Sunday Sermon launches a Psalms series, defining Christian meditation as focusing on God's Word to align the heart with truth rather than emptying the mind. The speaker contrasts this with emotional worship, arguing that anxiety stems from fixating on situations instead of God's character, while spiritual vitality resembles an evergreen tree enduring dormancy without losing life. Shifting to doctrine, the sermon critiques leaders who fail to verbally admit past errors, urging husbands to act as "resident theologians" who teach families solid beliefs and model humility by owning mistakes, ensuring true blessedness comes from knowing what one believes and why. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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A Collection of Psalms00:06:08
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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Thanks.
So, we're beginning a new sermon series through the Psalms.
We're not going to go verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
There are 150 Psalms.
Some of the Psalms have 150 verses, and it would probably take us 10 years.
It wouldn't be the worst decision that I would probably make as a pastor.
If I spent 10 years preaching through the Psalms, at the end of it, we'd probably be all right.
So it's not like that it would be a wrong decision, but there are other wonderful books of the Bible that I would like, by God's grace, Lord willing, to preach through as well.
So we're going to do kind of a collection of the Psalms.
We're going to go in chronological order.
And so today we're beginning with Psalm chapter 1.
The next will be Psalm chapter 2.
Then I believe we're skipping.
The next one will be either Psalm chapter 6 or 8.
I gave you guys a preaching schedule last night.
I don't have it on me this morning.
But basically, we're doing about 25 to 30% of the Psalms.
So, about 25 to 30 percent, we want to see from the holy, divinely inspired Psalms how we should pray, how we should worship.
We see how Christians should sing to the Lord, how Christians should pray to the Lord.
We also see how Christians should endure trial, difficulty, tribulation, how to suffer well, how to experience betrayal, how to pray prayers of vindication, how to let God be the one who ultimately gains vengeance and not us pursuing that ourselves, and how to trust the Lord.
How to experience victory in Christ.
All right, not to be a sore loser, but also how not to be a sore winner.
And so there's just a breadth of emotions, there's a breadth of human experience, a breadth of prayers, a breadth of singing that we find in the Psalms.
And so we're going to basically spend the rest of this year, we're going to finish our journey through the Psalms.
I believe it's December 26.
It's the last Sunday in December that we'll finish in the Psalms.
So today, without further ado, Psalm chapter 1.
If you would, would you stand with me for the reading of our text?
This is Psalm chapter 1.
When I finish reading the text, I'll say, This is the word of the Lord.
If you would respond by saying, Thanks be to God, it would be much appreciated.
Again, Psalm chapter 1, the Bible says this Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
In all he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
Let me pray briefly and we'll dive in.
Father, we thank you for your word.
We pray that you would bless it to our minds, our hearts, our souls.
Father, I pray that you would give us, even now, by your grace and the power of your spirit, Spiritual eyes to see, spiritual ears to hear, new hearts that are softened, malleable, and receptive to your truth.
Father, I pray that through the preaching of your word today, your people would, in fact, arrive at a deeper, more profound, more accurate knowledge of who you are, what you've done, and what it is that you require from us as a right and proper response to your word.
Father, I pray that we would come to see your character, that we'd come to see your nature, that we'd come to see your heart, but we'd also come to see what you've done for us in your work in creation, but even more so your work in redemption.
That we'd see what you have done, your salvific work in your Son Jesus, in his person.
And Father, we pray that we would come to see your law, not just as something that reveals our sin and a need.
For Jesus, a need for a Savior, but also your law that is a lamp unto our feet.
It's a guide, it's a compass.
Lord, I pray that we would delight in your law, that we would see it as good and holy and righteous, and that we would know that when we fail to uphold your law, we have a Savior.
But we would, in light of being redeemed by Christ, in light of your free gift of grace, that we would desire as a response to love you.
And we would recognize that those who love you seek to obey you.
And so, Lord, I pray that we would see your law as something that points us back to Christ.
But that Christ would then point us back to the law, not as a means of forgiveness or salvation, but as a guide that we could live lives that are pleasing to you, but also lives that are just better, lives that are full and rich.
You prescribe for us a better way of living.
I pray that we would see all that in your word as it's preached today.
Amen.
All right.
By way of introduction, I have a quote from the late, great R.C. Sproul, one of my favorite Baptists.
He was a Presbyterian in life, but now that he's dead, he's come to write theology.
And so.
R.C. Sproul, one of my favorite Baptists, he says this In the Psalms, we have a collection of 150 prayers that were inspired originally by the Holy Ghost.
If you want to know how God is pleased and honored in prayer, why not immerse yourself in the prayers that he himself has inspired?
As Christians, as we learn to pray, the Psalms function as a guide.
We see how the Spirit desires for us to pray.
That doesn't mean that it always has to be word for word quoting the Psalms, but they do provide.
Provide for us a template, a guide, a sample or example of how we should pray.
And so I'm excited for us to see more of that as we work through the Psalms, but especially as we work through this particular text today.
David's Guide to Prayer00:14:53
So, in your notes, under Roman numeral number one, I've written this the importance of Christian meditation as it pertains to prayer.
Our text today is an intro to the Psalms.
Psalm chapter one is a meditation.
And the Psalms in general really are a meditation.
So, some biblical scholars have called Psalm chapter one a meditation on meditation, thinking about how to think.
That's really what it is.
It's meditating on Christian meditation.
And because the word meditation has been hijacked in our culture today, and for really for hundreds of years in various cultures throughout the globe, I want to give you a definition of what Christian meditation is because it's very distinct from mantra meditation, pagan meditation that we find in our world today.
So in your notes, I've written this one very popular form of meditation in today's culture is called mantra meditation.
Where participants continually repeat a word or a phrase.
This practice is meant to transcend a person to an effortless state where focused attention is completely absent.
The goal is to become no longer aware of anything other than awareness itself.
It is believed that from this transcendental state, other forms of consciousness can be achieved that can lead toward a sense of being one with everything that exists and therefore one with God who exists in everything.
But this is the opposite.
Of the goal of Christian meditation.
See, mantra meditation, in short, it seeks the experience of being one with God, whereas Christian meditation seeks the experience of knowing God.
Mantra meditation, it seeks to suppress the analytical side of the mind and focus on the feelings of the heart, while Christian meditation often causes us to actually contend with our own feelings of our hearts.
Again, in short, mantra meditation, the meditation that's become popular in our culture today that would be associated with yoga and other.
Cultish sex, that kind of meditation that we find very popular in our culture today, it seeks to empty the mind.
Rather, Christian meditation, it seeks to focus the mind on substance, namely the substance of God's Word.
Here are a couple examples from the Psalms where the author, in this particular case, David, rather than trying to still his mind or empty his mind of all analytics, all rational thought, quiet his mind, right, there's ways that we could sit, be still, and know that God is God.
But I think we twist these scriptures a lot of times.
To say, empty your mind, stop thinking.
And I think the reason why there's so much of that message, even in the evangelical church today, stop thinking, is because there's so much guilt in evangelical Christianity today because there are so many thoughtless Christians.
So many people are content not to think deeply about the things of God.
And because they're not thinking deeply about the things of God, any kind of message that comes from the pulpit that says, hey, that's actually a virtue.
And people love that.
They'll flock to churches like that, they'll flock to pastors who console them.
About their thoughtlessness.
They will flock to pastors who console them and affirm them in their lack of biblical understanding, their lack of doctrine, their lack of theology, and say, This is actually a virtue.
In fact, the Bible even says to do this be still and know that He is God.
And of course, what that text means is work yourself into some kind of comatose state where there's no rational thought whatsoever, and that is somehow pleasing to God.
But it's not.
The greatest commandment is this love the Lord your God with everything.
But it goes into detail.
It tells us, it gives us an idea of what aspects of the person, the human being, we should love the Lord our God with.
Our heart, our soul, our strength, but also, the Bible says, Jesus says, our mind.
And this is not kind of like a buffet.
And a lot of Christians think that it is so.
It's not a buffet where you go and you go, I think I'm going to have the steak today.
No, you know, I'm going to have the meatloaf.
It's not like here are four different options for each individual Christian and how you can love the Lord.
You know, and I've selected the heart portion.
I'm going to love the Lord with all my heart.
And I'm going to interpret heart to mean emotions, zeal, passion.
And so I'm going to love the Lord with all of my emotions.
And I know that there are other people, other people in the church, other Christians who really love the Lord with all their mind.
And that's great for them.
And this is great for me.
That's not the command.
The greatest commandment to all Christians is to love God with everything.
It's not four different options and you get to select one.
It's a package deal.
Each of us is called to love the Lord with all of our heart.
And each of us is called to love the Lord with all of our strength, our soul, and our mind.
We are called to love the Lord not merely in our feeling, but in our thinking.
And so, Christian meditation is the priming pump for prayer.
And as we prepare ourselves to pray biblically, To pray Christianly, to pray in a way that pleases the Lord, we want to prepare ourselves with thought.
We don't want to just merely prepare our hearts.
We want to prepare our minds.
We want to think deeply upon the Word of God so that we might rightly pray the Word of God.
So let me give you an example of David.
This is Psalm chapter 42, verse 5, where he's actually not emptying his mind and completely surrendering himself to his heart and emotions, but rather he's actually doing the opposite.
He's actually using his mind, what he knows to be objectively true, regardless of circumstance, regardless of how he feels.
He is.
Using his mind and what he knows to be objectively true about God to actually contend to fight his own emotions, to fight his heart.
This is Psalm 42, verse 5.
It says, Now, this is unique because notice, you know, in the Psalms, a lot of times the audience is God.
A lot of times, they're prayers or they're songs that are being sang or prayers that are being prayed to God.
So, the person, the psalmist, the human being who's being inspired by the Holy Spirit to write a particular psalm, he's writing it to God.
It's almost like some of you might have a prayer journal where you actually take the time to write down prayers.
I think that's a wonderful practice.
But if you were to say, who is this journal written to, each of these entries, it would be written to God.
God would be the person that you're writing it to.
But look at Psalm 42, verse 5 again.
Why are you cast down, oh my soul?
Who is the psalmist talking to?
Who is David talking to?
He's not talking to God, he's talking to himself.
Why are you, who's the you, cast down, oh my soul?
David's talking to David.
And why are you in turmoil within me?
Why so anxious?
Why so worrisome?
Why don't you possess that calm disposition that we saw as we prayed?
At the beginning of our service in Psalm chapter 2, that the nations are raging, nothing but chaos and turmoil, doing everything they can.
No one is being still.
They're raging against God and His rule, His authority.
But what is God's posture?
He sits.
He doesn't even bother to stand up.
He is sitting in the heavens and He laughs.
He's got the same kind of posture as all the nations are coming together and doing everything they can.
Everything they can to contradict and to fight and rage against God, his posture is the same posture that you would have on a couch at home watching a sitcom.
That's how God is responding.
He sits in the heavens and he mocks.
He laughs.
He doesn't even bother to get up from his throne.
Now, his laughter, like I said when I was praying, it doesn't represent that the Lord takes pleasure in wickedness or pleasure in evil, but what it represents is the futility.
It represents the futility of man's rebellion against God's holy and righteous rule.
God is not threatened.
He's not concerned.
He's not worried.
That's his posture.
Well, look at David.
Again, Psalm chapter 42, verse 5.
That is not the psalmist's posture.
Why are you in turmoil within me?
David is in turmoil.
David is anxious.
David is worried.
But what does he tell himself to do?
Again, this is not a prayer.
Prayer is directed to God, right?
When we pray, we are speaking to God.
David's not speaking to God.
He's not telling God to hope in God.
Hope in God.
God, no, that doesn't make any sense at all.
So, who's he telling to hope in God?
Again, himself.
For I shall again praise him, my salvation.
I'm going to hope in him.
I'm going to worship him.
I'm going to praise him.
I'm going to thank him as though I've already been saved.
He's my salvation.
He's my refuge.
He's my rock.
He's my strong tower.
And although right now, circumstantially, I'm in a moment of chaos, a moment of turmoil.
My enemies surround me.
But I know that although the result has not yet taken place, I know that it's already in the bank.
It's as good as done.
I know that the Lord is my salvation.
I know that I can be at peace.
I can hope in God because he is faithful.
Here's another example, Psalm 103, verses 1 through 5.
Bless the Lord.
Again, prayer is directed to God.
David is not saying, God, bless the Lord.
God, bless God.
He's not telling God to bless himself.
He's rather, again, David is speaking to David.
He's speaking to himself.
He's saying, I need to bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.
Bless his holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
Have you ever done this?
I have.
There are moments where I'm just, I'm in fear, or maybe I'm bitter.
Maybe there's something that I was praying for, and the prayer just hasn't been answered, and I'm doubting the goodness of God.
I'm doubting the faithfulness of God.
Perhaps I'm even in my sin, bitter towards God, because I wanted something one way and God did it another.
I remember there was a theologian who once defined bitterness as this he said, Bitterness is the belief that God got it wrong.
I think that's well said.
Bitterness is the belief that God got it wrong.
Have you ever been, you know, convinced in a moment in your own sin that God got it wrong?
Well, in those moments, perhaps you've done this.
I know I've done it, and it's encouraging to see that David does it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
So it seems like a good practice to perform.
But he counts the benefits of God.
Have you ever, you know, pros and cons lists, right?
You're trying to make a decision.
Sometimes it's important to do that.
And to do that with God.
When we're doubting God, when we're bitter towards God, When we're frustrated towards God, make that pro and con list.
And I can save you some time.
The cons, there are none.
So you can just leave that side of the piece of paper blank.
And then the pros, you can begin to list them.
And if you try to list them exhaustively, well, we'll be continuing to do that for eternity in heaven.
It never ends.
What are some of his benefits?
This is verse 3 of Psalm 103.
He forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.
Who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
So, again, what is David's practice?
The psalmist.
What is his practice when he's in turmoil?
It could be anxiety, it could be bitterness, it could be anger.
There's a host of emotions that you might have.
Unbelief.
What is his practice?
His Christian discipline, spiritual discipline.
If you will, when he's in those kinds of moments.
Well, it's not only or merely or exclusively prayer, it's also meditation.
And that's my point.
Psalm chapter 1, it's an example, a sample of Christian meditation.
In a nutshell, we could say this prayer is when we're speaking to God, Christian meditation is when we're speaking to ourselves.
I'll say that again prayer, we know that it's prayer when we're speaking to God.
But the examples that I've used, Psalm chapter 42 and Psalm 103, neither of these are actually examples of prayer.
Because the author is not speaking to God, he's not writing to God.
He is rather speaking to himself.
And he's not, notice what he's doing.
He's not just affirming himself.
These aren't examples of self esteem.
These aren't examples of self assurance.
These aren't examples of him consoling himself and assuaging his own guilty conscience by saying, hey, you're really not that bad.
And really, you know, you've just misunderstood.
And really, the problem is not you, but it's your context.
You've been surrounded by a lot of toxic people, you know, and that's really, you know, like if there's anything bad in you, it probably came from somebody else and that influenced you.
You're really just a victim.
And that's not what he says.
It's not self esteem.
It's not self assurance.
It's not assuaging his guilty conscience to make himself feel as though he has no sin, as though he's innocent of any moral culpability.
No, no, what he's doing is he is actually contending with his heart.
My heart feels this way, but my mind tells me that is objectively wrong.
It doesn't matter how I feel.
How I feel may make it more difficult, may make it more challenging, but my feelings do not dictate what is true.
I think it was Alistair Begg who once said in a sermon, you know, he went to a church and the pastor, you know, greeted the congregation and said, How you feeling, church?
And he was sitting there in the pew just thinking to himself.
He didn't say it out loud.
He wasn't trying to be divisive, but he was like, Don't ask me how I feel.
He said, I don't feel good.
And the fact that you just asked that, I feel worse now.
I don't feel good.
Worship in Spirit and Truth00:04:53
But even if I don't feel good, who cares how I feel?
Don't ask me how I feel.
Tell me, and I love this line.
He said, Don't ask me how I feel.
Tell me what I know.
Tell me what I know.
Tell me what I know from the never changing, infallible, immutable, eternal Word of God.
Tell me what I know.
Tell me what's true this morning, regardless of what side of the bed I got up on.
Tell me what I can take to the bank.
Tell me what I can bet the house on.
Tell me what never changes.
Tell me what I know, not how I feel.
There's something that's so vital for Christians to understand when it comes to loving the Lord our God with everything.
Now, that's not, I don't want to go so far to say that the heart is irrelevant.
The heart matters.
I think of even Jesus, John chapter 4, when he's having this discourse with the Samaritan woman by the well, and she asked him about worship.
And he says, you know, where to worship.
And really, Jesus says this, you know, she says, You know, my ancestors say we should worship at this mountain, yours say the temple.
And Jesus, in essence, if I could paraphrase Christ and exegete that text very briefly, he says this Your question is about where to worship, but I tell you it's more important to ask how to worship.
How to worship.
And a day is coming where the Father is drawing to Himself true worshipers.
And true worshipers are those who worship in spirit and in truth.
So you're asking about where to worship.
I'm telling you, you should be more concerned about.
About how to worship, and this is how to worship in spirit and in truth.
Now, spirit, there it's a lowercase s, so it's not saying worship like the Holy Spirit worshiping, or no, spirit it means zeal in that context, it means passion, it means the heart, it means emotions.
So, emotions do matter.
Worship with zeal, worship with emotions and with passion, but also worship in spirit and in truth.
Keep your emotions informed.
Keep your emotions accountable.
Don't worship in spirit at the cost of truth because spirit at the cost of truth is not spirit, and truth at the cost of spirit is not truth.
Genuine biblical truth does not lead towards dead, cold, lifeless orthodoxy.
Genuine, true biblical doctrine is vibrant, it's filled with zeal, passion, emotion, joy.
It's not dead orthodoxy, it's not dusty.
It's not crotchety.
It's not angry.
It's not the curmudgeon, you know, just showing up and always complaining about something.
Right?
That's not truth.
Truth is invigorating.
Genuine biblical truth.
It's exciting.
In the same way, to worship in spirit, it's not mystical.
It's not all over the place.
It's not overly dramatic.
It's not constantly changing.
True zeal is.
Calculated zeal.
It's a strategic zeal.
It's, well, really, it's kind of like the fireplace in the fire.
I think it was George Eldon Ladd who used this analogy.
The fireplace, it's like truth, doctrine, right?
But you could have the grandest marble fireplace in some mansion.
You know, I mean, have you ever been in a place where like the fireplace is legitimately, you know, it's like up to here, you know, and it's like 10 feet wide, six feet tall?
It's like you could be burning like a whole forest in there.
Have you ever seen one of those grand, massive fireplaces?
Well, there are some churches, there's a way to have a marble, massive, grand fireplace like that, and there's no fire inside.
And everybody's looking and appreciating the mantle and the marble and all these things, the architecture of this fireplace, but they're all doing it while shivering.
They're cold.
But there's also a way to have a raging fire.
Me and Steve were talking about, like in our grill, you know, when you mess up, it's like, that is way too much fire for this context.
The grill is this big, the fire is this big.
That's not good either.
So there's a way of the fire, zeal.
True worshipers worship in spirit and in truth.
There is a way of having way too much fire and not enough fireplace.
And there's a way of having way too much fireplace, but too little fire or no fire.
And the Bible calls us to worship in spirit and in truth with zeal and knowledge.
Or simply put, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and our mind.
Balancing Zeal with Doctrine00:07:23
Our heart and our mind.
And there are times where our heart fuels our worship.
There are times where there are moments where you've just, you've so profoundly experienced the faithfulness and love and goodness of God that your emotions, your, I should say, your redeemed, regenerate emotions for the Christian with a new heart are actually fueling your worship.
You cannot help but begin to praise the Lord and thank the Lord.
And your zeal, your heart, is kind of like the gas pedal in that scenario.
It's pushing you into worship, driving you into praise.
But then there are other times where your heart and its emotions are precisely what's inhibiting your worship, holding you back from praise.
And so in those moments, we need to tell our hearts from our minds what we know is true.
So, Christian meditation, I wrote in your notes, it not only prepares us for how we should pray, But also, what we should pray.
See, after fixing our minds on God's truth, or fixing God's truth in our minds, we are always shown.
We always have something revealed to us about the character of God that we can praise Him for, something wrong about ourselves that we can repent for, and something that is needed which we can petition for, we can ask for, we can make a request for.
See, that's the beauty of the Word of God.
When we fix our minds in Christian meditation, the preparation for prayer.
Christian meditation, I heard one scholar say this, and he didn't mean it in any crude way, neither do I.
But Christian meditation, it's the foreplay of prayer.
It's the way that we prepare our hearts from our minds, from what we know, we are preparing how we feel about God.
We're preparing to pray.
And so, what are we doing with our minds?
Again, we're not emptying them.
It's not mantra meditation.
It's not trying to find this empty, comatose, transcendental state, stasis.
No, rather, we're focusing our minds.
We're utilizing, we're loving the Lord our God with the mind that He gave us by using our mind.
And focusing our mind, but on what?
Not on our situation.
See, we focus our minds all the time.
I kind of talked about this last Lord's Day when I was preaching.
We are always focusing our minds, almost always.
Sometimes we veg out and just, all right, I just, you know, we're asleep or watching something mindless, doing something mindless.
But most of the time, we are focusing our minds intently.
And when we're worried, our minds are going on overload, right?
Worry is not just an emotion.
So it's not just like our hearts or our soul is at turmoil, our mind is at turmoil.
The problem is that what we focus our minds on, and it's very intently, but what we are focusing our thoughts, our mind, our strategy, we're strategizing.
We're thinking through, you know, a hundred different scenarios.
But what we're focusing our mind on is not God often, it's not His Word often, but rather it's our situation.
And it's our own strength and our own plans and our own strategy.
And it's the dynamics of the situation that are causing us turmoil and fear, and then our own strength and power and how we could somehow fix it, how we can solve it.
Right?
Like, I've been in moments of anxiety.
They are not mindless.
This is my point.
They are not mindless moments.
Usually, when you're anxious, your mind is not slowing down, it's not taking a break.
Your mind is actually working faster in moments of anxiety than probably any other moment of your life.
You're thinking at 100 miles per hour.
The problem is what you're thinking about.
So, it's not that you've stilled your mind and you've bought into kind of the mantra meditation and emptied your mind of all rational thought.
No, you're thinking.
Well, you're trying to be rational, and often we're irrational.
Our minds overload.
But you are thinking as fast as you can, as deeply as you can, as hard as you can.
But the reason why you're still anxious is probably because you're just not thinking about Christ.
You're thinking about the situation, you're thinking about yourself, you're thinking about possible solutions to the situation and what you might be able to do.
And really, what it is, is you're frantically searching for something to place hope in.
Have you ever been there?
I mean, that's really what it is.
It's like, I feel hopeless, boom, because of this circumstance, this situation, this problem.
And then what you're doing in your mind, it's almost like a computer system when it's searching for scenarios.
It makes me think of, you know, like it's like crunch it, you know, like I'm going to crunch the numbers.
It's like, hey, can you crunch it again?
Maybe something will come back this time, you know, maybe there'll be a result this time.
But have you ever seen, like, in a TV show or a movie where there's, you know, like some kind of computer system that's searching for all the possible outcomes and looking for at least one viable solution?
Lack of a better illustration, Doctor Strange, right?
Dr. Strange with the Avengers, where he's kind of like, and he looks like he's in a transcendental state, right?
It looks like some kind of mantra meditation, which the movie is actually all about that.
But here's the irony when he actually saves the whole world, he comes up, remember, he's like, out of six million blah, scenarios, there's one where we beat the bad guy.
Well, when he's doing that, he's not emptying his mind, he's focusing his mind.
So the weird, wacky Eastern mantra meditation of Dr. Strange.
Actually, it is not what saves the world.
Even in the Avengers, they couldn't pull that off.
Because mantra meditation doesn't do anything.
And even godless pagans know that.
So they're like, the one time that this mantra meditation, you know, superhero character is going to save the world is the one time that he's not emptying his mind, but he's actually focusing it.
Because that's the only thing that actually works.
Because that's actual logic.
So we're going to have him, you know, in this transcendental state, but what he's actually doing in his mind is he is filtering through at, you know, incredible speed all these different millions of scenarios to find the one that will work.
That's what you and me do when we're anxious.
Now, we don't do it with like superpower speed because we're not superheroes.
We don't do it like Doctor Strange, but that's what we're doing.
It's not six million whatever, you know, scenarios, but we're going through six scenarios as fast as we can, you know, with as much, you know, thoughtfulness as we can.
The problem is that far too often, especially for those who profess Christ to be Savior and Lord, far too often in all the scenarios that we run through, Christ isn't one of them.
All the possible scenarios, possible solutions to the problem that we're running through, the scripture is not one of them.
Hoping in God is not actually one of them.
Hoping in God in the midst of trial, if God doesn't come through, we're okay.
A lot of times, the reality is we know that, but it's not enough.
So, you tell a fellow Christian that it's like, all right, well, here's something you could do, and here's something you could do, and here's something you could do.
God Cares About Your Happiness00:02:29
But at the end of the day, in an ultimate sense, even if none of this works, God is good.
And there's nothing, right?
There's nothing that He would allow in His providence, in His sovereignty.
There's no situation, no circumstance, no disease, no poverty, no loss, no loneliness, no kind of scenario that would ever come to you without first having to pass through the banner of His love.
God is not going to allow anything to happen to His children.
That will not ultimately be for their eternal good.
Meaning, anytime something happens to you that you don't feel like is good, that's only because it's actually better.
Because here's the thing God is a father, He's a father.
He's not your teenage friend, He's your father.
And as your father, divine father, all knowing, omniscient father, He actually cares about your long term benefits, your long term good.
There are things that my daughters, I mean, they are very convinced would be good for them.
And it probably would be good for them according to their skewed definition of good for the next three to five minutes.
But see, a father, a good father, cares about eternal good, long term benefits, long term good.
God allows us to experience affliction because he cares about our good 10,000 years from now.
He created us to be beings that will live on with him eons and eons into eternity.
God is profoundly concerned about your levels of joy and happiness 200,000 years ago.
You're not thinking about that.
He is.
He's not depriving you of something because he doesn't care about your joy.
He is holding something back that ultimately is not good for you because he cares infinitely more about your joy than you do.
Did you know God is more committed to your happiness than you are?
God cares more about your happiness, not just your holiness, but your happiness than you do.
And you know why?
Because happiness and holiness are inseparable.
Holiness is the means of happiness.
Because at the end of the day, what ultimately brings grief and anxiety and fear and depression is sin.
That's why you're not happier.
It's not your circumstances, it's your sin.
Topping Down Our Idols00:08:11
And it's your sin reacting to those circumstances.
Because you can have the very same circumstances.
This doesn't pan out, that doesn't work out.
But if you were holier, you'd be happier.
The reason why you're not happy isn't because there are bad things happening.
The reason why you're not happy is because you have a bad heart.
And you need to continually be sanctified and redeemed and repent of your sin and pursue the holiness for without which no one will see the Lord.
That's a progressive holiness.
Ultimately, that's Hebrews, quoting Hebrews, because it sounds legalistic, but it's a Bible verse.
Ultimately, we see the Lord because we've been made righteous, declared righteousness, not by works so that no man can boast, but through faith in Jesus.
His obedience and we're clothed in his righteousness.
That's the gospel.
However, at the same time, because we are positionally righteous, not by works, but through faith, we want to become progressively righteous in our sanctification.
We care deeply about justification.
Justification is the gospel, but sanctification is the Christian life.
And we want to progress in holiness, we want to progress in righteousness, we want to continue to dig deep.
Deep into our own hearts, not with thoughtlessness, but with Christian meditation, loving the Lord our God with all our minds, deep thought, probing the heart, and rooting up like weeds in a yard, getting them by the root.
Those idols, those wrong emotions.
I think it was St. Augustine who said this.
He said, Fear, anger, all these kind of problem emotions.
He said, It's merely the smoke that rises from the altars that we build to our idols.
I'll say it again.
Problem emotions, fear, anxiety, anger, depression, doubt.
It's merely the smoke that rises from the altars that we build to our idols.
Fall the smoke, and you'll find the idol.
When you have a huge cloud of smoke, metaphorically speaking, in your life, a huge moment of anxiety, a huge moment of anger, outburst of anger.
I'm so angry, I can't even control my anger right now.
Huge clouds of smoke, if you will, to keep with this illustration, a blow up of anger or an anxiety attack.
Or whatever.
There may be some medical reasons behind that.
So I'm not, we are body and soul, right?
But a big part of it usually has to do with our sin.
A big part of it has to do with our sin.
There's this cloud of smoke, but there wouldn't be any smoke if there wasn't a fire.
And there wouldn't be a fire if there wasn't an altar.
And there wouldn't be an altar if there wasn't an idol.
There's something that we love other than God, other than Christ, other than His promises.
There's something that we're trusting other than His character.
Other than his word.
See, here's the problem with idols.
Idols can be toppled.
Now, we should be the ones to topple them, right?
We should do the hard work, the soul searching work of finding idols in our hearts and toppling them over, saying, No, I will not bow the knee, I will not erect an idol, an altar, other than true worship to the true God.
We should be the ones who are toppling our own idols in our hearts.
But here's the problem often we don't because of our sin, because of our spiritual apathy.
Because of our mediocre approach to progressive holiness and sanctification, we allow idols to still stand in our hearts.
Just like apathetic kings in Israel, some of the kings, when they came in, when they were righteous, what would they do?
They would search through all the land and topple every altar that was built to a false god.
All the Asherah poles, all the altars and temples that were built to Baal, they would take them and rip them apart.
And we too should do that in our own hearts, but often we don't.
Now, here's the problem when we aren't diligent in our pursuit of holiness to topple our own idols, God, who is faithful and loving through his providence, through life, and those things which he orchestrates, he ordains, he will topple those idols and it will hurt.
When God topples an idol, it hurts more than when we do.
God's the one who's ultimately knocking that idol over either way, but he's doing it through the means of you.
In sanctification or life and his providence.
Life and providence hurts, right?
God sees, hey, you've erected an idol to financial security.
Let me go ahead and knock that over for you.
Lost your job?
Let me knock that over for you real quick.
Got evicted from your place.
Let me, hey, I love you.
Let me just go ahead and knock that over, right?
Oh, we owe on our taxes this year and we thought we were going to get taxes back and it's a $7,000 swing with what we were prepared.
Right?
I mean, you just go through a million different scenarios, but the point is, that's God's love.
That's God's love.
He topples idols.
And my point in all that is just to say, He's going to do that through sanctification, getting us to actually repent, us to knock over that idol ourselves, or He's going to do it through His providence.
Either way, He is committed to those who are genuinely born again, Christians, His children, adopted spiritual sons, as a loving Father.
He is going to do whatever it takes to ensure, to guarantee our happiness.
He's more committed to your joy, your happiness than you are, and he's committed to your long term happiness because that's the way that fathers think.
Fathers don't just think about what would make my daughter really, really, really like me in this moment.
Because that's not loving your daughter, that's loving yourself.
And I can tell you, as a father who is not God, but rather a man who is sinful, man, I am tempted to do that sometimes.
My wife, literally, she calls me Dada Sucker Man.
And the kids know that.
Like, they will come to me often more than her if they want something.
Jane is learning it.
She sees me by the pantry, she knows there's candy in there, and she knows that Uncle Joel is the most likely character to open a bag of candy and share it.
Now, that being said, sometimes it's innocent, sometimes it's sweet, sometimes it's kind, but sometimes it's love for myself.
It's not love for the kids because I care more about the kid liking me than me liking the kid.
Sometimes we actually don't love people, we love people loving us.
There's a difference.
Loving people, loving others is different than loving others, loving you.
See, God is committed to our own happiness, our own joy, and He knows that holiness is the means of getting there.
He does it through sanctification, granting us the gift of repentance in our hearts so that we will topple down our own idols.
And sometimes He does it because we're refusing to repent in that moment.
He does it through providence, taking things away, stripping things, allowing situations and life and moments to come to pass through the banner of His love.
Knowing that it's ultimately going to hurt, but it's ultimately for our good.
Now, my point in all this is to say these are the kinds of things that we need to be aware of when we go before the Lord in prayer.
These are the kinds of things that we need to be aware of when we come to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
These are the things that we need to be aware of when we sing to the Lord, pray to the Lord.
We need to be mindful and count His benefits.
There are moments where, before you're ready to pray, before you talk to God, you might need to talk to yourself.
I think that's the lesson for today.
Loving the Law as Life00:15:26
If nothing else, what I want you to see is that if we were to follow any guide for Christian prayer, prayers that please the Lord, why not use the prayers that the Lord Himself wrote?
All Scripture is God breathed, all Scripture is inspired by God.
The Psalms are Scripture, meaning this is God's Word.
And in God's Word, we have Holy Spirit inspired prayers.
We have God inspiring prayers to God.
That should be our guide.
That's the best example we're ever going to find for how to pray properly.
And I think one of the things that we see in the Psalms is that before the psalmist begins to pray, talk to God, he begins to meditate and talk to himself, even at times.
See, what we see, blessed is the man who walks in the counsel of the wicked and stands.
See, meditation, it provides stability.
Trees that are planted by streams of water will thrive even if there's little rain.
The streams of water, I believe in this text, they represent the word of God.
And putting down roots, being a tree that's planted nearby these streams of water, with roots reaching into the streams of water, I think that that's representative of meditating on God's word, his law, day and night.
Meditation, Christian meditation, not thoughtless, not mindless, but again, taking the mind and focusing it, feasting it on the word of God.
That kind of meditation provides fruitfulness, not just thoughtfulness, but fruitfulness.
Notice in verse 3 of Psalm chapter 1 it says, He, the blessed man, what does he do?
He's meditating on God's law day and night, and not out of.
Painful obligation, but he delights in the law of God.
He sees it as good, righteous, and holy.
He loves the Word of God.
He's thinking deeply about the Word of God.
And what's the result now?
That's verse 1 and 2.
Verse 3 the result is, He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
You could preach a whole sermon just on that.
Yielding fruit in season, but leaf never withers.
See, the Christian, the blessed man, the spiritually mature, sanctified Christian, Who meditates on God's Word day and night is like an evergreen tree.
The leaves are always green.
But even an evergreen tree isn't always producing fruit.
There is a way to be spiritually alive and yet fruitless at the same time in season.
See, it doesn't promise, notice, it doesn't promise that if you meditate day and night on the law of God, and not just begrudgingly, but because you love God's law, you've come to see God as holy.
Therefore, you've come to see His law as not just the right thing to do, but the good thing, the thing that produces life.
That's why I gave all that framework about God's holiness and happiness being one and the same, God caring more about your joy than you do.
All of that, if you see God like that, you see His law like that.
If you see God as someone who's concerned about your holiness but also your happiness, and that holiness and happiness are not at war with one another, and His law is simply a roadmap for accomplishing holiness and happiness in your life because He loves you and cares for you, if you come to see all that, then you don't just follow God's law begrudgingly, gritting your teeth and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
You meditate, think about the law of God day and night because it's your favorite thing to think about because you delight in it.
You love God's law because you love God.
And you love God, why?
Because you've come to see his love for you.
That he's not just concerned about you being righteous, he's concerned about you being happy.
Right?
1 John 4 19, we love because he first loved us.
When we see God's concern for us, that he loves us more than we love ourselves, we love him.
And when we love him, we trust him.
We trust him to provide the strategy for our happiness.
Instead of us coming up with all of our own strategies and scenarios ourselves, And that strategy that he presents to us in his word is his law.
And when we see his goodness and we see his wisdom, it becomes something that we can't help but think about deeply and meditate on day and night.
We become lovers of his law, we delight in his law.
And don't you always find yourselves thinking about the things that you love?
At the end of the day, that's all we think about is what we love and I would say what we hate or fear.
Because it's threatening what we love.
We are profoundly committed as human beings to our own welfare, our own benefit, our own happiness, our own joy.
And we think about the things that we love and we think about the things that are standing in our way and how we can somehow fix the situation.
And if we don't find ourselves often and frequently and deeply thinking about God, it is simply a revelation of our affections.
At the end of the day, We simply love something else more than Christ.
So, all that being said, God, we can trust Him.
And we love, because we see His love for us, we love Him, we trust that He's committed not just to us being righteous, but us being happy.
And because He's committed to that, we trust His law and we delight in His law.
And anything we delight in, we're going to think about often.
So, we're thinking about God's law day and night because we delight in His law, and the result is we are like trees.
And that's what I was getting at.
Evergreen.
The leaf never fades.
Meaning, there's never a moment that you're spiritually dead.
Your vitality is there.
But notice, verse 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither.
A spiritually mature person, a righteous person, the blessed man who delights in the law of God day and night, that person, that person, still, even though its leaves are always green, even though there's always spiritual life, that person is not always going to be bearing fruit.
Healthy trees, living trees, Still, God has ordained for trees and crops and animals and everything else, God has ordained seasons.
That's the way He created the cosmos.
It's the way he created his creation, the world, and it's the way he created you and me.
God has created trees to produce fruit in season.
And then there are other seasons where they are dormant.
It doesn't mean they're dead.
The leaves are still green, it's still vibrant.
There's still spiritual life.
And yet, as far as we can see, what's visible to us, there may not be a lot of fruit.
I'm sure that's been your experience.
And the reason why I pause for a moment and say that is what we often think is I think we conflate these things.
We think if there's no fruit, then my leaves aren't green.
Right?
If there's not apples in the orchard, the trees are dead.
So, well, there could be a healthy orchard with healthy trees, with vibrant leaves, but apple trees, they just, they only put out apples at certain times.
And so, so too, it is with us.
You might be in a season right now where there's not a lot of fruit.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that there's not a lot of spiritual vitality in life.
That's my point.
You can be spiritually alive and not have a lot of fruit.
It's not like Jesus, the Son of God, became righteous and finally began to have an intimate relationship with his Father when he began his earthly ministry.
Jesus had an intimate relationship with his Father his whole life on earth.
He was spiritually.
Spiritual vitality, perfectly holy, perfectly sinless, from the womb, from conception.
And yet, his fruit exploded at the end of his life.
And there were other seasons of Jesus' ministry where nobody even knew he was the Son of God.
Nobody had any clue what he was going to do.
It's the same way with us.
Meditation, it's not just thoughtfulness, it produces fruitfulness.
So, in conclusion, Proverbs chapter 18, verse 2 says this.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his own opinion.
So, I want to read a quick excerpt and I'll close from Reforming Marriage by Doug Wilson.
I like this.
I think it's really, really good.
And I think, you know, Doug doesn't mean it.
He's not saying this in relation to the text that I've just preached, but I think it's a good example a good example of a Christian man or woman, the blessed man or woman, who loves the law of God and is committed to thoughtfulness, committed to Christian meditation, thinking about God's word.
Thinking deeply about God's word, even contending with ourselves, giving ourselves a biblical pep talk before we begin to speak to God in prayer.
This is what he says The evangelical world is throwing away its theological heritage because of doctrinal faithfulness in Christian homes.
It is true that pulpits across our country are filled with a swamp of antidotes and sentimentalist yop, yippie skippie worship, and make it up as you go along theology.
But the heads of Christian homes, this only happens because the heads of Christian homes have been willing to have it so.
As the expectations for men in the evangelical world have gotten lower, men have not objected.
They have actually breathed a sigh of relief.
But a man who speaks for his house, as Joshua did, me and my house will serve the Lord, he must be a man who teaches his house.
And he must be a man who refuses to submit his family to the foolishness of unbelief.
Whether the unbelief is dressed up in liberal or pop evangelical clothes makes little difference.
When Jesus teaches us that his sheep will not listen to the voice of a stranger, he is assuming the sheep are right if they do not follow when the voice of the shepherd is absent.
So, the first thing necessary is that a husband must establish his home as a confessional home.
This means he must know what he believes, and he must communicate and teach this confession of faith to his family.
Related to this is the necessity that the confession be detailed.
A man who is just saved may only be able to confess that Jesus is Lord.
And this is enough, many would say.
It is certainly enough for salvation, but it is not enough for a man who is called to be an instructor of his household.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you still need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and have come to need milk rather than solid food.
Hebrews chapter 5, verse 12.
See, the Bible teaches that a minimalist approach to doctrine should be an embarrassment for an older Christian.
The fact that many today glory in having a truncated theology is an occasion for grief and sorrow.
The question is not, how little can I know and still get to heaven?
The question for husbands and fathers is, Given my time, resources, intellectual ability, etc., how much can I learn and how much can I teach my wife and children?
A man may not be a vocational theologian, I like this, but in his home he must recognize that he is the resident theologian.
He may not be a vocational theologian, but he must recognize that in his home he is the resident theologian.
A husband must be prepared to answer his wife's doctrinal questions, and if he cannot, then he must be prepared to study so that he can remedy.
The deficiency.
He must know why, oh, second, he must know why he believes as he does so that he can communicate and teach this to his family as well.
This is impossible apart from a consistent reading of the Bible over and over again.
In addition to his Bible reading, an evangelical husband must be committed to reading books of solid doctrinal teaching written by sound, qualified men.
Not only must he reflect upon the Word directly, but he should take full advantage of all the teachers which God has given to the body of Christ.
And lastly, as he studies his Bible, He will, of course, grow in his understanding of the greatness of the sovereignty of God in all things.
And as he does so, he must be humble enough to set aside any erroneous doctrines that he has previously held.
He must be willing to apologize to his family for leading them astray at that point, and he must teach them afresh and anew.
Under no circumstances may a godly husband and father cling to error, even if these changes must be made at great cost.
That's what we're talking about.
Blessed is the man who delights in the law of God and meditates on it day and night.
Christian men are thinking men.
They think about God's word day and night.
They are men of zeal who worship God in spirit, but also men of thought who worship God in truth.
And they recognize that call on their life that as a spiritual head of a household, you're called not only to be responsible for yourself, but others.
And that doctrine matters what we believe, and it also matters why we believe it.
And And the blessed man, who's like a tree, right?
He's stable.
Other people can count on him.
It's the last thing I'll say.
Other people, they can lean on him.
He's not falling over.
He's not hollowed out with termites.
He's not weak.
He's not breaking and rotten.
He's strong.
He's a pillar.
You can trust him, the blessed man.
Why is he stable?
Why is he spiritually alive?
And why is he bearing fruit in season?
Because he meditates, he thinks, he's thoughtful, he knows what he believes.
He knows why he believes it.
He's teaching that to others that he's responsible for.
And when he comes to recognize that he has held to something that is not true, that he got it wrong, what does he do?
The blessed man is a thoughtful man and he's a humble man.
He apologizes.
There is no glory in a man or a woman for that matter holding to something wrong, recognizing it's wrong, and trying to find some kind of way to sneak out the back door.
Godly, righteous men and women, when they come to realize that they held a wrong view, they own it.
And you know why?
For two purposes.
For the purpose of modeling humility, but also for the purpose of clarity.
One of the reasons why Christians in the evangelical world are so confused today is because Christian leaders won't actually admit that they changed positions.
Modeling Humility and Clarity00:05:28
Right?
COVID 19, great example.
Romans 13, submit to the government in everything.
How many pulpits said that?
Right?
And love your neighbor.
And loving your neighbor, I mean, my neighbor has a soul.
So love their soul by actually the church still gathering and ministering the ordinary.
No, that's not loving your neighbor.
Love their body.
And love only their body.
Because that's all that matters.
Because at the end of the day, if churches stay shut down for 10 more years, but people live a little bit longer, that's what's most important, right?
That's what my Bible says.
It says your soul doesn't matter at all and your physical health is the end of all things, right?
That's what.
No.
But that's what we did.
And that's not what pagans did.
That's what pastors did.
And there are churches that still haven't opened up.
It's been a year.
15 days to slow the spread.
How did you celebrate the annual anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread?
Isn't that hilarious?
And so my point is to say that's a great example of Romans 13.
Romans 13, love your neighbor, love your neighbor.
And then by God's grace, and I thank God for this, a lot of churches and a lot of pastors have changed their position in terms of action.
The churches are now open.
They're taking a stand against the civil magistrate in certain states, especially like California, saying, No, Christ is the head of the church, not Caesar.
Right?
They've changed their position, they've changed in their actions, they've changed in their life.
But here's the problem they have not verbally admitted to their people that they made a change, because that would involve admitting to their people that they were previously wrong.
And here's what's lost when we repent in deed but not in word.
Full repentance is word and deed.
When we repent in deed but not in word, here's the problem.
What happens is this not only do we fail to meet an opportunity to model humility, we also fail in our doctrine, in our teaching to model clarity.
Because if you don't admit, hey, I was teaching one thing and I said, this is our church's position, we're going to do this and this is why, here are the texts and here's our doctrine and here's our view, and now I'm doing something completely different.
If you never verbalize that, right?
If you make the change, In your teaching and your action and everything your church is doing, and even what you're saying and what you're preaching, but you never verbalize and say, hey guys, you might have noticed this is literally in direct contradiction to what I was teaching six months ago.
See, a lot of pastors won't say that.
And here's what you lose you don't just lose an opportunity as a leader to model humility, you also lose doctrinal clarity.
Because your people think, oh, both of these things don't contradict each other.
Right?
Like doing this is what Pastor so and so said to do.
Six months ago, and now doing this is what, and these two things I guess they're somehow cohesive and somehow they go together and they're not in contradiction to one another.
They're not in conflict.
You lose not just an opportunity for humility, you lose clarity.
Part of the reason the evangelical church is so doctrinally anemic and lacking so much clarity is because Christian men, Christian leaders, have not loved Christian meditation, thinking about God's word, but also they have not loved humility.
And so when they're wrong, they don't admit it.
You can show up to a church.
I mean, it's a fun but also tragic game to play.
You can show up, keep your little journal, and in most American churches, you could find over the course of a year, if you just take some notes, You can find probably 100 to 200 contradictions from the pastor's mouth.
The same guy.
You know who disagrees with most evangelical pastors more than anybody else?
Themselves.
Just wait till, like, literally, like two Sundays later, and they'll say something that objectively, like, perfectly contradicts what they preached the week before.
Because they don't have a systematic theology.
They have not yet cared enough to find how the whole of God's word works together.
And so they preach one thing, then they preach another thing, and it's contradicting.
There is no systematic doctrine.
There is no cohesiveness.
There is no serious thoughtfulness.
And the people, it's not just that they missed an opportunity to exercise humility, display humility, but they missed an opportunity to show people clarity.
Their people are confused.
Their people have no idea.
They have no idea.
Well, this is true, but this is also true.
But do you see how those things contradict each other?
Do they?
And so my point is to say we need to humble ourselves.
We need to love God's word.
We need to meditate on it day and night.
We need to pursue these things.
Know what we believe, know why we believe it.
Know that not everybody's going to be the world's best theologian, but you are the resident theologian for your home, the people that you're responsible for.
Teach them what you believe, why you believe it, and when you're wrong, part of being a leader is not just loving doctrine, it's loving righteousness, it's loving humility.
When you're wrong, own it.
And you don't have to pay penance.
Owning it doesn't mean that you have to go and tell everybody you're wrong for the next 10 years and flog yourself.
None of that.
All you have to do is say it once.
Hey, so you might have remembered I said this, that's wrong.
It's actually that.
Thanks so much for listening.
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