If you'll take your copy of the scriptures and turn with me, please, to the Old Testament book of Psalms, its opening chapter. The book of Psalms and chapter one. And follow with me, please, as I read aloud this short but powerful psalm. Psalm 1, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree, firmly planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall 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 ungodly shall perish. In the book of Psalms, we learn a great deal about talking to God. It's the closest thing we have in the Bible to what you could call an inspired prayer book. And whether it's praising God or petitioning God or pouring out our hearts to God, the book of Psalms, more than any other section of Scripture, underscores that at the heart of true religion is having a personal relationship with the Lord God, a heart-to-heart connection with the God who lives, the God who made us, a relationship in which we can truly confide in Him, in which everything is naked and laid bare before Him. The Bible, however, never separates the idea of our having a personal relationship with God from the idea of our attitude toward the Word of God, our attitude toward the authority of God, the righteous love, the righteous ponder, the righteous follow the Word of God. The wicked do not love the Word. and they will not submit to it. They may pride themselves on knowledge of the Bible. They may pride themselves on having opportunities to speak forth the Bible. But the wicked at heart never truly reveres and loves the word of God. The first psalm has often been considered a preface or a gateway into the entire book of psalms, the idea perhaps being that before one comes to speak to the Lord, as so many psalms convey an inspired record of speaking to God, but perhaps the idea is that before one comes to speak to the Lord, one should consider one's attitude towards God's Word. Sounding much like the book of Proverbs, this is a wisdom psalm. It makes a very strong contrast between the righteous and the wicked. It considers their character. It considers their condition. It considers their end. And I invite you to reflect with me this morning upon the two portraits that are set before us The first three verses of Psalm 1 give us a portrait of the righteous. The closing three verses of Psalm 1 give us a portrait of the wicked. And think with me about these inspired pictures that are set before us. The psalm draws our attention first to the righteous, and the description of the righteous begins with an affirmation of their condition, an affirmation of their state, if you will, and they are described as being blessed. The righteous are the blessed. Like Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount, this message begins with a pronouncement of blessedness. And like Jesus, who you may recall spoke of a plurality of blessings, so this psalm speaks of a plurality of blessings because the word blessed, interestingly, is in the plural. perhaps seeking to underscore the emphatic blessedness of the righteous, perhaps having in mind the multitude of blessings that belong to the righteous. The idea is of being well-off, of being favored, of being One, to be congratulated. I personally don't especially like the rendering that is often found, happy. Happy are the righteous. Happy has a high emotive element to it, at least in the way our culture thinks about happy. And many are the afflictions of the righteous. The righteous are not always happy in the moment, but they are always blessed. They are always the favored ones. They are always the well-off ones in the truest sense of that phrase. God Himself assesses His people as being blessed. And whatever our present circumstances may be, and whatever our present emotive state may be, let us learn to look at ourselves in the way that God looks at us, if by grace we belong to the company of the righteous. We are blessed. That's where this psalm begins. A metaphor making the same point is used in verse 3. The righteous shall be like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does, he prospers." Israel, obviously, is a mid-eastern country. What do we think of when we think of the terrain of mid-eastern countries like Saudi Arabia? We think of lots of sand. We think of brown. We think of barren. We think of desert. The very opposite of a lush tropical rainforest such as what you might find in the Amazon River Basin, for example. But Israel does have streams, and alongside those streams, trees flourish and bring forth abundant fruit, such as dates, for example. And the Bible uses this picture to illustrate the righteous. They are not brown and withered. They are fruitful. They are vibrant. They are trees whose leaves are green and full of sap. and they bring forth a prosperous yield. Psalm 1 does not go into the particulars of the blessedness of the righteous, but we infer from the larger analogy of scripture that what is in view is that the righteous are at peace with God, and God is with them, and God is for them, and God is their protector, and God is their shepherd. It is well with their souls. Again, if by grace we have warrant to count ourselves among the congregation of the righteous, let us learn to feed our sense of joy and our sense of peace by what God says about us more than by what our subjective state may be telling us. Let us not allow ourselves to be those who interpret our subjective impressions as being more defining of reality than what God has said. Let us not be those who are hypersensitive to the circumstances of life and dull to what the Bible pronounces about all those who belong to God and live in the company of the righteous. The Bible says, blessed are you. That's no small part of cultivating a life of joy and a life of peace. If you're righteous by the grace of God, you have want to wake up in the morning and say, praise God, I am among the blessed. Well, we're next given the character of the righteous. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. And righteous character is here depicted both by what the righteous do not do and by what they love to do. It's stated negatively and it's stated positively. Stated negatively, the righteous are marked by a practical disassociation from what is wicked. a practical disassociation from what is wicked. They do not follow the advice of the ungodly. They do not allow themselves to be conformed to habits of thought, of practice that characterize those that are evil in God's sight. They refuse to settle down unnecessarily in a setting that is characterized by a scornful disdain. for the presence of God, the authority of God, the word of God. The righteous take to heart the warnings of scripture, warnings that come to us in both Old Testament and New Testament. Proverbs 13, 20 says, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. It's recognizing a principle of association, that we are colored by those that we choose to company with closely. We're influenced by those whom we choose to have as our closer friends. We are impacted by the environment in which we choose to place ourselves and the values of the people in that environment. New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15, 33, be not deceived, we're warned, bad company corrupts Good morals. These texts are warning us. They are blinking signs. Be careful about who you accompany with. Beware of the influence of those around you. They can have a rubbing off impact that can be corrupting, that can be hurtful, that can lead to you suffering harm. the righteous recognize that they're called to live in this world. They do not isolate themselves, and that's a reaction that God's people in every generation have been susceptible to, thinking that the only way to live righteously is to withdraw into a cocoon of perceived safety. We'll simply stay at home with our family. We'll simply huddle with our Christian friends. We'll go to church. But other than that, we will keep a long distance from anyone who doesn't share our perspectives on life. Well, that's not true to the Bible's overall message. We're called to live in this world. We're called to be salt and light in this world. We're called to love this world. We're called to go after this world in the sense of seeking to reach the world. We will not reach people for Jesus if we go through life always thinking about keeping a great distance from them. So balance is needed in thinking about what our text is affirming. But what is central to what is being affirmed is that the righteous decidedly refuse to walk in the counsel or advice of the ungodly. They will not stand, that is they will not habituate themselves in a pattern of life that is ungodly in its attitude, in its speech, in its behavior. They will not willingly, voluntarily just camp, set up camp in a place where the attitude towards God's word is one of scorn, one of dismissiveness, one of disdain. The godly do not find pleasure in things that offend God. The godly do not enjoy being around words and attitudes that show a blatant disrespect for God's holy majesty. The sitcoms and the police shows, they may present a view of sexuality that says it is so cool just to do what gratifies, just to hook up in a way that just because you're excited by someone, the way they look or their charm, isn't this great. That may be what Hollywood presents, but the godly are controlled by a different perspective on sexuality. And there's a certain sense in which they despise what the world says. about such things that God holds dear. The righteous cannot enter into certain experiences that other people are running to in droves. The righteous are willing to turn off the TV, stay away from certain movies. They don't just follow the herd. My purpose this morning is not to give you a legalistic list of what you can do and what you can't do, but the righteous attitude towards the wicked does come to tangible expression in that decisions are made that show some discernment. They distinguish between things, they differ. There are things that they're for and there are things that they're against. And the things that they're against do lead them to make certain decisions about what they'll listen to and what they'll watch and where they'll go. The righteous cannot fully endorse an approach to learning that views God and scripture as being untrustworthy at best and evil in its influence at worst because of an archaic moral code that is repressive and that is just wrong to the modern mind. Now, there's certainly a place. There can be good reasons to use the public school system for our children or for young people to attend a secular university. There can be very valid, legitimate reasons for choosing that course, but the righteous can never be completely satisfied with a setting where the attitude towards learning is that God has no place here. God is not relevant to wisdom. God has nothing to do with what's really important in terms of your learning to be able to live life well. The righteous can never be fully satisfied with that attitude, that perspective. They have embraced the truth that wisdom begins with what? The fear of the Lord. It's only where there is an appreciation for the fact that God is huge. that real wisdom can be learned. Verse 1 of Psalm 1 is not describing simply the mental notions of the righteous, but their practical way of life, their habitual conduct. Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. It's describing things that the righteous don't do. And it raises the question, what is our pattern of conduct? What are the things that we purpose to not do? We purpose to not walk down that path. We purpose to not stand in that place. We're resolved to not sit down unnecessarily and camp in that scene. Don't do things because everyone else is doing them. May God deliver us from a herd mentality. Don't be controlled by what is cool. Don't be governed by what is easily accessible. Seek out that which is true and honorable and right and pure in God's sight. Stated negatively, the righteous are marked by a practical disassociation from what is wicked. Stated positively, the righteous are characterized by a love of God's Word. This is at the forefront of the positive setting forth of the righteous in Psalm 1. His delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law he meditates day and night. Now the phrase the law of the Lord is oftentimes used in the book of Psalms simply as a synonym for the word of God. Psalm 19, for example, in its lifting up the preciousness of revelation from God speaks of it as the law of God, but it's simply a synonym for the word of God, God's special revelation. The righteous love the Word of God because they love the God of the Word. I remember being asked by a pastor, as Beth and I began premarital counseling many moons ago, he spoke to us about how do you know that you love each other? He was speaking of marital love, the kind of love that would lead you to join your lives together for life. How are you confident that you really love one another. And one of the things that he explained in talking through our answers and discussing that together is that one of the marks of a marriage like love is a longing, a desire to be in the presence of the person, to want to know them. to want to share in their lives, to want to know how they feel about things, to want to know how they think about things, to want to know what they like, to want to understand what they don't like, to want to understand what makes them excited, to want to understand what really turns them off, to be able to enter into their plans and their purposes and where there's healthy marital love, there's a lot of talking going on and a lot of listening going on because that's the way love shows itself. There's an interest in that person to know them, to really know them, to know what's really going on inside. What are they struggling over? What are they longing for? Well, through the Bible, We have the closest thing we can get to. as sitting down in God's presence and learning what's on his heart, and learning what he likes and what he dislikes, and learning about his plans, and learning about his purposes, and learning about what he's done and what he's going to do. If we want to know God, we must have the Bible and the righteous love the fact that God has spoken in words that we can trust, in words that we can understand, and he's made it accessible to us. We have access to the Scriptures. We can know God through His Word. The righteous love the Word, not only because they love the God who gave us the Word, but also the righteous appreciate what the Bible does for them. I spoke a moment ago about Psalm 19. And I love Psalm 19 and its affirmation of what the Bible does for God's people. And without turning there, I'll simply quote the verses in mind. Verse 7, and following, the law of the Lord, we read, is perfect in Psalm 19. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. That's what it does. It changes the heart. It impacts life. It brings transformation. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. We can really learn insight. We can be wise people because of what the Bible does. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. There is content in the Bible that is calculated to make you a happier person. There are words that God has given us that if we simply take them to heart, if we understand them, if we believe them, the effect will be to rejoice our hearts. We will have a sense of, this is wonderful. We will have a right appreciation of the fact that this is glorious. That God would say these things and that they have this to do with me. The Bible does that. It rejoices the heart when read rightly in the power of the Holy Spirit. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Perhaps the single most famous text in the whole Bible about the Bible, 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, all scripture. It's inspired by God and is what? Profitable. Yes, it's divine. Yes, it's holy. Yes, it's true. But it is also immensely beneficial. It is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to train in righteousness. Under what end? that the man of God, and by way of implication, every righteous person might be thoroughly furnished to engage in every good work. The righteous love what the Bible does for them. And it's this love for scripture that moves the righteous to meditate regularly upon the scripture. Blessed is that man, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. I've quoted in years past, and allow me to quote again J.I. Packer's outstanding description of meditation, I found in his classic called Knowing God, written before some of you were born. But Packer says this, I believe it's on page 23 or 24 of Knowing God. Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself the various things that one knows about the works, and ways, and purposes, and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Learning how to pray in Scripture. Its purpose, Packard continues, is to clear one's mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one's mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God, and talking to oneself about oneself. Indeed, it is often a matter of arguing with oneself. reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God's power and grace. Its effect, writes Packer, is ever to humble us as we contemplate God's greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us, comfort us in the old strong Bible sense of the word, as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a marvelous description of meditation. Now the practical application is this. Are you making time to meditate regularly upon the word of God? Has that become a fixed lifestyle that you regularly, the psalm speaks of day and night, but the idea is of habitual, of recurring. of a pattern of conduct are you regularly seeking to immerse your mind and your spirit in the Word of God, seeking to take a word, seeking to take a phrase, seeking to take a larger section of Scripture and to ponder, what does this tell me about God? What does this tell me about me? What does this tell me about life in this world? What does this tell me that should encourage me, that should warn me, that should motivate me? If it is not the fixed pattern of your life to meditate upon the word of God, I'm not gonna tell you how long that ought to be, because that varies from person to person. That varies from season to season. But is it regular? Is it habitual? If not, why not? Yes, I know the obvious answer. We're too busy. Why are we too busy? Why are we not making time? if we're not. To regularly, even if it's limited in time, to regularly seek to engage God with His Word. Or are we giving too much time to entertainment? Are we giving too much time to work and being successful? Are we giving too much energy to physical fitness? Are we more committed to keeping our bodies in shape than our spirits in shape? Are we serving too much? We can volunteer too much and be so busy serving, Martha-like, that we neglect taking time to sit and contemplate. That can happen at home, that can happen in the church. So busy serving. that there's a neglect of sitting at the feet of our Lord and contemplating. We do make time for what we truly regard as valuable. What do we truly delight in? Let us remember that disciplining ourselves to do what is right is one of the key ways that we cultivate enjoyment. The devil will see to it that we oftentimes don't feel like getting along with our Bible and reading and meditating. The devil will fight that. The devil will all of a sudden bring to your mind ten different things that need to get done and wow, that magazine article that you've been wanting to read for three weeks has just got to do it now. The devil will work in all kinds of ways to keep you from your Bible. And oftentimes, even after decades of what I can say by the grace of God is a pattern of life, there's still some sense of nap of the neck, seat of the pants, Johnston, go to your chair, and go to your place where you seek the Lord. But it's oftentimes through the discipline of imposing on ourselves a will to do what's right that the joy comes. And we find ourselves experiencing new dimensions of pleasure in God. We find ourselves experiencing loving God. And part of loving God is liking God. And not treating him as if it's really not something that I especially treasure to just be alone with you, Lord. And to confide in you. and to have you confide in me through your word." Well, we've reflected on the condition and the character of the righteous from verses one through three of Psalm one more briefly. Think with me now on the portrait of the wicked that is set forth in the closing half of Psalm one. Verses four and following, the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall 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 ungodly shall perish. The ungodly are here described in terms of their condition, but much more emphasis is given to describing their end. Their condition is one of barren uselessness in God's sight. Now that sounds hard, perhaps even harsh, but let me explain what I mean. Their condition is here described as one of barren uselessness in God's sight. And where I get that is that verse 4 begins with the phrase, the ungodly are not so. What's the point of the negation? They are not what the righteous are. The righteous are like trees that are full of sap, vibrant, alive, green, heavy fruit laden on their branches. But then the writer says, led by the Spirit of God, the unrighteous are not like that. They are not vibrant. They are not full of sap. Their leaves are not green. They are not bearing fruit. They are brown. They are barren. They are useless, except to be chopped down and thrown into the fire. They're dangerous, just like a mature oak tree that has died, and it's bringing forth no foliage, and it's just waiting for a strong enough storm to blow it down. That's the picture that is here used to describe the ungodly. Now, what I don't mean when I speak of barren uselessness is I don't mean that there's no benefit in any sense that comes from non-Christians. There are non-Christians who've made discoveries and have invented things and have just done things that have been incredibly helpful to the world. We're not denying that. What we're affirming is that in God's sight, what He cherishes vastly above everything else is He looks upon a person made in His image. What God cherishes is seeing a concern for His honor. a love for his person, a reverence and a submission to his authority. And where that is totally absent, God views that person in a spiritual sense as being useless. as one that will be cast aside, as one that will be condemned, as one that will be burned, in the same sense that we would throw away the husk off of a corn cob. We have no interest in the husk, unless we're going to use it for decorating. In terms of eating, we have no interest in the dough yellow stuff. We want the bright yellow stuff. We love the bright yellow. The dough yellow, we just throw away. It's useless, it's worthless. That's the way God looks at the wicked. If a wife has a husband who brings the bacon home every week, but cheats on her unceasingly, is it not appropriate for the wife to think of that man as being a useless husband? Does she ooh and ah over the wonder of his paying the bills for her, when his whole life is a testimony to gross infidelity and betrayal? God made us for himself, and if we're not living for him, we are betraying the end for which we were brought into this world. It's sharp language, but it's the language of the Bible. And the point is reiterated in the image of the chaff. The ungodly are not so, verse 4, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. I've already used the illustration of the corn husk. In Bible times, the threshing would take place oftentimes on a ridge, on a rise in Israel where the wind, more predictably, blew stronger. And they would have the threshing floor, dirt hardened down or stone, and they would bring the harvest up to the threshing floor and then they'd leave the oxen around to crush the crops or perhaps some type of implement of threshing would be drug across the crop to crush it. And then people would come together and they would pick up the crushed pieces of the wheat, say, and they would throw it up in the air. It's long before John Deere came along. They would throw it up in the air and the breeze would come along and the heavier grain would fall down right onto the threshing floor. That's where the wheat would fall. That's where the corn would fall. But the lighter, wispy chaff, the useless husk material would be blown away. And God says, that is what the ungodly are like. They are like the chaff which is driven away by the wind. Insubstantial, relatively meaningless, and useless. You may recall that John the Baptist used the imagery of chaff in talking about the wicked. We read, for example, in Luke chapter 3, verses 16 and following. John the Baptist said, ìI indeed baptize you with water, but one, the Christ, mightier than I is coming, whose sandals strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.î He goes on to say, ìHis winnowing fan is in his hand. He will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, gather the weed into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.î John the Baptist using the same biblical imagery, perhaps thinking about Psalm 1 even as he preached. A distinction between the wheat and the chaff. The chaff are worthless and will be burned up. Psalm 1 does emphasize especially the end of the ungodly, the destiny of the ungodly. What awaits the ungodly? That's the concern that Psalm 1 especially wants to impress upon us. Like chaff, they will be driven away. They'll be driven away from the presence of God. They'll be driven away from all of the blessings of God. They'll be driven away from the righteous. The wicked, we read in Psalm 1, shall not stand in the judgment. And that certainly does not mean that the ungodly will not face judgment. The righteous find a legitimate comfort in thinking of the ungodly having to face the judge at the end. So often ungodly people get away with stuff in this life. So often in homes, so often in businesses, so often in political spheres, so often wicked people do wrong things and there are no immediate repercussions. Justice does not roll down. And the Bible proclaims that a day is coming where Jesus will have the last word and he will write the final chapter. Everyone has an appointment with Jesus Christ. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body, whether good or bad. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 10. But while the ungodly and the godly shall Each and all have to stand before the judge at that appointed tribunal. The ungodly, according to Psalm 1, will be unable to stand. The idea being they will not be able to face that judgment. They will not be able to survive that judgment. They will not be able to bear that judgment. They will be indicted. They will be condemned. They will be overtaken with confusion and with anguish and with horrifying fear as they realize too late that they're not prepared to meet Jesus, they're not prepared for eternity. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, but not with affection, not with the ungodly, not with reverence, not with love. They will be compelled to acknowledge that yes, Jesus is King. but they will not be able to stand before His holy indignation. Nor will they be allowed into the assembly of the righteous, someone tells us. Sinners will not assemble. with the congregation of the righteous, there will be a gulf, a great gulf, a fixed chasm between the people of God and those who are not His people, between those who believed in the Lord Jesus and those who did not and would not follow Him, between those who came to own their sins and pleaded for mercy and those who insisted on justifying themselves and thinking that they don't need a Savior and they don't need a God and they're certainly not going to own His right to rule them. The Bible describes this vivid contrast in various ways. Jesus famously, as He comes to the close of the Sermon on the Mount, makes it very clear, emphatically clear, there are two ways. And there are two destinies. There are two kinds of fruit that meet with two kinds of result. There are two kinds of foundation upon which we can build. Two kinds of consequences as to what you build upon. There is a broad way. Many are on it. That way leads to destruction. There is a narrow way. Few relatively find it by the grace of God. That way leads to life. There are good trees that bring forth good fruit, a harvest that is desired by God, that will be reaped by God, that will be rejoiced in by God. There are bad trees that have no fruit or bad fruit. Those trees, like the chaff, like the tares, will be gathered only to be burned. The dragnet will go out when Jesus comes back. He'll bring in all the fish. No one will escape Jesus' net. But then the angels will come and they'll pull out the good, and they will pull out the bad, and the bad will be discarded. Jesus speaks of it in Matthew 13, verse 47. The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which when it was full, they drew to shore, and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age, says Jesus. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, Jesus says. This is the most compassionate person who has ever lived. But he loves justice. And justice will roll down. There is a distinction. Hear me, hear God. There's a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. We should love the wicked. We should reach out to the wicked. If we are Warranted in saying that we're among the righteous, we should be broken and humble, knowing that we once were there and that God alone has made the difference. There is no ground for us to look down our long noses at the wicked, as if we're superior to them, as if we're better than them, as if God has seen that we are beyond them and thus has rewarded us for our good deeds. That is not biblical. But there is a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. There are those who love Jesus and there are those who don't. There are those who revere scripture and yield to scripture and there are those who do not. And the day is coming where there will no longer be any question about where you and I stand. And there will be no middle ground. Maybe some of you children, maybe some of you young people. You're not ready to identify yourselves with the wicked, but you know you're not a committed Christian. You have respect for the Bible. The things that you've heard taught all your life, you have not rejected any of them. You would say you believe in Jesus, you believe in the Bible, you believe in heaven, you believe in hell. You have embraced on some level the morality of the Bible. There are things that you don't do. You don't fornicate. You don't lie. You don't steal. You have internalized that there's a way to live that is good and that is upright and you have identified with that and you're for that. But you do not love Jesus. And one of the ways that that comes out is that you don't have an affection for his word and there's no decided commitment to serving him and to following him and identifying yourself with him. I plead with you. There is no middle ground. You are for Jesus or you are against him. You are a righteous person or you are ungodly. John Walker was telling me before the service of a gifted preacher who spoke to young people a number of years ago and spoke to those sitting on the fence. And John says he's never forgotten that preacher saying, there is no fence. There is only one place of deliverance, and that's in Jesus Christ. He alone has truly lived, Psalm 1, Not one of us have delighted in God's word as we should. Not one of us has truly meditated on that word day and night, fully surrendered to it, always yielding to it. Not one of us can stand in ourselves. Jesus Christ lived Psalm 1 and came for people like us who haven't to make us Psalm 1 kind of people. And Jesus does that by his spirit. There are many people in this room who amidst your ongoing failures and struggles, you can affirm rightly that you once had no interest in God's word, but now you love it. You're not bragging, you're just speaking reality. You cherish God's word because you cherish the one who gave it to you. Jesus Christ alone gives that kind of heart. The wise person prays, oh God, oh Lord Jesus, rescue me from indifference, from lack of commitment, from being more affected by the things of this world than by holy things. Oh Jesus, save me. You approach Jesus in that way and you will find the truth that he came not for the righteous, He came for sinners. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you for the privilege of having your word in our own language. And we thank you that we have such access to it in our country. And we thank you that we've been able to consider this, this holy chapter this morning. And we thank you for the presence and ministry of your Holy Spirit. And we pray, oh God, that by your spirit, that you would do those things that you alone can do. We pray that you would remember your promise, that your word will never go forth without accomplishing that for which it was intended. And we pray, oh God, that this very day, that good fruit would be born for your glory. We pray in the mighty and in the very sweet name of Jesus, amen.