Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Life: Life Reimagined

Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series with Psalm 1. Discussion points: Wisdom literature in the Bible teaches us how to live the “good life”, to be blessed is to have a soul satisfied in God, Jesus is the blessed man who delights in the law of the Lord and is compared to a tree rooted by a stream, we can follow the way of Jesus and be considered righteous because of his sacrifice.

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  Scripture reader: [Psalm 1] Blessed is the man who walks not in the council 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 waters that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but 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.

  Preacher: Hi, good morning. Good to see everybody this morning. I can see you a little bit better because I'm elevated now. It's yeah, it's great to be back. I'm I'm glad to be able to, to bring God's word for you this morning. This morning, we're starting a new series called Life Reimagined. This is going to be an opportunity for us as a church to re to evaluate our lives and to reimagine them according to God's standards.

  Now, one of the things that we rarely do as people in general is actually take a step back and evaluate our lives. Like, am I living the way that I want to be living? How is life going from right now? What changes do I want to be making? We do that on a microcosm all the time as we're influenced on Instagram, you know, we're scrolling like I'd like to be the type of person that travels more. I'd like to be the type of person that, you know, gains more muscle mass or whatever. I'm telling you about my Instagram, I suppose. But we, we all need to take a step back and to reimagine what is possible for us and what our lives could be like if we lived according to God's ideals and God's standards, how do we get the good life?

  That is a question that all people are asking and all people are trying to answer. How do I live the good life? So let's just start with this. I want you to take a moment and just imagine where you are right now living the good life. What would tomorrow be like if you could live the good life? What are some things that would change about you and about your circumstances? Now we'll do a little thought experiment. I actually did this thought experiment here at the church about five years ago. But, raise your hand if you've been here for five years. All right. So, there's not that many people who are gonna remember everything. Right. We're a relatively new church.

  I want you to imagine this side of the room and this side of the room are gonna have very different, circumstances. All right, this side of the room tomorrow morning you wake up and someone slipped a lottery ticket through your mail slip and it's, it's the big one. All right. So you just won millions and millions and millions of dollars reimagine your life. What's it gonna look like? How's it going to be different? I bet a lot of you with the thing that you were imagining a few moments ago can now live that out. All right. If your, reimagined life was sitting on a beach somewhere, you know, sipping on a drink, you can probably do that if you won the lottery this side. I'm sorry. not as good. Here. You all left and we're in a horrible, I'm sorry to say you were in a horrible, car accident and you're all paraplegic now.

  So we're the church of millionaires and paraplegics. that's, that's all we have in our church or one of the two. And I share that. And so I want you to reimagine your life. Well, a lot's going to change. Is it not for me? I'd have to figure out a way to get up my stairs, to get into my house. There's a lot of different things that cannot go on the way that they're currently going. If that were my reality. Now, I'll show this illustration because it's an illustration that I read in a book by a Harvard social psychologist named Dan Gilbert called Stumbling On Happiness. And it was a New York Times best seller like 15 years ago. And he tells this this exact illustration and he says that what's crazy is that the studies show that one year after the fact, those who won the lottery versus those who became paraplegic are exactly the same amount of happy that there is no difference in their happiness quantifiable according to science. They're the same.

  In fact, what Doctor Gilbert says is that if it happened over three months ago, it rarely has an influence on someone's happiness here. And today now I know there's exceptions to every rule. Many of us go through mourning. I my, my father left my family when I was five. I spent the next 30 years trying to figure out what that meant for me. And then my father died. And for some reason that destroyed me, even though I barely talked to, talked to him three times in 30 years. And for some reason, the death of someone I barely knew, killed me. And now I'm still trying to develop, still trying to deal with that, right? So it's not saying that nothing matters, but he's saying by and large, if it happened over three months ago, it's not going to affect your day to day happiness.

  And so even as we're trying to reimagine our best lives, how do we even do that? If we can think through my circumstances becoming the absolute worst or absolute best, doesn't actually influence how happy I am. What does influence my happiness? What will satisfy my soul, dear soul, what will satisfy you? Each of us has a soul that is hungry, that longs for more, that longs for significance, that longs for happiness and what will satisfy your soul.

  Friends, that is a spiritual question if I've ever heard one. When people imagine following Jesus, they often think that it's going to ruin their lives. Now, I know that many of my neighbors would prefer to go to elective dental surgery than to follow Jesus. And the real, the reality is, it's because we often times don't paint Jesus as being the most joyful to follow. We oftentimes don't send our best on TV to represent what Christians are actually like. And we as Christians often times aren't joyful as we are called to be. And as we not only are called to be, but God has given us the resources to be, but following Jesus is truly joyful, there is no better way to live. And that's, that's what I believe.

  And that's what we're going to be talking about for the next seven weeks is what it looks like to reimagine our lives following after the way of God and living that out, the way that he's meant it. And the way that we're going to do that is we're going to be going through the wisdom literature. Now, there's not, a lot of there, you know, that's the sermon series that you don't hear very often is wisdom literature. OK? We're gonna be going through, there's generally agreed on three books of wisdom literature and then two that are like, you know, kind of wisdom literature. So we're gonna be doing all five Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Solomon, which who's ever heard of a sermon on the Song of Solomon. You can go ahead and mark that one down, ok. That's gonna be high attendance Sunday for us. Here that, that book is just like written about sex, you know, check your kids into CoaH kids that week and, and come and join us.

  It's going to be an invitation, as we evaluate this wisdom literature to consider the way that God has given us to live. Maybe you've never done that, maybe you've never reimagined your life according to God's ideals. Maybe this is an opportunity, this is next few months will be an opportunity for you to evaluate your life, for you to think through the way you're living. And the way that you could be living, the way that you could have life in God. The goal of this series is gets you to reimagine your life as a person who follows God with your entire being with the core of your soul.

  And many people don't examine Christianity as I was saying that many of our neighbors haven't examined Christianity, not because they have, they don't consider Christianity an option. It's not that they've tried it and they found it lacking. It's that they've left it untried. As GK Chesterton says, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried." That is the reality of what it, of one of the things that hinders us from reimagining our lives following Christ.

  Here's another quote about imagination that I want to share with you, James K Smith says it this way, "Our action emerges from how we imagine the world we live into the stories we've absorbed, we've become characters in the drama that has captivated us. Thus, much of our action is acting out a kind of script that has unconsciously captured our imaginations." You live in the way that you imagine yourself living. Oftentimes you imagine the world around you. Many of the problems in our life are not because of anything other than a disordered and a diseased imagination.

  I think that CS Lewis says it really well, when he says, "It would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong but too weak. We are half hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased." All right.

  So to help us reimagine our lives, we're going to turn to these wisdom literature. Now, Tim Mackey, the guy who did the, the Bible project, you've probably seen those videos online. If you haven't, I invite you to check them out Bible project on Google on Google. Yes, but on youtube, which is owned by Google in case you didn't know. But he, he says this, "The wisdom literature teaches us what kind of world we're living in and what does it look like to live well in this world." So, basically what the wisdom literature is teaching us, the wisdom literature is teaching us what is the good life and how do we live it?

  Now, sometimes when we look at the wisdom of literature, we have to understand what it is in its genre. OK. So if you pick up the Psalms and then you look at the Proverbs, you're gonna see a lot of things that we call truisms where it says if you do this, then this will happen so much of the message of Proverbs and I'm going to be unpacking this under over the next seven weeks. Ok? But much of the message of Proverbs is, hey, if you live well, if you're just and kind, God is going to do that in turn for you, but then you get to the book of job and it's like job did everything right. Yet his life fell apart. And so you kinda, and then you look at and then you look at the Psalms, you look at Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiastes is like the everything is just meaningless, nothing matters. It doesn't matter how I behave, it's just vapor.

  And so you had to look at the, honestly, you have to look at all of the Wisdom literature as a collective whole and see the overall picture that it's giving to us and not just one book or the other. We have to understand the total message of God, which is one reason why it's really fun to do it all together in this way. And we'll be diving more into each of these as we go. So instead of going verse by verse, wisdom literature is difficult to preach, verse by verse. It's difficult, we normally pick books of the Bible go chapter by chapter, verse by verse. That's just a really good and easy way to preach through the Bible. And we think that the Bible is God's word to us. So that's what we wanna emphasize.

  But with the little Wisdom literature, we find it to be a little bit more helpful to go thematically. Because does anybody want to sign up for a 42 week study of Job? Not really. All right. How about a six week study of Song of Solomon, maybe? All right, but not Job. Ok. So we're gonna look at them thematically, the themes just so you can be excited. Work, reimagined, family, reimagined, suffering, reimagined, friendship, reimagined, money, reimagined and sex reimagined. So, as we dive into this week, we're going to start where the li wisdom literature starts. And that's with Psalm one.

  So if you have your Bibles, leave them open, if you haven't opened them or open them up to Psalm chapter one. Now when you get to Psalm 11, I'll just point out something as you're turning there is if you're opening your Bible like I am, you'll see. It's actually after Job. So Job 42 goes into Psalm one. And so how can I say that this is the beginning of the wisdom literature? Aha. You've caught me, but I've caught you because this is a Hebrew trap. OK. The, the old preacher Hebrew trap, I got you in the Hebrew Bible. Psalms goes before Job. All right. So Job is, is later in the Hebrew. And so Psalms really does open up the, the wisdom literature that we have here.

  And Psalm one is something that we call wisdom Psalm. Not, not all the Psalms qualify as wisdom literature, but Psalm, one does qualify as wisdom literature. And in wisdom Psalms, what you find is that the, the Psalmist gives you two ways to live and only two, two ways to live and only two, he says the blessed, behave like this, they do this and the wicked, they live this way. A little simplistic, right? That's lacking a little bit of nuance and honestly, it is and it's a rhetorical device. Jesus used it all the time. He said all the time. He said, you either build your house on the stone or you build your house on the sand. No other choices, you know, no wood pylons to build your house on OK. There is no Venetian kingdom of God. It is either on the stone or it is on the sand. Jesus said it like this. It's a rhetorical device to get us to consider our life.

  Now, what it doesn't do is what I think gets many of us in trouble a lot of times because we tend to think of the world. And I think this is a fallacy if we think about it like this, that life is a struggle between good people and bad people. The reality is all of us have a little bit of good in us and a little bit of bad in us. We are all made in the image of God. And so therefore, we reflect some goodness about who he is. But yet at the same time, we are broken by the curse of sin and death. And therefore, we all reflect a little bit of badness at the same time. And so when we get into this common enemy, political ideation that we have, where we basically say if this person doesn't agree with me, that means they're evil. And I'm going to condemn them that is going down a way, that's not really what the Bible is supporting and it's not healthy for our society as a whole. But we have to recognize that all of us are a mixed bag of motives.

  Now, I've heard, let me just throw out an illustration to, for that, I've heard that Adolf Hitler was a good dog owner that he really cared for. His dogs, caring for dogs are good is good, but Adolf Hitler, not a good person. Ok? Not at all. And so you can have redeeming qualities even as a overwhelmingly evil person, you can have some redeeming qualities, not anyone is all bad or all good. We're all made in the image of God, yet we're all broken by sin and we have different degrees of what that looks like.

  But in this psalm, we're being communicated, this is what it looks like to be someone who is blessed, this is God's ideal. This is how we are to sue life. There are two ways to live you either live for God or you don't, you either live for God or you live for self and for this world. And that's what this Psalm is teaching us. So let's just walk through it.

  Verse one. Blessed is the man. Now, if you can't tell, I grew up in the south, we use bless very differently than y'all do up north. OK. We, we say bless almost as a, as a happy insult, bless his heart. He just can't figure out which side of the road to drive on. You know, it's just like it's a way that you say someone's an idiot and you just say bless his heart, bless his heart. He just can't pass first grade. You know what, whatever it is. It's, it's just not one of those things that you want. you want someone to say about you. But when the Bible talks about someone who is blessed, they're talking about a state of being that is thriving, to be blessed is to be thriving, to be blessed is to be flourishing is to have a state of wholeness.

  When you think about someone who's blessed versus someone who's, who's not OK. If, if you cut into the person who's just good on the outside, they're like that Easter egg bunny that you get and you are real excited when you're a kid and you take a bite and you're like, oh I thought this thing was solid chocolate but it's like all hollow. You know, there's no chocolate on the inside, that's like their goodness. You know, it's just on the outside, but a blessed person is whole all the way through, like a solid, whole chocolate bunny. That's the good one. OK? You cut through that thing. It's like chocolate all the way through.

  And that's, that's what it means to be blessed as someone where your inner person is in agreement with your outer person where you are living, blessed, your soul is at peace. Now, to give you an example, Dallas Willard, somewhat of a spiritual hero for many of my generation is a man who you would describe or was a man who you would describe as blessed. Dallas Willard. Many people recognize his writings as being very influential. If you haven't checked out any of his books, go for it. They're, they're all very good. And many things, many people remark about spending time with Dallas. And afterwards, they would just say man, his pace, his pace of life is just so different. He like lives in a different time zone than the rest of us. He's just unhurried and going through life at peace.

  And here what he had to say, he's gonna get a lot of quotes throughout the series. But here he says this, "The most important thing in your life is not what you do, it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe." Oh, hold on a second. Let's take that one more, one more time. All right, you are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. Friends to be blessed is to have a soul that is satisfied in God, a soul that is satisfied. So what does it look like to be blessed?

  Let's look at what the psalmist has to say. Ok, first one blessed is the man who walks not in the council 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. OK? So he starts with a description of what a blessed man is not. He says a blessed man is not a man who walks in the council of wicked or stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

  And there's a progression there when you think about the way of sin, sin is often slow and progresses. OK? Here you're first, he's saying he's standing, this man is not or or saying he's, he's walking. So he's just walking by. He's like not really noticing he's gonna move on by. But then before you, you know what he's standing in the way of sinners. Now, when it says in the way of sinners in English. A lot of times we think that he's standing in their way like they won't move out of the way. He's, he's standing blocking the sinners from something though. What it's talking about is he's, he's, he's standing in their shoes. He's, he's living out their la their way. So he stands in the way of sinners nor sits, ok, he's gotten comfortable now in the sin and he's sitting in the seat of scoffers.

  And that is the way that sin is insidious and, and continual in our life, it starts slow and then it becomes consuming as you excuse, more and more the soul is looking for something to consume. The soul is hungry, looking to be influenced, looking for the good life. That's what's happening. When you constantly scroll on social media, your soul is looking for the good life. Looking for something to be influenced by something to delight in. But that is an all you can eat cotton candy buffet. All right. It, it's not gonna leave you full, it's gonna leave you feeling worse than when you started it and it's got no substance in it. No nutrition.

  Friends, I just want to invite you to reimagine life. Nothing can make you happier than the pleasure of God. The pleasures of this world will grow strangely dim and that's what the blessed person doesn't do. He's not influenced by the world. He's not walking in the ways of the world. But what does he do. Now, you would expect a psalmist or she do. Ok. It's just rhetorical. Ok, either one gender neutral.

  What does the blessed person do? You would expect the Psalmist to say, well, the blessed person, he stands in the way of the righteous and he walks in the way of the Godly and he sits in the way of the joyful, but that's not what he says. It's not all encompassing enough. Instead, the Psalmist actually says that there's a deeper root to this. The Psalmist says, if you get this, you're gonna get that other stuff because what he says is but the, the blessed man, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night says, if the Psalmist is saying, hey, if you get this, if you get delighting in the word of God, you're gonna get all the other stuff. It's not just that the blessed person has resolved himself or herself to study the word, but this person delights in the word, delights in it. They get the word and they see God himself.

  There's no way that there's some of us who are nerdy enough to where we'll open up the Bible and we'll just delight to read words there. Ok. That's, that's called being a Bible academic. And I would love to introduce you to some seminary professors. If that's what, what you are the majority of us, we open up the Bible. And we don't delight just because the words are there, we delight because the words point us to God. And through these words, we see his face, we learn his ways and we interact with who he is. And so when we delight in the law of God, that's saying, I delight in being with God and enjoying his voice, I want to hear him speaking to me. I delight in that. I delight in what God has to say, God is the happiest being in the universe. And then it's in it and it's in His word where we are to be most delighted. It's in the word of God that we find God himself.

  God has revealed himself through his word and we learn to think God's thoughts after him as we study the word. So ultimately, we know John 11 that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And this word that he's referring to is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is the ultimate revelation. Someone reveals themselves to you through their words. And Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is. So therefore, as we get to know Jesus, we get to know God himself, the ultimate revelation of the word of God.

  The Puritan, John Owen puts it like this. And this is, this is language, it's, it's archaic, it's not easy, but it's rich. Ok. So hang on. All right. Well, we're, we got you got this. OK. You got this. I believe in you Somerville. "If we settle for mere speculations and mental knowledge about Christ's doctrine, we will find no transforming power or efficacy communicated unto us thereby." He could have said that more simply, I'm confident. "But when our affections do cleave to him with full purpose of heart, our minds fill up with thoughts and delights of him. Then virtue-" and what he's referring to as virtue as, as change of character, "then virtue will proceed from Him to increase our holiness and sometimes to fill us with joy, unspeakable and full of glory."

  Have you had it? It's not always, but have you experienced it? Joy, unspeakable and full of glory? What's He saying? He's saying that if you want to know God better, if you want to be happy, you have to meditate on the word. You have to meditate on the word. And so as this introduction of wisdom literature, one thing that psalm one is teaching us is that the secret to being happy, the secret to wisdom is delighting in God.

  And so as you reimagine your life, as we go through this whole series, it's just going to be like reimagine your life. If you delighted in God and not money or delighted in God through your money. Imagine your life. If you delighted, how would you work differently if delighting in God was just a true thing for you. How would you have family differently as someone who delights in God? That's just the core being to what the wisdom literature is trying to teach us here. Verse three, let's keep walking through this so rich. I love this image. This is such a great image. It has just filled my prayers this week for you all. It is what I pray for myself. It is what it is just such a rich image. Join me.

  He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does. He prospers. The wicked are not so but they are like chaff that the wind drives away. So the blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water. In the ancient near east, there would often times be areas that would have streams, but they would be temporary streams during the rainy seasons and then they would dry up and it would be just a dry river bed there. And so the the vegetation in that area would also dry up. And so it wasn't given that a stream was going to be somewhere all the time. And but what he's saying is this is one, a man, this is a man who has planted himself next to a stream that remains constant, whose leaves do not wither who yields its fruit and its season, yielding fruit and season.

  Life is not always full of fruit. Sometimes there's times where maybe it's a little dry, maybe it's just not my season at this moment, I'm just struggling and that's ok. But what he says is that there are seasons when life is difficult and less sweet, but the fruit comes and the leaf does not wither because you were planted by these streams of living water. I just like to imagine the root system of this tree that's gone in under the ground. Even when it's not raining, the roots are touching the stream and is able to gather the water enough to nutri to bring nutrition.

  And that's who the blessed person is. That is who we are longing to be and all he does, he prospers is what it says. Now, this is not where I tell you to give to our ministry so I can buy another personal jet. Ok. This is not the Prosperity gospel here, but this is where he's saying that a blessed person is a person who prospers.

  When we think about prosperous life, our ears mainly only hear of someone who's benefiting financially prosperously. But what he's saying here is that the blessed man is a tree planted by streams of water or the blessed woman tree planted by streams of water and whatever he or she does, they prosper. That means whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or you're mopping floors for a living you can be prosperous in those different places. Wherever you are, you're able to prosper because where you are is just the situation. That's what's above the ground, under the ground. Your roots are connected to the streams of living water and you can have joy.

  Now he says the happy life and he, he compares the righteous tree, the happy life. Those who are pointed by streams of water. What does he compare it to? You would think that maybe he would say the righteous are like a redwood growing tall and together and the, and the unrighteous are like a sycamore. I don't know, some, some tree, some other tree that's not as good as a redwood, right? But the difference between the Godly and the Ungodly is not that the Godly is just a nicer or better version of the Ungodly, but it's a totally different way of being what he says is that the happy life is the one that's rooted like a tree. Godly people are people of substance that can stand strong while he says that the wicked are like chaff.

  Now, if you didn't grow up, if you grew up in the city, you might not even know what chaff is. All right. Chaff is that those things that cowboys wear on their legs? No, those are chaps. Ok. Chaff is what is left over after you do a harvest basically. So if you've ever corn on the cob ok. If you peel off the husk of the corn on the cob, the husk is the chaff. Now, if you get smaller things, chaff becomes smaller and can blow around in the wind. So, growing up in rural Mississippi as I did, you would get behind some vehicles that just had harvest and it would just be a dust cloud behind it. That, that dust cloud is not gonna go and plant seeds. Ok. That is useless stuff that's coming off of these seeds. It is the useless part of it.

  And that's what he's comparing those who are not following God, the, the not blessed. He says that they're like chaff, there's just blown in the, into the wind, they're without substance, not yielding fruit. They're here today and gone tomorrow. And that's how the, the Bible describes the person who delights in this world as opposed to delighting in God. And so friends, let me give you this reimagine life, reimagine life. You are a plant. You are a tree planted by streams of living water. You are a tree planted by streams of living water. You're rooted. The most important thing about you cannot be shaken or changed. You're not subject to others' opinions for your happiness. You're not dependent upon the sprinklings of praise. You're not movable by life's large storms. You delight in the Lord and he will never fail you.

  Let's look and see how the Psalm ends. Verse five. 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 notice something, OK? When we read that our brain does a little selective forgetting. When we read it, we read it and we think for the, wait, wait a second, what's it saying? What, what, what is it saying? When we read it, It says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish. We read that and we think the Lord knows the righteous and the wicked will perish. We forget this whole way. He's saying that the whole way, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, the way that they live their life and the way of the wicked will lead to perishing.

  You will eventually run dry. You will become more and more like the chaff, the things you fill your mind with and your heart with will become, you will become more temporary person as you fill your heart and your mind with more temporary things. That's just the reality. You become less heavy, less weighty, less substantial as you obsess about things of less substance. But if you place your hope in the Lord, the Lord knows the way of the righteous and you will be blessed in the, in the end, the way of the wicked, it will eventually lead to perish. It might look like they're happy. But at the end, those who live for this world will be like chaff in the wind.

  Now, I love this Psalm. I love the vision that it lays out. But I hate the way it makes me feel because I read the and I never feel more like the blessed person than I feel like the wicked person. I read the Psalm and every single time I read it, I think, I don't, I don't read the part about delighting in the law of the Lord on his law meditating day and night and think, oh, that's me. I read the part about walking in the council of the wicked and standing in the way of sinners and sitting on the seat of scoffers and think that's me. I resonate more with that wicked person than I do the blessed one.

  That's not the way it's supposed to be. I don't think that that hurts. Can I truly say that I delight in the law of the Lord and not in the things of this world? I never feel good enough. Can I truly say that I'm more like a tree planted by streams that I prosper in all that I do.

  And that's because I'm reading the Psalm assuming that it's about me when this Psalm is about Jesus. Now re look at it with me with fresh eyes knowing that he's describing the man that he's describing. The only truly blessed man is Jesus Christ himself. Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in his way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But he delights in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night.

  What better description do we have of Jesus? He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither and all he does, he prospers. Jesus lived the way of the righteous. He walked according to God's ideals. He delighted in the law of the Lord at all times meditating on it, day and night. He is the true tree planted by the streams of living water and friends. You can be grafted into that tree.

  That's the promise of the Gospel, not that He'll make you your own tree, but that you get to go be a part of the Jesus tree, that Jesus took on our humanity so that we might take on his righteousness so that we might be looked at as one who is blessed that the gifts and the prosperity that are true of Jesus is true of us, that we get all of the benefits that He deserves, that we get to the intimacy with the Father that only he accomplished for those who are in Christ. God sees us as he sees Jesus himself.

  And Jesus taught us that if we will follow him walk in his ways, trust him and receive his grace. We will be blessed as he is blessed. Not because we deserve that blessing, but because of what he's accomplished, how he paid our penalty, how the wicked penalty has been poured out on Jesus. You see, he is not just the blessed man, but he's the wicked man receiving the penalty here. He took on what it means to be wicked and was laid on the cross and that way perished on him.

  And so if you are in Christ today, everything that's true in this psalm is true of you in Christ, he received your punishment, you received his blessing through faith. I've been clothed in his righteousness and I'm seeking to follow his ways and the way of Jesus is life. So I invite you, receive the righteousness of Jesus and then follow in the way of Jesus live the way that he lived and you will be blessed. Follow in the way of Jesus is the way of the righteous. That is what we have here and we have more to go by than they had in the old testaments. We understand it even better.

  Now, each week we celebrate a sacred meal and the sacred meal. Some call it Eucharist, some call it communion, some call it the Lord's supper. But we celebrate it every week as a physical reminder of Jesus' body being broken for us and his blood being shed for us. And as we participate in this meal, we're reminded that we are a part of who Christ is, that he is really with us in a real kind of way. And so with this meal, if you are a Christian here today, we would invite you to receive it.

  If you're living in sin, that would lead you to think that you are not actually following Jesus. I would encourage you to receive the good news of Jesus and then take communion next week. But friends, you can, you can, there can be a way that we approach the communion table, never feeling worthy, right? Because I, I encourage you to evaluate your life. Are you living in sin? Are you not? But when you come to the communion table, you have to say Christ's righteousness alone, you don't come to the communion table because you are righteous, but you come to the communion table because you're trusting in Him who is righteous on your behalf.

  And so if that's true of you, the table is open, come and receive the grace of the Lord. A new He loves you as simple as that. There is grace enough for you always. So would you stand with me as the band makes their way back on the stage and we respond to God.

  Jesus, as we study your word this morning, help us to be men and women who delight in you. And Jesus, we, we just praise you that you have delighted in your Father throughout eternity past, that as the second member of the Trinity, that there's just been this ultimate delight in who you are and who the Father is and the Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you would fill us now and help us to delight in Jesus more. As we receive this meal, help us to be filled with everything that's true of Jesus and to feel truly blessed this morning. God, we, we praise you for the opportunity to respond to your word and we pray that our praises will bring you delight and pleasure. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.