WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.140 Good morning. My name is Brian Wallace. It's a delight to be here today. Bishop Alex, thanks for being here, Bishop Jeff. 00:00:09.279 --> 00:00:10.000 ! 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:37.780 In this story this morning, in Psalm 1, I'm going to be talking a little bit about some of the values that we have in C4. 00:00:37.899 --> 00:00:44.019 So I hope you get to know us a little bit as we talk a little bit about our value of formation. 00:00:44.859 --> 00:00:48.939 Dallas Willard once says that we're always being formed. The question is, by what? 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:57.760 And as you heard in the scriptures from 1 Timothy in our gospel passage, there is an invitation to pursue the things of God, 00:00:57.759 --> 00:01:04.959 to run after them and to flee evil. And there's this reminder that we have the law and the prophets, the scriptures, 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:13.819 to instruct us, to remind us, and how to avoid calamity. So this is where we're going this morning in Psalm 1. 00:01:13.819 --> 00:01:21.979 But would you pray with me as we open up our heads and hearts to the Lord? Lord Jesus, we are glad to be in this space. 00:01:21.980 --> 00:01:30.520 We're glad to be with you. We need you desperately. We need your teaching. We need your love and your grace, 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:37.120 your mercy. Would you speak to our minds that we would understand? Would you speak to our hearts that we could 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:43.920 experience your nearness and presence to us? Would you speak to our hands and feet that we would have the 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:52.939 courage to live differently based on what you're inviting us to this morning? Have mercy on me as I 00:01:52.939 --> 00:02:00.680 preach. Lead us, Lord Jesus. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. As we begin, I'd love to just 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:06.960 give you a quick overview of the psalm, Psalm 1. I want you to pay attention to the fact that this is 00:02:06.959 --> 00:02:14.120 actually a work of art. It's a poem, a poem deliberately written. And if you took ninth grade 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:18.699 English class, you would study this poem and understand that there is some structure. It 00:02:18.699 --> 00:02:26.840 actually has the A-B-B-A pattern of poetry. It begins and ends with a similar statement. The righteous 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:35.060 do not stand at the beginning and the wicked will not stand at the end. And this poem has a contrast 00:02:35.060 --> 00:02:42.640 between the righteous and the ungodly. The blessed and the perishing, those are the bookends of this 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:49.960 psalm. The first word is blessed in the ESV, and the last word is perishing. They are the contrast. 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:57.460 Blessed are the righteous, and perishing are the wicked. Now, there's two similes in the middle of 00:02:57.460 --> 00:03:04.039 this parable. Pay attention to the word like. The blessed are like a tree, planted, firm, established, 00:03:04.039 --> 00:03:11.840 sure. The wicked are like chaff. They're light. They blow away. They are ephemeral. They are tossed 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:19.099 by the winds of our culture. Now, this is a deliberate pattern of poetry writing for the psalmist. 00:03:19.219 --> 00:03:26.280 It's the very first psalm. It's an invitation and a warning to all of us who would follow after Jesus 00:03:26.280 --> 00:03:33.739 and let the psalter be our guide in worship. This is the invitation to worship in the way that God would 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:40.840 have us worship. Now, blessed, favor, doesn't mean that we're better than others. It simply means we 00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:47.719 have the favor of God upon us. Remember, Jesus blew away his crowd when he preached that blessed were 00:03:47.719 --> 00:03:54.240 the poor, blessed were the sorrowful, blessed were the meek, those who suffer, blessed are those who are 00:03:54.240 --> 00:04:00.960 mourning and persecuted for righteousness. So it's not blessed that everyone's going to have everything go 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:07.800 right in life, that we'll never get hurt or sick or experience pain, but we'll have the favor of God 00:04:07.800 --> 00:04:15.020 with us all the way through it. We will have relationship with God. His kindness and mercy 00:04:15.020 --> 00:04:23.879 and goodness will follow us everywhere we go. As a created person with the creator, we'll have 00:04:23.879 --> 00:04:31.339 relationship with him and have peace. That's what it means to be blessed. And it's interesting to note 00:04:31.339 --> 00:04:38.100 that this passage first talks about what the blessed or the righteous don't do. The blessed, they don't 00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:45.019 walk in the counsel of the wicked. They don't stand in the way of sinners. They don't sit in the seat 00:04:45.019 --> 00:04:52.839 of scoffers. Now pay attention to the movement that the poet is deliberately inviting us to. 00:04:53.379 --> 00:05:02.199 They don't walk. They don't stand. They don't sit. They get progressively settled over time. 00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:08.299 And it reminds me the most of junior high. Do you guys remember junior high? Are you trying to forget 00:05:08.299 --> 00:05:15.000 junior high? I am trying to forget junior high. It's where we sat at the lunch table and had the biggest 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:22.600 influences shape who we were and how we thought or how other people thought of us. They thought we 00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:29.699 were cool or geeks or whatever it was of the language, a jock or whatever label they would give 00:05:29.699 --> 00:05:35.439 you based on where you sat. Now the only time I got in trouble in junior high was when I was hanging 00:05:35.439 --> 00:05:42.319 out with a guy named Wendell Cornell. I went to Edgar Allan Poe Middle School in Annandale, Virginia. 00:05:42.319 --> 00:05:49.319 And Wendell was an unruly person, always making fun of the weak and the wounded in our church. And I don't 00:05:49.319 --> 00:05:56.339 know why we became friends. But the only time I got into tension was when one day Wendell started a 00:05:56.339 --> 00:06:03.680 food fight with a table next to us. And I was sitting next to Wendell, so I was implicated and got into 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:09.899 tension. This is one of the things that happened to us. We start walking in the hallway in school. 00:06:09.899 --> 00:06:17.000 We get progressively hanging out with those people. They become part of who we are. They guide us in 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:23.479 our direction and who we start thinking that we want to be like. We want to stand in the locker next 00:06:23.479 --> 00:06:29.139 to them. We find a sense of belonging or connection and capacity to be with them. Oh, look, I'm not alone. 00:06:29.139 --> 00:06:37.680 Oh, look, someone finally likes me. And even though it's not good choices, we end up doing things we 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:46.399 normally may not do in order to belong, to fit in. Did you do that in junior high? Did you ever listen 00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:52.459 to music you didn't really like because your friends listened to that music? Did you wear clothes that you 00:06:52.459 --> 00:06:59.139 look back on in horror? But you think, that's what all the people were wearing? My kids look at their 00:06:59.139 --> 00:07:04.859 pictures from their junior high days and say, Dad, why did you let me wear my hair like that? And I'm 00:07:04.859 --> 00:07:12.199 like, there was no letting, son. That wasn't the fight we were going to have was how you wore your hair. 00:07:12.199 --> 00:07:22.099 When we sit with folks that we hang out with, we become more and more like them. We become settled 00:07:22.099 --> 00:07:30.500 in the patterns of behaviors of the people who are around us. Now, the problem isn't that we befriend 00:07:30.500 --> 00:07:37.800 unrighteous people. Jesus did that. The problem is that we let the unrighteous form or mold us into 00:07:37.800 --> 00:07:45.120 the patterns of the way they think and live in the world. We get settled and we begin to not even pay 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:51.500 attention to what's being told us to think and believe. So one of the questions I want to ask you 00:07:51.500 --> 00:07:58.060 this morning is, who do you sit with? And I'm not just asking you who your friends are, but who's 00:07:58.060 --> 00:08:04.340 forming you? Who's shaping the way you think about the world and reality? What's playing on your 00:08:04.339 --> 00:08:10.879 television at night? What patterns of life are being normalized by the culture so you would 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:16.679 understand a way of being the way that they would understand it? Is it highly sexualized content that 00:08:16.679 --> 00:08:22.339 says, hey, this is how you can live with your body. There aren't any real consequences. You can do 00:08:22.339 --> 00:08:30.299 whatever you want whenever you want. Or more, are you sitting day after day, week after week with Fox News 00:08:30.300 --> 00:08:37.139 or CNN? I'm not against either one of them over the other. They're both equally bad in my opinion. 00:08:38.039 --> 00:08:45.560 They are the seat of scoffers. They normalizing, making fun of people whose opinions we may not 00:08:45.560 --> 00:08:54.279 share. It's evil and it's not good for our hearts to be formed by that way of being. Because most of us, 00:08:54.639 --> 00:09:00.060 what we're doing is rooted in lies. We're hearing rude things rooted not in the truth of how God wants to 00:09:00.059 --> 00:09:05.219 think about people who are different than us. So how do we think about people who are different than 00:09:05.219 --> 00:09:10.779 us? Either from a skin color or a cultural political opinion, folks who are the other. 00:09:11.679 --> 00:09:18.879 God would have us think of them as fellow image bearers of the living God, worth the dignity and love 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:25.959 and mercy that we have received. As I have been forgiven, I will choose to forgive. As I have been loved, 00:09:25.960 --> 00:09:31.060 I will choose to love. As I have received goodness, I will choose to give goodness. 00:09:32.019 --> 00:09:39.139 Do you hear any of that on CNN? Do you hear any of that on Fox News? I guarantee you don't. 00:09:40.379 --> 00:09:46.180 So why are we letting that shape the way we think about our neighbor? Why are we letting it shape how 00:09:46.180 --> 00:09:51.600 we think about our culture, our families, about what's right, what's true, or what's beautiful? 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:59.960 And if it's not Fox News that's shaping you, what is it in your life? Is it the cultural value for 00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:09.399 achievement, esteem, exceptionalism, wealth, or comfort? If we're honest, we look ourselves in the 00:10:09.399 --> 00:10:16.860 mirror, we all have to face the way that our culture has shaped us and not formed us into the image of God, 00:10:16.860 --> 00:10:23.840 but deformed us away from who God would call us to be. But what should we do instead? 00:10:25.399 --> 00:10:33.340 The righteous delight in the law of the Lord. Now, the law here is being used as an overview word for 00:10:33.340 --> 00:10:38.940 all of Scripture. The way that the Old Testament, the word law is meant for the words of God. The word 00:10:38.940 --> 00:10:46.080 for God is not just law. It's not just rules, but it's God's self-revelation to human beings. 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:53.940 The self-revelation of God who delights to be in relationship with his image bearers. Every woman, 00:10:54.200 --> 00:11:02.240 every man created in every place on earth. He longs to be with them, so he makes himself known to them in 00:11:02.240 --> 00:11:09.220 the words of Scripture. So this is what we do when we read the Scripture and we delight in them. We love 00:11:09.220 --> 00:11:17.040 them. We receive the God of the word. Just like Adam and Eve would enjoy God in the cool of the evenings 00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:23.840 in the garden, when we delight, when we read the word, we're delighting in his choice to be in 00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:30.879 relationship with us. It's an opportunity to delight in the word of God, not in the culture, 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:39.259 to be defined by what Jesus would say we are, not by what the culture would say we are. So the righteous 00:11:39.259 --> 00:11:49.399 pursue Scripture and they meditate on it day and night. Now here the psalmist is using a word, 00:11:49.559 --> 00:11:55.919 a language from farm community, meditate. This word is the same one that would be used of cows who chew 00:11:55.919 --> 00:12:01.799 their cud, bringing it back up to suck some more juice out of it day by day by day. 00:12:02.819 --> 00:12:08.419 Did anybody grow up around cows? My grandfather was a dairy farmer in upstate Vermont, so I didn't get 00:12:08.419 --> 00:12:15.120 to spend all my life with cows, but I got to spend lots of summers with cows. I was afraid of them most 00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:22.459 of the time, but I got used to them being around them. And the thing about cows is they are consistent. 00:12:22.460 --> 00:12:31.320 They eat, and then when they're not being fed, they chew their cud. They meditate on it day and night. 00:12:31.400 --> 00:12:39.440 By the way, my grandfather was an interesting person. He was a card, a sixth grade educated person from a 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:44.580 one-room schoolhouse who left to go take care of his family. And he was a funny human being, and he loved 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:50.360 the Lord too. When I visited him as a junior high kid, he would always convince me the electric fence 00:12:50.360 --> 00:12:56.800 wasn't on. If you grab an electric fence, you just feel a pulse. It doesn't really hurt. So he would 00:12:56.800 --> 00:13:05.720 grab the fence. See, it's not on. Got me every time. But my grandfather loved the Lord, and he and his 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:14.440 wife Joyce were the real Christian heritage in my life. When I visited my grandfather, after my 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:19.580 grandmother had died, he took me into his little apartment in Lindenville, Vermont, where he had a 00:13:19.580 --> 00:13:25.400 retirement little village. And in that little apartment, there was an alcove with two chairs in 00:13:25.400 --> 00:13:30.120 it and a table. And at the table between the chairs was a Bible and a devotional guide. And he says, 00:13:30.639 --> 00:13:37.080 hey, Brian, I need to ask you a question. He knew I was a pastor by this point. And his question was 00:13:37.080 --> 00:13:43.600 this. All of our life, Joyce and I would sit in these chairs and read the Bible to each other in the 00:13:43.600 --> 00:13:49.860 morning. And he handed me his devotional guide. And on one page, there was the word Steve, his name, 00:13:50.040 --> 00:13:57.000 and the other Joyce. And he goes, my wife's been gone for six years, but when the devotional has her 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:04.340 name on it, I hear the Bible in her voice. Is that okay? Of course, I kind of burst into tears and said, 00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:10.879 yes, grandfather, it's okay to hear the voice of God's word in the voice of the woman that you loved 00:14:10.879 --> 00:14:19.879 and lived with for 65 years. He meditated on the word. He lived in the word. He soaked in the word. 00:14:20.100 --> 00:14:24.960 It's interesting about my grandfather. He was an uneducated person. He didn't understand all the 00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:29.879 words that he read in scripture, but he soaked himself in it. He read it in the morning and at 00:14:29.879 --> 00:14:34.860 tea time, he took tea time every day at three o'clock. And he and all the people that worked on his farm 00:14:34.860 --> 00:14:39.740 would sit around and he would ask them, what do you think that passage means? How do we live that out 00:14:39.740 --> 00:14:45.200 today? He would live in it. He'd go back to it. And he would say, Brian, I'm not like you. I'm not 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:50.039 educated. I'm just simple. I read the Bible and do whatever it tells me to do every single day. 00:14:50.919 --> 00:14:58.320 He simply let the scripture form the way he thought about everyone around him. 00:14:59.019 --> 00:15:03.539 And he was a remarkable human being who gave dignity and grace to every person he encountered. 00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:09.180 Later in life, my grandparents lived most of their time with mentally and physically handicapped 00:15:09.179 --> 00:15:15.259 people, giving dignity to everyone around them, running homes for people who couldn't take care 00:15:15.259 --> 00:15:20.939 of themselves. So for instance, it was an interesting place to be as a junior high kid. I walked in the 00:15:20.939 --> 00:15:26.259 barn when I was in junior high and my grandfather was painting a brand new chair. And I said, what are 00:15:26.259 --> 00:15:31.199 you doing? He goes, well, Charlie loves to scrape paint off stuff and we've run out of stuff for him to 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:40.820 scrape. So he was doing this remarkably silly thing of painting a brand new chair so Charlie could scrape 00:15:40.820 --> 00:15:50.840 it off. His delight was in the word of God and it gave him capacity to hold the dignity of all people. 00:15:51.420 --> 00:15:53.220 And he gave it away to them freely. 00:15:53.220 --> 00:16:03.000 Again, to me as a junior high kid, it didn't make very much sense. I had to learn what he was doing 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:10.180 and out of what word he was living. He didn't walk in the counsel of the wicked. He didn't stand in 00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:15.720 the way of sinners. He didn't sit in the seat of scoffers. He didn't make fun of these people around 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:23.100 him. He loved them because he meditated on the scriptures and let it form how we thought about 00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:29.620 himself and every person around him. Ultimately, he was a word picture of a tree planted by 00:16:29.620 --> 00:16:36.759 streams of water. It yielded fruit, the fruit of dignity and love and kindness and generativity. 00:16:39.279 --> 00:16:46.060 He was a tree simply planted strong by a stream of those scriptures, a place where its nutrients could 00:16:46.059 --> 00:16:54.819 be soaked into his very fiber of his being. Now, one of the things that describes about this tree 00:16:54.819 --> 00:17:01.500 planted by the stream who's soaked in the word of God is that its leaves don't wither. But let me just 00:17:01.500 --> 00:17:08.480 say a quick word about that. Drought is going to come to every single one of us. Relational drought, 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:14.400 emotional drought, employment drought. We'll experience loss, loss of job, loss of friends, 00:17:15.400 --> 00:17:24.019 loss of feeling uprooted. We'll feel falsely accused all the time in our life, especially the 00:17:24.019 --> 00:17:30.599 higher you go up in the organizations in which you're serving. You're going to experience drought 00:17:30.599 --> 00:17:37.640 and difficulty in life. Hard stuff is going to happen to you. It's not evidence that you're not close to God. 00:17:37.640 --> 00:17:46.480 What is evidence that you're close to God is that you not wither. Not wither, not that you don't 00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:52.120 experience all these things as not hard, but it doesn't destroy the things that are most important, 00:17:52.300 --> 00:17:58.460 your relationships and your relationship to Jesus. In my 20s, when we experienced hard things, 00:17:58.620 --> 00:18:03.140 my wife and I were missionaries within a varsity for a long time. And when a hard thing would happen 00:18:03.140 --> 00:18:09.120 to us, it did cause us to wither a little bit. I would get testy with Lisa or she would get testy 00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:16.800 with me and the stress and anxiety of how are we going to fix this car? We can't afford to fix our 00:18:16.800 --> 00:18:24.840 washing machine. But as we've grown older, we begin to realize that we're no longer in this place of 00:18:24.839 --> 00:18:32.919 being in danger of losing our footing in the world. As I've gotten older, it's been interesting to see 00:18:32.919 --> 00:18:41.899 now that I'm 62, that I've had this consistent pattern of life come my way. It's no longer a 00:18:41.899 --> 00:18:49.500 threat to my sense of identity when bad things happen or I get accused. But again, it's zero credit to me. 00:18:49.500 --> 00:18:56.160 It's actually credit to the 20-year-old or 30-year-old or 40-year-old or 50-year-old Brian. 00:18:57.180 --> 00:19:02.220 The younger version of me who said, I don't understand everything, but I'm going to plant 00:19:02.220 --> 00:19:09.740 myself here in this word. And ultimately, it's no credit to my younger self. It's ultimately credit 00:19:09.740 --> 00:19:17.099 to the Spirit of God who gave me the desire for the word and made me have the capacity to see that 00:19:17.099 --> 00:19:25.219 there was no life being offered to me by the world. You see, one of the things you have to 00:19:25.219 --> 00:19:30.939 understand is that these patterns of life that we pursue to be formed into the image of God, 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:37.819 primarily rooting ourselves in our understanding of who we are based on what the Scripture is saying, 00:19:38.119 --> 00:19:44.779 it's really not our work. It doesn't change us. It's just our daily participation with the Spirit who 00:19:44.779 --> 00:19:50.279 does. By the way, I have a doctorate in spiritual theology, and this is the best analogy I can give 00:19:50.279 --> 00:19:55.680 you about how you're formed. Getting formed in the image of Jesus is like getting in the shower. 00:19:55.980 --> 00:20:02.619 It's very complicated, isn't it? Very profound. We don't wash ourselves. The water does all of that. 00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:10.220 We can add some soap to it, and ultimately, we have to choose to get in. And that's what our job is 00:20:10.220 --> 00:20:16.380 every single day. I'm going to choose to get into the environment where the Spirit of God can have 00:20:16.380 --> 00:20:25.140 access to my mind and my heart in the way I choose to live my life. He does all the work. I'm simply 00:20:25.140 --> 00:20:30.519 participating with the Spirit of God who put friends in my life to say, let's read the Bible together, 00:20:31.140 --> 00:20:35.460 who put a youth worker in my life when I was a kid who said, let me help you understand the gospel, 00:20:35.460 --> 00:20:42.059 who had older, mature leaders in my life who said, I know you don't get what God's doing to you in your 00:20:42.059 --> 00:20:47.700 30s and 40s, but I'm going to help you understand. I'm going to accompany you along the way. 00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:57.460 Your decision every day to put yourself in the right environment to be formed is the most you can do. 00:20:57.460 --> 00:21:06.759 Jesus desires to do the rest, and he will. You make small choices every day to plant yourself in 00:21:06.759 --> 00:21:13.980 scripture, to meditate on his word, to choose to be with Jesus daily in your lament, in your joy, 00:21:14.180 --> 00:21:21.920 in your question, in your sorrow, in all of the things that life comes at you. That is what will 00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:31.880 cause you over time to go from acorn to oak tree, planting yourself in the right environment. 00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:39.860 Despite our the hog realities, we can become people who face all of life's realities, including our 00:21:39.860 --> 00:21:48.220 death with peace, without fear, because we're making small decisions every day to be rooted by the stream 00:21:48.220 --> 00:21:54.220 and to put ourselves in scripture. Friends, drought is coming, but if you are planted by the stream, 00:21:54.319 --> 00:22:01.480 you'll have rich source of life that causes you not to be afraid, to be able to face life with hope 00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:12.819 and love. The tree, the righteous, the blessed are like the tree planted by streams, but not so the wicked. 00:22:12.819 --> 00:22:19.639 The wicked are chaff. Do you know what chaff is? Chaff is that thing that gets stuck in your teeth 00:22:19.639 --> 00:22:27.359 after you eat popcorn. No one likes it. You just want to spit it out. It's the outer kernel of a grain 00:22:27.359 --> 00:22:33.819 of wheat or corn or barley or something. In agrarian communities, they would take that kernel and put it 00:22:33.819 --> 00:22:40.079 on a mat and beat it with sticks. They would usually do that on the top of a hill so that when the wind 00:22:40.079 --> 00:22:45.460 would come across the hill, they'd throw the grains up and the grains would fall down, not pushed by the 00:22:45.460 --> 00:22:53.199 wind and the chaff would blow away. See, the chaff is the useless stuff to a farmer. It's not even good 00:22:53.199 --> 00:23:03.419 enough to be fed to animals. It's only good to be thrown away. The righteous are rooted, stable, 00:23:03.420 --> 00:23:11.539 the wicked. The wicked, not so. They're tossed back and forth by the winds of culture. 00:23:13.060 --> 00:23:19.060 Now, I want you to understand verse five. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in judgment nor sinners in 00:23:19.060 --> 00:23:24.560 the congregation or the righteous. Now, you can read this in one of two ways. Now, the wicked will not 00:23:24.560 --> 00:23:32.759 stand with the righteous. So, it's a choice. Remember, the blessed do not choose to stand with the wicked or 00:23:32.759 --> 00:23:39.700 the scoffer. And the same is true for the wicked. The wicked aren't making the choice to stand with the 00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:47.879 righteous. It's the reality that they see your good deeds and they choose to have nothing to do with it. 00:23:47.940 --> 00:23:54.720 They won't stand with you. They won't see you and make a new choice. Just as the blessed won't walk or 00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:00.420 stand with the wrong people, the wicked won't be with the wrong people either. Maybe they'll rub off on me. 00:24:00.420 --> 00:24:07.759 I feel too guilty, too ashamed, too dirty to be with us. And what I would want the wicked to know 00:24:07.759 --> 00:24:15.800 is that you're never too dirty for Jesus. Amen? You're never too far away to be welcomed in. 00:24:17.560 --> 00:24:22.680 But it's not only that they won't stand with the righteous in life, but in judgment, they can't stand. 00:24:23.140 --> 00:24:28.840 They can't stand in the righteous. The sinner is making a choice not to come into this building, 00:24:28.839 --> 00:24:34.399 not to come into the company of the followers of Jesus. The sinner is making a choice not to hang 00:24:34.399 --> 00:24:41.939 around people who are making good choices. It's a choice. It's always a choice. And it's our choice 00:24:41.939 --> 00:24:48.539 that we cannot stand to judge of it. It's not because Jesus doesn't want us. It's because we don't want 00:24:48.539 --> 00:24:56.419 Jesus. Whenever we're in danger of not being with God, it's our decision. Because scripture tells us that 00:24:56.420 --> 00:25:02.259 God would have all men and women turn and repent and come to him. So it's our choice. It's our choice 00:25:02.259 --> 00:25:06.740 every single day. The wicked will not stand in judgment. They will not make that choice. 00:25:07.680 --> 00:25:11.259 They will not make a choice to stand in the congregation of the righteous. 00:25:11.259 --> 00:25:21.960 But the question is, who can be righteous? We have to understand and read this passage in light of all 00:25:21.960 --> 00:25:29.240 the other passages of scripture. Romans 3, Psalm 14, Psalm 53, all declare the same reality. There is 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:39.099 no one righteous. No, not even one. So how can we be talking about the righteous? Standing with judgment, 00:25:39.099 --> 00:25:50.399 flourishing, never withering. They are the ones who are loved by the Lord. They are a tree that doesn't 00:25:50.399 --> 00:25:56.299 wither and produces fruit. They're not going to perish. They're not going to die. They're not going 00:25:56.299 --> 00:26:03.059 to experience judgment. But if we wake up every morning, we go and look ourselves in the mirror and 00:26:03.059 --> 00:26:11.559 go, am I righteous? No. I have to agree with scripture. No, not even me. Now, I want you to 00:26:11.559 --> 00:26:17.720 make a distinction between people who sin and people who become sin, ultimately pursue sin. 00:26:18.519 --> 00:26:24.440 You are someone you have sinned. And my suspicion is last night, the day before, the other day, 00:26:24.500 --> 00:26:28.980 there's some things that you did that you're unashamed of, that you're ashamed of. You wouldn't want them 00:26:28.980 --> 00:26:34.420 projected on the screen of this church to watch you get testy with your kids or have an argument with 00:26:34.420 --> 00:26:41.539 your spouse or yell at someone in a car who just cut you off. These are things that we are 00:26:41.539 --> 00:26:49.200 wrestling with. And you might be here this morning going, I need help. I need renewal. I need someone 00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:55.200 to give me the ability to stop doing the things I don't want to do and give me the capacity to do 00:26:55.200 --> 00:27:04.940 things I do want to do, referencing Paul. We all need the renewal and new life of Jesus. 00:27:06.220 --> 00:27:11.600 In a moment, we're going to come and celebrate the Eucharist. And so, a remembrance of the story of God, 00:27:11.700 --> 00:27:17.580 that we were the enemies of God, but by his love and mercy, he's making us the righteous. 00:27:17.579 --> 00:27:27.079 Not just new, but sons and daughters of the living God. You become righteous not because of your works, 00:27:27.159 --> 00:27:33.299 but because of the works of Jesus on the cross to remove that sin from you and to throw it away as 00:27:33.299 --> 00:27:40.099 far as east is from the west. To remember it no more. Not because God is a tottering old fool who 00:27:40.099 --> 00:27:46.579 can't remember things. No, he remembers. He knows that your sin has consequence. It cost him his very life. 00:27:47.579 --> 00:27:57.599 But he takes it and moves it from you. It's no longer your identity. Your new identity is blameless, 00:27:57.939 --> 00:28:03.699 pure, holy because of the life, the death, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. 00:28:04.919 --> 00:28:14.699 And all God invites us to do is say yes. Yes to him. Lord, I'm going to choose you every day. Lord, 00:28:14.700 --> 00:28:19.400 I'm going to invite you to come and make me new every day. I'm going to invite you to convict my 00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:26.259 heart of sin, but also convict my heart of hope and joy. I'm going to remember the story and believe 00:28:26.259 --> 00:28:35.920 that it's true that God in his goodness can make me new again day by day by day. Lord Jesus, 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:42.220 would you do that work in us? Would you renew us day by day that we could become 00:28:42.220 --> 00:28:54.500 formed by your word, not by our culture, formed not by our fears, but formed by the truth of your word. 00:28:56.460 --> 00:29:00.860 Help us remember the story. Help us live the story in the name of the Father, the Son, 00:29:00.859 --> 00:29:02.119 Holy Spirit.