The Prosperity Gospel Without The Heresy

Psalm chapter 1, I'll go ahead and begin in reading it. We'll go to the Lord in prayer. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does he prospers.

The wicked are not so but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Our good God in heaven, we ask for your help today and this morning. We know, Lord, that of ourselves we are weak vessels, weak creatures, but we know you make us strong in Christ.

And we know, Lord, that with you there's abundant hope in knowing who you are, knowing your word, and receiving forgiveness for our sins. And so we as the people have came here, Lord, to open our ears and to hear your word so that we can further see Christ and his kingdom. God in heaven, we know without you this is an impossible task, and so we ask for your help.

Lord, we ask for that Tim, you would bless Tim and all his endeavors as he's away from us. We thank you for the ministry you've given to him even outside of LaRue, and I pray that you'd be a blessing to him as well. Thank you, Lord, for this day, and may you bless it to us, Lord, and may we seek you continuously all our days. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, we have at the beginning of the Psalms here, Psalm 1 could begin any sort of different ways, and we can see that it begins in a way of telling us what it means to be a blessed person.

What is a blessed person? What does it mean to live a prosperous life? What does it mean to have prosperity? What does it mean to have the blessings of God? The word blessing or bless is kind of like a very general word. It's kind of like the word glory.

It's kind of hard to define, and there's many different ways to do it. But nevertheless, we can see the Psalms open up here with describing what is the blessed man? What is the prosperous life? What does prosperity truly look like? And we can see, and if we kind of ask ourselves, does God want us to be happy? Should our desires as creatures be to be happy people?

I remember as an early or a new Christian thinking the best thing I could do with watching TV would be to watch some kind of preaching on TV. And that's actually a very dangerous thing to do, sadly, in our day and age. But I remember this man, you might have heard of him. His name's, you know, I don't like to mention names, but his name's Joel Olsteen.

And I remember he talked a lot about blessing and being happy and prosperous. But I remember, I didn't know much, but I remember he gave me the heebie-jeebies. You know, like there's something about him that gave me the heebie-jeebies. It has nothing to do with the way he looked or anything like that. But just what he said and how he said it, just really, I couldn't explain it.

But it just seemed off. And we, if you don't know, he's quite the declaration of the prosperity gospel. That God wants you to be happy and prosperous, right? And that's kind of his, and here's another word I say, shtick, right? That's what he does quite often. And I just remember it just made my heart not settled right.

But I think we can go too far the other way. And we can almost say that God doesn't want me to be happy. Like I'm not, my desire isn't to be prosperous. I don't think that's biblical at all. If we see in Psalm 1, again, it can start any way. And it starts with what does it mean to be the blessed, or I would say happy person.

And what does it mean to be prosperous? We are, you know, you want to be prosperous. It's not okay to not be prosperous. And so I call this sermon the prosperity gospel, but without the heresy. We cannot go too far on the other side of the ditch in which we say God does not want us to be happy, not want us to be prosperous, but we don't want to go on the other side of the ditch in which we fall into Osteen's error, in which we define prosperity and blessing in a way that truly is not.

And so really I think this is the heart and soul of Psalm 1. Who is the blessed man? What does it look like? What does it mean? Who is this person? And what does it mean to be prosperous?

That's kind of the questions that we're answering as we're looking at Psalm 1. And I think we should look at it as people who want to be blessed, who we want to be prosperous in our life. We want those things. We want to be happy. And so as we look, we begin with those first few words. And I want to, you know, verse 1 and 2 is, you know, it's three different sections of Psalm 1 here.

I think verses 1 and 2 is the first section. And what we're looking at is who is the blessed man or who is the blessed woman, okay? And which it starts by saying, blessed is the man. Blessed is the man. Blessed is the man. Blessed, you could define this in many different ways.

And people use this word, unbelievers use this word, believers use this word. My boss, who was a pagan for no doubt, he would say, I'm too blessed to be stressed, right? He loved to say that while he was stressing out, right? And so we see this word a lot. We see it everywhere. What does it mean to be blessed?

And one way to define it, and I'm sure someone has a better way, but it seems to mean like happy. Blessed means to be happy. or another way perhaps is favored by God. To be blessed means to be happy or favored by God. Now happy is quite the word because really sin makes many people happy but it not a blessing right But it is a certain sense in which we receive the favor of God we are happy in that favored state And so one way to describe bless is to be happy or favored by God.

God blesses us and then we bless God in return. Now the blessing we give to God is different from the blessing he gives to us. He blesses us with favor, and then we use that to then worship him. We take his blessings, and then we bless him with worship. And so blessing is like a favor by God or being favored by God, and it's like happiness. Now, one thing we need to look at, though, is the opening here to the Psalms.

Blessed is the man. It's very similar to another opening to a major thing that's said, to a sermon that we hear. What sermon is that? Sermon on the Mount, right? We hear the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus opens up pretty much his ministry with this teaching, right?

Blessed are, right? And so it kind of echoes Psalm 1, in which we see in Matthew 5, 3 through 6, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

But I think the difference between the blessed man in Psalm 1 and the blessed person of Matthew 5 that Jesus describes, it's really Psalm 1, the blessing, has a good vibe to it. You know, it's the prosperous tree. Good things are going on. where the blessing that Jesus talks about, think about it. It is what? Blessed or happy are those who are poor, those who are mourning, those who are meek, those who are hungry, right?

It's almost like a different look at it. What's going on here? And I think the way we need to look at this, the first we need to get our head on straight, is that Jesus is describing the blessings of a person who is a sinner who needs Christ. That state that you get in during conversion in which you realize that I am empty and poor and weak and needy.

I need Christ. Jesus is describing, blessed or happy are you when you realize that you need me and my kingdom. Blessed are you when you're in that state of emptiness and brokenness and you thirst after righteousness and you see it in me. I think the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus declaring, I am bringing the kingdom and blessed are you when you're ready to receive it.

That's the blessing that Jesus is referring to. And I think the blessed state that we're going to see in Psalm 1 are those who are in the kingdom of Christ. Does that make sense what I'm saying there? You've got the blessing that Jesus describes. Blessed are you when you're ready to enter into my kingdom, when you're broken and you realize you're a sinner and you need me.

Psalm 1, I think, is all about the blessings of the person who finds himself in the kingdom of Christ. So if you try to read Psalm 1 as an unbeliever, there's unbelievers in this room. If you try to read Psalm 1 and say, okay, this is what I want to do, and you're not in the kingdom of Christ, it's going to condemn you and frustrate you. That's the purpose of it.

But if you find yourself in the kingdom of Christ, beloved, and you have looked upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and you do it daily, you're striving after him, you're denying yourself, picking up the cross, following Christ, Psalm 1 is the psalm of power of those who are in the kingdom of Christ. It's what you should be trying to reflect and look like because you have been given the power by Christ. But if you're not in the kingdom of Christ, Psalm 1 is only frustrating and very far from you.

But in Christ, Psalm 1 is the blessings of his kingdom. The blessings of his kingdom. Blessed is the man. what is as we look at this and we'll talk more about jesus at the end of the psalm explicitly at least what is the blessed man not and that's kind of how the psalm starts off if you notice it talks about what the blessed man is not blessed is the man if you look in verse one of psalm one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor does this man stand in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers we see three things going on there right um bless this man who does not um we see walk stand or sit and the wickedness or in the way of sinners or scoffers saying the same thing three times pretty much and if we take those things as a whole we can see the man is not blessed when he, instead of submitting himself, as we'll see, to the law of God, he submits himself to his own law, okay?

A sinner is one who has disobeyed God and has followed his own devices, his own standard, his own law. And so we can see right away that the blessed man is not the one who follows after his own sin, who's a sinner, who follows after his own sin, who has established his own standard and is followed after that. That man is not blessed. One who does that.

We can get more into the details about the different aspects, right? The counsel of the wicked. Blessed is the man who does not, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. We are by nature, counsel, think of like a king and a queen. A king always has his counselors, right? A president always has his counselors.

People advise them and he kind of makes decision based off of those counsels. And I would say, you know, by and large, we are all people who naturally take counsel. And we are also people who naturally give counsel. Have you ever noticed that people just naturally want to give them, give their opinions? It's just how it works. And so naturally, you are around people who want to give counsel, and you are naturally someone who usually listens to counsel and applies it And the blessed man is one who does not who does not he forcefully or he explicitly does not take the counsel of the wicked When he hears counsel that contrary to the law of God he naturally hates it And he does not do it.

He does not walk in that way. The blessed man can see, differentiate, can distinguish between the law of God and the sin of man. And no, I'm not going to walk in wickedness. Stands in the way of the sinners. Blessed is the man who does not stand in the way of the sinners. The way a person goes, the walk of life, right?

Blessed is the man who does not stand in that way, who does not do those things. And we'll see that, if you see, blessed is the man who does not stand in the way of sinners. Look at Psalm 1, verse 5. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the day of judgment. You see, the sinner, he may stand now in his sin, but he will not stand in the day of judgment.

And blessed are those who see that and they say, I'm not going to go down that path. We can see the third aspect too, sits in the seat of scoffers. To scoff is to jeer or to mock. A lot of times it's focused on someone in authority. One of the things, I think we have a two-party system, not to get political, but I'm going to. We're in a two-party system, and I think sometimes one side likes it when the other side wins because then that side has all this ammunition to mock.

I think people are just, we just love to mock. It's just our heart, our nature, that we love to mock others. And one of the things I think is we see a different party take office and say, finally I have more ammunition to scoff and to mock and to jeer. We can see this even, it's amazing to see how many, I think, Christians, we are called to not be scoffers.

We aren't to do that. We're not to mock. We're not to jeer. We're not to treat people that way. But it's amazing to see how that goes out the window when our president, when the person who's president is not our political party, right? And you hear these chantings and you hear these scoffing going on from the world and Christians can join in them.

But we are not to be scoffers. Now, I think it's here pointing at scoffing in general at the authority of God in heaven, but we aren't to be people with a heart that wants to scoff. Proverbs 21, 24 says, scoffer is the name of the arrogant, haughty man who acts with arrogant pride. A scoffer is one who is high on his own mighty horse and he looks down upon others.

And how much is it, how bad is it that we would scoff the God on high, right? And again, going back to the general principle of these three, this is not what a blessed man is. A blessed man does not have his own law and follows his own counsel, his own sin. And we become scoffers whenever we have our own law opposed to the law that is God's. This is not a blessed man.

But it turns to what the blessed man is, if you look in verse two, by his delight. And I want you to notice too, notice how it's all a bunch of actions, right? This is all things that he's doing, walking, standing, sitting. But then when it goes to this is what the blessed man does, notice it goes to the heart, not so much action. But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night. So this is the blessed man. The blessed man is not following his own law, but rather his delight is found in something exterior from him. That is God's law. That is the blessed man, one who follows the law of the Lord, the one who meditates on the law of the Lord. You meditate what your delight is in.

You do. And we can kind of this erroneous understanding of meditation, we can think it's like an eastern thing where you're sitting down in your living room, you know, Indian, what do you call it when you're Indian, sitting Indian style, right? And you're going, um, um, right? That's meditation where you're trying to empty your mind and all that eastern pagan stuff.

That's not the meditation what Scripture has here. Meditation in the Scriptures is always, you're not trying to empty your mind, you're trying to fill your mind. And you're trying to fill your mind with what? What blesses you, that is the law of the Lord. This only happens when you have a delight in the law of the Lord. You won't meditate truly on Scripture unless if you delight in it.

You can force yourself to read Scripture because you're supposed to be a good Christian. That's what good Christians do, you read your Scripture. but you will not meditate on it if you're not delighting in it first, right? It's a heart thing. You need to delight yourself in the law of the Lord and then you'll meditate upon it. But what does it mean to meditate day and night?

Are we to be hermits, right? Are we to never leave the house because, nope, I got to sit here and meditate on God's word? I don't think that's what it's saying. I do think there's an aspect in which we study it and we're intentive to. In our daily studies, we're not just kind of going through it willy-nilly, but we are meditating on it. But then we take that truth of scripture and we carry it with us in the day, all through the week, right?

So if you're a husband and you see the law of the Lord is for you to love your wife and your children and to lead them faithfully, you meditate upon that scripture by carrying that with you through the day. Am I doing this? You come to the Lord's Day service and you hear the word of God and you don't just go in one ear, out the other and you forget about it, but you meditate upon that scripture, upon that teaching and you carry it with you through the day.

Through the week. That meditation is only going to happen when you're delighting yourself in it first. Now, how can we delight ourselves in the Lord, in the law of the Lord? This is why I talked about Christ's kingdom. If you're not in Christ's kingdom, you will not delight yourself in the word of God. You won't.

It's impossible. We have a sinful nature that doesn't allow it. And so that's why it's blessed whenever you're poor in spirit and you enter into the kingdom of Christ broken, in which he takes hold of you and he changes your heart and he makes you, what? Through his work, through his accomplishment, delight in the word. So now it becomes your meditation Well I can tell you if you not delighting in the Lord you will not meditate But you will meditate on other things You will meditate on other things I thought about going into different things I always mention the same thing Sports all that kind of I don want to go over and over again But we do.

What are you meditating on throughout the week? We all do it. Is it in the law of the Lord or not? And if it's not, what do we do? God changed my heart through the power of the gospel and his kingdom to make my desires shift to the law of the Lord. Blessed is he who delights its extreme satisfaction or desire.

And your extreme satisfaction or desire is not in your own standard, but in God's standard. And it's so wonderful to you that you meditate about every single area of your life. It falls through all the cracks, all the areas in your life. You meditate, how do I apply the word of God to this situation, that situation, to all these situations? But many times we think of God as like a compartment.

He's just one little sliver of pie right here, and that's all he is. No, beloved, he is the wash over all of our life. And if he is not, it's because, again, your delight is in something else, typically your own standard that you have set up. So we can see. The blessed man is one who delights in God's law, not their own sin. This selfless way of understanding happiness runs contrary to our natural inclinations.

You see what I mean? Ask people what would make them perfectly happy in this world. What would make you happy? And most likely you're not going to hear the law of God, right? You're not going to hear that. But beloved, this is what makes someone blessed and happy, is that the law of God has become their delight, and it is their meditation all the day long.

This is true blessedness. This is true happiness. I remember seeing a man playing. I think I've already mentioned this man before. I only have like two stories. A man playing basketball at this ministry I was in at this church.

And I figured it was a good opportunity to go out there and play with him. And of course, give him the gospel. And so after I let him beat me in basketball, that's the key to win their heart. I become all things to all men, and a loser in basketball was that day. I remember asking him, you know, talking to him about the Lord, and he just, he flat out said, I just don't think God has really given me enough things, or I don't know exactly what word to use, but blessed me enough, right?

I don't think God has blessed me enough for me to really pay attention to him. And so this is a man who has set up his own standard of what blessedness is. I remember telling him I remember saying you know breathe in really really deep you know because we were just playing basketball out of breath he breathes in deep you know he's a nice guy and I said if you know that's enough blessing right there for you to worship your God but the thing is his standard was contrary to God's law he set up his own standard and so he found himself very bitter he was a scoffer he was against God and I told him it is not God's fault it is your fault because you have set up a contrary standard.

You must submit yourself to God and his word. That's what needs to happen. We cannot have our own standard. We cannot have our own law. The blessed man is one who sees the law of God. It is his delight now, and so he submits to it, and that is his meditation.

Okay, now the second part of this psalm, three and four. This is like a Simile, I believe. Simile is using like or as to compare two like things, right? I think I got it right. And so it's going to describe what is a blessed and non-blessed man like. And we see in 3 and 4 of Psalm 1, he is like a tree.

This man who's blessed, whose law of the Lord is his delight, and he meditates. This man is like a tree who's 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. But here's the non-blessed man. But the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Chaff is like the stuff around the fruit, right? So corn, you've got the husk, right? It's the chaff. Am I right there, Mr. Fields? And so you have that kind of chaff.

It's not useful for anything. It gets blown in the wind. And after harvest season, you see chaff all over the place in the country, don't you? Because the farmers aren't chasing after it. Oh, my goodness, my produce. They don't care.

All their produce is in their semis as they go by over and over and over and over and over again, over and over and over and over again to deliver it where it needs to go. But chaff is useless. It's only useless really to be burned. It's not useful to the farmer. The produce is, and that's what's heavy. That's what's weighty, right?

And so we can see that the blessed man is useful. Useful to who? Useful to who? Self? No. To God.

To him. to the one whose law has became his delight. The blessed man is useful to God. Where the not so blessed man, the one who's not blessed, is not useful to God. Now again, you ask an unbeliever, you ask someone, what does it mean to be blessed? Their definition usually isn't to be useful to my creator. Although that is truly, objectively, the blessed man or woman.

To be useful to the one who has made them. Now that doesn't mean that God needs us, but our desire is to be useful to the one who's made us. This is the blessed man. So we can see four qualities here of the productive fruit or tree. And the first one, if you see in verse 3, it is planted in a place where it will succeed. It's planted by not a desert, but streams of water.

Who plants us? Who's the one that's in charge of where we are planted? Not self. God. Remember the parable of the sower, right? What's the seed that actually was good?

It was the one that was planted in good soil. And so who do we rely upon in this life to be productive? to be helpful, to be blessed. It's our sovereign God. So if we're in a situation where we are not producing for the Lord, we're very weak, very dead, who do we cry out to? Our own abilities? No, to the one who is able to plant us where we need to be.

We cry out to our Father who plants. So notice the first quality is one who has been planted in an area that is going to produce, that's going to provide growth. the second quality is it produces as is expected you see that that yields this is the blessed man he's like a tree that yields its fruit in its season you have a certain expectation of a plant that's going to produce certain fruit and notice that the blessed man is produces as is expected it is not okay to be an unproductive christian right you have been you have been planted by the father, streams of water, and you've been planted so that you would produce for him. We live in a very immature age in which, I want to say this very carefully, I want to say this very carefully, we, where it highlights, I'm afraid I won't be able to say this carefully, where it highlights, we live in an age, you turn on K-fluff, I mean K-love, and then you turn on these things, it highlights this it almost magnifies how you know i'm just a wretched sinner and no good no good at all no but then god loves me anyways kind of thing yes right but move on right yes we're always outside of christ we are wretched sinners and there is no good right unless if we are satisfying ourself in him and his kingdom all that beautiful stuff but it's almost as if this immature kind of Christianity we live in is it does not produce a mature Christian and they excuse it by saying, oh, I'm just a sinner and I can't get anything right.

No, it's because you are not maturing as a productive plant. You come to Christ, you want to produce for your Lord, right? I want to have fruit that I can give to him, not because he needs it, because it is my great desire to do so. But it's like this immature Christianity, which instead of wanting that, instead of that being our desire, we just kind of say, oh, you know, I'm just a sinner, that's all I am.

Which again, you can see why I want to be careful. Because you are just a sinner, right? And we do have that. But it should not excuse our immaturity. If that makes sense. I hope I'm saying that good.

It should not excuse our immaturity. And I'm so tired of seeing Christians that should have been matured and had not. And they use that as an excuse, myself included. Cannot use that as an excuse. You remember what Tim was preaching on a couple weeks ago, not last week, Jim, a couple weeks ago. See, if you were in Sunday school, you would have gotten that joke right there.

So come to Sunday school. You get the inside jokes. Remember what Tim was preaching on, though, Hebrews 5, at the end of Hebrews 5, 11 through 14. Let me steal some of Tim's thunder here. About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you.

Again, the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Chapter 6, verse 1. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.

Again, he's not saying let us leave the basics of Christianity. Let's forget about it. He's saying move on, though. Get mature. Grow up as a productive plant. Let us move forward.

Go on to maturity. Not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God. An instruction about washing is the laying on of hands. Resurrection of the dead. And eternal judgment. Verse 3.

And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened. And have tasted the heavenly gift. And have shared in the Holy Spirit. And have tasted the goodness of the word of God. And the powers of the age to come.

And then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and hold him up to contempt For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those whose sake it is cultivated, i.e. God, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it's worthless, and it's near to being cursed, and its end is simply to be burned.

So we aren't immature Christians. We are not satisfied with immaturity. Grow up. Do not be happy with being the same level of maturity. You have a desire. I am in the kingdom of Christ.

I'm in good soil. I've been given everything so that I can produce fruit for my father. So do not be okay with a chaotic mess in your household and in your life in which you sin and you sin and you sin. reach forward to maturity by the power of Christ. This is the blessed woman or man. It yields its fruit in its season. It produces for the father.

And what's the third characteristic? And its leaf does not wither. Its leaf does not wither. It perseveres. It perseveres. It looks strong.

A dead tree looks as if just one storm is going to take it down. A lively tree looks like it can survive the storms. A blessed man or woman is one who is prosperous, who perseveres and can survive and does survive the storms of life. Such a prosperous tree is planted in God's law. And I would say in his instruction, in his presence. We don't have time to do it, but if you look at Psalm 92, remember it says in verse 12, the righteous, the whole Psalm, I mean, but we'll just look at verse 12 and 13, The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. The courts is like the presence of God. It's the temple itself. And so if you want to be blessed, you need to be planted in the presence of God and his kingdom and the kingdom of Christ. And the law needs to be your delight and your meditation as you go on into maturity in that.

The blessed man is one who delights and meditates on God's law, which produces a tree of prosperity. And so this final part, this final section of the psalm, 5 through 6, it really gets to the heart of the matter. The final part of the psalm is what helps us to keep from becoming prosperity gospel heretics, while celebrating the blessing and prosperity from God. so we don't want to see the prosperity gospel in which it highlights only physical blessings and then forget the fact that god truly does want us to be prosperous and have blessing but it needs to be on god's term according to his law instruction in which we see the heart of the matter here in five and six of chapter one in which the psalmist says 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.

The blessed and prosperous man is the one who will stand at the day of judgment and not be thrown into the oven to be burned. Again, I've already pointed out, but blessed is the man who does not stand in the way of sinners because they will not stand at the day of judgment, but the righteous one will stand at the day of judgment. That is a blessed one.

It says the Lord knows the way of the righteous. and it doesn't mean to say he doesn't know the way of the unrighteous as if God isn't omniscient. He knows every way, but God is intimate with the way of the righteous. He knows it because it is his way. It is his law. So he knows their way intimately. The way of the wicked will perish just like useless chaff.

Now it doesn't need to be a mystery. Am I going to receive God's judgment or am I going to be able to stand at God judgment It really isn meant to be much of a mystery because we live our lives today and what happens at the end when we die is just a culmination of how you lived your life. I'm not preaching works-based salvation, but I am saying whenever you are saved, God sets you in a position to where you can be productive.

And if you are productive for God today, you will stand in the day of judgment. But if you are just someone who is a Christian in name only with bad fruit, nothing to show forth for it at all, you will not stand the day of judgment. It's just going to be the culmination of your labors in your life. It's not much of a mystery. So that's why whenever you see someone who's a Christian but is very, you don't see quite the growth that you would like to see and you're just not so sure, the greatest thing about that is it takes away their security of salvation right there.

How blessed is the man who has been changed by Christ. His heart's been delivered from darkness and so now the light is in the law the Lord in which is their delight to grow and be more prosperous for the Lord. And the culmination of that is when you enter into the kingdom and God says, what? Well done, my good and faithful servant. But the one who has not been well done, beloved, that's a scary place to be.

Finally, as we start the conclusion, if you're going through a season of your life right now that your circumstances are terrible. They're just especially bad. They're not good. You might be thinking, how am I to be happy right now? How am I to be blessed? How am I to be prosperous when there is this thing happening to me, whatever it may be?

We can take a lot of peace and solace in the fact that, notice Psalm 1 does not say, blessed and prosperous are you when you have good circumstances. It doesn't quite say that, does it? Whenever things are going right for you, blessed are you. And again, that would be what the world thinks blessing is, what prosperity is, is things just go well for you.

You're making good money, you have your husband and your wife, you're not single anymore, things are just going really well. Notice the psalm isn't so much about those circumstances. What does the psalm say? You are to delight yourself in the law of God and meditate on it day and night. This leads to the prosperous and blessed life. So no matter what your circumstances are, that is what you are to do. and so those bad circumstances that you are given that is actually fuel for that fire of blessedness in which i am going to utilize this in obedience to my god so whether you are a single person and you hate your singleness and you're lonely and you're full of sadness right use that as a way to grow in the lord to be obedient to him to be prosperous because it's not about your circumstances.

It's about what you do with your circumstances. You are, as a Christian, one in which you can say, I can take these circumstances, lean into the law of the Lord through the power of Christ, and be a blessing prosperous because of these circumstances, even if that means I found out I have terminal illness or my child is going to die. The Christian can be prosperous and we're not a slave to our circumstances.

And so we need to remind ourselves of that daily as instead of complaining about our circumstances. Instead, we say, God, this is the circumstances that you have given me so that I can lean into your law and use it to be a productive fruit. So I find great joy in this because the world is enslaved to their circumstances. Beloved, you are not because of Christ.

So do not be a slave to your circumstances, but rather utilize your circumstances that God in his sovereign will has given to you to lean into his law that is your delight and give it back to him in worship so this is quite the man isn't it blessed is the man and that man is quite the man he is he truly is a uh one might say a perfect man i'm not that perfect man i am not the man you know what kind of the man i am you remember when david's confronted by nathan after Bathsheba What does Nathan say to him He gives that parable if you want to call it that a story of you know to hide what he doing Nathan trying to show him his own story but he tells a different story so David confused And then David hears the story of this unrighteous wretch who reflected of him and he says, that man needs to die for what he's done. And what does Nathan say to him? You are the man, right?

I'm that man. I'm that sinner, right? And we're all fallen in Adam, for sure. So what is this man? Who is this blessed as a man? Blessed is Christ.

Christ is the man of Psalm 1. It's his kingdom that we're talking about. He is the one that has loved the Lord perfectly. He is the one in which the law is his delight, and he meditated upon it day and night and failed not at it. Jesus is the man here. Not you, beloved.

Not you. This is the story of Jesus. Pilate, I think, is so interesting to see Pilate and the way he acted. And he was really used as a tool by both the Romans and by God himself because he would say these things that were like 110% spot on, but yet not quite know that he's being used by God in such a way. One of the ways I think he's used is what does he say about Jesus when he's about to endure the cross, he's been whipped and everything?

What does he say? He's bloodied up and he says what? Behold the man. Jesus is the man who has taken upon our sins, our punishment, right? He is the true man who was righteous in all his ways, but yet was punished as if he wasn't righteous. He is the man that we look to, the second Adam, the second man.

And we see that in his power, in his ability, we get ours. Jesus is the man here in Psalm 1 that because of his wounds, we can be that man too. and so we aren't to look at this outside of Christ's kingdom and say well I just got to get better but we are to look at this and say I do not even come close to that of myself but thanks be to Christ that he is the man and then his success becomes ours but Christ's beloved did not save you for you to be a useless Christian and there's far too many of that and I fight that battle each day in my own life. But Christ has saved you to produce fruit for his glory and honor.

Do not waste your life, but look upon Psalm 1, see Christ as the man, but yet he has gathered you into his arms so that you would be that man and woman too. This is the gospel. So here we see the prosperous life, but it's without the heresy. Instead, it's full of gospel. That Jesus Christ can make you prosperous than him. He can change your heart to love his law and delight in doing it all the days of your life.

Are you doing that? And if not, what a great opportunity for you to look at Jesus clearer now and to repent and rely upon his strength for you. And all of us are falling short to some degree. So it's our delight to take it to our dear Lord Jesus Christ, who is the man. Let's pray. God, I thank you, Lord, for my weakness and I thank you for your strength.

And I thank you, Lord, that any fruit I see in my own life, I know is a gift from you. I remember the days in which I was in the kingdom of darkness. I only had corrupted fruit. And Lord, in your kindness, you have taken me out of that domain of darkness and you brought me into the kingdom of light so that I would produce fruit for you. And I know, Lord, I desire to grow more fruit.

I desire to bear fruit in proper seasons, Lord. and I pray, Lord, that you would cause me with that desire to look upon Jesus Christ, for he produced perfect fruit always for you. And so he is our example and he is our power. So I pray for the people before me, those who do not know Jesus, that they would repent of their sins and look upon his kingdom.

And those who are Christians, those who rely upon Jesus, that they would have a new kind of umph in their desires to look closer upon Jesus as we should each day. Thank you, because that is our great worship, and I praise you for giving us that worship. And I pray that that would be our heart throughout the week this week. In Jesus' name, amen.