The Word

men, we do depend on him, don't we, don't we? I mean like we depend on him. We depend on God.

- We'll see that more in what we're going to do here in just a few moments. But maybe let me begin this way. I'm guessing that everybody has heard the phrase before, "It's like riding a bike." You know, you maybe used that with people, maybe they were going back to doing something that they haven't done in a long time and you're encouraging them, right? You're like, "Hey, it is like riding a bike," you know? It's like riding a bike. You can do this. You haven't forgotten how to do this. You developed some habits around that. You know, when you were little, you learned how to ride a bike and you never forgot how to ride a bike, right? You could get on it when you're older. A little more dangerous when you're older, but you could still get on it and you know what you're doing and you can ride a bike. And it seems like it's almost impossible to forget how to ride a bike. But I have found out that it is possible to forget how to ride a bike. Now, I'm not saying that it's because I've done something or you know, anything like that. I was actually paying attention to a man named Destin Sandlin, and he's an engineer and he's done a really highly viewed TED-Ed. That's TED educational. So it's a little different than just the regular TED Talks, a TED educational talk. They got like 30 million views and here's the short version. He had some welder friends that took a bike and they reversed it. They didn't make it completely backwards. In other words, you're not pedaling backwards. But what they did is they took the handlebars and they made it in such a way that if you turn the handlebars right, the wheel goes left. And if you turn the handlebars left, the wheel goes right. And he calls it the Backward Brain Bicycle. And he's done a bunch of different talks and he talks about kind of how our brains are wired into habit forms, that once we develop these habits, they're very hard to undo. And so he would take this bike, this Backwards Brain Bike, and he would tell people in the audience, he would say, "Hey, I'll give you 200 bucks if you can ride from right there to right there on this bicycle." And nobody could ever do it because you built this habit of learning how to ride the bicycle a certain way. And it just doesn't come to you when you're doing everything backwards, right? It just doesn't work, it seems. So he decided that he would try and teach himself how to ride this bike because he had tried it, you know, early on he was like, "I can't ride this, It's impossible." For eight months, this engineer worked on learning how to ride the Backward Brain Bicycle. And he finally got it. It's like eventually it just clicked. And he was now able to ride this bicycle anywhere, he could just ride it, he could ride in a straight line. And it even showed pictures of him learning how to ride it. And it was just like all over the place, you know? 'Cause it was, you turn this way and the wheel goes this way and you turn this way and the wheel goes that way. And he was trying to figure out like how to do it. But then eventually he got to where he learned how to ride this bike and he said it was really incredible. Then he, after learning for eight months how to ride this bike, then he showed himself, I think he was in Amsterdam and there was all of these bikes that you could rent, regular old bikes that you could rent. And he said, "Let's film this. I'm gonna try and ride a regular bike now." And he tries to ride a regular bike and he can't because he had trained his mind literally how to ride this in a different way. Now eventually he got back to learning and you could see the moment it clicked when he got this on film where he eventually remembered how to ride a regular bicycle because he had undone that and he had trained himself in a different way. Now obviously there's kind of brain circuitry that works when all of that stuff is happening, right? And I think it was Canadian neuropsychologist, Donald Hebb who said this, it was a pretty famous quote. He said, "Neurons that fire together wire together." It's kind of like it makes sense, right? Neurons that fire together end up wiring together. In other words, it creates a habit formed kind of pathway where then you don't have to think about it as much and you just do it. It's just really natural for you to be able to do. Now, even though that's kind of some new thinking around some of that, it's really not new thinking because guys like Aristotle in the 300s BC was actually talking about these ideas of how you formed habits and how you become a virtuous person through virtuous habits. Here's what Aristotle said back in the 300s BC. He said, "Virtues are formed in man by doing the actions." In other words, you form virtues by doing virtuous things. And that's how you build a habit of these things. And maybe you've heard of the philosopher from the 1920s named Will Durant, a very famous philosopher. He was commenting on Aristotle and he said this, he said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." See, what we're trying to get at here is this idea habits actually lead to directional outcomes. If somebody says that they're on a particular trajectory, they're saying, "This is where I'm headed." All I have to do is ask about the habits of their life to determine if they're actually going that way. Because the trajectory of your life is determine by the habits that you keep. Let me remind you of this. Goals that you have in your life are worthless without habits. It's the only way you actually get to the goals that you say that you're trying to get to. You have to have habits that actually support the goal that you're getting to. So if that's the case and it is, we've just been able to observe that as common sense in human experience. If that's the case, then let me ask you this question. What if there were spiritual habits? What if there were godly habits? What if there were habits of grace that would put you in the way of God's grace so that you could be formed more into the image of Christ? What if that were the case? Well, it is the case. That's why we're naming the series Habits of Grace. That's why we're talking about these very things. It is most certainly the case. Now remember this habits, listen carefully, habits are not an end in themselves. Habits are a means. Sometimes we get caught up in the habit being the thing. It's not the thing, it's actually leading us to the thing, right? Habits are a means. They're not an end. And so when we talk about habits of grace, we're talking about means of grace in which God can act in very specific ways in our lives because we put ourselves in the place of being able to receive his grace in our lives. So that's why we're starting this series that we call Habits of Grace. And as we start this series, I'd like for us to start in the very first Psalm, alright? Now, if you're wondering where the Book of Psalms is, do this. Just open your Bible to the middle, right? Just open your Bible to the middle and that's where you'll find the Book of Psalms. Some of you don't have a Bible with you. You've memorized this. Congratulations to you. It's very impressive. Thank you for doing that. People around you are duly impressed. But here's why we wanna start in the very first Psalm. We wanna start there because even though there's 150 of these Psalms, kind of a Hebrew poetry and songbook, let's say, there's 150 of them, but there's a reason that the first one is in the first place. Because God, by the super intending of his own spirit through the lives of people who were not only writing these but who were compiling these, God put this together in a very unique way. And the very first Psalm has to do with the way of righteousness and the way of wisdom and the way of life. And it's an invitation. It's an invitation as we open up the Psalms to live in this kind of way, to live in the way of wisdom and live in the way of righteousness and live in the way of life. And what the first Psalm does, it actually contrasts two different ways of living. There's the way of wisdom and righteousness in life, or there's the way of wickedness and sin and destruction. And depending on the habits that you form, it's going to determine the direction that you go. So here, if I've given you sufficient time now to find Psalm 1. And for those of you who use digital devices, it didn't take you any time. Some of you go find Psalm 1 and then you get it right? That's pretty easy. You know, people think you're weird talking into your hand, but nonetheless, that's perfectly fine. Here's what Psalm 1 has to say. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do, prospers. Not so with the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction." It's a wonderful psalm. And if I were kind of taking the whole psalm and I were just summarizing it in one singular statement, which I'm doing that to just kind of it all together, I would simply say it this way, those who delight and meditate on the Word of God are blessed. Those who delight and meditate on the Word of God are blessed. Now, we'll get to in just a minute what that blessing entails, because that's how the actual Psalm starts. Blessed is the one who does the following things. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But before we get to the blessing, let's talk about the habits that are related to the Word of God. Because if those who delight and meditate on the Word of God are blessed, and we'll talk about that blessing, then what are the habits that get us to that place related to the Word of God? Well, the first one is a habit of the heart. Alright? You can just jot that down if you want to, if you're taking notes or if you have a photographic memory, a habit of the heart. What do I mean when I'm talking about a habit of the heart? Well, what the Psalmist meant, notice what it says in verse number two, "but whose delight," do you see it? "But whose delight is in the law of the Lord." This is what I'm talking about, about a habit of the heart that actually we should be in a place where we delight in the Word of God. That's a Hebrew term that is translated delight. It can mean desire, it can mean pleasure that we take pleasure in. But that's really a habit of the heart, to delight in the Word of God is to, listen to this, is to actually delight in the person of God. They're not exactly the same thing, but God himself has revealed himself through his Word to us. And if God has revealed himself to all of us through his Word, then when we delight in His word, we are delighting in the nature of who God actually is. And this is something that we should be overwhelmingly encouraged by. Another of the psalms that are in the songbook here in Psalms says it this way, in Psalm 16, "You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, and with eternal pleasures at your right hand." That it is a wonderful thing to delight in the Word of God. Why? Because God shows us the pathway of life. And God reveals himself to us in such a way that we take great joy in his presence. You see, listen, friends, when you want to cultivate the presence of God in your life, I would have handy the Word of God. Because when you have the Word of God, you are now seeing how God is revealing himself to you so that you can rightly understand God as you spend time in his presence. You see friends, what we need to remember and realize is that the Word of God, listen to this, the Word of God given to us is a grace to us. That God has graced us with giving us the very Word of God so that we have this and that we can understand that it is a gift of grace. Because not only will this Word teach us what it means to walk in the pathway of life, but it will teach us to be overjoyed with the beauty of who God is. Because maybe we need to remember something when we read the Word of God. This is not just a history lesson. What we need to remember is that here's who's being revealed, listen carefully. This is who's being revealed, the most beautiful, the most admirable, the most intelligent, the most loving, the most righteous, the most true being in the entire cosmos is being revealed to us by his Word. And what our hearts should do is delight in this. We should delight and take pleasure and desire to hear from God because it's a hunger that develops in our hearts. In fact, the Psalmist said it this way a little later on in Psalm 119, "May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. May my tongue sing of your word, for all your commands are righteous. May your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts. I long for your salvation, Lord, and your law gives me delight." So maybe I would ask you to ask yourself this question, have you cultivated a habit of the heart that delights in the Word of God. That delights in the Word of God, that longs for the Word of God, that's overjoyed by the Word of God, that takes pleasure in the Word of God? Have you cultivated that habit of heart? But lemme tell you about a second habit that I think the Psalmist talks about, and that's a habit of the mind. That's a habit of the mind. Not only does he say, "Blessed is the one who doesn't do these things, but instead whose delight is in the law of the Lord." But then in the second part of that verse, it says, "and who meditates on his law day and night." You see what this is, this meditation on the Word of God is actually a habit of the mind. That word meditate means to muse, or to ponder or to imagine. It's a beautiful word. It also has the connotation. It could be used sometimes in agriculture with like livestock, cows who chew the cud over and over and over again like you chew Doritos, right? Over and over and over again. It just keeps chewing on it and chewing on it and chewing on it and trying to get out of it, all of the taste that it can receive. This is a picture of that. You see often, way too often in the culture that we live in, when we think of the word meditate, we think of some random, like new agey, super weird, you know, somebody floating in the ether, you know, smelling a bunch of candles and we're just like, "Oh, I'm just making my mind empty. I'm just emptying my mind." That's not what the Bible talks about when it talks about meditation. In the world that we live in, we talk about meditation as emptying the mind. The word teaches us that meditation is filling the mind. Filling our minds with the Word of God, that that's actually what we're supposed to do, to fill it and to chew on it, and to cultivate this habit of a mind that is fixed on the Word of God. And in when we do, when we cultivate the habit of meditating on the Word of God, there's so many beautiful benefits to it. In fact, the Psalmist says it this way in Psalm 119 beginning in verse 97, "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts." Isn't this a remarkable benefit that when we allow the Word of God into our lives and we chew on it and we cultivate a habit of the mind where we are rolling around the Word of God and we are obeying the Word of God, that we become wiser, smarter, more righteous in what we do. This is the beauty of this, because I wanna remind you of something, friends, listen carefully to this. There is a competition for your mind. The enemy of your soul is competing for your mind and your heart, by the way. And you've got an opportunity to say, "I'm gonna fill my mind with the Word of God", or "I'm gonna fill it with all kinds of other stuff." See, you're filling your mind, you just don't always pay attention to what you're filling it with. And sometimes the enemy of our soul, he doesn't care. Like he may try and foist upon you a really horrible narrative in your life, full of lies, you know, whatever. And if that works, great. But if it doesn't work, he doesn't care if just distraction works. If he can just distract you from the truth of God's Word, if he can just distract you from walking into obedience to the Word of God, he's fine with that. If he can just get you drooling, just going, ugh, right? It's like you're just in this drool of desperation and you're distracted and you're bored and you're just going, ugh. And you come away from that and you're like, I've been here for two hours just staring at this. My eyes hurt, I've got a headache, and is my life better? Because I saw that, you know, Alyssa had some blueberry pancakes for breakfast and she took a picture of them. My life is so much better because of Alyssa. It's like, why do people take, I'm eating breakfast. What is this gonna be like When you're showing your grandkids pictures? This was me on a random Tuesday eating blueberry pancakes. And they're gonna look at you like, "Wow, your life stinks." This is a sad life you live, right? But sometimes we get on there and sometimes it's not good for us because we stay on there and here's what happens. We start cultivating different things in our hearts. We cultivate comparison. Boy is she pretty. And the secret to her prettiness is all of these things she talked about and I'm not pretty enough so I need to do all these things that she's doing. Or guys maybe are looking and he's up there with showing his bicep and you're like, "I need to work on my biceps. My biceps are not as big as that guy's bicep." And he's using a filter by the way. Like, you know, he looks just like me normally, but then he is like ba-boo, and he puts that up there, right? He's curated this whole picture, right? And he's got it up there for you and all that stuff, right? I mean like, please. I mean my biceps aren't bad. Let's be honest. They're not great, but they're not terrible for a grandfather. I mean, I'm not embarrassed to wear a short sleeve shirt. I mean if I rolled that up, it might be a little ba-boom. Like it might be a little scary. I want to take care of everybody here. That's why nobody's sitting on the front row. I just did like that. And then they all get hurt. Like, don't test me. You don't want the smoke up here, right here. You do not want it. Oh, my family is disowning me right now. The enemy doesn't care how he gets you. He just wants you distracted. He doesn't care. Distraction works for him. Lies work for him. Anything works for him. We've gotta determine what we're going to fill our minds with. You see what we're talking about here? We're talking about habits. Habits that keep us in the way of grace. Habits that actually shape the trajectory of where we're going in our life. Because that's what happens, right? Our habits determine where we're headed. And if we don't cultivate spiritual habits, if we don't cultivate godly habits, we're not moving toward godliness, we're not moving toward christlikeness. So we have to ask ourself, what are these things? Well, some people have called them spiritual disciplines in the past, right? And you may think when I hear spiritual disciplines, it just scares me and I don't know that I want to do that. Okay, fine. Call 'em habits of grace. That's why we term the series this way. Call them habits of grace. You've maybe heard people talking before, "Hey, you need to have a quiet time." There's nothing in the Bible that says you have to have a quiet time. There's no label that says quiet time. And this is what that entails, right? And some of you get freaked out when you hear, "I gotta have a quiet time." Like, well listen, listen, first of all, I don't get freaked out by that. And the reason I don't get freaked out by it is because my life is noisy enough. There's plenty of chaos and noise. I need more quiet rather than less quiet in my life. And sometimes the people, listen, sometimes people that are afraid of quiet, it's because they're afraid of what God might reveal to them about them. And not that God's wanting to do that to condemn you. He's wanting to do it to shape you. But sometimes you don't wanna see that. You don't wanna actually get involved with God in a silent place with no distractions, where nothing is going on, where you can just listen to him through his Word and let his spirit begin to shape you. And even if that means, the shaping may be shaving also, shaving things off, right? But I don't care if you don't like the name, quiet time, fine, pick another one, dinner time. Feasting time meeting with the most glorious, being in the cosmos time. Call it whatever you want. Just do it. Just do it. Because this cultivates a habit of the heart that delights in God and his Word and it cultivates a habit of the mind that actually helps to shape us into the right direction. But understand that when you do this, by the way, when you spend time with God in his Word, understand what you're not doing, understand the point. The point isn't just so you know more stuff so that you've got some cool insight at your community group or when you're talking to somebody, it's not just that, right? We learn, we grow, we we gain knowledge. Those are all wonderful things. But the point is not to impress people with what we know and then maybe try to Lord it over them because we know more than them. That's not the point of why you read the Word. It's not that you're just reading it as a checklist. It's not you're reading it to have power over people. It's you're reading it to know God through Jesus Christ. Jesus said as much to the religious leaders, the Pharisees of his day. That's what he told them, they're busy man. They memorized big chunks of the Bible. You know, the Hebrew scriptures, they knew tons and tons about all of this. And you know what Jesus said to them in John 5? He said, "You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. But these are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." This ladies and gentlemen, listen to this. This isn't the end. This is a means. This is a means to the beauty of who God is. But it's giving us a true revelation of the nature of who God is, so that we're not creating God in our own image. This is pointing us ultimately to Jesus. So when we cultivate these habits of grace in the Word of God, it's a beautiful thing. And by the way, the Psalmist reminds us that it also results in blessing. When we cultivate the habit of the heart to delight in the Word, when we cultivate the habit of the mind to meditate on the Word and obey the Word. Do you know what it comes with? Comes with blessing. That's why it starts this way. Blessed is the one who does these things. So what kind of blessing comes with loving the Word of God? Loving and obeying and meditating on the Word of God? What kind of blessing comes from that? Well, the Psalmist actually tells us a few. Here's the first. We're blessed with roots and fruit. You'll be rooted and fruited. You can write it down that way if you want to. We're blessed with roots and fruits. I know it's not supposed to say fruits, it's just fruit, plural, I got it, leave me alone. Here's what verse three says, watch, "That person," the person that delights in the law of the Lord, the person that meditates on the Word of God. "That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers." Now you know that the context here, the Middle East, there's a lot of desert and arid areas, right? So you're not often talking about these really great, beautiful, fruitful trees. Because most of the land that was there is like really shriveled up trees like, I mean it's desert, like you got kind of dead stuff all over the place. But the Psalmist says and uses this imagery because it's very powerful imagery in the ancient near East. He kind of uses this kind of imagery to talk about the nature of who we are. He says, "When you love the Word of God, when you obey the Word of God, you're like a tree that is planted by a river of water." Now a tree planted by a river of water means this, is that those roots will go down deep and they'll continue to go down even deeper because it's gonna be able to access all the water that is nearby. And that means there's going to be an invisible nourishment, an invisible nourishment that is to this tree that is going up through the root system and is coming up the entirety of the tree into the branches. And what that ultimately results in is fruitfulness. And this is what the Psalmist is saying this looks like. And in fact, he even says, "The leaf doesn't wither and whatever they do prospers." Now is this a promise that if you love the Word of God, that you're gonna make a whole lot of money? That's not what this is saying. In fact, the imagery that the Psalmist is using is this. It's that no matter what the season is, this tree that is deeply rooted and that also bears fruit, it's gonna be able to do what it does and endure in the way that it endures. No matter what comes storms rage, heat, cold, rain, whatever, it's gonna be able to endure. And so what this is saying to us is that those of us, listen, those of us who love the Word of God, who receive the Word of God, who meditate on the Word of God, who live out and obey the Word of God, there's a blessing. And here's what it is, that what God will do in our lives is he will root us deeply and allow us to be people who bear fruit in our lives. And by the way, no matter what season you go through, it could be a real season of hardship. It could be a real season of heat being placed on you. It could be a real season of joy. No matter what it looks like, those roots aren't going anywhere. They're there because you are getting an invisible nourishment that is coming up through your life, by the power of God's spirit through his Word. This is what we are blessed with when we love and embrace the Word of God. There's a second blessing that the Psalmist reminds us of. And it says, we're blessed to be watched over by the Lord. We're blessed to be watched over by the Lord. Look at verse six and what it says, "For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction." Leave that up for just a second. This phrase here, watches over, it's a beautiful phrase. In the Hebrew language, I'm just gonna write it in English, it's yada, which is a beautiful phrase because it actually points to intimacy. It can also be translated, know, sometimes. And it's this kind of knowing. It's the kind of knowing, the Lord knows the way of the righteous. The Lord watches over the way of the righteous. And it's a picture of a mom or a dad and their baby. It's a picture of that compassionate observance that makes sure that that child is always in their view, that they always know what's going on with that child because there's an intimacy there that they always want to make sure that they are in their eyesight so that they can see what they're doing and make sure that they keep them from danger and lead them into the pathways that they're supposed to go. You see, when we embrace the Word of God, when we love it, when we delight in it, when we delight in God himself, when we meditate on his Word, when we obey his Word, here's what God says. Listen, "I see you, I see you. I'm gonna guide you. I'm gonna move you where I want to move you." It's why the writer of Proverbs, when he writes this, he says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him. How do you know what that looks like? You know it because of the revelation of the Word of God, right? In all your ways, acknowledge him. And listen and it says, "And he will direct your paths". Why? Because he sees you. He's observing you, he's watching you. He knows you. This is one of the great blessings of being a people who embrace the Word of God, that we have a God who is paying in special attention to us and who is guiding us in his ways. But there's a third reminder here of what kind of blessing results from loving the Word. And it's this, we're blessed with wisdom to avoid wickedness. We're blessed with the wisdom to avoid wickedness. This is also really important for us. Notice how Psalm 1 begins in verse number one. "Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers." Now watch this, watch this, watch this. "Who does not walk in step with the wicked, who does not stand in the way that sinners take, and who does not sit in the company of mockers." Do you know what this is? A regression of movement, right? This is a regression of movement. You go from movement to kind of standing to being sedentary. That's really what this progression looks like. And he's talking about blessed are those who don't do this. In other words, a reminder that even though it's possible that we can go from movement to being stationary, to being sedentary, that this is actually a picture of what sin does. Listen carefully. The first thing that happens is that we start walking in the way and with the way of sinners. And then what happens is we get comfortable in our sin. So we're not walking anymore, we're just standing among it. And then we're so comfortable that we make it a habit. We sit in it. So you go from moving with sinners to standing with sinners to seated with sinfulness. And you realize something very quickly. Just like we can cultivate habits of grace, you can also cultivate habits of sin. You can cultivate those just as well. And this is what the Psalmist is trying to remind us of. Blessed are we when we can avoid that, when we embrace and delight and meditate on the Word of God, we can avoid this because if you are walking in the way of sin, you are walking in the way of destruction. He actually contrast that with being a tree planted by rivers of water and says, "This is not what you're like." In fact, notice what he says in verses four and five, "Not sow the wicked!" You're not like a tree planted by water whose leaf flourishes and who prospers. Instead, you're like "chaff that the wind blows away." Dried up dead leaves that the wind's just taking off and blowing. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. You see, this is a great reminder for us when we look at this kind of blessing, when we look at the great blessing of what it means to embrace and love the Word of God. Here's what you can know and remember that Jesus modeled this perfectly. Jesus loved the Word of God because he loves the Father. And because he loved the Father, he obeyed the Father. And do you realize when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, what he kept going to when the enemy would tempt him and say, "Do this", and Jesus would appeal to the Word of God. He would cling to the Word of God because he delights in the Word of God because he delights in his Father. And he meditates on the Word of God. So he was calling it from his very mind in that moment when temptation came. And you know what also that means? It means that while he was doing that, the Father was overseeing and super intending his coming and his going. Jesus had no sin in him because he embraced the Word of God. He was perfect, he was sinless, he was spotless. And he delighted in the truth of the nature of God. He delighted in his Father, he delighted in his Father's word and God would superintendent and oversee and watch over him and observe him because he was intimate with him. And he wouldn't walk in the way of wickedness. He was without sin. But instead of him being wicked, he walked in the way of our wickedness and went to a cross on behalf of our wickedness so that God would judge our wickedness in his perfect sinless sacrifice. And that he would die for our sin, taking upon himself the justice of almighty God for our sin, not his own. But he would rise from the dead, conquering sin, hell, and the grave so that now by faith in him, we could be reconciled to God. Not because we're worthy to do that, but because he's shown us grace and because he's loved us so much. And now we can be reconciled to the Father. And when we're reconciled to the Father through the son, by the power of the spirit, the very life of God can now live inside of us. And we can now be these trees that are planted by streams of water that walk out the truth of the beauty of God's Word. This is what we see in Jesus. So let me ask you, what do we do with all of this that we've just learned? What do we do with it? Well, here's what you're gonna have to do with it. You're gonna have to make a decision on the kind of habits that form your lives. You gotta make some decisions on the kind of habits that are forming your lives. Because remember, it's the sum total of your habits, the compounding nature of your habits that are gonna show you the trajectory of your life. So let me speak for just a second. Those of you who are in the room and you are 21 or younger, just put your hand up real quick. Kids, everybody, 21 or younger, put your hands up in the air all over the room. Man, that's a lot. This is awesome, I feel old. But there's so many more older people than me in here. Alright, so you can put your hands down. I want you to listen very carefully to me. You need to start cultivating these habits as soon as you can. Start cultivating these kinds of habits of grace. A habit of the heart that delights in the Word of God. A habit of the mind that thinks on the Word of God that fills your mind with the Word of God. You need to do these now, I'll tell you why. 'Cause it's easier now. It's easier to do now. Habit forming is easier when you're younger. Remember I told you about Destin Sandlin who created the Backwards Bike. It took him eight months to learn how to ride that bike. But he had a 6-year-old son and he said, "I want you to try and learn how to ride this bike." And at first it was like terrible, right? He knew how to ride a bike, but he was doing terrible. Took him two weeks. Two weeks he learned how to ride the bike. Why? Because when you're young, those habits are easier to form. You wanna try and learn a new language at 54? Good luck. It's hard. But you get these kids when they're young, man, it's like they have pliable minds that just have the ability to be able to do that, right? Young men, young ladies, start this now. Start time with the Lord now. Start loving the Word now. You know, I think that if I could speak to a number of other people in the room, I think that there's probably a number of us that are here that are kind of caught in between these habits of grace. We're kind of caught in between. Here's what I mean by that. If you are being really honest, and I hope you will be in your heart, I can't see in it. But if you're being really, really honest, in your own heart, you are relatively unserious about growth in grace, relatively unserious. I'm not saying that you're not serious at all. I mean, you're here, aren't you? You have a love for the Lord. You have desire to hear the things of God and that's a wonderful thing. But you're relatively unserious about really growing in grace. You don't really delight in the Word of God. You don't really take time on your own meditate on the Word of God. I would encourage it, doesn't mean you're more or less spiritual than somebody. This isn't a judgment. And I'm not trying to guilt anybody. I would encourage you to have a Bible when you come on Sunday. It doesn't have to be this, it can be digital if you want. I prefer this 'cause this doesn't give me any notifications that I don't want. It's only notifications that I do want while I'm reading it, right? It's why I spend time in the Word this way. But whatever you do, you, I don't care. Just have it accessible to you. 'Cause here's why, listen, you need to start getting familiar with this because if you think that one meal a week is going to allow you to grow into what you should be and nourish you as it ought to, you're missing it. You gotta feed yourself. And then we take opportunity to gather together around the Word and there's kind of a mass feeding. Hopefully it's a bountiful buffet when you come on a Sunday. But we still need to daily be able to learn how to feed ourselves. You see, for too many of us, listen, for too many of us, you come here, you don't have a copy of the Word available to you, you come and watch. And it's your great joy, hopefully you're like, "Man, I hope Jerry gets fired up today because we just want him to pour gas on himself and we wanna watch him burn for the glory of God. And listen, and you're kind of fired up about that and it's cool and you leave and you're like, "Man, that was great, that was great." But listen, what you are not doing, you're watching the fruit of my life in Jesus. You have made Christianity a spectator sport instead of being on the field and being in relationship. You don't get to vicariously live through someone who's communicating the truth. You must live before God. You must desire God. You must desire the things of God. This can't be a spectator sport for you. And I say that in love because my job here, listen, my job here, I'm not a circus monkey up here performing for you. My job here is to lead you to the beauty and excellencies and glory of Christ. That's my job. That's what I want. That's what I want to say to Jesus when I get there. I tried to lead your people to the glories and excellencies of who you are. I tried to facilitate them walking into your presence and knowing you and learning to hear your voice through your word. It's not about a cult of personality. It's not about developing those kinds of things. "Well, pastor Jerry, I know you're gonna be coming back and forth in a little while and you told us about that and that's gonna be a little different." Is the church gonna announce who's speaking?" What? Why would we do that? We don't do that now. Why would we develop some kind of cult of personality that's wrong, that's upside down, that's backwards. We're here to worship the glory and excellency of Christ and to together hear his Word and delight in it and respond to it and meditate on it when we gather together and when we get home, I almost kicked this over. And when we get home, being able to do that on our own, to be able to spend time in his presence. So what actions do you need to take as a result of this? Lemme give you three quick ones. Here's the first, start. That's the first action to take, start. In other words, here's what I mean. Pick a time, pick a place, pick a plan. Just do that. Pick a time, pick a place, pick a plan. Start doing this. Listen, start doing this. Spending time with God in his Word. Do it five or six times a week. You may not make it seven every single day. Five or six times a week. Do that. Do it for three weeks. Habit. Habits are starting to form. Don't do it out of habit. But this is what you gotta do, you gotta start. And by the way, listen carefully. Listen right now in my own personal time with the Lord, not to prepare messages, not to teach from, my own personal time with the Lord, I'm just reading through Matthew's gospel. That's what I'm doing right now, okay? And I read slowly through Matthew's gospel. I read every other thing that I read really fast. I can consume a lot in a short amount of time. I read a lot of information and I read fast and I process fast. I'm not doing that with the Word because my job isn't to do, like, you know, I read Matthew in 72 minutes. Ba bam, get some of that. What? That's not the point. The point is to know God. The point is, I wanna see Jesus revealed in my life. The point is, what am I doing with that? What does this teach me about God? What does this teach me about Christ? What did I have to do as a result of that? That's what I'm doing. And sometimes I will come back to the same set of three or four verses, day after day for three or four days in a row, I'll sit in the same passage. You're like, wait, what? Yeah, because I'm not in a race for anybody. I don't get a medal for doing anything. I'm trying to know God. So pick a place, pick a time, pick a plan. Just get started. Here's the second, second action. Remind. You can jot that down. Or memorize it. Remind, what am I telling you to remind? Remind your own soul what you are doing in this time. David would sometimes preach to his own soul. "Why are you down Casto, my soul. Why so disquieted within me, put your hope in God for I will yet praise him, my Lord and my God." I'm like, wait, wait. Did you just preach to your own soul, David? Yeah, sometimes we need to remind our own soul that the God that we are coming into his presence is the most beautiful, the most glorious, the most admirable, the most intelligent, the most loving, the most wise being in the cosmos. And we're coming into his presence. And he has graced us with words of life. Sometimes we just gotta remind our soul. And then thirdly, ask. Here's what I mean by that. Some of you may be thinking to yourself, you know what, I'll be honest with you, Jerry, you've been preaching through this, and I don't have a desire in my heart to delight in the Word like I should. Okay, good, good. At least you've acknowledged that. So you know what you do from here? Ask God to give it to you. Ask him. Some of you got stuck 'cause you're like, "Yo, I just, I don't really, you know, I just don't really, you know, and I don't like reading or whatever." By the way, there's new technology, you can listen. Audio bibles, you got all that right? You listen, you can read, you can do whatever, right? There's ways to get the Word of God in you. But you're like, "Man, it's not something I want to do." Then here's what you do. You ask God to change your want to's. Do you know that God can change your want to's? I don't want to do this. God can say, "I can help you to want to do this." But you need to ask him. You need to ask him. You need to ask him to give you a heart to obey. Ask him. Because this will be transformational in your life when you now align yourself with habits that actually are means of grace, that God will use to shape you and to transform you. So friends, listen to me. Do not underestimate godly habits. Do not underestimate habits of grace. Even though they may feel small at times they will compound and here's what they will do. They will result in blessing of a life shaped more into the image of Jesus. 'Cause those who delight and meditate on God's Word, they are blessed. So this Psalmist tells us that we get to choose which trajectory we want based on the habits that we form. Choose wisely 'cause God wants you to grow in grace and godliness. And there's so much grace for you, so much grace for you to do that. Let's bow our heads together. In a moment we'll be dismissed and it may be that as you listen to this Word, what you realize today, as I was walking through the gospel of Jesus being the great forgiver of sin, maybe you were hearing the testimony of a brother that got baptized. And you understand and know in your own heart that you need to turn from your sin and put your faith and your trust in Jesus and what he's done on the cross for you and through his resurrection so that you can know your sins are forgiven, your life's made new, that you're changed and new and different. If that's your need, I would encourage you, don't leave the building without coming, talking to one of these men or women that are standing right down front down here. And just let 'em know, I wanna receive Christ, I wanna surrender my life to Jesus. Let them pray with you, offer some help to you so that you can start this new journey with Jesus. So many of us would be so encouraged to know that you've done that. No greater issue that you have in all of your life than to know the life eternal, the life abundant that God has for you in Christ. So I hope that you'll do that when we're dismissed in just a moment. Maybe others of you though, realize there's some habits in your own life that need to go and maybe some habits that need to start, habits of grace. And maybe you want somebody to pray with you about that. These folks down front, they would love to do that. Or maybe you got somebody right next to you or nearby you that would be glad to pray with you about that. To encourage your heart to maybe just pray over you that God by his spirit would do in your heart what he wants to get done. I would encourage you to do that. Don't just not. Act. Act. Obedience is action. So I encourage you to do that. Father, thank you for the blessing of your word. It is a grace to us that you, by your spirit have superintended the compilation of the Word of God through the instrumentality of human beings to give us a truthful and uncorrupted revelation of who you are. What a grace gift to us. I pray that what you would do is you would stir in our hearts a hunger and a delight in your word because we delight in you. And that you would also stir in our hearts, God, a desire to meditate and to chew on and to obey and to live out the truth of your word. 'Cause we know when we do, that we are blessed indeed. So Father, would you help us to walk in the realization of this because the world around us needs to see people that no matter what season it is, that we are people that are like trees planted by streams of water that get this in invisible nourishment from the roots because we are firmly founded on you Lord Jesus. And that when we go through hardship or trial or suffering or great times and great success, that all of it, we people can see the beauty and the glory of Christ in the midst of it. Lord, that's what a world needs to see because we want them to see you Jesus. So maybe we be a people that are rooted and are bearing fruit because of the beauty of the Word of God in our lives that is attended to by your Holy Spirit, shaping us into the way of righteousness in life. So we trust you to do that now. Help us to act in obedience in whatever way you lead us. For your glory in Jesus' name, amen.