Good morning, everyone. It's
been a while since we've been here, and we're thankful that
the Lord has brought us back this way. We've known Brother
Frank and several of you all for many years, many years. Some of you have been to Dangas,
and you realize that it's not an easy place to get to, but
the more you get there, the place God has prepared. For a morning
lesson this morning, open your Bible to the book of Psalm and
find Psalm number one. And here this Psalm sets forth
a great contrast. It sets forth a great contrast
between two groups of people, saved and unsaved, saints and
sinners, sheep and goats. It sets forth a contrast. Two
characters for two characters and their condition. Those that
serve God and those who serve Him not. What can be more different
than these two classes of people? And this division, this division
has been from all time. This is not something that the
Calvinists have set up and said, well, we're going to teach this
and this. This is from all time. This is the greatest division
that was ever made between the sons of Adam, saved and unsaved. The righteous and the unrighteous.
The children of God and the children of the wicked. This is as ancient
as the Scripture is itself. Ever since the struggle began,
between grace and works. There was a separation made and
God made the separation. It's not something we do. It's
not something that we choose to do. It's God's work. He separates
us. He calls us. He puts us into
the family. And there we are. What did the
old song say? Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to Christ I cling. So this separation, this contrast,
that we're going to look at here, we'll find it starting in verse
1. The holiness and the happiness
of a godly man. And then the second contrast
we find in verse 4 and 5. The sinful and the misery of
the wicked man. And then in verse 6 we find the
ground and the reason for both. Let us go through it verse by
verse here and see what God has taught us. Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth
in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
Men will puff themselves up and say, that's me. I don't do those
things. But wait, wait. But his delight is in the law
of God. And in his law does he meditate
day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted
planted by the river of waters that bringeth forth his fruits
and seasons, and his leaves all shall not wither, and whatsoever
he doeth shall prosper. Blessed is the man. Happy. Happy is the man. Why? Why are
some saved and others not? I don't know. That's God's business. He said, I chose you from before
the foundation of the world, and I ordained you, and I sent
you forth that you may bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. This is God's Word. But it's only by His grace, by
His mercy working within us. By nature we are no different.
By nature we are all the children of wrath. But God, but God, chose
a people before the foundation of the world, and He sent His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in time. In time, Christ was made
flesh and dwelt among us. In time, when the fullness of
time was come, God sent forth His Son made of a woman. made
under the law to redeem them that were under the law. See,
this is God's purpose. This is God's working, and this
is God's doing and not our own. Our Lord taught His disciples
in Matthew chapter 5. He says, and seeing the multitude,
He went up into a mountain, and when He was set, the disciples
came unto Him. Can you imagine the very Son
of God, God in human flesh, sitting down amongst a bunch of sinful,
wretched, vile creatures and teaching them, teaching them
as little children. That's the same thing He's doing
today. He uses men to teach his gospel. He sends forth his pastors
and his teachers to edify and uplift his sheep, to teach them,
to comfort them, to uplift them, and to correct them. And this
is what our Lord is doing here. And he says in Matthew 5, verse
3, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
God. Blessed is he that mourns, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. They
shall be filled. You see the shalls? You see how
our wants, our needs, our everything is supplied by God Himself? You
say, well, I want things I don't have. You have exactly what God
has prepared for you. You have exactly what God has
from before the foundation of the world ordained for you to
have this very minute. He said, I've got troubles, that
too is ordained of God. That he may wean us from the
things of this world, that he may prepare us for the entering
into eternal glory. He's separating us, calling us
and teaching us, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these
other things shall be added unto you. Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and
thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy, the shalls of God's Word. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they are blessed of God. Blessed are
the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Within ourselves, we cannot be happy. Within ourselves, there's
fighting and there's rulings and this and that, but in Christ,
in Christ, we find everything that we need. Everything that
we need to stand before God, to hear Him say, welcome in unto
the joys of the Lord. You have been faithful over a
few things. I'll make you rulers over me.
Happy is that man. to enter into the very presence
of God, knowing that it's not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to His own purpose He saved us. It's not what I bring in my hand,
but who I cling to by faith, who I look to by faith, and who
I enjoy telling other people about. Paul describes our condition
as he does all mankind. In Romans 3, verse 10, he says,
there's none righteous, no, not one. Well, what about me? There's
none righteous, no, not one. But look what I've done. There's
none righteous, no, not one. Look what I give to the church.
Look what I do for this and that. There's none righteous, no, not
one. There's none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after
God. All of human nature. This is
putting them all into one category here. But he'll separate them
later. He'll separate them. They're
all gone out of the way. Everyone. They are all together
become unprofitable. There's none that do us good.
No, not one. And then he brings it down to
our particular case here. Their throat is an open sepulcher. We spew forth the blasphemy of
God. With their tongues they have
used deceit. The poison of the asp is under their lips. Whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitters. Well now wait a minute,
you're not talking about me. Paul is describing every man
by nature. Every one of us by nature is
exactly the same. Our pastor, Brother Gary Vance,
uses this illustration all the time. He says there is no difference
by nature between the man of Charles Spurgeon, who was a mass
murderer, and the man that was used as God, Charles Nixon, and
Charles Spurgeon. There's no difference between
them by mention. One God used greatly for the edifying of His
gospel. The other, He allowed to do whatever
He chose to do. You say, that's free will. No,
it's not. Free will is not coming into contact here now. Don't
misunderstand me. These men, women, these terrorists,
whatever they're going about to do what they desire to do
in their own natural heart. Their mouths are full of cursing.
Their feet is swift to shed blood. And you and I would do the same
thing except God's restraining grace has laid hold of us and
held us from doing it. Destruction and misery are in
their way. and the way of peace they have
not known. Why? Because there's no fear of God
before their eyes. This tells us who we are and
what we are by nature. So who can be a blessed man?
Who can the psalmist be describing here? How is it possible that
one such as this can be declared by God himself as a blessed man? Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord computeth not from the equipment. Blessed is the man
that trusteth Him. Iniquity has gone forth out of
our mouths. Sin, degradation, all manner
of evil. We have it here and it often
comes out. And it will come out even more
except God restores it. Blessed is the man whose strength
is in thee. Blessed is the man whose sins
are covered. This is the only way that you
and I can be called a child of God. Our sins must be dealt with. Our sins must be covered. We
must stand before God as perfect as God is in Himself. We must
stand before Him as holy as He is. He will not accept anything
less than His perfect righteousness and His perfect holiness. And
in order for you and I to stand before Him, we must have this
righteousness and we must have this holiness. So how is this
obtained? Tell me, how can it be, how can
it be that God should love a soul like me? over in Christ. It's simple,
yet it's unthinkable. It's simple. Christ taking my
place. Christ living and dying in my
room instead. Christ coming into the world
and taking upon him my sin. And there living a perfect righteousness
before God, there he goes to the cross. He goes to this old
rugged cross that man hangs up and worships. Foolishness. Christ
or the cross has already did what it was meant to do. Do away
with the cross. Get it out of your synagogue.
Get it out of your presence. Get it off from your neck. It's
already done what it's been sent to do. Christ was crucified on
that cross. That is a picture of suffering
and shame. So therefore, It's accomplished.
It's finished. It's been fulfilled. Take it
away. Don't look to the cross. Look
to the one who's on the cross. Lean on Christ. Look to Him.
See the greatness of His suffering. See the greatness of His death.
And see the greatness of His satisfaction. Oh, the satisfaction
of Christ. He suffered. He bled. And He died. in my room and in
my studio. He by himself purged my sin. My sin. Some people say, oh,
he purged the sin of the whole world. No, he didn't. He purged the sin of his people
in the whole world. His blood for that case is limited. It's limited to those for whom
he came to die for. He did not die for every man,
woman, and child in the world. He died for a particular people.
And He, by His grace, sent forth the gospel. And the gospel comes
and rings in our ears and enters into our hearts and we believe
it. And God says, You're mine. I have loved Thee with an everlasting
love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn You unto Myself. That gospel is what He used to
draw us unto Him. That gospel is what He uses to
pierce our ears and to pierce our hearts and cause us to look
to Christ by faith. That gospel is what He declares.
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. So the gospel comes and they
believe. Well, how do I believe? I don't
know. There was a time that I didn't believe, but now I do. What happened
there? There was a change somewhere.
There was something happened here somewhere that caused me
to believe what I did not believe, caused me to love what I once
hated, caused me to cling to that which I rejected. What happened? It has to be the grace of God.
It has to be God working within us It has to be the work that
God has performed for us. He has put away my sin. He has put them away to the point
that the all-seeing eye of God, when He looks at me, oh, I see
sin in myself, and I'm sure you see sin in me. I see sin in my
mind, in my thoughts, in my hands, in my heart. But when God sees
me standing in the robes and righteousness of Christ, He sees
me as perfect, holy, harmless and undefiled with sin. That's
the only thing that He can accept. That's the only people that He
is able because of His holiness. This is the only way that we
can approach Him is to be robed in the righteousness of Christ,
found in Him, not having my own righteousness, but having the
righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. I have
Him. What's the old song say? I am
His and He is mine. His forever, only His. Blessed is the man who can seek
Christ Jesus our Lord as our only hope for sin. Blessed is
that man. Blessed is the man who sees the
Lord God satisfying his own law, satisfying his own justice, and
then working out a perfect righteousness and giving it, giving it unto
me, a free gift. It's not something I earn. It's
not something that I conjured up with my own hand. It's the
free gift of God. God giving unto us a perfect
righteousness, a perfect standing before God. Oh, no wonder the
old songwriter said, how can that be? How can that be? Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly. Not because he's above sin. We
still have this thing of sin on us, about us. It afflicts
us daily, we fight with it, we struggle with it, but it's still
there. We attempt to push it down in
one place and it rises up another. It's still there. It's not because we choose to
turn aside from sin. If you choose to, quit breathing. Hold your breath, teacher, and
breathe. You'll start breathing. It's the same thing as sin. Try
to quit sin. Fight against it all you can.
Our pastor says hand and foot. Fight against it with hand and
foot. And see if it don't spring right back up. It's here. It's here. And it will be here
until this flesh is taken off and this new man This new man
that God has prepared for glory comes forth. The old flesh is
laid in the grave. The old flesh goes back to the
dust of the earth. The new man that God has prepared
rises to the very presence of God. And God says, welcome him. Welcome him. Welcome as my sons
and daughters in Christ. Brother Spurgeon said, when men
are living in sin, they go from bad to worse. First, they merely
walk in the counsel of the careless and the ungodly. It's just natural
to them. And they simply forget God. That's
natural to them. Their evil walk is practical.
That's natural. That's just what it is. Rather
than habitual. It's not something I participate
in every day, men said. But after that, they become habitual
evil. And they stand in the way of
open sin. Men does not start off bad and
work himself up again. Men do not start off as righteous
and then because of something they do, they follow. That's
foolishness. Men start off as sin. When I
came forth from the womb, I spoke lies. We start off in sin, and
we progress downward all the days of our life, deeper and
deeper and deeper in sin. You say, well, I'm a Christian.
I've been washed in the blood of Christ. I've been sanctified
by God the Father. You're still in this flesh. And
this flesh gets worse and worse and worse every hour of every
day. We may not see it. We may not
see it. But the fact is, we're sinners. We're sinners. That's not right. Verse 7. But his delight is in
the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate day and
night. He no longer delights in sin, although sin is still
here. This is not the tenor of our
life. Sin is not something we go out
looking for every day, although it affects us every moment of
every hour. Sin is not something that I try
to participate in, but I find myself entangled in it. There's been a change in here.
There's been a change in masters. The master that once ruled over
me, this evil ruled in my heart, has been ejected. He's been ejected. Now God has taken up a load in
my heart. Now, although I fight against
sin, although I struggle against sin, I have no sin. Do you understand
this? He that is born of God sinneth
not. How is that possible? It's because the new man that
God has created within his people, everyone. They all have the same
new nature. Just as they all have the same
old nature, everyone who looks to Christ by faith, claims to
Christ for his only righteousness, has this new nature. And they war against sin. They
war against sin, desiring to serve their God, but yet sin
affects them. That's the war cry between the
flesh and the spirit. Listen to what Paul says in 1
Corinthians 6, verse 9. He said, Know ye not that the
unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived. Now listen to this list of people,
or list of things that he does here. Neither fornicators, nor
adulterers, nor adulterers, nor feminists, nor abusers of themselves
with mankind, nor thieves, nor covenants, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
Well, who then can be saved? Who then can be saved? Because
we all must take our place and find ourselves in every one of
these. And such for some of you, the children of God, such for
some of you, that you are lost. You are lost. You are sanctified,
but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by
the Spirit of God. That's how we stand before God,
being washed in the blood of Christ, sanctified and declared
to be holy, and robed upon with the righteousness and the justification
of God himself. That's how God sees us. Brother
Don said, as God sees things, that's the way they really are.
That's how God sees every one of his sheep. Verse 3, And he shall be like
a tree planted by a river of water that bringeth forth his
fruit in his season. His leaves shall not wither,
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Notice here, you're
planting. You're planting. A tree is planted,
planted by the sweet rivers of pardon and mercy. It's not something
that, you're not a weed, you're not a flower, you're not a bush,
you've been planted by the Lord, by God entering into your heart
and establishing you as a new creation. You've been planted
by the rivers of forgiving grace, by the precious promises of God.
by the sweet river of the communion. This is what we have fellowship
with, the communion with Jesus Christ our Lord. These rivers
shall never run dry. I will be with thee always, even
unto the end. They shall be fresh every day.
And as God blesses his people, fruits will come. Fruits will
come. Fruits will come. So we see in
Psalm chapter 6, or Psalm chapter 1, in verse 1 through 3, the
holiness and the happiness of a godly man. Now look at verse
4 and 5. The ungodly are not saved. What more
needs to be saved? But are like chaff, which the
wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall
not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of
the righteous." You take everything that the writer says here in
verse 1, 2, and 3, and then he says, the ungodly are not sinners. They're not blessed with God.
They don't have the righteousness of God. They don't have the forgiveness
of God. You say, well, why not? Why can't
all be saved? That's not the way God purposed
things to be. I don't know who will be saved
and who won't be saved. I don't know how a man or how
you separate this man from that man. But God does. He does not
leave it up to us to say this man and that man and this woman
and this woman, this child and this child is God. God says they're
mine. And then He goes about working
everything in this whole creation. Everything. Everything in this
whole creation of all time, He worketh all things for the good
to them that love God, to them that are called according to
His purpose. Every trial, every tribulation that we go through
is for our good and for His glory. Every blessing that He gives
unto us is for our good and for His glory. All things work together
for our good. to them that love God, to them
that are called according to his purpose. So we'll leave it
at that. This is God's doing and not our
own. We must all appear before the
judgment seat of God, the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone
may receive the things done in his body according to that which
he has done, whether it be good or bad. You say, well, you're
contradicting yourself. No, I'm not. Those that stand
in Christ has already been judged. There will be a time that we
appear before God and we will hear Him say, welcome in. Welcome
in. The unrighteous shall appear
before God to hear Him say, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.
I never knew you. That's the great contrast that
God Himself provides for His people. There are separated people. There are loved people. They're
elected people and they are our chosen people and all of this
are the works of God and our honor. The third thing we need to see
is verse 6. Here is the ground, the reason for both. For the Lord knoweth the ways
of the righteous, but the ways of the wicked shall perish. Why
does God know the way of the righteous? Because He established
them. He appointed that way. He directed
that way. And He brought us that way. While
the ungodly, if you will allow me to use these words, He simply
leaves them alone. He simply leaves them alone.
Right where they're at. Doing exactly what they want
to do. Serving the God that they want to serve. He leads them
right where they're at. Oh, our prayer, don't leave us
to our sins, for surely we will go astray. As the brother prayeth,
leave us not unto ourselves, for we will choose the wrong
way every time. Has the power not pottered over
the cloth of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and
another unto dishonor? He said, well, there's unrighteousness
with God. That can't be. That shouldn't
be. God should love everybody. It's
a wonder God loves anybody. It's a miracle. It's a miracle
of grace and of mercy that God should love anyone. And the only
way that He can love anyone is for them to be found in Christ. So that it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that willeth, but of God who shall have mercy. He numbered the hairs of our
head. Listen to how he watches over his people. He numbers the
hairs of our head, and he will not suffer any evil to befall
us. He knows every hair of our head. And He knows exactly when one
falls to the ground. Let us, let us look to Christ. Let us follow Him. And let us
depend upon Him. And the way we look to Him, lean
on Him, and trust Him, it's no more about Him. More about Him. Let us follow him all the days
of our life, and let us look with expectation of him returning
to gather us home, gather us into this family that he will
one day take into the great heavens, and there we shall dwell forever.
But while we're here, we struggle with this kind of sin. While
we're here, we fight hand and foot, as our pastor says. against
this time of sin. But one day, we will be relieved
of this time of sin and we will rise into the air to meet the
Lord. Ever be with Him. Amen. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we thank Thee. We pray that You will take Your
Word and apply it to our heart. Cause us to meditate upon it
down through the week. Cause us to look to Christ more
often. Lean on Him and depend upon Him daily. Now be with us
in our continuing service. Let me once again worship our
God. Lead and guide us and direct
us in Christ's name we pray.