Let's turn back to Psalm 37.
That was read earlier. The message just has a one-word
title. It's called Steps. Steps. And I'm going to begin with an
illustration. Somebody who's heard me now and
again probably going to think, well, does he start every message
he brings with some illustration about his kids? Well, maybe so. My response would also be that
because my children are always the perfect illustration of depravity. They're great sinners from their
birth. like their father, Bob, who's a great sinner like his
father's father's father's father all the way back to Adam. And the sooner we recognize the
sin in ourselves and in our children, the more serious we'll be about
getting them to the place where they hear about the remedy for
sin, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So you forgive me if
I use my children And this is a little unique. This illustration
isn't about their depravity for once. This recollection I have
was in the springtime and the whole family in April had gone
down to the Gulf Coast in Florida near Pensacola Beach and I loved
to go there to pompano fish. And I'd get up early in the morning
and I'd gather up my rods and reels and rod holders and I'd
walk down to the beach and get it all set up and this particular
morning as I came out of the place we were staying, I walked
across the concrete slab out there. As I stepped off into
the sand, I realized it had rained the night before and the whole
beach was just as smooth as silk all the way to the water. But
I walked down through there and began to put the rod holders
in and set the rods in them, and I turned back around to go
back and get another load of fishing stuff, and just as I
did, the back door came open, and out comes this little boy.
And Luke's about maybe five, not quite, I don't think, but
he's already got up and got his swimsuit on, and he comes walking
across that pad and he looks down and the only way, I can't
really describe this, I've got to kind of show you what he did,
but he comes walking to the edge of the concrete and he looks
like this and all of a sudden he goes And the further he went, I'd
begun to hit my stride after a few steps. And he got to where
he was like this, and he couldn't reach him anymore, so he started
jumping like this. And then he'd jump with two feet
to the next one. And it was real cute to watch.
And all of a sudden, he realized he couldn't jump anymore and
reach it. And he just looked up, and he
saw me, and he just took off running. Not paying any attention
anymore to those steps. And he got down there to the
edge of the beach and he just leaped off across the thing and
it was real sweet. I still remember that great hug.
And we went back up and got the rest of the stuff and fished
all day long. But most modern religionists would take my little
illustration and this is what they'd say to you. We're all God's children. And
we should try to follow the example of Jesus. We ought to ask ourselves
every time we go do something, what would Jesus do? Isn't that
what they do? Isn't that what they say? And we need to do the
best we can to do the same thing he did. So that one day we'll
look up and God will be pleased with us and let us into heaven
to receive our reward for being good children. Can't you see
somebody taking that illustration? I've heard that one about the
footprints in the sand and all that stuff. Listen, Luke was
just playing a silly game. That's all he was doing. And
let me tell you something about games. Sort of like hopscotch or Angry
Birds. I don't care what the game is.
And the old timers can ask the kids after church what Angry
Birds is. You kids can ask your grandparents or some of us old
ones later what hopscotch is. The games change, but what they
accomplish never does. You know what they accomplish?
They gobble up time. They just take time. The other
thing they do is they make us feel good about ourselves when
we win. And they're all easy to win, pretty much, aren't they?
Yeah, on Angry Birds, if you can't figure out how to win it,
all you got to do is pay another dollar and they'll tell you how
to beat it. And there's no serious consequence
to losing. And that's modern religion. It's
all made up. Some take a little time, some
take a lot of time. But folks feel good about themselves
and the consequences of losing is rarely spoken of. Here's the
truth. When the time came and Luke stopped
playing games and remembered what it was he came out there
for, he was looking for his dad. He'd been in where I was and
I wasn't there. And he came looking all through
the house and finally he saw me out there and he started across
that. When he quit playing games and started remembering what
his original objective was, if we'll do the same, if God enables
us, we too will stop playing religious games. We'll seek the
Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart. When we realize that this
is life and death, what we're doing here tonight is life and
death. Eternal death is the consequence
of sin. The result of playing The religious
game is death and hell. This is serious
stuff. This has to do with eternal life.
And it's the result only of fleeing to the Lord Jesus Christ, being
found not out there doing the best you can, but in his arms. Don't focus so much on our own
two feet on what we do, how we will how our walk is or how we
feel about what we do. We can't do enough to be perfect
before God. We must look to Christ. You see,
he's already done all that needs to be done. Just leap into his
arms. He'll carry you all away as far
as you need to go. And don't misinterpret what I'm
saying. A believer never ever excuses his own bad behavior. A believer regrets and is remorseful
for and repents of bad behavior or sin. But no one is saved by
how well we walk or by what we do. Everyone who's saved is saved
by what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He's already done it for
us. His steps made for a perfect
walk. He lived perfectly, walked in
paths of righteousness for his name's sake. He died the perfect
death. He took the steps required to
go up Calvary to die, and He did it on purpose that we might
live eternally. Look at Psalm 37, verse 23. Steps, steps. It says here, the
steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delighteth
in His way. Physical life on earth is for
every man, woman, or child, a walk. It's just a series of steps we
take. And that walk will be just as many or as few steps as the
Lord God ordains. We won't take one fewer step
and we sure won't take one more step that is ordained of God. Job said first, man that's born
of woman is a few days and full of trouble. Now, I know there's
trouble here. I know it. I just found out Tom's had double
pneumonia and congestive heart failure. I didn't even know it
until 15 minutes ago. I didn't know Jean's bleeding
behind her eye. I didn't know that. I think most
of us know our pastor's wife is maybe facing a kidney liver
transplant, and that's just touching it, isn't it? I mean, if you're
here and you don't want to have trouble, just wait a little while.
But the point is, our days are few, and the days we have will
be full of trouble. And Job also said, he said, man's
days are determined. The number of his months are
with thee. You know, if you got days or months or years, I don't
care what it is. Every step that we take is an
order to the Lord. He said, Lord, thou numberest
my steps. We won't take one fewer or one
more than we should. David said, there is but a step
between me and death. Do we realize we may get up from
here and take one step out that door and it's done. It's our
last step. And when each of us takes that
last step, do we realize what will happen? we will instantly
be in the presence of God. And we'll have to give an account. Do we realize we're going to
have to explain every motive of every action of every step
we ever took? We're going to have to give an
account, the scripture says. Now that sobering is not downright
terrifying, isn't it? We've got to give an account.
Job said the steps of a man's strength are going to be straightened
in that day. And the picture is this, okay? The picture is that you're walking
along a ledge. And it just keeps getting more
and more narrow. And there's a huge cliff down
here. And every step you take, there's no going back. The land,
it just falls away from that line. And sooner or later, you
get out here, you know what? There's nowhere else to go. When
that last step is taken, there is nowhere else to go. We're going to have to look up
before the face of the true and living God and explain ourselves. Oh my, oh my. That's, is it any
wonder that Job said, terrors shall make me afraid on every
side. So why don't believers have to
be afraid like that? Why don't, I didn't say all this
to terrify the children or make anybody shake. Why don't we have
to be afraid? Because of what it says right
here. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord. Now
let me explain something. I know somebody is looking at
that word. Good. It's in italics, right? And we've been taught
you where you can leave that out. Well, I'm not a linguist,
but brother Mark is and Mark and see if you don't see, see
if I'm telling this right. The word ordered there is a word
we don't have an equivalent to. It means established, but it
also means perfect. So what this is saying is that
the steps of this man are perfect and established. He's a good
man. And that's talking about God's
people right here. We're good men. We're good women.
We're good. And you say, well, how do you
reconcile that with there's none good? No, not one. Well, let
me see if I can help you. Turn to Psalm 85. Look at verse
12. This is a sweet scripture. I
was trying to reconcile. It says the steps of a good man
are ordered of the Lord and it pleases him. And I know from
the scriptures I'm no good. I'm not good. I know from experience
I'm no good. And then I found this scripture
in verse 12 of Psalm 85. It says, Yea, the Lord shall
give that which is good, and our land shall yield or increase.
If we're going to give an account, you know what it better be? It
better be perfect. And you say, well, I don't have
an account that's perfect. Yes, you do if you're in Christ.
If you're in Him, all you got to do is just stand there and
keep your mouth shut. And the Lord Jesus Christ will
step right in your shoes and pick you up. This one's with
me. This one's mine. I called him,
I went for him, I gathered him up, I brought him all the way
through, and I went down and got him. And he's now here with
me. He's mine. He stands where I
stand. He's in my steps, the steps of
a good man. They're perfect. See, if we're
in Christ, we don't have to be afraid. Not at all. It says here that our land shall
yield or increase. Talk about fruit. The Lord Jesus
Christ, He bore more fruit in His walk through this world than
any human being ever has. It was perfect. He bore the fruit
of righteousness all the way. And we have that fruit. And look
at what it says in verse 13. Righteousness shall go before
Him and shall set us in the way of His steps. God's not looking at these steps
I take going through this world. If you're in Christ, He sees
the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ and they're ordered. They're
sure, they're perfect, they're established. That's where we
want to be. Every step Christ took on earth
was holy and good. He's God. He couldn't do anything
else but good. God did not have, listen to this,
God did not have Christ walk through this earth and then say
to his people, now you go walk in his steps. If you follow close
enough or get it right enough, I'll save you. No, no, no, no,
no. That wouldn't have worked for
us. We'd have messed it up, wouldn't we? We can't keep those steps
anymore than Luke could keep my stride. Couldn't do it. All
he did was mess up my steps. You see, before the world began,
God chose the people and put them in Christ. And when God
was born as a man named Jesus, God's people were with him, in
him, carried by him in his arms his whole life. Any step he took,
we took. Any footprint he made, we made.
Any good and righteous thing he did, we did. God set us in
the way of His steps. And when God examines the steps
of a good man, He sees the very steps of Christ. He sees our
steps in Christ. His steps are our steps. Now, this all gives us cause
for rejoicing, I assume. This is good news for us who
can't walk from here to there without sin. However, oftentimes,
The steps of others make terrible trouble for God's people. Ever experienced that? The steps
of others. You ever had a boss who just,
you just couldn't please him. You got family members who just,
they cannot stand to be around you. They just, they look for
every opportunity to embarrass you, to take what you say and
twist it and turn it and whatever. Turn over to Psalm 44. Claire
read the first eight verses of this Psalm this morning and that
encouraged me. The scriptures are full of examples
of what I'm talking about, how there are those who make trouble,
make trouble for God's people through their steps. You see
in verse one of Psalm 44, it says, we've heard with our ears. Our fathers have told us what
work thou didst in their days and the times of old. Verse 8
says, In God we boast all the day long and praise thy name
forever. That all sounds good, doesn't it? But now listen to
how this psalm turns. In verse 9 it says, But thou
hast cast off and put us to shame and goest not forth with our
armies. Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy, and they
which hate us spoil for themselves, Thou has given us like sheep
appointed for meat, and has scattered us among the heathen. You sell
your people for nothing, and it doesn't increase your wealth.
Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors, and a scorn and
derision to them that are round about us. Y'all ever had anybody,
when they said, where do you go to church? You say, I go to
Todd's Road. And they go, oh, oh. You go to that place where they
think babies go to hell. You go to that place where they
believe in that election stuff, that God elects some people to
hell and some to heaven. They take our words and twist them,
don't they? These are the steps of others.
Look what it says in verse 15. My confusion is continually before
me, the shame of my face hath covered me. For the voice of
him that reproacheth and blasphemeth by reason of the enemy and avenger,
all this has come upon me. And we have not forgotten thee,
neither have we dealt falsely in our covenant. Our heart is
not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy way.
It doesn't make us want to quit believing on Christ. But I'll
tell you what, we can do a whole bunch of whining, can't we? Just
like the psalmist did here. He's going, this just doesn't
seem right. Is God the clean God? What's
going on here? Turn over to Psalm 56. This goes
on and on through the Psalms here. In Psalm 56 verse 1, Be
merciful unto me, O God, for man would swallow me up. He fighting
daily, he oppresses me. Mine enemies would daily swallow
me up. For they be many that fight against me, O Thou Most
High. Verse 5, Every day they arrest my words. All their tongues
are against me for evil. They take what I say and make
it mean something I don't. They lie about us. They gather
themselves together, they hide themselves, and they mark my
steps when they wait for my soul. Now remember that phrase, they
mark my steps. Okay? What that's saying is evil
men are watching you, and they're paying attention to the steps
you take. Turn, look across the page. It's Psalm 57, verse 6. They have prepared a net for
my steps, my soul is bowed down, They've digged a pit before me.
Now stop there and look up here just a minute. It says, they've
set a net for my steps. The picture is here, when we
talk about this business, that there are evil people who will
take steps to make life hard, to make trouble for God's people.
And I'm going to prove that here in a way that might not be very
pleasant. But the thing I want us to see in
this, is that we need to have pity on those that do that to
us. We need to have pity on them,
because they bring upon themselves the very destruction that they
desire for you. They dig a pit in hopes you'll
fall into it. And, you know, something that the wicked are
able to do, they want the righteous to fall, so they dig a trap,
set a trap, They mark our steps, they watch what we do, and we're
predictable. If I wanted to do in Joe McSherry, and I wanted
to do Lizzie and Gene, if I wanted to do them in, here's what I'd
do. I would arrange on a Tuesday
to have a pit dug 30 feet deep out here, or deeper, where the
first two parking places are on this lot, knowing And on Wednesday
night at 6.30, Joe's going to back his truck into that spot
and fall to his death in the pit. And Gene and Litzie are
going to roar back in, back their truck in, and bang! You know
how I know that? They take the same steps every
Wednesday. They leave home, they drive here,
they park their car, they walk in and hear the Word of God.
You can write it down, folks. You can write it down. They're
predictable. You see how the wicked don't
have any problem setting a trap for you. They know what you're
going to do. They knew in the day that Daniel, they knew Daniel
was going to pray to his God. And they went to the king and
said, O king, O great king, let everybody who bows to anybody
beside you be thrown in the lion's den. The king said, that's a
good idea. The trap was set. And then they
went and stood staring in Daniel's window because they knew at nine
or ten or whatever it was, he was going to bow down. And then
they ran and told the king, well, what happened? The trap was sprung
and they threw him in the pit, right? Mordecai, Haman knew, he knew
Mordecai wasn't going to bow to him. He set about, built a
gallows in his backyard, and set a plot about to kill all
the Jews, because he hated Mordecai. And it was easy to do. What about
in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's day? It was easy. All they had to do was tell the
king, anybody who doesn't bow to that image, throw them in
the furnace. They knew those three men wouldn't
bow. They set the trap. They walked into it. And by the way, don't ever try that. If you try
to set a trap for an evil man, it'll never work. You know why? They're unpredictable. One day
they're going that direction, next day they're going that direction.
One day they're going up, they're trying to act all nice and sweet
and whatever, and the next day they're looking for some new
form of evil. You can't trap them, so don't
try. Vengeance is the Lord's anyway. Let it go. But God's
people are easy to mark. Look at the rest of Psalm 57,
6 here. They have prepared a net for
my steps. My soul is bowed down. They've
digged a pit before me. And look what happens. Into the
midst whereof they are fallen themselves. You don't have to
set a trap for them. You don't have to avenge yourself
in any of these things. God's going to do it in time.
You want the proof of that? What happened in Daniel's day? Those fellas who got him thrown
into the lion's den, what happened? The lions weren't hungry that
night. He comes out of there and the king throws those fellas
in there and they and their families were devoured. by the lions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
they got thrown in the furnace and came face to face with the
Lord Jesus Christ who brought them back out of that furnace.
And all those other fellows got thrown in the furnace. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego got raised up. You see how, and listen,
this can get more terrible, more terrible than these illustrations
I've given you. Do you know in the days of Saul that there
came a time when the Philistines came up to fight Israel? And
Saul brought his army out, and they're on this mountainside,
and here's the Philistines over here. And every morning, every
morning, a giant named Goliath, he was 11 feet 4 inches tall.
You know what he did? He stepped down off the mountain
and walked down into that valley and looked up at Israel and said,
I'm one man. You send down a man, we'll fight,
and I'll cut his head off and leave his body for the buzzards.
Whoever wins, though, they'll have the victory. He defied the
army of God. And you say, what was that all
about? 40 days and 40 nights, every man in Israel, including
the king, was made to know what a coward they were. You know why David's brothers
didn't want him coming down there to that battle scene? So that
he'd see what cowards they were. Goliath walked down that valley
and everybody goes, I'm afraid. I don't want to go out there. Don't make me go. What a terrible thing. In the day, this is just almost
unimaginable. In the day, When Moses was born,
the Pharaoh had decided God had given the Jews the land of Goshen
and they prospered. There got to be so many of them.
Pharaoh was going, they're going to have more men than we do soon.
And they're going to conquer us. So we issued a decree. And you know what the decree
got? We forget about this. When we read the story for the
most part, Pharaoh said, all right, y'all go to the midwives.
And every time a baby's born, y'all walk in. If it's a girl,
that's fine, walk back out. If it's a boy, grab him and tear
him from the arms of his mother, walk down to the Nile and throw
him in the Nile. Can we imagine? Now that's trouble. Every step taken, that little
thing is squalling and screaming and is hurled in the river. and
trying to breathe as it sinks to the bottom. Can you imagine
the parents having to watch it? They couldn't do a thing about
it. In Herod's day, word came the
King of the Jews was to be born. The wise men came through and
Herod said, you fellows tell me about this. And they told
him, the King of the Jews was going to be born in Bethlehem.
He said, you know, when you find him, come tell me about him so
I can come worship him. And the angel of the Lord came
to those wise men and said, don't go back to Herod. He's got a
bad plan. He's going to take bad steps
against the infant. So they didn't go back. And when
Herod came to realize what was going on, he'd been mocked, it
says. You know what he did? Let me tell you the steps he
took. He said, From Bethlehem to the coast, every child, not
just the boys this time, every child two years and younger,
kill them. Somebody walked in that nursery
this morning, let me tell you what would have happened. The
soldiers would have taken Tiara, Aiden, Tuck, Cora, Jax, Josie,
Mina, and Edie B. And you know, for good measure, they look at Macy and say, I
don't know if she's two or not. So we'll take Macy, Wyatt, Jasper,
Eden, and Sophie. Can we imagine the horror? And you might have pulled your
ankle holster and tried to do something, Aaron, but I don't
think you could have stopped them. Not if it's a U.S. Army. The
Romans and Turians killed every child from Lexington to the river
in Frankfurt, two years old and younger. Folks, that's unspeakable
trouble. And it came the way of God's
people. You say, how do we deal with that? I don't know. I do know, I do know
that Goliath, the trap he set is the one he fell into. A boy
showed up as a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, took a sling
and five smooth stones and went out there and slung and hit him
in the head. When he hit the ground, he drew out a live sword,
cut his head off, left him there to be eaten by the buzzards.
Do we see the pit he fell into? It was the one he made. I know
Pharaoh, I didn't realize this until this week, the Pharaoh
who ordered the death of every male child. When Moses returned
60 years later, there came 10 plagues. You know what the 10th
plague was? The first born male child of
every family in Egypt died. You see the pit he dug for God's
people? He went into it. Pity those that fight against
us. Pity them. Our suffering is terrible,
but it's temporary. Their suffering will be terrible,
but eternal. You and I don't need to add our
wrath. The wrath of God is sufficient. And if we set about thinking
I'll do something, or I'll be angry, or I'll get even. All
it'll do is make us more unhappy and more miserable. Have pity
on those. And, you know, turn to Psalm
119 with me. Psalm 119. Verse 133. The other
reason We ought not, or if we can, seek
the Lord's face in all this, is it except for the grace of
God, we do just what they do. You see this in Psalm 119, 133. He was praying here, order my
steps in thy word and let not any iniquity have dominion over
he, over me. We need to ask God not to let
us do these terrible things because we're capable of them. We surely
are. You see Psalm 37 back there,
you ask, what if I am overtaken in a fall? What if I slip? What
if my steps slip? And if you're not old enough
to have figured this out yet, you will slip. You will slip. I do ask anybody here, we do. We slip. We're going to slip.
But I sure love what it says next in Psalm 137. You see, verse
23 says, the steps of a good man, ordered by the Lord, and
he delighteth in his way. And here's how I know this is
spoken about men, God's people. Though he fall, the Lord never
fell. His walk was perfect. He never slipped. Not one time
did he slip up. But it says, though this good
man, who's good in Christ, though this man whose steps are ordered,
though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down. For the Lord upholdeth him with
his hand." Aren't you glad we don't have to follow the steps
perfectly? Because we can't. And if you slip, or should I
say when you slip, and you start, you know what happens? The Lord
not only uses his feet to establish a righteousness for us, he takes
his hand and reaches down and gets us before we hit the ground,
before we utterly fall. You see, our Lord Jesus Christ
was born a baby in Bethlehem, and at some point in time, he
began to walk. He took his very first step at
some point, but every step he took for the next 30 plus years
was right and righteous It was holy and perfect. It was not
one stumble, not one misstep. And then he took those steps
up Calvary, laid himself on the tree, and he took no more steps. You say, that's obvious, Bob.
They nailed his feet to the tree. He couldn't walk. He allowed that to be done so
there'd be no question when he took all the steps that were
necessary for his people, he was done. There were no more steps to be
taken. It was finished. His walk was sufficient. It had
accomplished the purpose he set out to. He had walked through
this life perfectly righteously before God, and he was laying
on that tree to give that to his people. And then he laid
there, every wicked step you and I ever took, they drove those
nails through our feet in him. He took our nails. It's a pretty vivid picture,
isn't it? Our Lord who carried us all the way got what we deserve
for our sin, death, and separation from God. And we get, by His
steps, everything He deserves, the love and affection and sweetness
of God the Father. Wow, what a great salvation this
is in Christ. You know, we've Reread the Psalm 37 when Luke
was reading it, it's like I was hearing it all over again. Fret
not thyself because of evildoers, neither be envious against the
workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the
grass and wither as a green herb. And notice what it says here.
It says in verse 3, trust in the Lord. Verse 4 says delight
thyself also in the Lord. Verse 5 says commit thy way unto
the Lord. Verse 7 says rest in the Lord.
Verse 8 says, cease from anger and forsake wrath, fret not thyself
in any wise to do evil. Verse 9 says, wait upon the Lord.
Verse 13 says, the Lord shall laugh at the wicked, for he seeth
that his day is coming. We can afford to give it up,
let it go, let it be. You see, we don't need new feet.
The better to walk with, We need a new heart in order to believe
on Christ, to trust Christ, to cling to his everlasting arms.