APR 6 2014

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · April 6, 2014
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The video wasn't going to work, and that's what he pulled off in five minutes. So that's pretty solid and gifted, talented guy. Yeah, and more than that, he's just, from what I'm finding, we haven't spent a lot of time together, but the guy just seems like the real deal. And that's what I'm finding here at this church is just authentic people that are the real deal.

I'm surprised at the sacrifice I'm finding, people willing to take the low road. It's exciting. It's good to be here, and I'm loving it. I hope you're loving it, too, and it's good to have you all here this week. Yeah. God, good. On Thursday, I found myself ready and ready to get to church. I need my phone so I can know what time it is. I found myself ready to get to church. I was looking forward to preaching this message.

I got a new thing. I'm getting my sermons in by Thursday, so I got a couple days to mull over them, and I'm excited about this message. If you have your Bibles, turn it to Psalm 1. I'm going to turn off the auto lock here. Just give me a moment. And stop, watch, reset, start. There we go. So I told you what we're going to do is we're going to take a little change in our gait every so often.

If you're a runner, sometimes you know there's a pace you'll run, and then you'll either quicken it or slow it down. And I feel like when we're teaching the Word of God, I want to look at the whole counsel of God's Word. So every fifth week, as best possible we can, we're going to get away from the main theme that we're doing, and it's the book of John right now, through the lens of John the Baptist, a three-fold calling.

We've talked about that for four weeks. You're aware of what I'm talking about. But what I want to do is I want to pull out and either do a psalm or a proverb. So five weeks from today we'll be in Proverbs 1, and kind of just give us a little bit of a rhythm where we go back and forth. And so I love the psalms. Hopefully you do as well. We're starting today in Psalm 1.

And this is, if you were going to, when they gathered the psalms together, I don't think David wrote them in an order, but they gathered them and they put them together in a way that the first psalm would be the opening note of the entire chapter. When you read Isaiah, there's an opening note. He stands before the Lord, you know, and his tongue is touched, you know.

Or, you know, you look in John. And John, when we, when the beginning of John begins in the beginning, and he sets up that entire premise. And in Psalm, the same things happen. And the message in Psalm, and the message of Psalm 1 today for us is this. Is that if we get ourselves in alignment and in agreement with God's Word, it releases God's presence, power, providence, understanding, love, blessing into our life.

It's that simple. It's that simple. That if you love, and David wasn't loving the Bible at the moment, okay? When he was writing these things, he wasn't loving the Bible. He was writing the Bible. But he did have the law. He didn't have the book of John, obviously. He didn't have revelations. He didn't have anything in the New Testament. But what he loved was half of the story.

Interesting, people say the law, you know, they sometimes feel bound up by the law. But David makes a statement in Psalm 1 where, you know, where he talks about meditating on the law. And in other parts of the scripture, he says, I delight in the law of the Lord. It says in this, that we delight in love. Who loves the law? Think about that. We're going to talk about why does David love the law.

And I'll give you a little bit of a sneak peek. It's because he finds God in it. He finds an understanding. He finds the love of Christ, the love of God for himself in it. So we're going to begin with this message. Verse 1. Blessed. Blessed. Blessed. Great word. Blessed. Think of that word. Just hold it in your mind. Blessed. 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, whose delight, whose love, whose great rich love is the light, is the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. This person, this person, they'll be like a tree that's planted by streams of water. This person, they will yield their fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither. And listen to this promise, guys.

Listen to this promise. Whatever they do will prosper. Whatever. It says, whatever they choose to do. And I believe that that's like, you know, following God and his righteousness into the things that you feel he's called you to, but also the desires of your heart. If you make what God's principles are the key to that following, it will succeed.

That's one of the promises. It's a massive promises. I've said for many, many years, it's not what you do so much, but how we do it. It's not so much what you're going to do with your life. It's not so much, you know, what person you're going to marry, or who, but it's a lot more about the how. You see, this is a book of how. The how gets us to the what.

See, I firmly, I have found this in my own life. That when I have gotten the how right in the waiting process for that next key to unlock that next season for my life, when I get the how right, I walk into the what. We spend so much time, right, thinking about the what. What do we want to happen? But see, how we go about, like you talk to a premarital couple, the way in which they prepare for marriage, the how they prepare for marriage will greatly dictate the way in which they see success in their marriage.

You know, we spend a lot more, if we spend, let me say it this way. If we spend as much time preparing what we're going to do after we get married as we do preparing our weddings, would we have, imagine, imagine, you know how much planning goes into a wedding. But imagine if you spent just a little bit of time on the wedding, but all the time you spent for the elaborate wedding, and whether you're going to have the, you know, the violin or the, or the fife, you know, or whatever you're going to play.

You spent all that time thinking, hey, you know, how are we going to make, who we, what's, what friends are we surrounding? Ourselves? What's our network? Who's our go-to person? Who's our pastor? What community are we going to be a part of? How's our finance looking? You know, how do we speak to each other? Have we done the counsel? On and on.

Imagine, if at a church, and this is what I want to encourage couples who are getting married in our church, is that let's put more emphasis into the how we're going to live after we're married than into the wedding day. And so that's what David is saying here, that if you delight in the law of the Lord, if you love God's word, and you come in agreement with it, whatever you do will prosper.

That's a promise. That is a promise of God. And it says, goes on to say, Not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor the sinners in the assembly of the righteous. Another great promise here. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

God will watch over your ways. Imagine everywhere you go, if God is over you, and he's watching over you. No, not there, not there. No, and he stops this. And he, just imagine God, like, you know, like a caring mother over a toddler child, just making sure he doesn't slip or fall or catches him and grabs his hand when he needs it across the street.

That is what Psalm 1 promises. If we love the word of God, and we come in alignment with it. And that's why David loved him. Because not only did he find God in it, but it guaranteed success in his life and prosperity. You know, few things are as culture. Let's go to that verse 1. Blessed. Blessed. Blessing. Think about blessing. We bless our food. We have blessings before we do certain things.

But few things in our culture are as valued as a blessing. You think, once again, back to the marriage issue. Of so many men I know go to a father, and what do they ask for? They ask for his blessing. Because when a father is in agreement with the husband who is going to marry his daughter, are things not a little bit better in the family situation?

I had a friend, he was an African-American friend that's marrying a first-generation Korean girl, a friend from my old church. And the father says, I will not bless you. We will not have an African-American marry into our daughter. He was an old-school Korean from Korea. Two years, my friend wanted to honor them, and he kept honoring their daughter.

And in the end, about two weeks before they're married, the dad came back, and he goes, the way you have treated my daughter has changed my mind. Wasn't a believer. He says, you can be a part of my family. You see, it was about the how. You see, he took care of the how, and God took care of the what, and he got the blessing. We see that in blessing.

How important is blessing in relationship? How important is blessing in a family? The father's blessing over his son. The father's blessing over his daughter. The mother's blessing. Were you a person, and just think in your own mind, that you felt blessed by your parents? I know my father was old school. 1908 he was born. So he's probably older than anybody in this congregation.

Had me when he was 60 years old. And I remember, he was very proud of us. He would show us off. We were, you know, he would take his place. We did things. But there was, there was never, I never once heard the man tell me he loved me. It just wasn't the way that you did things first generation out of Germany, you know, in 1908. It just wasn't how you did things.

But I knew there was a trickle down effect. At least I knew it. But there wasn't like this blessing. I don't know if I remember a hug. But I knew my dad loved me. I knew it. It wasn't like he rejected me. But there was never a direct blessing. Matthew 3, 17, Jesus comes out of the water and God blesses his son. He says, this is my son whom I love and with him I am well pleased.

I try to say that to my daughters every single day. I try. I go to them at bed and I say, look, I want you to know this. First of all, you are my daughter. You have a father. Now God is your, my daughter will say yes, but God's my real father. And I'll say, yes, I know. She actually says to me, we're actually just brother and sister because God's our father.

So you're doing, but right now you're my dad. I said, that's right. They got into a season where they wanted to call me, where one of them wanted to call me Adam. I said to my daughter, there's only two people in the world that have the right to call me dad. You and your sister. Only two. And I said, I want you to know the value of that. They went back to dad really, really quick.

When they understood, it wasn't about, hey, all the old people call you Adam. Yeah, but they can't call me dad. I mean, they can, but it's creepy. I'm starting to have too much fun. I'm a playground dad. Every Friday at my daughter's school, I've been doing it for eight years. Every Friday. Started on just one Friday. I showed up and they had a volunteer and I prayed.

I said, God, can I show up here and graduate these kids? Seven years later, I graduated my daughter's first daughter's class into middle school. They don't allow parents on the campus at middle school, but I'm still with my other daughter. And one of the things I realized is the little girls who always run up and hang on my leg and grab my hand.

And it happens all, there's three right now. And as soon as I get there, they come and drape themselves on me. And I have to say, no, you can't hang on my leg. You're not my kid. Again, awkward. And they hang on me. And they're the ones that don't have dads in their lives. And they say, one of them says to me, a regular, my daddy, my daddy's going to come too.

My daddy's going to come to the playground too. You'll see. My dad, and she makes up these, my daddy's taking me to horseback riding, but I know the story about her daddy. And her daddy isn't going to bring her horseback riding this weekend. We've been trying to love on her and care for her. We've seen a change. I try to give them appropriate boundaries and let them know that they're cared for.

But they fight to hold, they will actually try to break the other kid's arm, these three girls. Though immediately they are drawn. One said to me, my mommy said I didn't have to have a daddy. And so she went and she wanted to have me without a daddy. And she goes, but I want you to know my mommy's single. Do you think you could be my daddy? Now, I was like, do you get what's happening there?

You get what, how important is a father's blessing? How important is a mother's blessing? How important is your blessing to a friend? Blessing. Blessing is a formal approval that comes with all the attachments and accoutrements and all the extra good things. When you get that blessing from a father, what happens? Hey, you know what, by the way, we have this extra apartment and we just want to give it to you.

We want to bless you guys with it. It's not only a formal approval, but it also has power that's attached to it. And so Jesus comes out of the water and he says, this is my son in whom I loved and I am well pleased. He comes out of the water. And then it says he goes to the desert and he leaves the desert in power. You see, blessing has power. Bless people.

Bless people. I really, I'm not a prosperity gospel guy, but I am for not speaking negativity over each other. I told one of my friends recently, he's had a rough time and I said, how do you like your new job? I said, I love it. It's great. I feel like I'm built for it. Love it. Yeah, I loved my last job too for a while. I was like, really? Yeah. And then that kind of went away.

I was only there two years. Yeah, it didn't work out. So just don't, don't trust that. I was just, you know, and I know where he's coming from. So I didn't say anything, but I just wanted to go. No, no, don't speak that. No, I want to speak in faith because there's a blessing that comes with speaking. Proverbs, it speaks about that, you know, the blessing of the tongue.

You can bless people with the things that you say. And so I would ask you this, who are you blessing? Who are you blessing? When I tell my daughter I'm proud of him, I say, you know why I'm proud of you? They say, yeah, they know not why. And I say, because you're you. I'm proud that you did this. I'm proud that you did that. But I'm proud of you because you're you.

I want to say that God's proud of you because you're you. I'm not proud of my daughters because of what they do. I'm proud of that thing, that they did it. I'm proud because of who they were made to be. So pay attention in the scripture when we see the word blessing. Pay attention because what it is, it's a key to God saying, I am in agreement with this.

I favor this type of living. And when God favors something, it is like stepping into a beam of light and being infused with all the goodness that comes with it. It happens in all the different things in our life. When we get in alignment with the things of God, that's why David meditates on the word of God. Because when he gets in alignment, it commands a blessing and the provision of that blessing together and from God.

I said a few weeks ago that I heard a study from a friend that 1% of couples who pray together on a daily basis get divorced. 1%. It was in the notes. You can go back and find it. Only 1% of couples who pray together on it from 1,700 couples that were part of the study. I realized I want to be part of that blessing because prayer commands a blessing and it is humility.

And so I just began. I said, I'm not praying enough with my wife. We started doing it. Who are you praying with? Next time we say this word blessed is, God's word promises blessing to all those who follow it. I've already said that. And I would say this. The Bible's not rocket science, guys. It's beyond us. Let's be clear about that. It is so far beyond us.

We will never fathom it, understand it. We'll never even have a child's understanding of the Bible because it is infinite. But it's also not rocket science. If you do the things God says to do, he will command a blessing and favor into your life. It's that simple. It doesn't mean that we won't have hard times. Jesus had the entire blessing of God.

He had some difficult times in his life, as we know. We'll be celebrating it this weekend. But it's not. We just want to follow it. So, Revelations talks about a blessing. It says in Revelations 133 that if you just read the book of Revelations aloud, there's a blessing. I don't know what that blessing is, but I'm going to do it. Because I want some of that.

I want it all. I don't want to leave any blessing on the table. I don't want to have any dark area of my life. I don't want to have anything in my life where I'm not getting the blessing. You see, now I'm starting to get greedy for blessing. Because I just want more. Imagine, as a child, and the father, could he bless you too much? I'm not saying that you spoil a kid, but just say, I just want to bless you as you go to school.

You know what? I'm really proud of you. You know what? God has made you so amazing. Just build them up. I want to be a part of it. And the more I've experienced this, over the last year I've tried to get real serious about anything in my life that is not consecrated to God. And what happens? And I've noticed it's been like a superhighway for the provision and direction of God in my life.

Consecration. Getting in alignment with the things of God. Removing the darkness. You see, the lie is this. God just wants to keep you from having fun. He just wants to keep you from having fun. I want you to keep, you know. And like in the same way I tell my kid, don't walk across the street with your eyes closed. I just want to keep you from having fun, right?

No, I don't want you to get hit by a car. Okay? I want to bless you. And that's what God wants to do. See, right now there's two currents running through this world you'll see in your notes. There's a current of God's power and life. And in that life is blessing. The world before the fall started with the current of life. There was no death. There was no understanding of death.

They were in the current of life and God's goodness was there. But man decided on their own volition to step out of that and to eat of death. They ate God's secret. You see, God's secret was that he knew what death was. And he wanted to keep it a secret. And some secrets are good. But they wanted to know God's secret. And so they ate the apple or whatever fruit or whatever it was metaphorically.

They ate it. And when they did, all of a sudden there was another current that could run into the world. It was a curse. Now God isn't in the business of cursing. But what happens is this. Anything that is outside of God is cursed. Because only good, all good and perfect things come from who? God. God doesn't even have to curse something that is outside of his blessing.

It is immediately cursed. Do you get that? It isn't like God created curse. He didn't create curse. Curse was a result that is basically when God is removed from the peace, curse exists. And so when man decided to allow that to happen, when they stepped into death, there was a second current that is running through the world. And I want to say that these currents are strong in the world.

And if you get in alignment with the current of life, blessing comes with it. And when we get in alignment with the things of death, death comes with it. If you look through Proverbs 18, 21, it's in your notes. It says the power of life and death is within the tongue. That there's a power. It talks about a power. And you can do a word search on this if you want.

I put some extra scriptures in there. Hebrews 2.14 talks about the power of death being overcome by Jesus. That there was a power, but he overcame it. Romans 1.16 talks about the power of salvation. Salvation of what? To give you life. And so there's two currents running through the world. You know, other religions call this, a lot of times, call it karma.

It's to understand that if you do a good thing, good things happen. If you do bad things, bad things happen. And I want you to know that the Bible says that that is true. The Bible doesn't call it karma, but karma is true. I wouldn't call it karma. It's not true for the reasons they say it's true. But the reason when people of other religions step into that and find that it works or it doesn't work is because it's God's stuff, but it's been renamed and taken the glory away from God.

You see, the devil is really good at taking God's stuff because he knows that it works. And then renaming it and getting people to buy into it, but removing the cross or removing Jesus from that peace. I want to say that it's real. So I had a businessman once tell me this. He said, I'm not a believer, but that book of Proverbs has made my business really successful.

He said, I read a proverb every day. There's 31 Proverbs, one for every day of the month. He says, I read a proverb every single day. And he goes, I have done my business and it has been my key to success. But I don't need organized religion. I don't need church. I don't need Jesus. I want to tell you what. His plan for business works. It works because God commands a blessing for people to get in alignment with him.

And you don't have to have the whole truth to still be into alignment with the things that are God. He still honors what is right. This is why karma, the idea of karma in other religions works because it's God's stuff. And I hope that makes sense as I say that. So we see these things. Now, I just want to understand blessing real quick as we move through the notes.

The biblical understanding of blessing connotes formal approval with the infusion of provision that accompanies it. Genesis 27, one of the best stories, right, of blessing. It's Jacob and Esau. They're battling for their father's blessing. And not only does the father's blessing come with the physical provision that Isaac had, but it also comes with God's blessing.

So we see that there in the scripture, that that story of blessing. Blessings are attached then to the things of God. In the Old Testament, now if you read the Old Testament as we look at blessing, blessing is about provision. It's about land. So when they get the Holy Land, that's a blessing. God uses the idea of things to show what blessing is in the Old Testament.

Now, he's going to fulfill that in the New Testament to show that it's not just all about things. But so we can get it, he begins in the Old Testament by saying, when you are blessed, you will know it in these ways. You will have all these things. Now, Jesus comes later on and says, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek. He goes and flips this upside down because he has taken the blessing to the greater blessing.

The blessing that is up in heaven. The blessing that is eternal. All the riches of heaven. But in the Old Testament, it's cattle. It's for husbands. It's wives. For women, it's children. There's all these things that if you have this stuff, then it means that God is on your life. You see that. And that's why when Job had his issue, because they were still in that old covenant, it was so mind-blowing to his friends as he sat there, and mind-blowing to Job.

Because he couldn't understand why you should have suffering when he was in complete alignment and integrity with God. Job was a man who had complete integrity, and everything fell apart. And in the system that God had set up, that shouldn't have happened. But Pastor Jim said something to me two weeks ago that made me think. And I've always known it, but I've never said it this way.

He says, but God is sovereign over his sovereignty. God is powerful over his power. God created the rules. He can make the rules. And he can do with the rules what he wants. And so when I was trying to explain this to my daughters at Pancakes and Bible Time yesterday morning as we spoke, I said, can God make a rock that he can't pick up? They hadn't heard that one.

And one said yes. The other one said no. And then back and forth, ten minutes. It ended up here. Yes, but we can't understand why. Can God make a rock he can't pick? Yes. And can God step outside of his system to do something in Job's life for the greater benefit because he's God? Yes. Can John the Baptist be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth, even though he had never met Jesus?

The Holy Spirit had not yet come, okay, after Jesus. And Jesus had not died on the cross. But it says that that baby was filled with the Holy Spirit. And I believe it because God is sovereign over his sovereignty. Remember that he is sovereign. Now that's something to get your head around. We can spend some more time if you want to unpack that with me.

Please talk to me about it because I know it creates some tensions in our mind. The New Testament now is all about heavenly blessing. It's about love, joy, peace, all the goodness of God attached now to the provision that comes with it. Do I believe that provision sometimes comes with following God? Yes, I do. But would I preach it as my main sermon on a regular basis?

If you give more, God's going to give you more. No, I would not. Do I believe when you tithe and tithing works? Yes, I do have experienced it. I've never met a person I know who tithes on a regular basis who has lost everything and been down and out completely. They've always made it back to this point. Now, if you're a different example of that, come tell me and you'll be the first that I've met.

But I know it works because it's in agreement with what God has said to do. But the New Testament, look at Ephesians 1. It's in your notes. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with what? Every spiritual blessing. Not just six of them, nine. How many blessings are there in heaven? It's eternal.

Unlimited. The amount of blessings. You're going to get to heaven one day and people say, well, I'm going to be bored. That's not a lie. I'm going to be bored when I get to heaven. You're not going to, we're not going to know everything when we get to heaven. We will be like God in that we are eternal from that point, but we will not be all knowing.

We, otherwise we would be God. You get it when we go to heaven, we're not going to be God. We're going to have those elements. So when we get to heaven, you're going to be there a million years and God's going to say, hey, let me just show you this thing. You haven't seen it yet. And you're going to go, oh, whoa, what is that? And then you're going to spend a million years checking that thing out.

Okay. And then like, while you're still just fascinated and you've got another million you could spend there, he's going to be like, hey, check this out. Come here, look at this. Oh my goodness. Really? You know, and that's what heaven's going to be like. It's going to be mind blowing. It's going to blow your soul. It's going to be completely overwhelming, but full of peace, full of God's love, full of his treasure.

Those are the blessings I'm talking about. And what Paul said is praise be to God because some of that is available to us now. Matter of fact, all of it is available to us now. The question is, how much do you want? Is there some limitations because we're in a temporal world? Yes. While we're in the temporal, we still have elements of the curse here.

We still have drag. It's like a boat with dragging, you know, you know, 50 pounds behind you. It's going to be a little bit slow, but there is no blessing in heaven that if we submit ourselves to God that cannot be fleshed out further than you'll ever be able to take it in your entire life. That's the scripture. And David knew that if he pressed into God's word, he began to realize, he began to realize this secret.

Do you see the secret of powerful living in God now? He began to see the secret and then he saw these laws that were like, don't do this, don't do that. But he didn't see the don'ts and the do's. He saw Jesus Christ. He saw God himself within that. And he saw the riches that it could bring into his life. And so he said, oh my goodness, this law that says don't do this, don't do this.

This has the power of life in it. This has the power to bless my life. This can, this changes everything. And he fell in love with the law. He fell in love with this book. I'll tell you, the more we live this book, the more we love this book, the more we love the God of this book, because we've got to be careful that we don't love the book of God more than we love the God of the book.

I know I've met so many people that love the book of God, but their life doesn't show the God of the book. You see, let me just give you a little, this is going to blow you away and you'll probably get emails tomorrow until we have a conversation and talk about it. But the entire Bible is not going to heaven with us. The God of this Bible and the truth of the Bible is going with us.

But the devil's name is in this Bible and a whole bunch of other things are in this Bible that their memory is going to be erased when we get there. See, this is a record book and it's a tool, but there's a God who infuses this with power. And so that's the thing. I want to be in love with the God of this book, but not this book of God. The Bible talks about that.

The Pharisees were in love with the book of God. Jesus calls us to be in love with the God of the book. And that's what we want to go for at this church, to be people that can put it into practice. And so we see it there. And so what we, then we see what, you know, I won't go into it because we're running out of time, but Jesus flips this on its head.

And you can see now why when Jesus is talking about this idea of the poor will be blessed and those that are humble, because that was the nature of Jesus. Jesus was humble. Why do we take the lower road as believers? Why do we seek reconciliation with people? When you seek reconciliation with people you were upset with, the people that bother you, it will command a blessing of reconciliation in your life.

It will command it. If you have this upsetness, one of the things to do is to go back and say, hey, where am I upset? And go to try and make right with people. I don't care how far back it is. When I said that in the first sermon and people came up to me afterwards, I was in this row and I heard a bunch of people by me go, oh, I thought, oh, maybe I hit a nerve.

But we want to live. Why? Because there's a blessing of that. And Jesus knows that you can be poor now and be rich, because now we're open to that blessing that I talked about. You see, in the Old Testament, you had to have all those things because we didn't have access to that glory that I was speaking about. But now we do. And that's why Jesus can say, you can have bad things happen in your life, but so what?

Look what I have for you in heaven. Look at the peace that transcends all understanding. I've already preached this here once before, but I'll say it again. I sat with my friend who has cancer. He had six months to live. And he had the chemo pack that was pumping chemo into him. We were having a coffee at Pete's. And he said, well, they gave me six months and I probably won't see my kids live.

I'd grow up. He had small children. It's our old church. And it was a real heavy moment. And I said, well, I just wanted to learn something. I said, what are you learning? What would you say to me? He says, Jesus and cancer is enough. Let me say that again. Because it's so far beyond where I am and I don't get it and I'm not preaching it from me. Okay?

Because I've never been there. I've never been in that kind of suffering. But this man who was going to lose his family and probably not live said to me, I found that Jesus is so good and the blessings that I experienced in the midst of this suffering is so good that Jesus and cancer is enough for me without anything else. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's why Job, what does Job say?

Though yet or though he what? Slay me. I will what? I will praise him. If he takes a sword and chops me down, I will praise God. That's discipleship. That's the message of Christianity. That is the message of God. And in other, you look in some of the other comparative religions, when you have negative things happen, it means you're on the bottom of the cast.

It means that God's mad at you. But it doesn't mean that here. Because we can at any time plug in to the infusion of God. Talked about the love of God and that he experienced. Let's go to the bottom of the notes. James 1.25 says, whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.

They will be blessed in what they do. It says that the law gives what? What does it say it gives there? The perfect law gives what? Laws don't give freedom, do they? But they do. Because you imagine if there was no laws on the freeway. How would it be? You see, the laws give you freedom to be able to get home without dying. The laws give you freedom that every person who's intoxicated won't be on the street because they can pull them off the street.

You see, we want to love the law of God. You know, I wanted to be a law breaker. I was in a season in my, you know, back in my 20s. Every law I could break, I wanted to find the way out. I wanted to find, you know, every way out I could. But I have found that I want to uphold the law because the law gives me freedom. Not to bind us up, not to put heavy burdens on people.

And that's the razor's edge of this thing that Jesus talks about, that Paul talks about. But I want to love the law. How's your love of the law going? There's five outworkings. I'm going to say them in two minutes and we're done. First is this. Look in the scripture right there at the beginning of Psalm. I'm sorry, verse three. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water.

If you are meditating on the law of God, if you let it penetrate into your heart and you follow it, you will be completely nourished. Because a tree by a stream of water never needs to be watered. Right. Amen. To that in the back. A tree that is planted. If you plant a tree in the right place, you never need to water it. You hear me? If you plant a tree in the right place, you never need to water it.

And you know, I tell you what, this book is the right place to plant your life. It says that it'll yield fruit in its season. Imagine that you're always in step with the right season. Never out of step. The one season leads to the next season that leads to the next season. And the timing of God is on your life. And it just happens. This book will guarantee, God guarantees timing in your life.

You don't have to figure it out. Let me just release us all from the burden of we have to find our intentional purpose or we might miss it. If you follow this word in the how, you will not be able to miss your purpose. Your purpose will come and lay at your feet. It's not about the what, it's about the how. I'm preaching now. I'm having fun. Okay, I'm sorry.

I love that. No, I just love that message. Because I've been so, for 44, you know what I mean? I felt like I should have been here 20 years ago. 24 years of God. Like, what are you doing? When's this going to happen? Da, da, da. Thank God. Thank God for you it didn't happen any sooner. I'll tell you that much. That was a mess. God's timing. And like I said, that first message I preached here was, you know, staying in the boat.

How to stay in the boat well and trust. Do the how really, really well. Live the how. The next thing it says is, it goes where in verse 3, the leaf does not wither. Whatever they do will prosper. So good. I've already unpacked that. And it says all the way down to the bottom, for the Lord watches over the waves. Of the righteous. I just want to say to you, if you need breakthrough, it's not far away.

It's not far away. And it's not rocket science, guys. It's finding out the darkness in your life. Finding out things. Putting things in agreement with God. Not being willing to tell that little lie anymore. Not because God's going to be mad at you if you do. But because you experience the love of God when you follow his laws. You want to follow the laws of God.

Because in them you will experience. If you need breakthrough in your life, read this every day. Be a part of it every single day. And when you do, you will be watered. You will be in fruit and step with God's timing in your life. You will prosper in whatever you do. It might not look like you think it's going to look. But God's prosperity will be all over it.

Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God. We get ready to move into communion. We love your word. Love your word. The word of God is the star. And the God of the word is the star of this pulpit. You are the star of this church. You are the star of our life. God, you set us next to you. In your sight. You keep your eye on us. You watch over us, Lord. And at any moment, God, if we step away, we can be blown away like that jack.

God, let us be a strong church. A strong church of your word. And always, from every person who's here, God, we submit it to you and we bless you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Pastor Jim, take us away.