Yesterday I met a man that I think is about a half inch taller than Gary Bergman, none other than his own son. Guy’s a giant, and he was there for our breakfast this morning, and I was excited for Mike. His two sons were there. I was just blessed in so many ways, and Larry Post couldn’t even make it because he was committed to something else, but he sent a busload. I don’t know how many came.
You invited several, and there was a nice group of men came from your little corral, so we appreciate all of that. I think I told you about a funeral that was pending as of last Sunday. I had a challenge. On Monday there were two funerals that I should have gone to, but the one I had committed to lead in, and I guess I told you the story, I don’t know now, that in July of 1966, this church, this congregation, determined that there needed to be a church in Grimsby. It was people from here. They gathered together, and they started prayer meetings, and I had a phone call come to me when I was at college. When are you finished this year? And I said, in about a week’s time. Good, you’re our preacher on Sundays.
We have a policeman. He was the chief of police, Del Gleash, and we have a machinist, Alf Cowell. We’re not preachers, but we have an idea you are, so you’re the preacher for the summer. So I was the first preacher at what they now called Lake Mount, and I think it was the second or the third Sunday, there was a fellow in the audience, and he had a girl with him that I recognized from our old church, Carol. And when I got to the end of my message, I made an invitation, who would like to accept Christ? And this fellow’s hand went up. I didn’t call him forward. At the end of that short little service, I took him down the hall. We were meeting in a Catholic school right in behind the current Lake Mount Church.
I took him down to a classroom. I said, Bill, what do you want? You raised your hand. He said, I want what you said. I said, you want to give your heart to Jesus? Yes. I said, you know what’s going to cost you everything. He said, I believe so. So I led him to the Lord.
Well, I got a call from Carol last Saturday, and she said, Pastor Dave, we haven’t seen you for so many years, but your friend Bill, you led him to the Lord. And just a couple of months ago, he said, Carol, if anything happens to me, you find Pastor Dave. I want him to do my funeral. So there I was to do Bill’s funeral. Now, I didn’t get to follow him all these years. I saw him at one point for a few years when I pastored a church in Hamilton. He was our sound techie, but I lost track of Bill. And at that time he had a couple of little fellows in his family. When I got to the funeral home on Monday, I walked into a special place reserved for family, and two giant men were standing there.
I didn’t know who they were, but they knew who I was. It was so refreshing, so refreshing, because those two men, their two kids, are following in the footsteps of their mom and their dad. Their children were like stair steps, you know, right down to one that was barely out of rompers. And every one of them honored their grandpa. It was not an elongated service. Sometimes they have 50 grandkids all have to sing a song and quote a poem. Drives me nuts. But this was, this was great. And they just made Bill Sterling and his wife look like just in the middle of the service.
I stepped in and I said, Carol, you guys, you guys have such a wonderful history now. I said, what, look at all of this. This is wonderful. And so that’s where I’m beginning by to tell you that little illustration this morning by reading for you Psalm 1. Psalm 1. Blessed is the man and the woman. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper. Blessed is the man. Blessed is the man. And then it goes into negative. This man is blessed because he does not walk. He’s blessed because he does not stand. And he’s blessed because he does not sit. I intend to spend at least a couple, maybe three or more Sundays just munching on this passage and another passage that I believe mirrors this. So blessed is the man who does not walk.
How? In the counsel of the ungodly, doesn’t set foot on the path of sinners, and he does not sit in the seat of the scornful. So Psalm 1 actually begins with a danger sign, but the danger is a way to move you aside. Don’t enter here. Stay away. And if you do, you’re going to be a blessed person. Don’t walk where you ought not to walk. Don’t stand where you ought not to stand. Don’t sit where you shouldn’t sit.
So I’m going to invite you to read this out loud with me. Would you do so? It’s up on the screen. 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. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law does he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. Pastor, you didn’t read the rest of the chapter. No, the second half is about the ungodly, and I’m focusing today and probably next Sunday and the next Sunday after on the godly.
We’ll leave the ungodly to, well, to whoever. We’ll leave that alone. The ungodly, however, are not so. So here I go. They’re like the chaff that the wind drives away. That’s the ungodly. The ungodly will never stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly, that will perish. That’s the negative half of this psalm.
Here’s another rendition of the very same passage. Oh, the joys of those who do not follow evil men’s advice, who do not hang around with sinners scoffing at the things of God, but they delight in doing everything God wants them to, and day and night are always meditating on his laws and thinking about ways to follow him more closely. They’re like trees along a river bank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and they, all they do will prosper. Again, sinners. What a different story. They blow away like chaff before the wind. They’re not safe on judgment day, and they’ll never stand among the godly. The Lord watches over all the plans and the paths of godly men, but the paths of the godly, of the godless lead them into doom.
Blessed. I love this word. I’ve never been so excited about the word blessed, blessing and blessing, as I am these days. And I hope you’re getting caught away with this as well, because we are a blessed people, and there’s a reason for us being blessed. The Jewish people are a blessed people, but they’re being, they’re being battered and beaten, they’re being raped, they’re being killed off, and their whole nation is under attack. But still, God is going to bless them in the final days. We are a blessed people. We’re a blessed people to live in this country, although it’s going into a very dark place as we know it. Here’s what happens to people that follow hard after God.
When you’re reading the book of Esther, have a look and find God mentioned. God is never mentioned in the book of Esther. However, the book of Esther is all about God’s relationship to his people. And here’s what I believe. I believe that we get blessed without even trying. Here’s Esther. She’s a recipient of the favor and the blessing of God, and she may not even be aware of it, because she did not dive in to rescue her people by imploring the king to undo what the wicked man Haman was about to do. She was just saying, you can’t do this to God’s people. So God was in the mix, and the Lord caused the king to show favor to Esther more than any other woman in his harem.
He so favored her and was kinder to her than he was to any of the other virgins. Keisha had a question in your mind. He was not meddling with her. She was still a virgin. She was one of many, but he favored her the most. He put the royal crown on her head and made her queen in the place of Vashti. I believe some of us are blessed, and we don’t even recognize, we don’t even see it. He just blesses us and blesses us and blesses us, but there’s a reason he blesses us, and that’s because of how we walk, how we talk, how we are functioning when no one is looking. That’s the measure of a man or a woman of God.
When nobody’s observing us, you look so perfect and angelic when you’re here. I have been so discouraged and troubled over the years in my church life to find out that there were women in the church, and their godly men were brutalizing them, unkind, horrific, denying their wives some of the most needful things, careless. I had a man come to me. He had credentials with the assemblies of God in the United States. He was absolutely equal in every way and maybe exceeded my posture, my position. He was a man older than myself, and he came, and he said, I want to take you for a drive. He took me up to Peterborough to a nursing home. I had no idea he was building a platform in his mind psychologically. He was building a platform that he wanted me to walk on with him.
He took me to Peterborough to a nursing home, and he said, Patty has lost her sense of direction. She won’t even know me today. I’m going to introduce you today to my wife. So I went in with him. It was a member of our congregation now. He had retired. He took me in, and I saw this lady. She didn’t light up when we walked in the room. It’s like we weren’t even there.
He sat with her for a little while. He spoke to her, hoping that maybe something would get through, but he was convinced that she was hearing nothing of any value, and nothing transpired thereafter, but about a month from then, he came by our house, and he brought a beautiful lady. That lady was attending the Queensway Cathedral. That doesn’t matter a whole lot, just giving you some of the facts. He said, I want you to meet this beautiful lady, and we’ve been keeping company a little bit, and then the day came when he wanted to come, and he wanted to confront me with something, and he said, I have a mind to divorce Patty, and I just want to know, pastor, you’ve met her now. You’ve seen her. He said, yeah, she’s got a heart that’s beating, and yeah, she’s sitting there, and yeah, she’s being taken care of, but he said, really think about it. She’s really not my wife anymore. I remember saying to my friend Bruce, in sickness and in health, I said, you loved her when you found her healthy.
You’re struggling to love her anymore in her sickness. Oh boy, his shorts got in a knot, because you see, it seemed to him like I was accusing him of something. So there’s a man of God, a man of the cloth. Blessed is the man who doesn’t care how many men have divorced their wives. Blessed is the man who doesn’t care how easy it is to get a divorce in sickness and health. What is the fruitfulness that we look for? So often, I think men, sorry, I’m attacking men today, but this chapter is addressing men, and of course the women will say, how come the Lord was all hung up with men and not women? It all began in the garden. He created the man first.
You think that she was born on the same day he was? Think again. Read in the second chapter. He was busy looking after the garden. He was naming the animals. He was doing all kinds of things, and then for him, she was an afterthought. When he made the man, he had the woman on his mind. Everything that she would become was already in his creation, but she came after. And all through the Old Testament, the man was responsible in every way for his house.
So when God wanted to speak to Israel, he spoke to the men, and basically said, I put you in charge. Stand up and be accountable. Be the man. So that’s why the men are always addressed, especially in the Old Testament. Be the man. Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk just because the laws of the land will support him. Blessed is the man who has a higher moral standard than the liberal government running our country today. Blessed is the man who says, I don’t care what anyone says. I believe that the child in the womb has value.
Blessed is the man who says, show me a man who has had a baby, and then maybe I’ll believe that a man can conceive and have a child. Blessed is that man who takes his stand. Blessed is the man who knows what a man of God is. He shall be like a tree. A tree. I’ve got trees growing in my yard. I have to uproot and toss them away. They’re the result of a root running underground, and up it comes. I made the mistake of planting raspberry bushes.
Anybody ever made that mistake? And they have thorns. I planted elderberries. I planted red currants, and I planted blackberries, and then I made this mistake of planting raspberries. When I walk out into the yard, the raspberry says, me, me, me, me, and they’re popping up everywhere. I got one of those weed whackers. I love taking the weed whackers to my special raspberry bushes, because I didn’t plant them there. I don’t want them to go nuts like there. They’re taking over the whole yard.
When I, in the middle of the night, open the window, I can hear them growling. They’re growing at night. You can hear it. The tree that someone’s talking about represents a man of God, who’s not some little sapling that popped up and out of the middle of nowhere. He’s a tree. He’s like a tree that somebody on purpose planted. Didn’t plant that tree in a desert. Planted that tree in like a Garden of Eden, right beside a beautiful stream of water, that even in the drought, that tree will never fail. You’ve read it.
We read it, that its leaf will not wither, and its fruit will come in its season. Why? The main ingredient that it uses to survive is water, and in that water, it brings up the minerals from the underground. So a tree that’s planted by a river, by a fast-growing creek, that tree will never fall apart. The man of God is like a tree, planted on purpose, and it’ll never fail. I don’t have a river running through my backyard. I don’t even have a small creek. I have mosquitoes, and I have a tree. I took this picture this morning at seven o’clock.
This is a dogwood tree. Now there is a tree. There is a beautiful tree, and I’m not responsible for it. Somebody planted it long before I ever came along. Trees are a wonderful thing. You know, they change the atmosphere you’re in. You’ve gone in the meadow, and the air changes the moment you get into that shade, and it’s not just that the sun is sheltering you. It’s that those trees are issuing off beautiful vapors from its leaves. Its leaves give off fragrance.
Its leaves give off tons. I read this once, how much a major oak tree gives off per day. It’s incredible. It spills into the atmosphere just like its leaves, a healthy tree. When you get into the Beatitudes, Jesus is talking. He talks about the blessed, the blessed. He’s talking about men and women of God, the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven, the ones who are blessed. Blessed is the man who walks not, stands not, sits not.
Even in their mourning, they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, because the ungodly man is gentle. He’s not a brute. I have never raised my hand against my wife. I have never intentionally hurt her. I could not think of it for a moment. If I were to slap her across the face or do anything in a harsh way, I would suggest that hand needs to be cut off. I honor my wife, and I hold her up in history. She’s a gift to my person, and I guard her, and I preserve her.
I love her, and in this time of weakness in her life, I’m more attentive than I’ve ever been in my life. Listen, sir, I almost lost her to cancer, and when God gave her back to me, I did a dance at the altar. People were not too excited to see, David, he’s gone a little nuts. I had a reason to dance. The Lord restored her unto me and to my life and became the mother of two more wonderful children. Our little boy was about seven years of age, and we were in the Swiss chalet, and he picked up a harmless butter knife, and he turned to his sister, and he put it near her jugular vein. That’s an innocent little thing, right? Boys will be boys. Not in my book.
I said to him, downstairs. We’re in a chalet. The washroom is down there. I followed him down to the foot of the stairs. I don’t know if he knew what was coming. I literally pinned him against a wall, grabbed ahold of his little jacket, and his feet were no longer touching the floor. I said, that was a knife you held to your sister’s throat. You never do anything toward any girl, any woman, and you’ll suffer for it. Do you understand me?
He couldn’t talk. He was pretty near gagging. I’m strong on this. I was on a school bus, 17 years of age, and there was a guy back behind me. He would have been 17, 18, maybe even 19, and he’s saying the ugliest things about a little lady. Now, this gal was always on our bus. This is school time. I rode school bus. We lived out in the country, and he’s saying terrible things.
I don’t even use, I don’t even mention the words, and he had, to my knowledge, he had no reason to accuse her of such filthy rot. I turned to look at him, and he took a bite of an apple, and he spit it into the back of her blonde hair. The next stop was the stop that he would get off. I had a pile of books for homework. I gave them to my brother. I said, take these home. I’m about three miles from home. Before that guy got off the bus, I was off the bus waiting for him. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but when I was done with him, he had to go to the hospital and have reparative surgery.
I don’t think he’s hurt girls anymore. Pastor, that’s brutal. I was sort of saved in those days. Stand up and be accountable. Be a man of God. Be gentle. Not like I was on the school bus. A man of God is hungry, and he’s thirsty for righteousness, and he’ll be satisfied. He’ll be merciful.
He will receive mercy. He’ll be pure in his heart, and he sees God. He’s a peacemaker, and therefore he’s called a son of God. Are you a peacemaker? I hope so. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for there is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you when people insult you. Why do they insult you? Because you make them jealous.
They hate it when you don’t reprise. They hate it when you don’t speak back. They hate it when you act like a man of God, and so they’re going to insult you. They’re going to persecute you. They’re going to falsely say unkind things against you. Jesus said, they’ll do that because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great. They persecuted me just like that. Genesis 26 12.
Isaac planted crops in that land, the promised land, and the same year he reaped a hundred times what he had sowed in the ground. God blessed him. Abraham was a man of God, and his sons followed through. I witnessed that at the funeral of Bill Sterling on Monday. Not only are his sons following God, but his grandsons and his granddaughters. I was almost moved to tears because I remembered the day that Bill got saved, and his fruit remained. That same year, he reaped a hundredfold. Why? Because God blessed him.
Blessed was the man. Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, Rejoice, highly favored one. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. The following verse says she was confused. She couldn’t believe that the angel was saying this to her. Now she didn’t know how the story was going to go on. She had an angelic visitor, and the first thing that the angel said, You are a blessed woman.
You are highly favored. In fact, she was more favored than any young woman on the planet at that time. She wasn’t just favored, she was highly favored. And we’re still talking about her today. Godly people don’t always recognize just how godly they are. I can tell you how humble I am, just look at me. A truly humble person will never declare that they’re humble. You declare, even think that you’re humble, even think about it, and your humility just went down a large percentage point. She was truly a humble young lady, probably only 14, 15 years of age.
But pastor, she was engaged to be married to Joseph. That’s how it worked in those days. Betrothed, promised, but maybe they weren’t supposed to get married for another two years, three years. It was a contract, it was established, and normally at least one year would pass since the contract had been established between the fathers. And it was nothing for a girl 14, 15 years of age to be promised. He was a young lady that had no idea that she was highly favored, no idea that God was drilling down with laser focus on her. She was truly blessed. Blessed are they who do not walk in the way of sinners. Obviously, she didn’t hang around with all the other, some of the other, the few others who were naughty girls.
She didn’t listen to their silly stories, and she wasn’t even seen sitting with them. She was a careful young lady. You know, how can I back that up? Because of this, how could she ever expect anybody in the community to believe that she had experienced the implantation of the heavenly embryo if she was already known as one of those bad girls? She was as pure as driven snow. People who are blessed are people who do not walk, who do not stand, who do not sit. We’ll go back to that for a moment. Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly. There is a progression here.
If you walk in the counsel of the ungodly, what is the counsel of the ungodly? At times, it’s the new laws that are brought down to us by our governments. I had a lady come to me. I was a very young man, and I didn’t know how to handle a lot of social challenges in the day. I didn’t know what to do about Carolyn in our church, who was still acting out prostitution when she got upset with her new husband. She’d actually get, she’d get back at him after they had a quarrel, and it wasn’t settled. She’d go and turn a trick just to get him upset. She was still walking away.
She’s still trying to find her way. I didn’t know how to deal with that. I didn’t know how to deal with a lot of stuff that was going on in the church. I just didn’t know how to deal with it. But I did preach about walking circumspectly, and a lady came and made an appointment to visit with me at the church. She came, and she told me how she was having a struggle with her marriage. And somebody said, I think it was her medical doctor said, I don’t know how he would have even been aware of the challenges that she had. And so he said, I want you to go and see this psychologist, wrote a name on. This happened in London, and the psychologist had some kind of a relationship with Western University in London. She came to see me because she said, Pastor, I want to know what your thoughts are.
I said, I’m a young married man. I shouldn’t be giving advice for anything. Well, she said the psychologist said that I needed to watch some blue movies, some pornographic stuff, and that would help me to develop in my relationship with my husband. That’s the counsel of the ungodly. Our children now are being counseled in the schools. They’re being counseled into immorality. They’re being taught things that I dare not even mention from this pulpit. I’m too embarrassed. They’re being taught to do things that are wicked.
And they’re being told it’s okay. We’ve got to teach our children, our grandchildren how to walk in the way of the Lord because they’re being brainwashed by by people who don’t have moral compass anymore. I uphold and I bless and I would support anyone who’d say, I’m not sending my children to the public school. I don’t trust what’s going on there. I’m with you. I’m with you. The counsel of the ungodly is all around us. If you start to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, you’re walking where you ought not to walk. And there’s another thing that’ll happen.
If you start to walk where you ought not to walk, think about this. I’m not even mentioning about all of this stuff, but you think about if you start to walk where you ought not to walk, you’re going to get comfortable standing where you should not have ever been walking. You never should have walked there. You never should have been sitting with those wonderful ladies. This picture I’m going to give you right now is very strong on television. I don’t watch television anymore. I’m sick of it. But I would see things where these women would get together, often of high society, and they were talking about what would it be like to have an affair. This kind of thing happens with getting together and with men getting together.
That’s the counsel of the ungodly. So you should not even walk with those people. You should never listen to what they’re saying. Because when you walk there, you’re going to get comfortable and you’ll find yourself intrigued enough to stand there and stare at it for a while, and you’ll end up sitting there. I won’t mention names, but we had a wonderful couple from this part of the country move into the city of London, and the husband and wife, newlyweds, knew me from Brayside Youth Camp, a church that they go to. They came to our church. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. Eventually, I left that church because I felt called to go elsewhere, and I was not aware of the day of the year, whatever, that they left that community and they moved to another city, which I shall not name. I don’t want you to catch on because somebody here could catch on.
And then I was invited by a church that I had found out that they were attending. I was invited by that church to go to that city and do a marriage encounter weekend. I used to do this early on before I got really knee-deep into missions. I had to work somehow. I had to get my shingle out there. So I would go and I would do marriage encounter weekends, and I actually made recordings of all my teachings and sold them and did all that stuff. So I went to this city, and when I got there, the first thing I did was I asked the pastor, is so-and-so coming? Are they going to come? Because I know they come to your church.
And he said, oh, you haven’t heard. That couple, it turns out, got become very special friends with another couple of the church. Started going on weekends together or little vacations together, spent evenings together. And what was happening when that was going on is the lady of this partner started looking at the man of that partner, and that broke up their marriage. That is two Christian homes. The counsel of the ungodly is a walk we got to stay away from because we’ll end up standing there, and surely we’d end up sitting there. Is this a happy message, pastor? It’s really a happy message because this man who’s blessed delights in the word of God, says delights in the law of the Lord. And, you know, years ago I struggled with that thinking, why does it say law?
I don’t want to believe that this book is just full of laws. When this was spoken and put into writing, that’s all they had at that time was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They had the law. That was their sum total. And by the way, the average synagogue all over the world today are celebrating something out of either Genesis or Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. They’re still focused on the law, the law, the law. You know the Isaiah 53 is never read in a synagogue, never, because they don’t know what to do with it. You think about that. But these, in this hour, in this hour, the man who’s blessed of God loves the law of the Lord, and he was taught as a little child in the synagogue by the teacher that the word of the Lord, the law of the Lord, is sweet to taste.
It’s like the honey dipped in a finger and put onto your mouth. I know that I taught this some time ago as I researched and found out about the teaching of children in the old synagogue that the teacher would have a slate for the child to write on, you know, a little chalk slate. And on every chalk slate, that teacher would come along with a stick and dip it in honey and smear that honey on the slate. And at the same time, then all at once, the children just put the slate down, just wait, I’m putting the honey there. And then the teacher would quote the verse, your word is like honey. And the teacher would say, you’re going to be writing the precepts, the words of the law on that slate. I want you to taste it even now. The children would lick the honey off the slate. They were learning by that little process to honor the law, the word of God.
And the blessed man loves the word. And yesterday morning in that men’s meeting, the challenge I put out there is about men because it was just men. I said, do we recognize the weaknesses that are in our life? And I said, sir, are you opening this book every day? Are you reading the word of God? Because if you’re not, you’re weak. This is where your strength comes from. You’re already weak. I didn’t go into this, but I could have said, you’re walking in the counsel of the ungodly.
Where are you getting your, where are you getting your, your moral compass from? This is your moral compass. And when you close this book, you are opening the compass and you are listening. You’re observing something else and it’s going to mess up with your soul. He delights in the law of the Lord. And in that word, in those thoughts, he meditates day and night. It can happen that in the evening, or maybe it’s in the morning, whenever you spend some time in the word of God, you’ll read a choice, little something that rivets to you. Suddenly that thing that’s been in that, in that Bible for years, you’ve read it before, but the morning, the spirit of God quickens that word to you. And all day long, you are thinking about that little truth that the Lord by his spirit made real to you.
That’s meditation. Meditation is reading something in the word and then visualizing it and allowing the Holy Spirit to embellish it and enlarge it for you to touch it, for you to feel it, for you to gain in your spiritual understanding, where he’s whispering to you, this is the way, walk in it. He meditates. The man who’s blessed is filling his mind with beautiful truths that will excite you, guide you, and help you along the way. He meditates day and night. And what’s he going to be like? He’s going to be like a tree planted by the water. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. This would be for another message, but let me just tell you, I wrote a curriculum for a big church, a Baptist church in Florida.
I wrote a curriculum for them and I based it on someone. A whole curriculum for probably three months of teaching. I wrote it for the adults and then the youth and right down. And one of the things that I taught through that, which I wrote for that church was this, a tree planted by the rivers of water. It’s known that trees pull the water out of the ground and thereby they grow because there’s nutrition down in that ground and the water they need. They need the water. Then that water courses up through the branches and it’s an amazing thing. There’s scientific discovery. What draws that water?
We call it sap, whatever. It goes up into the leaves and then the leaves give off that water into the atmosphere. And if we had some way to trace where that humidity goes off the leaves, it goes up into the atmosphere and it starts colliding with other molecular mist, raindrops, and it keeps on gathering and gathering. And somebody says, a little bit of rush of cool air. It’s raining somewhere. And you look up, sure enough, and the cloud bursts and that water comes descending on you that came up out of that tree. So the water that was in the river has now been sucked up into the tree. The tree has grown stronger. The leaves are sending that humidity up into the air.
It gathers up into clouds and falls on you. Here’s the picture that I get. The man of God, planted like a tree by the water, is drawing up the minerals that are found in this book. He grows stronger and stronger. And not unlike about a half an hour ago, he comes with the saints of God. And as he stands in the house of the Lord, and the instrument people lead us in celebration and praise and glory. And then have you ever noticed, we start off celebrating and singing happy songs. A tambourine would work, drums would work, singing and celebrating. But then the temple, by design, we work this out, by design the temple slows down until we’re singing more worshipful songs.
We won’t go from praise to worship. And now we’re not thanking God for what he did, but we’re praising God and we’re worshiping him for who he is. And we’re sending up that which we got out of the book. Listen, worship, worship is this book that’s been digested in your heart. It’s these words offered up back onto God. The more you get into the word, the more deep and special and promising and effectual be your word and praise. And as you worship the Lord, listen, a congregation this morning, oh, Erica, think about, as we worship today and we sang forth the beauty of the Lord and we sang in his time, in his time, do you know what happens? I believe that our praise and our worship ascends up before God and it accumulates and suddenly there’s a blessing because it begins to rain from heaven. What’s coming down from heaven?
That which you sent forth to him. Praise and worship returns. So that tree that gathers its strength by this river, that water goes up and it gathers in the clouds and it rains in a place that there’s been a drought. Every time the drought has been broken, the water, where did it come from? It came from trees, maybe a thousand miles away. One more thing. I got to stop. But, but, but, but, but I, I did a study on the redwoods of California trees, forest. Do you know what I discovered me?
Hello, me. Hello, me. Oh me. Oh my. Here’s what I discovered about trees, especially the big redwoods and other massive trees like that. I had no idea. A tree is standing over here and another tree is standing over here. This guy pulls up some moisture from the ground. This tree over here is a little guy.
He’s just struggling to get along. This tree through his root system will support that tree. Did you know that their roots will start to come together? What I read is the trees in California that are strong, supporting other trees as far away as a thousand miles. When we, when we support a man like who was here last Sunday, you give a thousand dollars. That was a spontaneous offering. God bless you. A spontaneous, you didn’t know I was going to say, let’s give an offering. You gave a thousand dollars when we support him.
We’re causing it to rain in Moldova. We’re causing it to rain elsewhere. Blessed is a man. The woman who walk with God are careful. They’re stepping careful of their standing, very careful where they sit. They meditate upon the word of the Lord day and night, and then they lift up their hands in the holy place. And the word that came to them through the rooting process now changes the meadow that that tree is growing in and the ungodly move into that meadow. People have come into this church and said, I felt something from the moment I walked through the door. Is that your testimony post?
He waved his hand. This is a meadow. All these trees come bless the Lord. All your servants of the Lord who stand by night in the house of the Lord, lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the Lord and bless the Lord. And somebody comes into your midst and they say, Whoa, Whoa. Wow. I went to that church and I sensed a presence in that place. You’ve felt that before. Haven’t you?
You sense his presence. That is the fragrance of praise and worship. Because when we live a life of praise and worship, we don’t wait for Sunday morning to worship. We worship day and night. Hallelujah. Praise God. Hallelujah. We worship around the clock and we create a fragrance around us. And what we put up into the air goes up into the holy place and that descends upon us in spiritual reign.
We are a blessed people. So before we leave this house, we should take a moment. Please don’t lose sight of this. We will take a moment to bless each other. And at the conclusion of my funeral for Bill Sterling, my heart went out to Carol. How long have I known Carol? Yeah, 65 years. She’s out there. She’s a mourner.
I stepped down from my podium sort of and came over and I said, Carol, there’s a word in scriptures. The Lord bless you. And I said, I won’t go into a long teaching on it. But I said, you know what it means? My prayer, Carol, for you is that God will kneel down where you are in your mourning. That’s blessing. He will kneel down where you are. He doesn’t call you up. He comes down, down from his glory, ever living story.
The son of God who came and Jesus was his name. My prayer, Carol, is that he will kneel down and he will hold you as you go home tonight to an empty house, to an empty bed. And you said tomorrow morning and you said alone and Bill isn’t there. My prayer is that God will come and sit beside you and you will sense he’s there. I said, my prayer, Carol, is that he will hold you until this storm of mourning begins to dissipate. God is going to help you. I’m so glad that we have those truths and those thoughts that we can share. Take what you hear in the house of the Lord and let it just little bits and pieces, little drips here and there. Our walk with God in the commercial place can make a difference.
But it begins here. Heavenly Father, I thank you this morning for the word. It’s precious. Your word is divine and it leaves nothing out. It even talks us about what not to do. So, Heavenly Father, thank you for teaching us out of your word and help us to be faithful.
Help us to be faithful.
Help our men to be men of God in every way, in every respect.
And help our women to be princesses of heaven, to exude the glory and the beauty and the nature of Jesus in word and in deed and decorum.
I ask these things in Jesus’ name.
And everybody said,
