The Meditations of the Blessed Man - December 14, 2025

Today I'm gonna just be introducing a very important topic. So if we can all rise, I'll read from Psalm 1, 1 through 6. Psalm 1, 1 through 6, and this is the reading of God's word, and it should be very familiar to you. But may it bless us this morning. It reads, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and in his law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. And in whatever he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so. They are like chaff, which the wind drives away.

Therefore, the wicked will not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Let's pray together. Father, truly, this morning we ask you to speak for your servants are indeed listening. And as we wrap up this year, just thinking through the things that we ought to be grateful for, and the things that we want to adjust and modify to serve you better.

So as we meditate on your word, I pray that you would really stir in all of our hearts a great zeal to see your glory be established. May we all seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, because we know that you are a God who gives us even more than all these things. And so we pray for just ears to listen well and bless your saints as we eat of your food this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Go ahead and be seated. I'm sure you've heard the phrase count your blessings. Right? And we're gonna learn how to count our blessings together today. But first, we have to think together. What does it mean for you and for me to be blessed by God? What exactly is a blessing? And when you hear, oh God has blessed the person, what are the things that come to your mind?

How closely is the idea of God's blessing tied to favorable circumstances and prosperity? Does it mean becoming wealthy? Becoming healthy and strong, being influential, being celebrated and recognized. What does it mean to be blessed by God? And this is a very important question. I'm gonna throw out some names of people, and just take a moment to think with me. Would you consider these people to have the blessings of God? The richest person in America for the fourth year in a row is who? Elon Musk. He has a net worth of over 400 billion dollars. Has he been blessed by God? The title of America's strongest man for the last two years has been given to Lucas Hatton. How physically strong is this man?

He currently has the world record for the trap bar deadlift at 1,134 pounds. This man literally can lift more than half a ton. The most famous person and most arguably the power more most powerful person in America or in the world is Donald Trump. He is the president of the United States. Has he been blessed by God with his presidency? Is Donald Trump a blessed man? Currently, the oldest person in the world is living in the UK. Her name is Ethel Caterham, and she was born in August of 1909. So she is currently 116 years old. She caught COVID at 110, and she survived. She remains in relatively good health today.

Is she blessed? Venezuela's Marina Corina Machado just received the Nobel Prize in 2025 for her, and I quote, tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy, end quote. Is she a blessed lady? She is being used by God, but is she blessed? We have the privilege of having Shohei Otani on the Dodgers, our local team, who people are saying he could be the greatest baseball player of all time. He's loved by people all over the world. There are very few people who dislike this generational athlete. Has he been blessed by God? How about Joni Erickson Tata? You may not have heard of her, you may have heard of her.

She is an author of over 40 books, a radio host, a Christian speaker, and the founder of Joni and Friends, a Christian organization that ministers to people with disabilities. And she is very well known, very well loved. She is 76 years old, and she is a quadriplegic. In 1967, she dove headfirst into the shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay. She fractured her vertebrae and has been paralyzed from shoulders down for almost 60 years.

And at present, Pastor Wang Yi of Early Reign Church Covenant Church in Chengdu, China is in prison. He's been in prison since 2019, having been accused and convicted of inciting a subversion of state power. Is he blessed by God? So half trillionaire, Elon Musk, strongman Lucas Hatton, President Donald Trump, 116-year-old Ethel Caterham, Nobel Prize winner Marina Cochina Machado, two-time World Series champion, Shohei Otani, longtime quadriplegic Joni Erickson Tata, convicted felon, Pastor Wang Yi. Out of all of them, which of these is blessed by God? Who has the most blessings to count? I am sure you have prayed. Lord, please bless me. Lord, please bless so-and-so, my son, my daughter, my friend, at some point in your life.

Which of these sorts of blessed people that I just listed off is the closest to what you mean when you pray a prayer of blessing over yourself and four other people? What do you mean when you ask for God to bless? On a test, you may be able to give a good, sound, correct theological answer, but is that theological answer the same as your practical actual answer? What we consider in the recesses of our hearts to be a blessed life or a cursed life will reveal a lot about our theology. And the gap between our theological answer and our actual honest answer will give you insight into whether you are praying and living by faith or you're living by superstition and wishful thinking. So, important question.

What does it mean to be blessed by God? Do you really want to be blessed by God in the way that he desires to bless you? And if it's yes, how do you access those blessings? The Bible is a book of God's blessings. The Psalms is a book celebrating those blessings. It's a very emotional book. And the Psalms contain many truths about God as well as many accounts of the full range of human emotion as we experience and respond to God's blessings. Right? And we're going to be looking at Psalm 1 today. Psalm 1 serves as the opener, the introduction to the Psalms. Again, which is a book of the Bible that contains praises and prayers to God. Okay, in the beginning, Psalm 1 anchors those prayers and the praises of the truly blessed man firmly on the word of God.

Okay, and so like many of the psalms, Psalm 1 is written in what we call a chiastic structure. A key spelled C H I is the Greek equivalent to the letter X. Okay. And look, think of the shape of the X. A chiastic structure is where there are parallels from the beginning and in the ending, the parallel from the second point to the second to last section, and then so on and so forth. Okay, so it's a literary tool used by the biblical writers, usually in the Old Testament, and the emphasis and the highlight of every chiasm is at the middle, at the joint, the juncture. In English, our main point when we write, or even in Korean, it's in the introduction sentence or at the end. But in the chiasm, the main idea, the point is right in the middle.

So I'm gonna give make it a little easier for eyes to track. So here's Psalm 1 again. Okay, the thought flow of Psalm 1 is like this. A B C B A. Okay, with the A thoughts running parallel to each other, the B thoughts running parallel to each other. Nodger if you see that. Okay. The A stanzas, okay, give descriptions of the standing before God of the blessed man, the standing before God of the wicked man. Okay. Then the B stanzas liken all people to be like trees. Either trees that are beautiful, fruitful, and pleasing to the eye, or trees that are cut down, used for the fire and then turned ashy. Trees are useful for both the building of homes as well as for firewood, right? Because everything has a purpose.

Everything is useful to God. Both the good and the evil, Proverbs 16, 4, are useful to God. So the A stanzas, give us the standing of the righteous and the wicked. The B stanzas, detail for us the usefulness of the righteous and the wicked before God. And the main point of Psalm 1 is right there in the middle at C. Okay, in the C stanza, you get the definition and the description of what God bless you. Looks like biblically.

And in it, it's the visual of what the favor of God looks like on a person's life. And there in the middle of verse 3, we not only get the point of Psalm 1, we get the entire book, all 150 chapters of Psalms emphasized with this one verse. It's basically the title page, the title point introducing man to how he is to count his blessings. Okay? So, verse 3 is very important. The central theme of Psalm 1 and the introductory to all the Psalms is in verse 3, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. And whatever he does proper uh he prospers. There you have the definition of what God means for a man to be blessed. Okay. A blessed person is one who honor who bears God honoring fruit.

A blessed person is one who remains whole and healthy and unwithered in any and every circumstance. And the blessed person is one who prospers. Then you might like that point. You're like, ooh, tell me more about the prosperity, right? And I'm going to just define what biblical prosperity is in a little bit, but being blessed by God by the Bible's definition means to be fruitful, unshaken, and prosperous. How blessed is the fruitful, prosperous, unshaken man. Okay. So today I'm going to be walking this through what biblical blessedness is. And getting whatever your heart desires and having all of your whims, dreams come true does not mean blessing. Everything going well for a person in this life does not mean that God is pleased with the person.

Comfort, success, and wealth do not necessarily equate to being blessed by God. Amen. If anything, those things may be proof of the very opposite. Think about this. Comfort, success, and wealth may be evidence that you are cursed. Romans 1. Pay attention, so you know that I'm not getting this from my own bias. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Therefore, God gave them over in their lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For this reason, God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their females, exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

Verse 28, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind to do those things which are not proper, having been filled with all unrighteousness. You want this world? Here, have it.

You want this cursed world to be your reward? Here, take it.

Whatever is not proper, fine. You do whatever you want.

And man, in his exchange of the truth of God for the lies of the world, gladly embraces those things, regards them as blessings from God. So for the unbeliever, comfort, success, wealth, and pleasure may actually be instruments of judgment that cause them never to seek God, that cause them to believe themselves to be God. So here are a very few important questions for the Christian. How do we distinguish between a blessing and a curse? How do we biblically discern how to count our blessings? And if we truly want to be blessed of God, how do we direct the trajectory of our lives towards God's true blessings? What do we do day to day to live blessed lives?

And I'm sure you're interested, right? So I'm gonna focus today's sermon mostly on Psalm 1, 1 to 2. And through it, I'm also going to introduce to you our church's vision and theme for 2026. So here's the outline for today's sermon, the rest of today's sermon. First, we're going to briefly look at what the wicked delight in. The wicked man's delight. Second, we're going to see what the psalmist says is the blessed man's delight. And third, in the event you want to be blessed by God, more and more, we're going to be look at how to best access those blessings. Okay? So let's look at Psalm 1 together. It reads, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

When we think of cursed and wicked men, we think of maybe people who have committed horrible crimes on other people. Right. But in Psalm 1 1, the description of the cursed wicked man is given more in regard to his trajectory than in regard to his deeds. The wicked man is described more in his trajectory than to his deeds. So the entire psalm is a description. Okay? There's no instructions in here. It's all a description. And the description of the wicked man's observable trajectory starts with movement. There is fluidity to it. There is a walking. And then somehow that walking stops. And then there's a static standing. The wicked man has paused there in his way. He doesn't just then remain standing there.

There is a seat that is taken. There is a residence that has been taken. He is abiding in his sins. And from that hardened place of cursedness, the wicked man then becomes a scoffer, an accuser, and then a justifier of his sins. He starts calling good evil and evil good. Isaiah 5, 20. The cursed man is self-righteous, and in his hardened and seated arrogance, he scoffs. So there's a trajectory and then a decision and then a commitment. And the wicked man's commitment is to godlessness.

He scoffs at those who are not godless. And verse 1 tells us that the blessed man is the one who walks and then decides and then commits to the very opposite. You guys see that? So in Psalm 1, we have we have two categories of people, and there are only two: the blessed and the cursed. The blessed is synonymous to righteous, the cursed is synonymous to wicked. The blessed may come across a lot of money. The cursed may come across a lot of money. The blessed may marry well.

So the cursed wicked man is discernible by the trajectory of his life, by where he is eventually seated. The book of Jeremiah gives us additional insight into what and how God defines wickedness. And again, it's not in his deeds, it's in his posture. Wickedness is posture, evidenced by deeds. Okay? Jeremiah 17, 5 to 6, thus says Yahweh, cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from Yahweh, he will be like a juniper in the desert, and he will not see when prosperity comes, but will dwell in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt which is not inhabited. There are three identifiable markers for the wicked cursed man that's given here. A wicked man is one, somebody who ultimately trusts in mankind.

What does that mean? He trusts in man's brilliance, man's creativity, man's potential, man's science. The wicked man is the man who believes that you can do whatever you put your mind to. He believes that success comes from hard work and grit. So, second, he trusts in his strength. He trusts in the strength of his flesh. And ultimately, the wicked cursed man is somebody who has no heart for God. He may be at church, but he has no heart for God. His heart turns away from Yahweh. So when true prosperity comes, he misses out completely on the blessings of God. That's Jeremiah. And the result of his life is fruitlessness.

Okay.

And for God to love God and to serve God, but that wicked man fails in living out that purpose. And what is he hear? Throw out that worthless slave. No value except to be burned. Throw out that worthless slave into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So Psalm 1 describes the wicked as like chaff. Right? The psalmist says that the wicked will fall and be condemned at the judgment, and that's Psalm 1, and they will perish. Why? Because they exchange the truth of God for a lie, loved and served created things rather than the creator, Romans 1.25. So a person can make a lot of money, attrieve great success, gain a ton of fame, keep his body physically strong and healthy, and then perish in his wicked pursuits.

Think about this. Let's say Elon Musk is not a Christian. He has no blessings on his life. He may have some of God's common grace demonstrated differently than you. Zero blessings.

Right? I used to play Monopoly by myself all the time. I won all the time. And I love the game because the goal is to own everything. And you can win in the game of Monopoly, but when the game ends, reality sets, prospering in a board game does not equate to prospering in life. Right? Nobody says, while they're winning in Monopoly, I've been so blessed that the dice have been rolling so well. I've been so blessed with green houses, red hotels. I've been so blessed. Look at all my money. Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. Vodhi Baccham once preached, hell will be filled with people who didn't smoke, who didn't cuss, and may have even been baptized. Why? Because none of those things make someone a Christian.

That's what he said. The wicked man, even if he doesn't drink, if he doesn't cuss, he doesn't cheat, is still an object of wrath because of his posture against God. And even if he wins the monopoly game, reality will set, none of that matters. Are you guys following the illustration? So what makes a even a religious person who is wicked, a religious person who is wicked, they may even serve as pastors and missionaries and elders, but a religious person that's wicked is ultimately someone who has a desire to use God rather than to be useful to God. So the wicked elder, the wicked pastor, the wicked preacher, missionary, his delight is in himself. The wicked man's pursuits are all for himself.

They are for his own glory and not for the glory of the one for whom he has been created. So verse two gives us then the blessed man's pursuits and then the blessed man's like delights. Okay? And the blessed man's delight is the very opposite of what we see in the wicked. Can you, Alice, can you click please? Can you click the next one? Blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh, whose trust is Yahweh. Psalm 1, 2 to 3. His delight is in the law of Yahweh. And in his law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. And again, that's the main point, right? So this blessed man's delight is in hearing God's voice, studying God's truths, knowing God's heart.

The blessed man exalts in his purpose that he has been created by God and for God to love God and to serve God. So the blessed man just meditates on God's word and God's laws and God's statutes day and night.

As he gets to know his God for whom he has been created, that man is truly blessed. Because he delights in the law of the Lord. And the key word here is delight. You can read the Bible again and again and again and cover to cover and still not delight in it. You can read the Bible as a chore, as an assignment, as a duty, as a textbook. But the delighted in God's word is an excited man because oh, I hear God, his delight is not only in knowing a lot about God's he delights in God Himself, his pursuit is in God and not just God's gifts.

The blessing in knowing the creator rather than in possessing the things that have been created. That's the blessed man. And the blessed man is unflappable, he's unshakable, his joy is unwavering, no matter what the circumstance. Amen. He is like a tree planted by streams of water in constant absorption and drink of living water. And what happens when a man delights in God's word? The psalmist says three things, describes lists, three things. And again, these descriptions, they're descriptions, right? They're not prescriptions. There's nothing that you're being told to do here. It's just describing the blessed man. First, this truly blessed man, he yields fruit. The fruit he is bearing is righteousness.

And that righteousness brings joy and delight to God. God smiles on this man's righteousness. This man's life is pleasing to God. Think Job. Right? But think Job. He loved Job. God loved, delighted in Job. And as a result, Satan had his way. God is proud of this blessed man. And while he's living among people, this blessed man turns heads. This man's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control causes other people to gaze on his life and wonder why he is this way. Maybe he had good parents. Why is this guy like this? And no matter what earthly circumstance befalls him, the blessed man does not care.

As long as God is magnified, as long as glorified. If God gives him good health, praise God. May God be glorified in my body. If God makes him a quadriplegic, praise God. May God be glorified in and through this wheelchair. If God makes this man's business thrive, man, may God be made known through my wealth. May his kingdom be built from all of this extra that I have prospered. If a God, if God blesses a man by shutting down his business, may God be magnified in my trust, and may he prove himself faithful to the command, give us our this day our daily bread. Because if I have a wealth of treasure, I don't need that prayer. May God show himself to be faithful, so that others may see me rejoicing in my poverty and give you glory, God.

The blessed man is content in any and every circumstance and desires only that the God for whom he has been created is glorified, whether by plenty or in want. And the people around him glorify God because of him. Wow, your God must be good. And the blessed man gains favor in the sight of both God and man. Can you click this slide, Alex? Do not let loving kindness in truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good insight in the eyes of God and man. The blessed man's friends and family glorify God because of him. Second, next slide. This blessed man's leaf does not wither.

What does that mean? He is unflappable and he is always whole. He is always healthy. The sun may blaze, thorns may grow, worms may come and try to nibble. But the blessed man's leaf is perpetually always green. He has a hedge of protection from God. Protection from God not from circumstance, but protection from ever wilting because of that circumstance. You guys tracking that? The blessed man counts as joy every trial that comes into his life, James 1 2. A person who does not delight in God's word wilts when hard circumstances come. Circumstances do not change people as much as they reveal the depths of their roots.

The cursed man's leaf withers because the cursed man's roots are shallow. The blessed man is protected by God from sin, from deception, and ultimately from condemnation. And that theme is what Psalm 119 is about. All hundred and seventy six verses.

Next slide, please.

With all my heart I have sought you, do not let me stray from your commands. And he says, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. God's word preserves, protects, directs, guards, and guides. And God's word keeps the blessed man's leaf green under any and every circumstance. When you sit around a campfire, do you gather green leaves for the fire? No. Green leaves can be singed, but they are not easily burned. Right. Third, next one. If I just do this, just click it for me. The blessed man's delight in God's word brings prosperity and in success in whatever he does in ministry in ministry.

Remember, the Christian's hope is in heaven and in glory with the Lord. Amen. Oh, it's not. A Christian's hope and his glory is with the Lord in heaven. There is nothing in this world that satisfies. There's nothing in this world worth pursuing. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. That's the point of Ecclesiastes. If you are on a cruise liner, that is sinking. Who cares if you have a two hundred inch TV in your room? Who cares if you have an amazing view? Who cares if the world's best stake is delivered to your room every day on that cruise liner? It is sinking. The goal for you and for your family on a sinking ship would be escape, not enjoyment. Success and prosperity on a sinking ship would be escape and survival.

True success would be in you getting as many people to escape and survive with you. So the Christian understands that he has been created by God and for God to love God and to serve God and by getting souls saved and equipped for the saving and equipping of even more souls. The in whatever he prospers, Psalm 1.3, is in the saving of souls. And it's in the power of God-pleasing ministry and not in the favorableness of his earthly circumstance. God has never promised the saint a wonderful and easy life in this cursed world. Nod your heads if you understand that.

So while we are on earth, prosperity is in the storing up treasures for ourselves in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy thieves, do not come in and break and steal, right? Matthew 6.19. The blessed man's heart is in heaven, and his investments are in the eternal.

He meditates on it day and night, and he thrives.

Why? All scripture is God breathe, and it is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, so that the man may be equipped for every good work, thoroughly equipped for every good work. The cursed man is the one who trusts in mankind, who makes flesh his strength, whose heart is away from Yahweh. To the cursed man, the promise of eternity is foolish. Right? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. I'm gonna YOLO. I only live once. Let me enjoy my life, right? That's the cursed man. So for the cursed man, this passage is nonsense. The cursed man wants wisdom and skill and strategy to access more earthly stuff. He does not care to be equipped for truly good and blessed and profitable work.

For the man whose hope is fixed on this world, church is a waste of time. And there's nothing that worship and Bible study can do for him, even if he's faithful to coming to church. Pastor Adrian Rogers once described so many people in the church read the Bible like it's a recipe book, and they never enjoy the meal. Is that you? I am trusting that you are here at Beacon because you want to prosper spiritually, and because you want to hear the voice of God, and because you want to be useful to your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I believe you are here because you want to be able to count real and actual blessings. So for those who truly desire to be blessed by God, I want to take our attention back to verses 1 and 2.

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and in his law he meditates day and night. I am praying that we grow in our delight in God by growing in our delight in his word. Amen. And in some ways, the word of God is an acquired taste that has to be trained up a little bit. But the more we consume it, the more we want to consume it. And here's the thing: you cannot delight in something you are not familiar with. Right? So we do need to read it and study it. We do need to regularly consume and study it daily. How often should you eat food? Yeah, a few times a day.

Every single one of us knows that one meal a week, even if that meal is at a buffet, actually will do long-term damage. Right? Do you understand that? One meal a week, even if it's at a buffet, will kill you. Because it'll harden your heart. If you're not doing well, if you're not thinking well, it's likely because you're spiritually malnourished. You need a daily intake of food. If you look at my body, you know that I don't starve. Right. Oh, he eats pretty good, is what you'll think. When I look at your posture and your attitude, I can tell. He's well fed.

All he hears every week is just the sermon. So in 2026, we're gonna try to provide some intervention and some help. And we're gonna do this together. Okay. I'll point to you. Don't flip it before we uh get there. Um I'm gonna email the instructions and sign-ups for this, but we're gonna have two tracks of accountability. We're gonna try to have 2026 a year where we really build strong habits of Bible intake. Amen? Sound good? Okay. The first one, there's gonna be one track where you read through the whole Bible in 2026. And that's about 15 minutes a day. But the problem with that is if you have a bad week or if you get sick and then you have to catch up, it's like an hour. But still, some people want to do that.

And there are several plans available. There's a chronological plan that grows through the Bible chronologically, like Genesis 1 to 11, then Job. Or let's say when you get to 2 Kings, then you'll also read Isaiah and Micah. Okay, so it skips, but it follows a timeline. There's another plan that's called a thematic plan. So in the thematic plan, it skips around according to theme. So when we get to Christmas season, we're gonna actually read Luke and look at all the prophecies of the baby Jesus. So it does skip around. So the first reading of that thematic plan is Genesis 1 and 2, Psalm 8. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him, right? Um, and then Hebrews 1.

So it skips around. That way you're not stuck with the Levites in Leviticus in the wilderness wanderings for months. All right. So there are several plans you can choose from. I will not assign one to you, but if you want to partake, you will choose one and you will work on reading through that plan, but will assign you people that you will do it to get.

Okay. Um that's less than one chapter a day. Whereas the whole Bible plan is four to five chapters a day, so it's one chapter a day. So the New Testament plan actually is way more manageable. And so, regardless of the plan that you choose, uh, if you are willing to partake, will match you up with people so you can meet once a month, whether on in person or online, to share about what you've been reading. Reading is the means. And what I'm hoping for is that we're not skimming, that we're actually reading. Because reading without retention is a waste of time. Amen. Because if you spend an hour reading but don't remember anything, that's no good for you. Licking food, tasting food is not the same thing as swallowing and digesting.

So licking food and tasting food will do nothing for you, just like checking the box. Oh, I read these chapters today is gonna do nothing for you. What you wanna focus on is the meditation of the word of God that leads to delight. Right? It doesn't not say, Blessed is the man who, but his delight is in the reading of the no, it's not. It's a meditation, right? But you can't meditate without memorization. Do you guys realize this? Eve misquoted the command of God, and therefore all humanity fell. God also said, Don't touch it. He never said don't touch it. So memorization always leads to meditation. So as a whole church, we will be memorizing 2 Thessalonians, a whole book of the Bible together.

But it's only 47 verses, three chapters. So January to April, we'll focus on memorizing chapter one. Titus already finished it. The 10 year old? Yeah. Well, you might be thinking, oh, he has a young brain. No, he just worked hard at it, right? He's motivated to do it with that. So January to April, we'll memorize chapter one, and we'll have a party where we recite it to each other, and then we feed each other pizza. May to August, we do chapter two, and then September to December, chapter three. And that is really slow because there's 52 weeks in the year, and you're only memorizing one verse a week or less than one verse a week.

But why are we doing that? So that we are studying 2 Thessalonians. When you memorize it and study it, you don't forget. And then it's living and active in your mind. And the goal is not reading or studying or even memorizing the goal is delighting in God through delighting in his word. Amen. I want to share with you a little bit of background. I was a mess all throughout my childhood. I was an absolute mess. My father divorced twice before I was five, and it derailed his life. I went to 12 elementary schools. And I was very angry, I was very insecure. I was wild and reckless. Because hurt people hurt people, right? For the by the grace of God, my father married who I consider my mom. I don't know my biological mother when I was 12.

And I got saved at 15, got called into ministry in college, but I was still very, very emotionally unstable, insecure, and actually even abusive. And because of many failed relationships, both romantically, both even in the church, I was like, something has to change. So I decided, Lord, I can't control this. My mind is all over the place. I can't control this. I'm gonna just memorize verses to hedge in my thoughts a little bit on patience, on love, on kindness and selflessness. And so I sat at a like a coffee bean. I sat at the same coffee bean every day for a few months, about eight hours a day, trying to get my life right. But then I realized, oh, because I want this so much, it's changing me.

And I'm good at it. So I decided to memorize through a book. Memorize Philippians. And then I started teaching it to the youth group. And they're like, your teaching is different. Because now I know the context. I'm thinking through Philippians every day for hours. Of course the sermon's gonna be different. Then I was like, you know, I'm not that familiar with the Old Testament. So I decided to start short. 21 verses in Obadiah. I memorized the whole book of Obadiah, 21 verses. And then I said, Oh, hi guys, the next book, 38 verses. I memorized that. And pretty much every day from 24 years old to 29 years old when I got married, it kind of paused a little bit when I got married. I was just delighting because I didn't delight in my bride.

I was just delighting in the word of God, and everything changed for those five years, constantly memorizing the word, having it flow through me. My preaching changed, my teaching changed, my counseling changed, I changed. Because he was constantly adjusting my thoughts. It was like nonstop spiritual chiropractic treatment. I had 34 books memorized by the time I got to seminary. A lot of it I forgot, so now I have to rememorize, and I'm still memorizing a minimum of three hours a day. Because not just because I have to as a pastor, but because I love it.

Keep all of my crazy thoughts in check. It's helping me to love people. And when I'm speaking God's word, I'm confident that this is the saith the Lord. And not just, I think John MacArthur would agree with this, or I think R.C. Sproul would agree with this. No, I don't consult commentaries often because the word is in my mind all day, every day, day and night. And interestingly enough, it's brought me a lot of favor with people. Well, first of all, because it's made me less of a jerk. The word has softened me up to make me good with people. And I'm helping them, not because I'm trying to be like, oh, poor baby. I'm giving them life, giving truth, all because all that I'm trying to do with my free time is to plunge into the word of God.

And I want you to taste and see that he is good and that his word is powerful. Same thing. And that's why I want to have 2026, the year where we really focus on growing in the word. Amen. May He bless us. May we count our blessings, not in terms of what we're gaining materially, but how we're growing spiritually. Amen. I want to close with Psalm 1. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoppers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and in his law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree, firmly planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

And whatever he does, he prospers. But the wicked are not so. They are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. But hallelujah, Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked will perish. May we be found truly blessed. Amen. Let's pray. Father, help us to understand your word. Help us to not hear it and then forget it, but help us to delight in it. Plant it deeply in our hearts and in our minds. So as the seasons and the circumstances change, we will be green and fruitful and genuinely and truly prosperous for your glory and for your reputation and our joy. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.