Yesterday morning at the church Lynn and I have been attending the pastor spoke about Psalm 1. Listening to him reminded me of one of my favorite sermons from the time I pastored our church in Illinois. I thought I'd share it here. This was the introductory message of a sermon series we did in Augusta, 2003 called, "Deep Thoughts Of A Dead Poet" in which we examined several of the Psalms. I began this message by showing a clip from the Robin Williams movie, Dead Poet's Society, in which he points to a hallway trophy case and challenges his students to "Make your lives extraordinary!"
“Make your lives extraordinary!” What does that phrase mean to you? How would you describe an extraordinary life? Do you believe that you could actually live a life on this earth that other people would call extraordinary? Do you believe that your life could actually make a positive difference in the world around you? Do you believe that it’s possible for you to live your life in such a way that long after you are gone, people will look back, remember your life, and thank God that you were here? Maybe you hear these things, and are unable to see through the cloudy darkness of a less-than-perfect past, deep emotional wounds, frequent failures and disappointments and you think to yourself, “There’s been nothing extraordinary about my life yet, why should I believe that there could be?”
You’re convinced that because you’ve failed in the past, failure is your only future. Because you’ve never before felt a direction or purpose for your life, you are doomed to years and decades of wrestles wandering. Maybe you’ve never met an extraordinary person, therefore you wouldn’t even know where to begin in making your life extraordinary, even if you wanted to and felt that it was remotely possible.
These are the questions and the thoughts that I want to open your mind with this morning as we begin this new series of messages entitled, “Deep Thoughts a Dead Poet.” As we get into this first message of our series, I want to boldly proclaim to you that you absolutely have a choice in determining whether your life will be one of extraordinary purpose, extraordinary character, and extraordinary accomplishment, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy or one marked by years and years of restless wandering through the fog of emotional distress, disappointment, and failure leaving behind either no legacy at all, or one of hurt and destruction.
Would you turn with me to Psalm 1? I can think of no better place to begin a series of messages from the Psalms than with the first one. As we get into this, let me tell you a little bit about the Psalms. The word Psalm comes from the Hebrew word, psalloo which means, “to play an instrument.” So what we have here is a set of 150 short writings that were meant to be set to music. Many of the Psalms were written by King David. Some were written by Asaph, his worship leader, others were written by various authors. Dani read this psalm for us a while ago. Let’s read it again together.
This first Psalm is really a preface psalm presenting us with what could be an outline for the entire collection of Psalms. If the entire book of Psalms were a sermon, this first Psalm could be the foundational text upon which the entire sermon is written. Everything we read in the collection of Psalms emerges out of the thoughts of this first one. It is in this psalm that we uncover the truth that we have the choice whether or not to live extraordinary lives.
Psalm 1 consists of two parts. The first part reveals to us the attributes and eventual outcome of the person who is submitted to God. And the second part shows us the attributes and eventual outcome of the person who rejects God. Now let’s make sure here that we understand these thoughts. To be submitted to God doesn’t simply mean that we believe in Him, go to church, and occasionally read our Bible. It means that our heart, mind, emotions, and every single facet of our life, including career, family, finances, and countless other things has been totally yielded to His authority and control. If we choose to retain authority and control over any single area, then in that area of life, we have rejected God.
Let’s begin our tale of two men by seeing what the psalmist has to say about the person who has chosen to submit every single element of their life to God. The first observation being, that he is blessed. The person who has submitted himself to God is blessed! The Hebrew word here literally means that this person receives from God a multiplicity of blessings. All of the blessings that God has from the beginning intended for mankind to enjoy are available to the one who is submitted to God, the most important of those being a relationship with God himself.
What is the second thing we notice about the person submitted to God? He does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. The New Living translation says it this way, “He does not follow the advice of the wicked.” This is a person whose footsteps through life are ordered by the Word of God. Where the Word of God tells him to go, he goes. Where the word of God tells him to stay away from, he stays away from.
He believes that God’s ways are greater than his own ways and he gives himself to constantly searching for and following that path. He finds his purpose in life, his destiny, and his future anchored in the divine purpose for which he was created. God told the prophet Jeremiah, “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world.”
To some of us God has said, “Before you were born I set you apart as a lab technician who would take my truth into the lab.” “Before you were born I set you apart as a teacher who would take my truth into the classroom.” “Before you were born I set you apart as a manager who would reveal my character through the way you lead.”
The next thing we need to discover about this person is that they do not stand in the way of sinners. This is a person who now finds purpose and meaning from being a part of the community of believers. He realizes that the way of sinners, people who don’t know God, is a way that leads to sorrow, emptiness, disappointment, death, and ultimately separation from God.
This person does not sit in the seat of mockers. He finds no truth in the foolish ranting of the atheist, who surrounded by the overwhelming evidence of God’s presence, proclaims that there is no God. He rejects the philosophical man-made teachings that dismiss a need for God. And he finds his spiritual security, authority, and rest anchored with Jesus Christ.
The person of God delights in and meditates on the Law of God. He does not see the laws of God as a curse, but rather, a delightful, enjoyable way of living that is full of life and freedom. He meditates upon them, thinking about them throughout the day, contemplating them as he falls asleep at night. In days of peace and prosperity he sings psalms of praise out of the Word of God and in days of calamity and terror he comforts himself with the promises of God’s Word.
The next thing the psalmist does in illustrating to us the person submitted to God is compare him to a tree planted by rivers of water which yields fruit in its season and whose leaf does not whither. Notice here that this is not a wild tree that springs up, lives, and dies unnoticed, but a tree that is chosen, planted, considered as property, cultivated, and secured from uprooting.
His life is watered and nurtured by rivers of forgiveness, rivers of grace, rivers of promise, and the river of communion with Christ that never runs dry. The proper fruit emerges at the proper times to be blessing and sustenance to others around us. The fruit is expected, and emerges naturally through being connected to Christ. His acts of kindness and demonstration of Christ to the world will have eternal consequences for both himself and for those he touched with his life.
These are the attributes of the person submitted to God. This is what he looks like, and this is how he lives. But what becomes of him? The psalmist gives us two insights into the eventual outcome of this person’s life. First, whatever he does will prosper. His desires, plans, and goals will come from the heart of God, receiving His blessing. And even in the inevitable times of failure he will prosper through growing in wisdom and understanding.
Secondly, the Lord promises to watch over him. The one submitted to God need not worry about their daily needs, because Christ assures us that we are more valuable than the sparrows of the air and the lilies of the field which he faithfully cares for. He doesn’t need to spend a restless life searching for meaning and purpose because God prepared and ordained their purpose before they were born.
I want to tell you a story about a man who submitted himself to God in a radical way. He was born to a minister of the Church of England during a time of total moral anarchy with rampant drunkenness, homelessness, vagrancy, and crime. At an early age he was ordained a minister of the Church of England, yet he struggled deeply with his own sin and the Biblical principles of grace and forgiveness. He came to America as a missionary, yet failed miserably in that work and returned to England in shame and got into a disastrous marriage that failed.
He finally came to a place of total surrender to God at a place called Aldersgate at the age of 35. He went into the streets, fields, and mines of England, passionately preaching the Gospel to everyone who would listen, sparking a great revival that would sweep the world. He organized his converts into small discipleship groups, thus forming the Methodist denomination. John Wesley died at the age of 88 and his last words were, “The best of all is that God is with us.” Leaders all across England proclaimed that “today, England has lost a great treasure.” The nation was dramatically transformed by the Methodist revival with thousands upon thousands turning away from drunkenness and adultery and being transformed.
Methodism swept the world and quickly became the largest protestant denomination in America and the church you are sitting in today traces it’s spiritual roots back to this man who’s life truly was like a tree planted by rivers of water.
What about the person who has decided to reject God? We come now to the second part of this psalm where we learn of their attributes and their fate. The first thing we need to recognize is that this person is in a state of progressing from bad to worse. To begin with, he is a man who does walk in the counsel of the wicked. His footsteps are ordered by his own selfish desires and by those around him who use him to fulfill their own selfish will.
He carelessly forgets God and doesn’t care to understand God’s purpose for his life, and as a result, he easily gives in to evil and sin when the opportunity presents itself.
Walking in the counsel of the wicked is bad, but he eventually progresses downward and becomes worse by standing in the way of sinners. Now he has become acclimated to evil. It’s become a way of life. He openly violates God’s law, without shame or conscience. He begins to scheme and plan and orchestrate opportunities to sin and take others with him.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the horrible progression continues as he sinks to a new level, the place of sitting in the seat of mockers. This man who has rejected God seats himself in a place of authority to proclaim the foolishness of God to everyone who will listen, be it in the classroom, the courtroom, the media, or the halls of congress. He looks for opportunities to discredit, humiliate, and persecute those who submit to Christ.
This is a picture of the life of a man who rejects God, but what is his fate? What becomes of him according to the psalmist’s words? First, he is compared to chaff. To understand this, you need to know a little bit about threshing wheat in ancient days. When wheat was harvested, it was brought to a threshing floor where the kernels of wheat were beaten out of the stalk. Then the threshers would use instruments to throw everything up into the air. The kernels would fall to the ground, and the rest, called chaff, would be carried away by the wind.
The chaff is intrinsically worthless, dead, without substance, and easily carried away. Any that is left is then gathered and thrown into the furnace to be burned. So we see, that in God’s eyes, the one who rejects Him is worthless, dead, without substance, and easily carried away.
Their life will have been one of restless wandering upon the earth, never finding what they truly longed for. All that they spent their life achieving will be swept away or handed over to someone else to enjoy. They will one day stand before the very God that they mocked only to hear Him say, “I never knew you, depart from me.” And they will spend a conscience eternity in torment, never to see the face of God again, forever remembering the countless opportunities they had to turn and embrace God.
I want to finish this morning with another story. This story is about a man who was born in 1844 into a family of Lutheran ministers. He was raised by his Godly mother, grandmother, older sister, and two aunts. Early in life he began to be influenced by Greek philosophy, atheism, and antirationalism. As a result, he began to believe that truth is subjective and that there really are no moral absolutes. From there, he ascended to the “seat of mockers” and began to teach that the ethic of each individual is supreme. He declared that “God is dead” and that the next evolutionary step for humanity would result in a race of “super-humans.”
At the age of 44 he collapsed in the streets of Turin, Italy and spent the next 11 years of his life irretrievably insane, under the care, once again, of his mother and sister. At the age of 55, Friedrich Nietzsche died, mentally wasted, and spiritually bankrupt. But his story doesn’t end there. He too left a legacy.
His thoughts inspired world leaders. Their names were Karl Marx, Lenin, and Mussolini. Adolph Hitler embraced Nietzsche's ideas of a super-human race and worked to bring about what he called the Aryan race in part by eliminating the Jews, whom he considered a species lower than humanity.
The social and sexual revolution of the 1960’s found it’s platform upon Nietzsche’s thoughts as college students and college professors proclaimed with one voice, “God is dead!”
His legacy continues. Communism has collapsed around the world, leaving entire nations in extreme economic, and spiritual poverty. The 60’s revolution has left us with rampant disease, legal annihilation of the unborn, and an entire generation picking up the pieces and trying to figure out what went wrong.
Robert Frost once wrote a poem called, The Road Not Taken. Quite simply, he observes that each of us have before us two roads, both of which we are free to choose. As great as this poem is, it isn’t original. Nineteen centuries earlier, Jesus Christ, in his most famous sermon, said, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Which road will you choose this morning? Which life will you embrace? My prayer today is that you will submit yourself to God, embrace Jesus Christ, and choose the extraordinary life that God has had in mind for you all along.
As I've shared before, our vision for church planting here in Augusta involves the formation of a network of house churches led by a unified brotherhood of elders. House church networks were the earliest forms of church planting in the first three centuries after the Day of Pentecost. It wasn't until the time of Constantine that pagan temples were converted into Christian meeting places and called "church." House church networks continue to be a powerful ecclesial force in various places around the world, but have never been a significant expression of church life in America...until now.
Deoxyribonucleic acid: 
In a couple of weeks I will mark the one year anniversary of relocating to Augusta, Georgia (Lynn joined me 60 days later). I came into this new season of life knowing that I wanted to take a year away from ministry to re-tune my heart to harmonize with the heart of God in all of life's contexts: personal relationship with God, marriage, community, church-life, and ministry. 
Heart racing, lungs gasping for air, muscles tensed for fight or flight, mind struggling to process the overwhelming sense of a presence by my side; an unworldly presence with undiscernable intentions.
The Way I See It #77
Okay, I stole this from the 
I haven't posted in a couple of days because my mind has been absolutely devoid of anything that seems interesting enough to write about. I go through spells. There are periods of time when I have four or five posts bouncing around in my head waiting to be written. And then there are periods where my mind is like an etch-a-sketch that's been violently shaken by some kid who has no idea what he wants to draw.
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