Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our dear heavenly father, you left us this 119th psalm so that we could think in a variety of ways about the benefit of your scriptures to our souls.
[00:00:18] And I pray this morning that your spirit would stir up within us fresh sense that you are the best and that you share your best with us.
[00:00:35] In Christ's name, amen.
[00:00:38] I tried to preach this sermon last week, but I failed. So we'll try again this week.
[00:00:47] Way too often in our lives we get focused on what is worst about life instead of what is best about life.
[00:00:58] It turns out that we all have a part in our brain called the amygdala.
[00:01:08] I led a book study several years ago and we learned about the amygdala.
[00:01:13] And the amygdala does one thing, just remembers everything bad.
[00:01:19] You don't have any spot in your brain that remembers all the good, but you do have a spot in your brain that remembers all the bad.
[00:01:27] So basically, the scientists explain it this way. Your amygdala remembers everything bad because it wants you to be able to respond quickly to danger in your life.
[00:01:44] The trouble is, my amygdala just doesn't work when I'm in danger. It works in the middle of the night when I'm in no danger at all. The only danger I'm in is not being able to sleep.
[00:01:58] So we have a natural mental mechanism that remembers all the bad so that we learn from it and we're ready to respond in a more rapid way.
[00:02:13] If we're going to focus on what is best, we have to have a discipline to do that.
[00:02:22] You will not normally wake up in the middle of the night remembering something wonderful from 20 years ago, but it is not uncommon to wake up and remember something terrible from 20 years ago. If I'm going to focus on what is best, I have to have a discipline to do that.
[00:02:44] I also want to say at the beginning, by focusing on the best, I live a better life.
[00:02:53] Nobody lived a good life by always focusing on the worst.
[00:02:58] Nobody ever lived a good life doing that. In fact, God said in Jesus Christ that he came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. God does not want us living these miserable, bad focused lives.
[00:03:19] So in psalm 119, King David wrote, the Lord is my portion.
[00:03:27] I promise to keep your words.
[00:03:33] I can translate this in a little more understandable way. What did David mean when he said, the Lord is my portion? He meant, the Lord is the best part of my life.
[00:03:46] When David said, the Lord is my portion, he's saying, the very best part of my life is my relationship to the Lord.
[00:03:58] And when I read that, I want to say, if David said, the Lord is the best part of my life, can I say, the very best part of my life is the Lord?
[00:04:15] Or would I have to say the very best part of my life is when I'm on vacation at a certain place?
[00:04:21] Or the very best part of my life is thanksgiving dinner with my family? I mean, let's be brutally honest with ourselves.
[00:04:31] Can we say, the Lord is the very best part of my life?
[00:04:37] And you might honestly say, you know what? I don't know. How would I know if he is or isn't? All right, let's just do a couple tests.
[00:04:50] What are your best thoughts? What do your best thoughts focus upon?
[00:04:55] Do your best thoughts get drawn to the Lord?
[00:05:01] Or are your best thoughts something that's far from God altogether?
[00:05:09] Your best feelings?
[00:05:14] When your heart is at its very best, are those feelings drawn toward the Lord?
[00:05:26] What about your choices?
[00:05:28] Are your best choices connected to Christ or are your best choices somehow or another separated from Christ about your behaviors? Is the Lord your portion in your behaviors? Are your very best behaviors expressions of something of the beautiful character of Christ, or are your behaviors separated?
[00:05:58] So when David said, the Lord is my portion, he was looking at his life and he said, when I'm thinking at my best, God is in the middle of it.
[00:06:08] When my feelings are at the best, God is in the middle of it.
[00:06:13] When I'm making my best choices, God is in the middle of it.
[00:06:18] All right.
[00:06:20] David said, the Lord is the best part of my life.
[00:06:24] Now I want to say, what about the Lord is the best part of my life?
[00:06:37] So I wanted to go from this vague idea of God, and I want to be more specific.
[00:06:46] The Bible says that God is a God of peace.
[00:06:51] If the Lord is my portion, then it should be, I should have the experience in my life of the peace of of Christ from time to time.
[00:07:05] Do you see?
[00:07:07] If my life is always focused on what's the worst, I'm never going to have the peace of Christ. On the other hand, if I can turn my life toward what is most beautiful in Christ, then the Lord is going to be my portion in the sense that I'm going to be experiencing the peace of Christ.
[00:07:30] The best part of my life will be touched by the peace of Jesus Christ.
[00:07:37] I won't have to struggle every day with the internal turmoil and anxiety because the best part of my life is the peace that Christ is sharing with me. Are you following me on this?
[00:07:53] The truth of Christ is the truth of Christ part of the very best part of your life?
[00:08:01] Is the justice of Christ, is the love of Christ. I want to stop. I want to stop having this vague sense of God. And I want to specifically be able to look at these are the qualities that are natural to God. And if the Lord is the best part of my life, I'm going to be experiencing some of that in my daily life.
[00:08:28] And then David said, because the Lord is the best part of my life, I promise to keep your words.
[00:08:37] David said, I recognize you are the very best part of my life. And when I recognize that, I feel an impulse to promise you that I'm going to keep your words.
[00:08:50] Have you made any promises to God lately?
[00:08:56] Can you think of the last time you said to God, I promise?
[00:09:05] When David was overwhelmed with the goodness of God, he felt a need to say to God, I want to make some promises to you. You are so valuable to me. I want to make promises to you.
[00:09:25] And then David said, in verse 58, I entreat your favor with all my heart.
[00:09:33] Be gracious to me according to your promise.
[00:09:37] David said, the very best part of my life is the Lord. And because he is the very best part of my life, I value and I pray for his favor.
[00:09:50] If something is the best part of your life, don't you want more of it?
[00:09:55] I don't want more of the worst part of my life. I want more of the best part of my life. And David said, because I recognize you are the best part of my life, I value and pray for your favorite I.
[00:10:11] The word favor means support because you are the best part of my life. Oh lord, I pray for your support in my daily life. I pray that Monday when I go to work, you will support me and I'll be able to live out my faith in whatever condition you put me in.
[00:10:31] Because you're the best part of my life, I pray that you would support me and I could be an influence for good and love in my home.
[00:10:43] When I have this sense that God is the best part of my life, it only makes sense to me to say, would you continue supporting me and continue being the best part of my life? Support also means approval. I mean, favor also means approval. If you favor someone, you approve of them.
[00:11:07] We all like to be approved by people that we respect.
[00:11:12] David said, you are the best part of my life and I desperately desire your approval.
[00:11:23] A favor also means preference. If you favor somebody, you prefer them above somebody else.
[00:11:30] If you favor mashed potatoes and gravy, you're out of luck. You can't buy it anywhere anymore.
[00:11:42] That's your favorite.
[00:11:44] All right.
[00:11:46] Has it ever dawned on you that you could say to God, I pray that I would be a preferable person in your life?
[00:12:01] Has it ever dawned on you, God is open to you saying to him, I pray that you would prefer me. I pray that you would favor me.
[00:12:13] I recognize you are the very best thing in my life. And because I recognize that, I pray for your favor, for your preference.
[00:12:28] And David said, not only do I entreat you for your favor, I do it with all my heart.
[00:12:35] David said, dear God, more than I want anything else in the world, I want your favor.
[00:12:43] Let's test that.
[00:12:46] What do you want more than anything else in the world?
[00:12:52] I can see some of your minds, man, it's going to that lottery ticket you got at home. I just want that lottery ticket to win big.
[00:13:02] Some of you are saying, I just want my kids to have a good year at school this year. Just please, could they have a good year at school this year.
[00:13:13] I can see some of you saying, I hope I get that new job. It'll make all the difference in my life.
[00:13:22] So we have a whole list of things that we would really like.
[00:13:30] David said, when I look at the best part of my life, I can't think of anything I want more than God's favor.
[00:13:43] Church.
[00:13:46] And David was not a naive man.
[00:13:51] In fact, he was a brilliant man. And he said, because the best part of my life comes from God, I can't think of anything I want more than the one who creates the best part of my life to continue to favor me.
[00:14:14] Then David said, be gracious to me according to your promise.
[00:14:23] David wrote this so well, it's so well tied together.
[00:14:31] Grace is the expectation that God is going to treat me better than what I deserve.
[00:14:39] And the key word there is better.
[00:14:42] Grace focuses on what is better.
[00:14:48] If my life gets focused on what is worse, I'm not living in the grace of God.
[00:14:55] If every day I think, oh, this is terrible, oh, that's bad, oh, this isn't going to work out. If my focus is on these, on the opposite side, then I'm not living in the grace of God, because the grace of God is not about what's bad. It's about what's best, better and best. David said, I ask for your favor because you've been so good to me. I value your goodness. I value your favor, and I pray that the goodness you've begun to show me, you would show me even greater favor in the future that you would be more gracious to me than you've ever been.
[00:15:43] Isn't that an awesome prayer?
[00:15:46] Are you audacious enough to say to God, would you be more gracious to me than you have ever been?
[00:15:54] You say, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that prayer. Look what David said. Be gracious to me according to your promise.
[00:16:02] God has already promised that he wants to be gracious to us.
[00:16:07] He's already gone on the record of saying, I really, really want to help you live the best life. I really want what's better for you. So when I ask him to be gracious to me, I'm only asking him to do what he already said he wants to do. I'm not asking God to do something that is pushing his limits. He's already said he wants to do that. And I'm simply saying I ask you to be gracious to me in the very same way you said you wanted to be gracious to me.
[00:16:43] This is a prayer for God to treat us better.
[00:16:52] Does that make you uncomfortable?
[00:16:56] Does it make you at all uncomfortable that God said, I'm open to you meeting me tomorrow morning before you go to work? And I'm open, my heart is open to hear you say, dear God, would you treat me better today?
[00:17:15] I find that absolutely fascinating that God says, I'm open to you any time in your life, saying to me, dear God, you are gracious and you've promised to be gracious. I pray that you'd treat me better today.
[00:17:32] I'm not complaining that he's treating me bad. I'm already saying that the best part of my life comes from goddess. But that doesn't mean that it can't get better. This is what David is saying.
[00:17:46] The best part of your life comes from God. But guess what? He can make it even better than that. As good as it is today, it could be better tomorrow.
[00:17:59] Do you know that worry and anxiety are overcome by a prayer for grace?
[00:18:11] What are you worrying about?
[00:18:13] What is it that has you troubled?
[00:18:16] The answer to that worry is a prayer for grace. Worry focuses on your fear of a bad outcome.
[00:18:25] Why do you worry? You're fearing a bad outcome. Why do you have anxiety? You're fearing a bad outcome.
[00:18:33] The prayer for grace replaces the worry with the hope and the promise of something better.
[00:18:42] So I look at a problem, and instead of being weighed down by worry and anxiety, I look at a problem and I say, this is a wonderful opportunity in my life for God to be more gracious to me. Than he's ever been.
[00:18:58] The problem is an opportunity for God to treat me better.
[00:19:04] It's not the end of the world church, because God is the best part of my life. I self evaluate and self correct. Listen to what David says, verse 59.
[00:19:27] When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.
[00:19:36] I can just simply say, David said, when I remember that God is the best part of my life, I self evaluate and I self correct. Let's look at that.
[00:19:50] This word sink is not.
[00:19:53] It's not the word for just flow of consciousness. It's actually the word for logical evaluation.
[00:20:01] Could I read it that way?
[00:20:04] When I logically calculate or evaluate my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.
[00:20:17] The Bible teaches us that we have to self evaluate.
[00:20:22] Let a man examine himself. The Bible says, ladies, that means humanity. Let human beings examine themselves. All right, I want to reintroduce a word to you. It's fallen out of the english vocabulary. In fact, it has become kind of an insult, but it's one. For the Greeks, it was one of the four cardinal virtues. And the word is prudence.
[00:20:51] And probably because it's fallen out of the english vocabulary, most of us don't know what the word prudence means. So I'm going to tell you today. You'll get this as free as part of the sermon.
[00:21:05] You can add it to your vocabulary.
[00:21:09] Prudence means the ability to judge between what is good and bad in a specific situation with an impulse to do what is good. All right, now, let me say it again.
[00:21:27] Don't daydream for a few minutes. Come to me.
[00:21:31] All right.
[00:21:33] Prudence means the ability to discern between good and bad in a specific situation with the impulse to do what is good. All right. Prudence is absolutely necessary for self evaluation.
[00:21:54] You see, I'm self evaluating. I'm not worrying about everybody else's opinion of me. I'm not worried about my image. I'm setting that all aside, and I'm looking at my own life, and I'm trying to discern between what is best and worst in my life, what situations in my life are calling out the best in me, what situations in my life are calling out the worst in me. I wanna do honest self evaluation, and I wanna do it with the impulse of doing better in the future.
[00:22:37] David said, when I logically self evaluate my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies.
[00:22:48] If you're not taking time to really look at your life and really start saying this, my part of my life is beautiful. It's really good. This part of my life is a mess.
[00:23:01] Why is this part of my life good and this part of my life a mess?
[00:23:06] How is God in this best part of my life, and how is God left out of this worst part of my life? We start to do what healthy people do. Take a good, honest look at the life I'm living. Give a prudent investigation into what is good in my life and why is it good and what is not so good in my life and why it's not good with the impulse to do better.
[00:23:43] Self evaluation requires some kind of moral standard. If I'm going to evaluate myself, I have to have something to evaluate myself with.
[00:23:55] Do you see?
[00:23:57] It's got to be more than my feelings, because my feelings lie to me. Do your feelings lie to you? Yes.
[00:24:06] Good. Church. This means yes. This means no.
[00:24:10] All right. There's coffee out there if you need some. All right, listen.
[00:24:20] David is modeling the kind of life that is lived in a healthy relationship with God.
[00:24:36] He's modeling a healthy christian life.
[00:24:40] He said, I looked at my life, I evaluated my life, and I figured out that God is the best part of my life. And so I asked him for his favor and grace.
[00:24:53] I looked at my life, I started evaluating, and I used the truth of God to evaluate myself.
[00:25:03] You see, God says some things are true and some things are not true. And you can disagree with him all you want, but it doesn't change it. Do you see? I can tell myself that things that displease God will be okay, but I'm lying to myself. It will not be okay. When I evaluate myself, I have to submit to the truth of God.
[00:25:30] I have to submit to the idea that God is reasonable.
[00:25:36] God is a reasonable being.
[00:25:39] Ah.
[00:25:41] Do you ever ask yourself, is this reasonable behavior?
[00:25:47] Am I doing a reasonable thing, or am I being very unreasonable?
[00:25:54] Am I thinking in a reasonable way, or have I got myself stuck on one of these thought loops that's unreasonable, and I just play it over and over and over again?
[00:26:05] You see, David is self evaluating, and in his self evaluation, he says, I'm using God's moral code for my self evaluation because he is the best part of my life. I can't think of any other code better because this is the best part of my life.
[00:26:28] Self evaluation requires brutal honesty.
[00:26:32] If I'm going to say God is the best part of my life, I want to look at what kind of life I'm living. I got to be brutally honest with myself because I often make too many excuses for myself.
[00:26:45] Anyone else?
[00:26:48] Anyone else? Make excuses for yourself.
[00:26:53] But I also need to be moderate.
[00:26:57] Self evaluation is not self punishment. You don't do self evaluation to punish yourself. Okay, I'm a jerk. I'm a loser.
[00:27:10] God doesn't like me. Nobody likes me. I don't blame him. I don't like myself. That's not self evaluation. That's being a bully. Stop bullying yourself. It doesn't help. All right? Self evaluation is. It says, okay, I've made some mistakes and I want to get better.
[00:27:31] But that's not the whole story.
[00:27:34] There is good in my life. God has done something good in my life. I have good experiences. I have good relationships.
[00:27:44] I have healthy thought patterns. It's not all bad if your self evaluation only focuses on the bad. You're missing the point.
[00:27:57] I want to replace the bad with the good, so I have to think more about the good than the bad.
[00:28:03] Otherwise, if I think more about the bad, I am replacing the good with the bad.
[00:28:15] Self evaluation requires divine input. You got to pray when you do this.
[00:28:20] You got to listen to what David said. Dear God, search my heart and know my ways and see if there's any wickedness in me that I'm not seeing so I can confront it. Do you hear this? David said, I'm not going to self evaluate alone. I'm going to say, dear Goddess, search my heart and know my ways and help me to see where your goodness can overcome things that are not healthy in my life.
[00:28:59] When I do self evaluation, I turn to your testimonies.
[00:29:04] Based on the contrast between the testimonies of the Lord and my self evaluation, I make life corrections.
[00:29:15] This is how life gets better. I start in the goodness of God. I start by saying, God is the best part of my life.
[00:29:25] And then from that I say, because you're the best part of my life. I ask for your favor and your grace. Because you're the best part of my life. I'm going to use your ideas to evaluate myself. And when I evaluate myself and find there are things that need to get better, I'm going to correct my life way by what you've already taught me.
[00:29:50] I get better by focusing on, to begin with, how good God has been to me. And then when I start appreciating how good he is to me, I feel the need to evaluate myself. And then as I evaluate myself, God is at work in me to make me even better.
[00:30:11] This is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
[00:30:21] Now, I'm going to skip to verse 64. I can't do the whole thing, and you would be dropping out of the chair. So I'm skipping some verses. We're going to verse 64.
[00:30:32] The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love. Teach me your statutes.
[00:30:39] When I self evaluate and correct, I begin to see the steadfast love of the Lord in all the earth, we end up seeing what we're looking for.
[00:30:53] If you start by saying, God is the best part of my life, and you pray for favor and grace, and you self evaluate and you self correct, life starts looking differently, and instead of seeing bad everywhere you look, you start seeing the steadfast love of the Lord in all the earth. Can you hear this?
[00:31:19] I believe. When my heart is right, when I am best connected to Christ, I see his goodness all over the place.
[00:31:28] When my heart is not right and I'm focused on the bad, all I see everywhere I go is bad. Bad people, bad drivers, bad attitudes. Okay? The world didn't change. I did. Church.
[00:31:47] The world didn't get bad all of a sudden or get good all of a sudden.
[00:31:53] My focus changed.
[00:31:59] The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love. Do you honestly believe that?
[00:32:07] Or do you say, yeah, but they're shooting bombs in Israel, and the Russians are still in Ukraine, and the elections and the economy and, and, and church.
[00:32:24] Sometimes we get swept away by our culture.
[00:32:36] And this is where I'm asking all of us to just pause for a minute and start where David started.
[00:32:44] If you feel overwhelmed by how of the ugliness of life, just start where David started.
[00:32:51] The best part of my life is not in all that stuff.
[00:32:56] The best part of my life is in relationship to God, all right? And when I'm feeling the wonder of all that, I start seeing the goodness of God in other places and not just in my own life. Do you see this?
[00:33:15] Can you see the goodness of God? You say, well, I don't know. What am I supposed to be looking for? The goodness of God?
[00:33:27] I mean, just in a plain, simple way, can you go out in your yard, look at your neighbor's yard that has all the beautiful flowers, and say, isn't God good?
[00:33:40] I like my neighbors who have good flowers. They're awesome people?
[00:33:47] Or do you just look at the flowers and go, that's a lot of work, church.
[00:33:57] If you're experiencing the goodness of God, you start seeing it in other people.
[00:34:05] If you're lost to the goodness of God, all you see is the people who are giving, you mean hand gestures when you're driving.
[00:34:16] Ah.
[00:34:17] But when you see the goodness of God. The steadfast love of the Lord. You start noticing that person. Let me in.
[00:34:27] The goodness of Goddesse church.
[00:34:31] Wasn't that person polite?
[00:34:35] Wasn't there something nice about that person? Do you see? When David was living a life in a healthy relationship to God, he said, I see the steadfast love of the Lord everywhere.
[00:34:48] Does that mean he didn't have enemies? No, he had enemies, but he could see beyond his enemies that even though there are enemies out there, the steadfast.
[00:34:58] Excuse me.
[00:35:00] Always something.
[00:35:04] The steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:35:10] All right, I want to give you one more big idea. Today the earth, o Lord, is full of your steadfast love.
[00:35:24] Now I need to say to myself, what does David mean by the earth if you're a materialist? All he means is the material things of this world.
[00:35:39] The matter, the touchable, the things that can be sensed with the five senses.
[00:35:48] But I believe David sees a much bigger world than that. I believe there's more to life than just the material world.
[00:35:56] What does it profit a person if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? See what? There's more than just material things.
[00:36:06] So this is the idea I want to share with you. The spiritual soul sees phenomenon, meaning and purpose which guides the material world.
[00:36:21] If you focus on the material world, you miss the phenomenon, you miss the meaning, you miss the purpose, you miss that something is guiding all of this. This is not just happening randomly. So David said, the.
[00:36:42] The world I live in, the phenomenon I live in is more than a material thing.
[00:36:49] And I see beyond just the material things, and I see God in the phenomenon of my life.
[00:36:58] The steadfast love of the Lord is not an object. You can't go pick it up.
[00:37:05] You can't buy it on Amazon. The steadfast love of the Lord is a phenomenon, and it is as real as gravity.
[00:37:15] The steadfast love of the Lord affects life on planet earth every bit as much as gravity. Do you see?
[00:37:26] All of life works the way it does because of the phenomenon of the steadfast love of the Lord. Steadfast love means God doesn't love me because I'm lovable. He loves me because he's loving. God loves me just as much when I'm an ugly soul as when I'm a beautiful soul. The steadfast love of the Lord guides the phenomenon of life. And that's why David can say the earth is full of your steadfast love.
[00:38:01] And then he says, teach me your statutes.
[00:38:06] This goes together perfectly. David said, I'm seeing your steadfast love in all the phenomena of life.
[00:38:13] I'm seeing your steadfast love in the meaning and the purpose of life. I'm seeing your steadfast love in the experience of life.
[00:38:22] I've already admitted that you're the best part of my life.
[00:38:26] And now I'm praying that you would teach me your principles for living in the world that you created.
[00:38:39] You understand the phenomenon of life. You understand the meaning of life. You understand the purpose of life. You are the best part of my life. And I want you to teach me more so that I can live in the world you created in your favor and grace and the best possible life that I can possibly live.
[00:39:02] Do you see what David is saying?
[00:39:05] David is saying, the better I understand this, the more I want to learn your ways.
[00:39:11] The better I understand this, the more I long to self correct to live by your good ideas, because it always makes my life better.
[00:39:24] My life never gets better when I'm living outside of your good ideas. All right, let's wrap it all up, okay? Christianity is a thinking religion. We can think together. Let's go. Here we go.
[00:39:42] We soften our heart and. And we have a sense. God has been very good to me.
[00:39:48] The very best part of my life is God.
[00:39:55] He's already proven that he wants to be good to me.
[00:40:00] And so I feel the impulse to make it part of my daily relationship with God to ask for his favor and his grace.
[00:40:10] I don't feel like I'm imposing on him.
[00:40:14] I feel like he's already said he wants to do that.
[00:40:18] And when I have a sense that I'm asking for his favor and grace, I also have a sense that I need to self evaluate. Am I the kind of person that it's easy for God to bless, or am I living the kind of life that it's hard for him to bless? Where do I need to self correct?
[00:40:37] And when I start self correcting, I start seeing that all the phenomenon of life is touched by the steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:40:48] And then I say, I really want you to teach me your ways because I have come to understand it is the very best life that can be lived.
[00:41:00] Our dear heavenly Father, I thank you for the psalms.
[00:41:06] I thank you that you saved this wisdom for us.
[00:41:13] I pray for myself, and I pray for everyone who's here this morning. I pray that we could sense your spirit.
[00:41:21] And as we sense your spirit, we could also remember how good you've been to us.
[00:41:29] I pray then we would ask for your grace. And your favor.
[00:41:33] I pray that we do some self evaluation and self correcting. I pray that we would see your steadfast love in all of life and we would have a stronger impulse to live the way you want us to live, because it is the very best life.
[00:41:49] And I pray that Christ will receive all the glory. Amen.
