Putting Down Deep Roots

It is no coincidence that Psalm 1 is number 1. God put it there as an introduction; it is the foundation for all the others, and I suspect there is someone here who has memorized it, I don't know. “Blessed is the man who did 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 Jehovah, and on His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and whose leaf does not fall; everything he does will prosper.”

“Not so the wicked, who are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for Jehovah knows the way of the righteous, but the path of the wicked will perish.” Thank God for His Word.

Some have memorized and meditated on this Psalm. Do you know that there was someone else who did so? His name was the prophet Jeremiah, who lived in very dark times, times of great sin everywhere: idolatry in the very House of God, sexual immorality everywhere, violence, and abuse of the poor. And Jeremiah was called to preach a Word to the people that was not very popular.

He was called to preach to the people that they had to submit to their enemies, Babylon, as a punishment from God. Who wants to hear that, right? Brothers and sisters, let’s surrender! Who wants to hear that? Who wants to say amen to that? But that was the message, because they were in sin and had to surrender to it. So he was branded a traitor to his country, right? “Traitor to his country” is the phrase, right? A traitor to his country.

“You hate God, you hate us, you hate the country. How can you preach that we have to submit to our enemies?” Jeremiah says, “Well, because it comes from God as punishment against you.” They say, “No, God is with us!” He says, “God is with you if you are with Him, but you are against Him, so submit; 70 years is nothing, and afterward you can return.” Nobody wanted to hear about that, right? He was a deeply rejected, lonely man.

One day they took Jeremiah and put him in a pit, a cistern—an awful place, with mud in it, awful—and he almost drowned there. His brothers and his friends conspired against him. He was beaten with rods; he was a lonely man. He is called the weeping prophet because he was very sensitive and wept for the people. The Book of Jeremiah is full of conversations between Jeremiah and Jehovah. He says, “Lord, why? I am preaching a message I would rather not preach, everyone hates me—why?” And God says, “Look, I am with you. If you have raced with men and they have worn you out, how will you race with horses? Look, I know what I am doing.” And Jeremiah says, “Look, I’m not sure You know what.” A lot of dialogue.

Jeremiah was a man who had intimacy with God, and I believe he meditated a great deal on Psalm 1 because it shows in his prayers; it shows in his prophecies. So let’s turn to Jeremiah chapter 17, Jeremiah 17, and we are going to read another version of this Psalm in prophetic form. When the Word of God is in you, sometimes God takes from this Word and puts it into a prophecy that you give to the people; thus it is the memorized Word, but then God takes it and gives it to the people in another form. That is what happened here with Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 17, verse 5—Jeremiah 17:5. It’s so good to hear pages turning. Others have their phones—that’s okay too—but it’s good to carry the Bible as well, right? Whatever, that’s okay too. If you have the Bible on your phone, even better, because you always carry it with you, thank God. Verse 5: “Thus says Jehovah”—verse 5, Jeremiah 17—“Thus says Jehovah: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from Jehovah. He will be like a shrub in the desert and will not see when good comes, but will dwell in the parched places, in the wilderness, in an uninhabited and desolate land. Blessed is the man who trusts in Jehovah and whose confidence is Jehovah, for he will be like a tree planted by the waters, which sends out its roots by the stream and will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will remain green; in the year of drought it will not dry up or cease to bear fruit.”

“The heart is more deceitful than all things and perverse; who can know it? I, Jehovah, search the mind and test the heart, to give to each one according to his way, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Thank You, Lord, for Your prophetic Word. The thing is that Jeremiah had internalized this Word.

In the first Psalm, the righteous man is compared to a tree planted by streams of water, and the wicked man, or the man who rebels against God, is compared to chaff, which is the light part of the wheat after it becomes barley, right? And it does not last in the wind. The tree lasts—hundreds of years—but the chaff is quickly gone. Here in Jeremiah it is a little different. The righteous man is once again compared to a tree with deep roots, while the man who trusts in man is compared to a tree that has no depth, a bush whose roots are not very deep. When drought comes, it dries up quickly. What kind of people will we be? What way of life are we going to choose?

I thank God because I know many green people, thank God. I don’t know whether that means something bad in Spanish: “Oh, but he is very green!” I don’t know; it just sounds bad. Is it bad? Is it an insult? I hope not. Green—it’s wonderful. Here it is something lovely, something good, right? Green.

There is a life, a life that springs from people who have roots, and that is what we are going to talk about. I thank God because not a day goes by—and I mean this seriously—when I do not meet someone and see the fruit of that person’s life, see that person’s green leaf. Living people who should not be alive. Marriages that are still together and flourishing, and—wow!—it is a miracle that they are like that. People you would think would already be out of everything, but they are alive and kicking, alive and moving with energy, with new life. The enemy has come to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus has come so that we may have life, and life in abundance, and that is the life we are talking about today.

Now, to have a life like that, we must resist the influence of what is around us. The difference between the chaff, the broom shrub, and the tree—and the person who follows God—is this: What is influencing a person’s life? Is a person shaped by what is around him, or is he shaped by another source of power that does not depend on circumstances, right?

It says here, “Blessed is the man who did not walk in the counsel of the wicked.” Look at how the Psalm progresses: “Who did not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.” Do you notice the progression? It goes from walking to standing to sitting, right?

I put it this way to the young people one day. There is a difference between walking down certain streets and hearing certain things. It is very different to stop on the corner and start chatting with a person every day. It is even more different when you have a reserved place on the steps of a certain place and it is your place, your seat of—whatever, right?—of a scoffer, I don’t know.

There is a difference; there is a progression of becoming less and less vital, less and less active, more and more established in evil. It is a downward progression. By contrast, the person who meditates on the Word of God also becomes firmer every day, a firm tree; but the difference is that it is not dead—it is a living difference. The tree is still growing. Although it does not move, the river flows every day, there are new nutrients, and therefore that tree has new life all the time. There is a difference.

It begins there. First, we talk about the pressures people face, pressures to adapt our lives to our environment. It begins with listening to, or walking in, the counsel of the wicked: listening to the advice of wicked people and following it. I don’t know whether anyone here has a friend who gives them bad advice, right? And you cannot look at your wife beside you, okay? (laughter)

You say we have to turn this way, and we get lost—bad advice! There are friends who give bad advice, right? A young man is tempted: he has a girlfriend he is dating, and then there is another girl who is interested in him, and he does not know what to do. So he talks to his dad, and his dad says, “Well, you’re a man; you’ve won the lottery. What’s the problem?” Right? The counsel of the wicked. Then life gets complicated and you get into trouble with God, and you do not want to be in trouble with God.

There are some people whom, no matter how much we love them, we should not listen to, because they will not point us in a healthy direction. And we know that some advice is contagious, right? It is contagious. Have you ever listened to someone complain about something, complain about the authorities or the boss, or gossip about someone, and you listen to it and then catch that person’s attitude? And you start thinking, “Yes, I’m upset too; everything here is bad.” You were fine before. There are some people who see that attitude and say, “Look, I don’t want it to rub off on me. Let that person be dissatisfied there all by himself, because—I don’t know.” (laughs)

I remember a very lovely man. He had come out of the streets, out of a very hard life on the streets, right? And he became a man of God, a real tree, a resolute son of God. He was about to get married, right? And I saw him here at the barbershop, where he was getting his hair cut the day before his wedding. A friend of his came in and was saying things, right? And I could tell that he was looking straight ahead into the mirror, and I was thinking, “I’m not even going to look at him. I love my friend, but I have more important things to do,” right? The counsel of the wicked. We must be careful.

Then it says that we should not stand, or remain, in the way of sinners. In English it is, “Don’t stand in the way of sinners.” It is about where you place yourself—certain environments, certain situations you put yourself in that will not lead you to anything good. In English it is called “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I don’t know whether some of you have had that experience of being in the wrong place at the worst possible time, right? There is nothing good here.

Now, Jesus went to rough places, right? Jesus went among drinkers and prostitutes, and He hung out with them. But it was He who influenced them, not they who influenced Him, right? We talked about that in the English service. There is a famous preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who said that if someone comes and I am up here, and Pastor Sam comes, and I say, “I’m going to pull you up here with one arm,” I think I can do it, but I’m not being very realistic. But if he wanted to pull me down, it would not take much, right? It wouldn’t take much, and—bam!—down to the floor.

God has called us to have an influence, and we are going to talk about that. We cannot have an influence if we live in a monastery, in some hidden place. We must be in the world but not be of the world. Be in the world, but let it be evident that you are different, right? Is it evident that you are a Christian at your workplace? Do people know?

I think about that, and I rejoice when I find it. The other day I went somewhere to have something done. I bought jeans from a store and went there to have them do the hem—I don’t know the word. For one peso they shorten your pants. So I went to that store and said, “Okay, when will they be ready?” “One week.” Then the girls looked and said, “Oh, they’ll be ready tomorrow, and they’ll be perfect.” And I said, “Wow.” They said, “There’s a lady who does it; she does everything well and is very nice, so don’t worry: tomorrow, and perfect.” Then, one or two months later, a sister from our church came up to me and said, “Did you like the pants?” It turned out that a sister from our church was the one who did the pants at that store. And I felt, “Thank You, Lord!” because she is bearing witness, right? She is bearing witness.

There are pressures, pressures to conform when we are in a certain environment, environments where there is hardly any fear of God, right? There are jobs where, if you work hard, it makes you look bad to the others who do not want to work, right? And I am not saying that you are going to be like Joseph in the Bible and go report the others—no, I am not talking about that—but what will our testimony be like?

Another testimony: There was a brother I met here after a long time. I had not met him before because he was the husband of one of the sisters and a leader in another church, so he did not come here. Then he came, and afterward my wife said, “Oh, that’s so-and-so! You don’t say!” because he worked at the hospital with my wife, cleaning at night, and she had talked with him. And she said, “I knew there was something different about him. I knew he was a Christian because there was always joy in his life, always a warm, appropriate, lovely greeting. I knew he was a child of God—the fragrance of Christ was in his life.”

And it is not that we are perfect, mind you, right? Nobody wants someone fake, someone who always seems perfect and never has problems. That will not win anyone over because it is a lie, right? Jesus says, “In the world you will have problems, but take heart, because I have overcome the world.” We can go through problems and still be appropriately transparent with people. But there will be other powers at work in our lives.

We can be different. The salt of the world, right? If salt tastes like the food, it is useless; it has to make the food salty. We have to have some spice, to be different. One more testimony, okay? One more testimony. This morning I was praying in the Harrison building. I come very early and settle into one of those rooms on the third floor with the window facing the street. Do you know which rooms I’m talking about? You know, quietly resting before the service, and sometimes I see things happening out on the street.

And I saw a brother from our church—and I spoke with him about this—and he stopped to talk with someone, and I thought, “Uh-oh! Is he standing in the way of sinners?” (laughs) No, not at all. But he was there, and I could sense that this new brother—notice, new, he has only been here for two months—was having an influence on this man. I even saw him wave the Bible a little (laughs). It’s not that we have to hit people with the Bible, please; we’re not going to win anyone that way. But I could sense that he was having a good influence.

A man like that, who does not listen to the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, is in the world, but because he has roots, he can influence them rather than having them influence him, amen? Okay, many testimonies, many testimonies. But the thing is that the heart is deceitful above all things; we deceive ourselves. The complicated thing about deception is that you don’t know you’re being deceived, right? If someone is being deceived and you tell them, “Look, you’re deceived,” that isn’t true—if someone is caught in deception, they say, “Now you’re deceiving me by telling me I’m deceived,” right? It’s complicated.

There are siren voices, those voices that call to us and become entangled in the heart if we allow the counsel of the wicked and the influence of people who are heading in another direction to enter us. I want to walk with men and women who help me send my roots deeper. Loving everyone is one thing—we should welcome everyone—but whom are you going to allow into your confidence, right? Whom are you going to allow to influence you? Because we rub off on one another.

What we do not want is to end up sitting in the seat of scoffers. I looked up that word: scoffer. I don’t hear it very often. Do people use it in conversation? Okay. It has to do with mockery. I looked up “scoffer” in Proverbs: it is someone who mocks authority, mocks God, mocks what is good, and has that arrogant attitude: “I’m better than they are. What ridiculous people! They still believe in God; they still serve”—that mockery, that arrogance. And they are compared to a chair, because when someone has that attitude, he is not full of life; he is cut off from life and ends up losing energy and vitality, and becomes—I don’t know—someone who is not going anywhere.

I was looking in ancient Hebrew for the meaning of “the seat of scoffers,” thinking that perhaps there was a historical background to it, and at last I found some drawings from the ancient world of the seat of scoffers (laughter), and there is a very important phrase: “couch potato.” Have you ever heard “couch potato”? Sofa potato—I don’t know whether that is right in Spanish—someone who, after sitting around so much, loses his vitality and is no longer going anywhere. Okay, I had to say this in the morning: please, tonight, if the husband wants to watch a program on television, okay, that’s enough, sorry. I’m guilty of that, but let’s go to the tree.

If the husband sits down to watch the game tonight and does not want his wife to come in, he is a couch potato, as Pastor Gregory said—but they are going to tell me, “You can’t!” I have to say that because I don’t want things to go badly for me in my own home, right? (laughter). What we are saying is that you lose energy when you allow yourself to be influenced more by your environment.

But there is another power at work within us. If we are willing, we can draw new strength from God by resisting the pressures around us. There is a power stronger than any lie of Satan; there is a power stronger than the dissolutions of life; there is a power that can save marriages that already seem dead, on life support. There is a power that can put new life into those marriages. There is a power that can help our children and young people say no to sin and yes to God and to a healthy life; there is power. But that power is not automatic; we have to seek it.

A tree does not become a tree overnight; it is a long process of many years of sending roots deep into the soil, and it also depends on where that tree is planted, right? I think about where to plant myself. Before joining this church, I observed the pastor and the brothers and sisters of the church, and I thought, “Do I want to be like them one day?” Because if I join them, if I plant myself in that soil, I want to make sure that the soil is close to the river of God’s flowing power, right? Well, that is a separate matter, but you have to think about where you are planted—whether you are in a situation where you can send roots deep into the Word of God. I love that it says that his delight is in the law of the Lord.

You know what? You are blessed to speak Spanish, because English just doesn’t do it here. In English: “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” That’s very nice, but it doesn’t say: “In the law of the Lord is his delight.” This suggests savoring the Word of God, eating the Word of God. Look at what Jeremiah does. He says in prayer, in Jeremiah 15—he says in verse 16 of Jeremiah 15—“Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word became to me the joy and gladness of my heart, because Your name was called upon me.” O Lord, God of Hosts—to eat from the Word of God.

You know what? The Word of God is the most delicious spiritual, intellectual, and emotional food you can eat, right? That’s how it is; it is delicious. But it is what they call in English “an acquired taste”; it is an acquired taste. You do not automatically want to eat from the Word of God; you have to learn to savor and enjoy the Word, amen? Do you understand me? There are certain foods that are not tasty the first time you eat them, right? Vegetables, right? Some things. Now, I have acquired a taste for seaweed—I don’t know the word, that green plant from the sea, right? Amen, seaweeds, seawoods! (laughter). I have acquired a taste for that (seaweed) because I ate it a lot, and now I like it. I said this in the morning: I like raw fish with wasabi. Now my Japanese wife and I—well, I like it more than she does.

What do you do to acquire the taste? You eat it a lot, a lot, a lot, and in time you say, “Wow, now I like it; now I want it.” That is how it is with the Word of God. At first, when you begin to get into the Word, you take the Bible down from the shelf. We are very good at leaving it open so that it will bring us good luck, right? Good vibes—but dust it off and just read it, right? You have to read it. And you begin with Psalms, Proverbs, one of the Gospels—Mark, Luke, John, Matthew—and you begin to read. At first you do not understand very much, but in order to grow, roots have to push their way into the soil; it is going to take time.

You have to meditate on the Word, chew the Word, ingest the Word. Do not let the verses you read go in one ear and out the other; instead, let the verses remain here, and allow them to descend into your heart. In discipleship, some sisters put it this way: “When I meditate on a psalm, I let the psalm carry me along. It is as if it were a ship at sea that carries me to beautiful things, and I lose myself in the psalm; I make the psalm my own.” Many of us think that meditating means sitting like a Hindu—the yogi sits down and meditates. Do you know what I am talking about? I am not recommending that, right?

The idea of that kind of meditation is to empty the brain, empty the mind, empty the self. The idea of Christian, Judeo-Christian meditation is not to empty yourself; it is to fill yourself with the Word of God. It is completely—it is very different. What they have in common is that you calm down for a while. That is something beautiful, right? Going to a quiet place, putting on that little music, breathing, and taking ten minutes in which you are simply going to let the psalm carry you along—it is very beautiful. I did it before coming in here.

When you meditate, you have to memorize the verse, right? And to memorize it, what do you have to do? You have to repeat it and read it, repeat it. So when the Hebrews spoke about meditation, they used the word “murmur,” because they were speaking, right? “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.” It is as if I were repeating it—not like a mantra, but allowing it to enter my mind, my heart, my being, right? I don’t know whether some of you talk to yourselves when no one else is around, right? And people think you’re kind of crazy, right? Because you talk to yourself.

I am a verbal processor. I do it a lot, and those who hear me from another room sometimes listen so they can find out what is in my head, right? But the thing is that you have to repeat the Word of God, sometimes out loud, until you have a short verse memorized, and allow it to enter your heart. You meditate on the Word and walk in the Word. Start with that.

Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things.” That’s an easy one, right? Philippians 4:13 was my first verse in Spanish. You have the verse, and you repeat it throughout the day. The Puritans spoke about it this way: when you have the verse memorized there, it is almost as if you were walking with the verse throughout the day, right? You go about your business, but you are thinking, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Then it is as though you were walking alongside it, and later you meet someone while you are with a friend, and you stop talking with your friend for a moment, greet the person, and then resume walking and return to your conversation with your friend. That is what meditating on the Word is like.

It is a verse that accompanies you throughout the day; it is a private, inner dialogue between you and God alone that is always running. How beautiful—it is the soundtrack of your life; it is the music inside you. You have this verse there, and it helps you do what you have to do: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Then you are in a conversation with someone, and he is sharing a problem with you, and you say, “Well, you know what? I know that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.” He says, “Where did that come from?” And you say, “It was in my mind. I was meditating on the verse, sending roots deep into the Word and drawing life from it.”

That Word has power. It is more than studying; it is more than reading. The Word of God is living and effective, the Word says; it is penetrating and has life in itself. It is like taking a vitamin that gives life within your mind, your brain, your heart, your emotions. That is why we put so much of the Word into our children in our church. Have you noticed? If they go to I Wanna on Friday night, what do we do? We make them memorize verses; we put verses into them. Whether you believe it or not, whether you want it or not, we are going to put verses into you. Then on Sunday they study the Word, the overview, the story of the Bible. It is excellent; they learn a lot, notice that. The children learn more than we do. I am embarrassed when I compare them with my discipleship group; those children are coming out with a great deal of the Word inside them.

And I want that, because when they are fourteen and a little friend—the counsel of the wicked—is saying, “Look, let’s go over there; let’s do such and such,” there will be another voice they will hear: the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to them through those verses, telling them, “No, there is another way; there is another path.”

Brothers and sisters, the pressures we face are strong; they are strong. There will be times when we have to stand alone against the whole world, right? Some people even have to lose jobs because of their faith in the Word of God. Jeremiah put it this way when he thought about it. In Jeremiah 15:17, after His words had come to him there, he says in verse 17: “I did not sit in the company of mockers, nor did I exalt myself because of Your prophecy; I sat alone because You filled me with indignation.”

There are times when we have to stand firm and even be alone, separating ourselves in this way so that we may know that there is someone with us. Even if the whole world says something else, there is another voice. I have—what is that instrument that points you north? A compass, a compass—I have a compass inside me that tells me which way to go. It does not matter if I feel lost; there is something inside me that points me toward where I have to go: the Word of God. And once you begin to savor the Word of God, you become addicted to it, because it truly is good, right?

Psalm 19 says the following about the Word. Psalm 19: “The law of the Lord is perfect; it converts the soul. The testimony of the Lord is faithful; it makes the simple wise. When I do not know what to do, when I find myself in trouble and am confused, and I cannot see the right path, the Word of God is like a voice behind me telling me, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ It says, “The commandments of the Lord are right; they gladden the heart. It is pure; it enlightens the eyes.” I see people who have a light within them, and I know that it is not they themselves; it is the Word of God within them.

Then it says later, in verse 10 of Psalm 19: “They are more desirable than gold.” Is there anyone here who likes gold? More than much refined gold. Is there anyone here who likes finding a $20 bill in the street? Finding something beautiful in the Bible is like winning the lottery. It says: “They are desirable and sweet, sweeter than honey dripping from the honeycomb.” It tastes sweet; it tastes like rice pudding. It tastes like a good flan, an alfajor, dulce de leche, a Donkey Donuts—better, because it is something that tastes good once I have learned to savor it. The Word of God is good; it is my sword for fighting when I am under attack; it is something firm to hold on to when everything else is moving. The Word is my hiding place; it is the power of your life.

Brothers and sisters, we want to send down deep roots, and it is going to cost us, notice that. We are going to need power because society is going from bad to worse. This world’s teachings about what is normal and what is good do not follow the Word of God, and things are only going from bad to worse. There are many churches that conform to what society says and do not stand firmly on the Word of God. If we want to survive as a church and be the church we must be, we are going to have to become a little thick-skinned about the Word of God, right? This is a biblical word—did you know that?

Brazen. Normally that is not good at all, as I understand it, right? But in the Bible it was a good thing for the prophet Ezekiel. He had to preach a hard Word, and God said: “For the whole house of Israel is hard-faced and obstinate in heart, but I have made your face strong against their faces, and your forehead strong against their foreheads; like diamond, harder than flint, I have made your forehead. Do not fear them or be afraid before them, for they are a rebellious house.”

We are going to have to be very resolute about what we believe, right? We are going to have to be firm. Even if they look down on you and think badly of you—but let it be for the right reasons, right? Not because we fail to bear witness, but with humility, with grace, with firmness. We do not have to seek to be loved by everyone; we must seek to be faithful to the only One who matters, to have roots that go down into the earth, firm roots.

The beautiful thing about this tree is that it remains firm even in times of drought. You know, as a pastor I sometimes hear about many problems, and I was saying this morning: I wish I could help in ways that I cannot. Sometimes I wish I were a doctor so I could prescribe medicine, or a social worker so I could solve things, and I thank God for Christian social workers, Christian doctors, psychologists. I know I am not a psychologist, but I know that what I have is valuable, right? What we have here to give is one single thing: the Word of God. It is bread, the bread of life.

It will not always be tasty bread; it will not always be attractive bread, but it is bread that heals, bread that gives vitality, that does wonderful things. I have learned never, ever to underestimate the power of a person who has that bread inside them, right? As I said at the beginning, there are people who should already be dead and buried who are here giving glory to God and leaping for joy because they have the Word of God inside them. There are people who are new.

I see that especially in elderly people who have walked with God through many years, much struggle, many problems, but they trust in the Word of God; and at the end of their lives, although their bodies are wearing away, they are green in Christ. There is a life in their eyes like Caleb’s, who says: I am more vigorous than when I was twenty years old; let me attack. I thank God for a church—I want us always to be a deep, deep church, where the unadulterated Word of God is preached. May we be people who do not depend on the rains like a plant with dry roots, but people who, each one of us, have our own root beneath the earth, so that people see there is something different in you and me. A life planted like that is contagious.

You know, we said earlier that sin is contagious, but life is contagious too. A person full of vitality who comes into contact with another person can infect that person with the life of Christ. I want to be that kind of person.

That is why whoever walks with the wise will become wise. I want to walk with the wise, and I want to be wise so I can walk with others and be contagious among them. It works, it works. I thank God for the influence we can have.

Isaiah 61 says something beautiful: “Jesus” applies it to Himself when preaching good news to the poor, preaching new hope. Look at what Isaiah 61 says: “The Spirit of Jehovah the Lord is upon me, because Jehovah has anointed me; He has sent me to preach good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. To proclaim the year of Jehovah’s goodwill, the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to decree that those who mourn in Zion be given glory instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a distressed spirit; and they shall be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah for His glory. And they shall rebuild the ancient ruins, raise up the former desolations, and restore the ruined cities, the rubble of many generations.”

People with the Word inside them go to places where there is death, where there is sadness, where there is disorder, and they bring life and shalom; they bring new hope. Almost every one of us who is here is here because someone touched our life for good, right? There was a mother, a grandmother, a father, a sibling, a school friend, a coworker who touched you and infected you with life and love, right? I thank God for that, for the influence we can have in the lives of others.

In Jeremiah 15, as we were reading, God speaks to Jeremiah because he was very discouraged and sad. He says these words; He says: “Therefore, if you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before Me; and if you extract the precious from the vile, you shall be as My mouth. Let them turn to you, but do not turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze. They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to keep you and defend you, says Jehovah my God.” Amen.

If we are these trees with roots that go downward, people turn to us, and we do not turn to them. At the end of the Book of Ezekiel, it speaks of a supernatural river, of waters of life flowing from the eschatological temple, the temple that will be in the new heavens and the new earth. And that river of the waters of life flowed, and there were trees on both sides, and it says that the leaves of those trees were used to heal wounds. We know there are leaves that transmit ailments, right? Has anyone ever stepped on poison ivy? You know what it is like.

Our leaves can give life to others when what comes from you touches others; it works. The power of God, the Word of God, works, and I thank God for people who have done this, who have made the Word of God their delight, who have stood firm like that tree, who do not give up even when storms and droughts come; they keep seeking, and their leaves are touching needy people around them. They may be coworkers; they may be young people in the neighborhood who are alone and need a spiritual mother. It may be a relative of yours, someone rejected by others whom you welcome. Your life matters and has power, a life-giving power for others. I want to be that person; I want to be part of a church like that too. And you? I know you do.

Let us pray. I invite you to stand, amen. Father, we thank You, Lord, that man shall not live by bread alone, Lord, but by every Word that comes from Your mouth shall man live, Lord. I thank You, Lord, for the hope we have as Christians: trees that appear dead can come to life again because the river flowing past them is a reliable river with fresh waters, not stagnant waters. And I ask You, Lord, for the people in this congregation who feel hopeless at this time, who think: How am I going to keep going? How am I going to get out of this? I ask You, Lord, to fill them with new strength on this day, Lord, so they may know that they can put down deep roots and that there is healthy soil for them, Lord.

I thank You for the change, for the fruit that comes in its season. Lord, I pray for the people who have sought You perhaps for years and feel there is no fruit, Lord; may they persevere. Lord, may they know that the fruit will come. You promised, Lord, that if we remain in You and Your Words remain in us, we can ask whatever we desire and it will be done; and this is for the glory of Your Father, that we bear much fruit. And I ask that we may be a green church, Lord, a church that bears real fruit, Lord, that has firmness of character and inner quality, Lord. Thank You for the hope we have in You, in the name of Jesus.