Psalm 1
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Hey church, so good to see everybody. Last year a friend told me about a new commentary series on the Psalms. It was by Christopher Ashk and it was called The Psalms, a Christ-centered commentary. I ordered it, began reading. It felt like I had never read the Psalms before. You know how it feels when you get a book that just touches your soul.
It opens up new vistas of understanding, how meaningful that is. Well, that's exactly what the Christ-centered commentary was for me. And so I've longed to bring to you some of the reflections I've had over the past two years as I've read through the Psalms. Today marks the start of a two-part sermon series with Psalm 1 today and Psalm 2 next week. And as I'm permitted, I'll continue in the same style as another occasional preacher, Mike Carnicella, who's been preaching through the four chapters of the book of Philippians for years.
I want to start with a question. Why is Psalm 1, Psalm 1? There's 150 individual psalms divided into five books, collectively known as the Psalter or the Book of Psalms. Most were written by King David, but multiple authors wrote psalms over several hundred years, and some of them and somebody put them together. Probably Ezra the priest after the Babylonian exile, But whoever it was, they made Psalm 1, Psalm 1, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, with a purpose.
Why? Why not begin with Psalm 150 at the very end of the Psalter, which says, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So we would start with a tribute to God. Why not Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want the picture of God's tender care. Or Psalm 46, be still and know that I am God, the reminder of God's sovereignty in the midst of tough times.
Well, first, it's important to understand that Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are the intro and framework for all of this altar, all of it. And if you don't understand those two psalms, you won't really understand with any depth the rest of the Psalms. And there's more. Psalm 1 is Psalm 1 because it teaches us the most important thing you can know. How to live a meaningful life.
I'm reminded of the quote from William Carey, the great missionary to India, who said, I'm not afraid of failure. I'm afraid of success. It's something that doesn't matter. Psalm 1 shows us what matters. It clearly states there are two ways to live. There is no third way. And that's our main point. Two ways to live. It's, on the surface, a simple psalm.
That's very deceptive. It's power-packed. But it has just six verses that I divide into three simple sections, which is the outline for our sermon today. First, the blessed man's life. The first two verses, one and two. Three negatives and a positive. Secondly, second point, two word pictures. Verses three and four. The tree and chaff. And thirdly, the congregation of the righteous, verses 5 and 6, which is the key to heaven.
Let's read it. Let's read Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by a stream of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. So first point, The blessed man's life, verses 1 and 2. Three negatives and one positive. Now, notice the first word of Psalm 1 is blessed. You know, it's easy to misunderstand the word blessed.
Our tendency is to take it to mean whatever people think is a blessing in their own lives. A life free of trouble. Health. Wealth. Getting what I want. but frankly, we're bad at knowing what's good for us. Last year, my six-year-old granddaughter asked me out on a date for Valentine's Day, and I was deeply honored.
We dressed up. We got a table for two. She wanted to go to the nicest restaurant she knew, Olive Garden. She said she would order. I helped with some of the words, but she could see the pictures in the menu, and she knew what she wanted. Before dinner, we started with a large peach mango smoothie. She ordered our entree, lasagna classico with unlimited salad.
I lost count of how many breadsticks we ate. We finished the night with black tie chocolate mousse cake, one each. What was I thinking? I would never have done that as a parent. Something changed in my brain when I became a grandparent. As Ann says, Granddad's house is the house of yes. Well, you know what happened to Ann.
Towards the end of the meal, Ann mentioned she was full, but still managed to stuff down her cake, even though she looked a little green around the gills. And I took her home and, you know, the best thing about being a grandparent is you get to hand the kids off to the parents to take care of anything that happens after that. She was sick all the next day. I'm convinced, I'm convinced, we're not that different than Ann. In fact, in some ways, the pursuit of worldly blessings might have less obvious negative consequences.
but they do greater harm. After all, Anne learned her lesson. She remembers it to this day. But many pursue hurtful things without ever learning the lesson. And consequently, if we're not careful, left to ourselves, we easily mistake the first words of verse 1 as the formula to get what we want. Fortunately, God doesn't leave us to ourselves. He knows what true blessing is.
One of the greatest problems in life stems from the fact that we can't see what God is aiming for because he has a long-term, big-picture view of the blessed life. The psalmist doesn't use the word blessed to mean material prosperity, unending health or a life without sorrow. No, remember the words of the Apostle Paul through many tribulations, we must enter into the kingdom of God. Blessed, in the Bible, points to a way of life, a way to live, such that the principles of Psalm 1 nurtures a life that pleases God.
Let me take a little side note here before we get to the description of the blessed life. Right off the bat, there's a problem, this word man. Gender-specific designations in the Bible tend to grate on modern ears. So Bible teachers are quick to point out that the Bible uses man generically, meaning all people, and this reference in particular is not gender-specific, that women are included in the blessed life, and that women should not take any more offense with the word man than when the Bible refers to male followers as the bride of Christ.
That's right, and good, and true. Still, the use here is singular, the man. For most Christian history, most of Christian history, Christians saw the Psalter, all 150 Psalms, as pointing ultimately to only one man, Jesus of Nazareth. And I agree. We'll get to Jesus in a bit, but let's look with that said at what Psalm 1 has to say about the blessed man in verse 1.
Now, anyone who knows anything about marketing knows that one never starts with the negative. The Bible is completely unconcerned about marketing. We start with the negative. The negatives are not here to reinforce the idea that Bible people are negative people. These negatives are definitions that help clear the way for the positive. The blessed man is one who doesn't do three things with three people in three ways.
First, the blessed man does not walk in the advice, the counsel, the thoughts. of those who are wicked. He doesn't entertain their plans. Second, the blessed man does not stand in the way of sinners, whereas walking is mulling things over, thinking about those things that you hear in the dorm floor arguments about religion or from classes or from co-workers.
Standing means taking a stand. You plant your flag. It shapes your behavior. It's active. Standing is a firm position after mulling things over. Thirdly, the blessed man does not sit with the scoffers. In other words, he doesn't have a comfortable place at the table with those who mock and scorn. This is the gang of the inner circle. We think of the Pharisees and the Herodians, Two adversaries gathering together to plot the murder of Jesus.
You know, it's interesting that the scoffer is seen as the end of the road for evil. It's the indication of the most fatal sin, says Derek Kidner. Those who scoff have a fixed mind. They sneer. That sneer serves to make them feel better about their sin. I mean, who can argue with a sneer? Notice the progression here in the Bible. The Bible calls this the fear of man, or in modern terms, worldly peer pressure.
It's that slow, steady descent from mere consideration to taking a stand for evil and then becoming a part of the inner circle that scoffs. Come on, everybody's doing it. Can it really be that bad? Did God really say? Can't you hear the echoes of the scoffs of Satan in the garden? Peer pressure. An elderly woman was asked what the best thing was about being 104.
And she said, no peer pressure. Few in this room are 104. We all have peer pressure problems. The kind that pushes us to evil. It's one of the oldest and most insidious tricks of the world. And it ranges from the vicious middle school lunchroom table of the popular to the most elitist political institutions of the world. The application for us is don't do it.
Or as Paul says in Romans 12 and the J.B. Phillips translation, which I like, Don't let the world press you into its mold. Be countercultural. I spoke at a missions conference in Boston, and when it was over, the PA drove me to the airport. That's the usual job of pastoral assistance. What was unusual was he picked me up in a very nice late modern model Lexus, And I was pretty sure he didn't buy it on his pastoral assistant's salary.
Well, Blaine, I said, as I got in the car, unless you borrowed this car, there's a story behind it. Blaine said, you're right. This is the last vestige of my law career in Oklahoma. Blaine said he had gone to church most of his life, but it didn't mean much to him. He pursued a career in law, landed a position in a prestigious law firm. He observed the partners and reflected on their ways. And he decided he wanted to be like them.
So he started mimicking their habits. The partner he admired the most owned a sailboat, so he took up sailing. When they hit the nightclubs after work, he made sure to order the expensive scotch. Another partner ordered, and they worked long hours. They worked long hours on Sundays. And soon he did the same. And he distinctly remembered that one of the partners told him that their work at the firm was far more important than anything that happened in church. He agreed.
And he was accepted to the table. Blaine's story illustrates that progression of how Satan still whispers to us, walk in their ways. Stand with them. Sit. scoff. Yet for Blaine, it was a descent to hell. Blaine's life unraveled. One Sunday, sitting in the law office, he looked around and realized that his colleagues were the most miserable people he had ever met.
That their lives were completely empty. And worse, he realized he had become like them. It was rock bottom. He couldn't go on. He quit the firm. To get his head together, he packed a suitcase full of books of philosophy and religion and jetted off to the jungles of Costa Rica. Unbeknownst to Blaine, his aunt, a Christian, had secretly slipped a Bible into his suitcase. And he began to read it, and he scoffed at first. But as he read, he came across the verse in the book of Hebrews, You cannot please God without faith.
At that moment, he saw Christ had done everything necessary for him to know God. And only one thing remained, to repent of his scoffing, sinful attitude and put his faith and trust in Jesus. And so right there in the Costa Rican jungle, Blaine bent his knee to Christ as Lord. One more point I want to make. You see the descent of Blaine, walking, standing, sitting. But one more point about these negatives for the blessed man, walking, standing, and sitting. It's not just not doing things.
Hear me on this. The blessed man understands the positive implications of the negative. That is, they don't walk in the counsel of the wicked, but they walk in the counsel of the godly wise. They don't take their stand with sinners, but they take their stand with the good. They don't sit in the inner circle of the scoffers who disparage God and his people, but they sit with those who fear God, His covenant people, the church. Blaine's life illustrates those principles too.
Blaine finished telling me this story at the airport. As I got out of the car, I mentioned to Blaine there was a place for him in our work in Dubai. And when he finished up his seminary degree at Gordon-Conwell, he was welcome. And he did just that. After a stint in our church in Dubai and marrying a woman that Leanne, my wife, had led to Christ, Emirates flight attendant, he planted a church in L.I. on the border of Oman. And then another in Kuwait. And after he got kicked out of Kuwait, he now pastors a church in North Carolina.
There's a positive direction too, you see. And there's one more stated positive direction in verse 2. Look at verse 2. The blessed man delights in God's word. the law, that is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Now, normally we associate law with sort of dreary, dull, plodding legalism. So it's a bit of a surprise that the psalmist is not talking about stuffy moralism.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's not about rules and regulations and heavy obligations. The Hebrew word delight implies pleasure. desire, something that brings intense satisfaction. The blessed man doesn't see God's word as a list of chores or a speed limit sign. He sees it as a love letter. The joy that comes from realizing that God's instructions aren't meant to restrict life, but to give it meaning.
Let's take a bit of an excursion here using the whipping boy of the Old Testament. The book of Leviticus. Leviticus absolutely has a branding problem. It is notoriously the place where Bible-in-a-year reading plans go to die. To the modern reader, it feels like an endless dry text filled with bizarre rituals, skin disease diagnoses, and severe penalties. But let's recenter the heart of that book.
Leviticus wasn't written to trap people. It was written to rescue them. The book directly before Leviticus is Exodus. Exodus ends with God's holy presence filling the tabernacle. It is so holy that Moses himself can't go inside. Humans are flawed and broken and sinful, and God is perfect and pure. And if the two touch directly, it's dangerous for the human. But Leviticus points to an answer of the ultimate question.
How can flawed humanity live near a perfect God without being destroyed? The answer is grace. The laws, the rituals, the sacrifices were merciful roadmaps provided by God so that broken people could see God's heart to forgive, to cleanse, to walk in a relationship with Him. The blood of bulls and goats, of course, could never cover human sin, but rightly understood, even Leviticus gives us a picture of how to be forgiven for sins and outlines sacrifices that point to the sacrifice of Jesus.
So understand the law, the Torah, contains not dull teachings, but it includes examples, both good and bad, instructions and doctrines and praise and prayer. For us, meditating is not about emptying our minds as with Eastern religions. We fill our minds with the word of God. And when we encounter something we dislike or don't understand in the Bible, our suspicion is not directed on the Bible.
The suspicion is directed on us, our hearts, our misunderstandings. We seek out what it means. Verse 2 is a call to delve deeply into the Word of God. That's why the blessed man meditates, chews on the Word, mulls it over in his mind. I've met with a number of people over the last number of months, and it's been surprising to me how many people have told me, I'm having trouble reading the Word. And I understand, but keep at it, meditate.
My Uncle Jack was a fighter pilot in the Navy and while stationed in Japan connected with some missionaries who shared the gospel with him and he came to faith. It was a very dramatic conversion. Uncle Jack later told me he prayed for me daily and rejoiced when I came to faith myself. He not only prayed faithfully, but he read the scriptures every day. He was a disciplined man. That served him well because even after walking with the Lord faithfully for many years, intense and debilitating doubt blindsided him.
Doubt about his life, doubt about his salvation, doubt about God. But he told me as he continued to faithfully read God's word, doubts were lifted and his faith was rejuvenated. He said he wasn't sure what would have happened if he had not regularly meditated on God's word. It's a good warning for us. The word protects us. And since you don't always know what's down at the end of the road, it's good to delight in the word of God. Let's move to point two.
Next two verses where the psalmist gives us a two-word picture. Two of them, the tree and the chaff. He's like a tree planted by the streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, they are like chaff. that the wind drives away. The first word picture describes the blessed man. He's like a tree. I have a large sycamore tree in the backyard of my house.
It reminds me of verse 3. It's planted right next to the stream in our backyards, and one of its massive roots is partially exposed before it plunges deep into the soil. It's stable. It's not blown about by circumstances. That's how it is with a blessed man. Circumstances don't dictate how he feels. There's water close by. The blessed man is vitally connected with what sustains him. Meditating on the word, fellowship with believers, prayer, those things sustain us.
The blessed man is fruitful. He lives a productive life. His leaves do not wither. That is, he is durable. All he does prospers. That is not to say there are never setbacks. Of course there are. But in hard times, those setbacks do not stop him from persevering. The second word picture here describes the wicked. It's brutally short.
They're chaff. The husks left over from seeds. The wind blows chaff away. Is there anything more opposite of a tree than chaff? The wind is a picture of the Spirit of God which drives away the wicked. And this hints at our next two verses, 5 through 6, our third and final point. The congregation of the righteous, verses 5 and 6, the key to heaven. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The wicked, who have been so confident standing in the company of sinners, arrogantly scoffing, cannot stand before God. Furthermore, they aren't part of the congregation of the righteous. Notice in verse 5, there's an assumption that judgment is approaching. It's the judgment. There's no John Lennon anthem of the atheist here.
Are you all too young to know who John Lennon is? He's saying about imagining there's no heaven above, no hell below. You can imagine it, but it sure takes a lot of faith to believe it. On the other hand, Jesus often warned his listeners about the seriousness of their choices because the day of judgment will come. It will come. It's more sure than tomorrow's sunrise. So consider who has more theological weight, John Lennon or Jesus of Nazareth.
The implication is though that the wicked can't stand in the judgment, the congregation of the righteous can. That means there is nothing, brothers and sisters, friends who've joined us this morning, there is nothing more critical in your life than to belong to the congregation of the righteous. Who are they? This congregation of the righteous. There's grave danger in how you answer because we must avoid two pitfalls.
One pitfall is the pharisaical self-righteous attitude, the mindset that says, I've got it together. I thank you, God, that I'm not among those rotten sinners. Beware of scoffing at the scoffers. We should pray for the scoffers. Don't forget, though, that the people Jesus most condemned were those who thought their own righteousness, their own good works, their self-righteousness was good enough for God.
The other pitfall, of course, is living in total despair, realizing we simply can't meet the righteous commands of the law, which is really closer to the truth. We're all sinners. The Bible is clear. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If God showed up at midnight tonight in perfect, complete justice, who would be left at 1 a.m.? It's this Leviticus problem. How can sinful people commune with a holy God? But there's hope for sinners.
God, out of his great love, has made a way. As I mentioned at the start of the sermon, there's only one totally blessed man, Jesus of Nazareth. He is the only one who lived a truly perfect Psalm 1 life. He is the blessed man. I mean, think of the peer pressure he resisted. Pressure from his family who thought he was crazy. The religious elites who sneered and scoffed and plotted his murder.
Pressure even from his own disciples who tried to turn him from the task that he was sent to accomplish on the cross. think of the political pressure of Pontius Pilate think of the temptation of Satan who said prove yourself worship me and I'll give you the world yet despite everything Jesus delighted in sharing the true meaning of the law of God with others has there ever been a more fruitful life in the history of the world than Jesus Jesus solved the Levitical problem He laid down his perfect life as a ransom for many such that to join the congregation of the righteous is to repent of disbelief and put your faith in Jesus as the Lord of your lives.
That's the key to heaven. Can you imagine someone saying, here's a key, it opens heaven? You say, no, thank you. No, it's the key to heaven. Faith in Jesus includes us in the congregation of the righteous. Here's what J.C. Rowell, the Anglican bishop of Liverpool, said. Never did anyone speak such white-hot, scorching words against sin, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness as did our Lord Jesus Christ.
He spared no false teacher. He uncovered the rottenness of the pharisaical system with an unsparing hand. And yet never did anyone speak such tender, comforting words to the brokenhearted, to tax collectors, the prostitutes and children. And how do we know that this voice speaks the absolute truth of heaven? It's because he never broke a promise he made. He promised that he would lay down his life for us, and he did.
He promised that he would rise again from the dead on the third day, and he did. The same mouth that scorched the proud and comforted the outcast is the mouth that conquered the grave. He kept that monumental promise to shatter the tomb, and he will keep every small, quiet promise he made to secure your soul to the very end. so Jesus lived the perfect life that we were meant to live he died the death we deserve so that he could become the sacrifice that satisfied God's righteous judgment he allowed in this sacrifice for the great love and mercy of God to be poured out on us which enables us to be forgiven and stand at the judgment clothed in the righteousness of Christ now all that's required is faith to trust in Jesus
that's how we stand in the congregation of the righteous let me frame that for you what the congregation of the righteous looks like I went to Indonesia as the invited guest to speak at a vast gathering of teachers from a network of Christian schools from across Indonesia the owner of those schools owned many successful businesses we stayed at his hotel we shopped at his mall we got our COVID shots at his hospital you get the idea but he saw his schools as the point of his ministry to this largely Muslim nation Leanne and I were invited to I don't even know how to describe it we were invited to his palace we had dinner with 20 other people
I sat to his right Leanne sat with his sweet wife and during the meal I asked him how he came to faith he told me as a younger man he had been sent to America to manage a business his father owned Things didn't go well. His marriage was in trouble. His wife told him she was leaving him with the children. And it was then he was indicted for running afoul of election laws in the U.S. And he faced serious consequences for that.
It was rock bottom. At that point, he cried out to God for help. He told me he wanted God to get him out of his mess. But what God spoke to him about was that he was a sinner and he needed to repent and follow Jesus. And he did. He bent his knee to Jesus as Lord. And we spent some sweet time together rejoicing in our salvation. Last month, I took my car into the dealership James Motors for repairs.
And it was going to take longer than expected, so they gave me a shuttle ride home. My driver had full-sleeve tattoos. He had face tattoos. I asked him about his life. He said it had been rough. His mom was a junkie, he said. He started doing drugs before he was 14. He didn't blame her, he said. She didn't know better. But he said things were looking up.
He moved out of the drug scene in California and was now living in a recovery center downtown Louisville. I mentioned I knew some of the Christian folk who worked there. He did this number, you know, as he's driving. He said, they led me to Jesus. They told him he was a sinner and he needed to repent and believe. And he did. He bent his knee to Jesus as Lord and we spent some sweet time rejoicing in our salvation. Friends, from a burned-out lawyer to an Indonesian billionaire to a recovering junkie from California.
They stand among the congregation of the righteous. It's so counter-cultural. It's so opposite of what people think. That's because it doesn't have much to do with you being good or righteous or joining the congregation. Blaine was right. He's done everything we need. Now, you know, I know that when we talk about the congregation of the righteous, we subconsciously add a word.
We tend to slip in the congregation of the self-righteous, right? There's a tendency to do that. Of course, God hates the self-righteous. Those folks do exist. But the true congregation of the righteous are the most humble of all people because they know it was God's work, not theirs. And then once we've made the move to the congregation of the righteous through repentance and belief, we're stirred by the Spirit of Christ in us under grace and with joy, we walk in the way of Psalm 1, not to earn heaven, but to please God out of our joyful love for what He's done.
You see, sometimes people get it backwards. We come to faith first. And then we look at Psalm 1 to see how can we please God out of joyful love. Our destinies, on which of these two paths we take, depends on our decisions about which way to go. Much is at stake. And it's summed up in the first and last word of the psalm.
Do you notice? The first word of the psalm is blessed. The last word is perish. And between these two extremes, you must decide from the heart, for God knows who belongs in his congregation of the righteous, how you go. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Lord God, thank you for your word that instructs us on how to live a meaningful life.
Thank you for making a way for us to be with you and to commune with you. We rejoice that Jesus Christ is the Blessed One of Psalm 1. We marvel at his righteousness. We're stirred by the Spirit of God within us to walk with Jesus in the way of Psalm 1. We pray for resolve under grace and with joy. And Lord, thank you for the opportunity to take communion this morning. We pray that you would bless this time, a time of reflection, a time to think of your sacrifice, your work on the cross, your promise to come again.
Lord we pray that you would you would make sure that we that we live a life for those who know you in a way that's pleasing to you and those that are thinking about coming to you Father we pray Father they would recognize the truth of your word the coming judgment we pray in Jesus name Amen