So we now turn to the reading of
scripture,
which is found in Psalm chapter
1. Psalm 1. This is
the words of the living God.
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 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, but are like chaff that the wind
drives away.
And therefore, the wicked will not stand in
judgment, nor the sinners
in the congregation
of the righteous.
For the Lord knows the way of the
righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. You may be seated.
Well this morning we begin our 12 week
summer series through what is considered by many
to be one of the most beloved and
cherished books of the Bible,
which is the book
of Psalms.
And the book of Psalms is unique in
many ways, very different from other books in
the Bible.
And the first is that the Psalms, or
the book of Psalms is actually a hymn
book.
It's a collection of divinely inspired
Hebrew poems
that were sung by the nation of Israel,
and they're worshiped to God both in, private,
as well as familial, and also in corporate
worship. This is a book of praise, and
today the book of Psalms
stands as a model for us
in how
our language should be in our singing unto
the Lord. Our first hymn this morning,
praise to the Lord the Almighty, is actually
inspired
by the language of Psalm
130.
Another way that the book of Psalms is
different is that the book of Psalms is
actually a book of prayer. The Psalms contain
individual and also corporate prayers to God.
If you read some of the Psalms, you
will find prayers of joy,
and prayers of sorrow,
prayers of anxiety, and also prayers of confidence.
And sometimes you'll read a Psalm, and all
those are actually found in that one Psalm.
The Psalms is just a great way of
how the emotions of us humans,
just function and operate here in this world
that we live in.
And so the book of Psalms functions as
a way in which, as a model,
for our prayer life. The words we ought
to use to the Lord.
And finally, the the book of Psalms is
an instruction book. That is, some of the
Psalms contain
poetic imagery,
simile,
and language that really
instructs
God's people,
to life, prosperity,
and happiness. And in the Psalms, the way
that the Psalms are guiding God's people to
life,
prosperity, and happiness,
is
is to meditate and obey
the law of God, the Torah.
And well, our Psalm this morning, Psalm 1,
this is a Psalm of instruction
thoroughly, from verse 1 all the way to
verse
6. However, rather than instructing us by a
series of don't do this and don't do
that,
really the way in which the psalmist is
instructing us is by way of contrast. And
it's a sharp contrast.
It's a contrast that is between,
that is that of black and white, of
good and evil, of left and right, of
up and down. These are completely polar opposites,
that the psalmist is trying to present to
us. And what the psalmist is presenting us
here is 2 humanities
that walk 2 different roads
that lead to 2 different
eternal
final
destinations.
1 is the righteous man, and the other
is the wicked man. And the the purpose,
the reason why the psalmist is presenting
this to us is because he wants the
reader to self reflect on this psalm. And
but more importantly, he wants us to ask
a question
that's of supreme
importance, and this is the question for us
this morning.
Am I in the congregation of the righteous,
or am I in the congregation of the
wicked?
This is the question for us this morning.
And so, by way of introduction,
let us jump into our psalm. We have
2 headings this morning, the way of the
righteous and the way of the wicked. And
so, beginning with our first heading,
the way of the righteous. Let us read
verse 1.
And it reads, blessed is the man who
walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the seat of sinners, or
the way of sinners, nor sits in the
seat of scoffers.
You see the book of Psalms here launches
with this word blessed.
And it's a word that appears over 26
times in the psalter, and many other times
in the bible. It's a word that we
use predominantly because the bible uses it. And
it's something that we also get acquainted with,
especially since we're in this in the Psalms.
This is our series.
The Hebrew word for blessed is asher or
ashrei, and it simply means happy.
And here, it's actually in the plural. So
it's it's meant to magnify
this happiness, the state of happiness.
It's one of the reasons why some translators
translate
the opening of Psalm 1, oh, the happinesses
or oh, the blessedness
is of the man or woman or people.
Now typically when we use the word blessed,
we usually,
use it only to convey
God's favor towards us. His his gifts in
this life, whether it be a salary
raise, or a new house, or a new
car, or maybe the comfortable life in which
you have lived, you know, the comfortable life
in which he has provided you.
Just the other day, I was listening to
a podcast, and in one of the interviews,
the interviewee said something to the effect of,
you know, the Lord has blessed me with
so much. He has blessed me with a
beautiful wife. He has blessed me with beautiful
children. He has given me, you know, a
good amount of friends around me. He's given
me a good bill of health. And so
typically, the way in which we use this
word blessed is in that way to know
God's gifts, to God's favor towards you.
And, you know, I mentioned this because although,
yes, the word blessed means God's favor to
us,
we also always remember that it means so
much more. To be blessed, to be happy
in the scriptures,
is not merely about what God gives you,
but more importantly about what God is for
you.
In other words, it is a happiness
that springs from the assurance
that you belong to God and God belongs
to you.
It is a happiness that flows out of
knowing that your creator calls you son or
daughter,
And that you could come before him and
call him father.
It's a happiness. It's this state of being
from knowing
that God is your savior, redeemer,
and friend.
It's a happiness that persecution
cannot destroy. This is one of the reasons
why Jesus says in the beatitude,
blessed are those who are persecuted.
Persecuted for righteousness' sake.
It's a happiness that poverty cannot diminish.
It's a happiness that prosperity cannot enhance.
This is one of the reasons why Paul
writes in Philippians,
but whatever gain I had, I counted
as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything
as loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing
Christ Jesus, my Lord.
And dear friends, happiness is a pursuit of
all people.
In every generation,
every man that is born of woman, there
is a thirst and a longing
for happiness. Nobody wants to live a miserable
life.
But yet, we do to some degree, and
we seek to,
remove ourselves from that state.
Well, Psalm 1 reminds us that there really
is no true blessedness, no true happiness, apart
from receiving and knowing the one through who
we were made,
exist, and the one and that we will
one day return, which is God. Unless
you know Christ in the Bible,
unless you know the Christ of scripture, true
happiness is not obtained
or experienced.
And this
this leads me now to ask a couple
of questions, or at least for you to
ask some questions,
which is, what is it that makes you
happy?
What is that one thing in life that
if you just had, would make you happiest
the longest?
Is it retirement? Is it a particular video
game?
Is it
a successful business?
6 figure salary?
A mansion, a home, a spouse.
Now there's nothing wrong with wanting these things.
I wanna be absolutely clear about that. However,
my point is this, that is that to
pursue happiness
apart from God
is really like trying to fill up a
strainer with water.
It's it's it's like trying to satisfy the
hunger of a lion with a carrot.
Or it's like trying to empty
the ocean
of its water by using a bucket,
and only a bucket.
Sure there might be momentary moments of happiness
in this world apart from God, but very
much like, you know, a kid who is
chasing bubbles,
once you touch it, there it vanishes.
Right? True lasting happiness, true lasting
blessedness in this life begins with God, and
the way of the righteous are those who
not only,
know that they have favor with God,
and the gifts that they receive come from
God, more importantly it's recognizing
that the gift is actually God himself.
He is
both the gift giver and the gift, and
this is what makes them blessed.
God is the source of their happiness.
This is the way of the righteous.
2nd, look with me at verse 1. The
righteous reject 3 things.
The way of the righteous walks not in
the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in
the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
The counsel of the wicked, that word counsel
there is a reference
to the beliefs
of those that neither
know God or his law. These are those
who are morally bankrupt, morally corrupt. These are
those people that call that which is good
evil,
and that which is evil good.
The righteous do not seek the counsel,
the advice,
the philosophy
from these sorts of individuals or people.
When the psalmist writes the way of sinners,
the way,
that phrase there is a reference to the
behavior
of those that neither know God or his
law. The word sin, it's a word that
we often use, simply means both in the
Greek and the Hebrew, to miss the mark,
and here in this Psalm, when it's describing
sinners, it's describing the people who conduct their
life in such a way as to oppose
God's law
habitually
and intentionally.
The way of the righteousness does not conduct
his life
in this way. He rejects this sort of
behavior
entirely.
The righteous walk it away
that aims to honor and please
God. They seek to aim,
they seek to obey God's law at all
costs.
And then we see the 3rd,
stanza there, and it says, the seat of
the scoffers. That seat there, it's a Hebrew
word that is also used for marriage. This
is where,
people find their belonging. It's a reference to
the belonging of those that know that do
not know God or his law.
These are the scoffers that mock God and
his law openly.
These are those that are unashamedly
anti God, anti Christian.
And the righteous
are those that do not sit
with them, do not sit in their committee
boards. They do not sit at their dinners
or their
other committees. They do not participate
with them in their hatred on the one
whom they treasure.
Now the psalmist is not suggesting that we
cease to
disengage with these individuals, to not engage these
individuals, but really what the psalmist is getting
at here is that we do not entertain
them. One pastor put it this way, that
we are not to be a party at
their parties.
This is the way of
the righteous.
And the simple reason is this, Paul puts
it very well in 1st Corinthians chapter 15
verse 33 when he says, do not be
deceived,
bad company ruins good morals.
Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good
morals. Dear friends,
contrary to what the world may say, what
Psalm 1 is teaching us here, and the
three things that the righteous
reject,
is that there really is happiness in saying
no.
There really is joy
in disassociating
from different world views, people, and philosophies.
We don't have to accept
everything.
And when we do, we are quick to
be deceived. The the righteous,
those who are righteous, those who seek to
walk a righteous way,
understand the progressive nature of sin. Look with
me at the text again. We have look
at the verbs. It says, walk, sit, stand,
and
sit. Walk, stand, and sit. And isn't this
how sin functions and operates
in the world?
Right? First, it starts off with advice,
then it
moves into action,
and then into association.
This is what happened at the fall. First
it started with, did God really say?
To delighting
and disobeying God, to then actually touching and
eating the forbidden fruit. It starts with the
the the the words into the head, into
the heart, and out into the hands. And
the righteous know
that just as sin ruined the blessed estate
of our parents in the garden, so also
will it ruin our estate and blessedness in
this life.
Sin is not something to be trifled with.
It's not something to pets. It's not something
to play with.
And who we
surround ourselves with, things that we fill our
minds with,
this will eventually control
our mind, which will eventually control our hearts
and our actions. When we befriend sin,
there we will find misery.
And where we make a practice of sin,
there we will find destruction.
And where we fellowship with the wicked, there
we will find death. The righteous are not
guided
by the beliefs,
behaviors,
and belonging
of the world. Rather, the righteous truly seek
to follow and obey God's
law.
And we know that. Read with me verse
2.
It says, but his delight, that is the
righteous one,
his delight is in the law of the
Lord, and on his law he meditates
day and night. That word, God's law, in
the Hebrew is Torah. And it's it's a
reference to God's commands, God's teachings,
God's instructions, and for the for the way
of the righteous, for the righteous one, God's
law is not merely a preference.
It's actually his pleasure.
He enjoys
and delights
in God's
law.
He says like the psalmist,
in Psalm 119,
the law of your mouth is better to
me than thousands
of gold and silver pieces.
Or how sweet are your words to my
taste? Sweeter than honey to my mouth. And
how do the righteous demonstrate their delight of
God's law?
Well, the answer here is the act
of meditation.
And now typically when we think of meditation,
the image that is conjured up in our
mind is one of an individual sitting out
in nature with,
with maybe sitting in a in a very,
an Indian style, legs crossed, eyes closed,
sort of humming to enter into this,
tranquil
state of being.
And really the the idea
or the the objective there is sort of
to escape the reality in which they live.
This is really new age spirituality.
Well, biblical meditation
is not that.
And I think Psalm
chapter 143 verse 5 really clarifies what biblical
meditation is. And I want I want us
to listen carefully here. Because there's 3 stanzas
in this verse,
and each each word here that we're gonna
point out is just simply another word used
for meditation. The psalmist writes, I remember the
days of old.
I meditate on what you have done,
and I ponder the work of your hand.
Here we have the words remember, meditate, and
ponder. In other words, to meditate is to
actually remember.
To ponder. It's it's a it's a act
it's an intellectual activity
of engaging with God's law.
And therefore, biblical meditation is not emptying the
mind, but rather it is filling the mind.
It's not eliminating thought like New Age Spirituality,
but it is redirecting
thought on the wonderful works of God,
on his truth, on his commandments.
It's not forgetting
the world in which we live, but it's
remembering the one which created the world that
we live.
His truth.
And really meditation is that activity
of calling the mind to think, dwell, and
apply the word of God, his promises, his
commandments, the truth that it is found therein,
to oneself. Meditation is not simply reading God's
word, even though we want to do that,
we want to also pray God's word, but
it's studying, it's pondering, it's memorizing it in
such a way that it becomes one with
you.
That you could carry it with you.
Dear friends,
when we delight in a person,
we wanna spend time with that person.
When there's a song that we really enjoy,
we want to listen to it.
When there's a movie
that we like, we repeatedly watch it.
Also, what Psalm 1 is teaching us here
is that if we delight in God's law,
and if we say that we delight in
God's law, then we won't meditate upon it.
And since the act of biblical meditation is
an act of really filling the mind, I
think the question for us
is not whether we meditate, but what do
we meditate upon.
What we fill our minds with truly reveals
where our delight is.
Sort of the the opposite,
of what we find here. So what do
we fill our minds with the most?
Who do we spend the most time watching
and listening to? What is the content that
is found there? Is it honoring to God
or is it not honoring to God?
Because whatever
you meditate upon, whatever you fill your mind
with, will eventually control you.
And the way of the righteous knows this,
and it is the reason why he reads
and meditates and prays upon the word of
God. This is the way of the righteous.
Just as a philosopher meditates on the laws
of logic
to sort of instruct his thinking,
just as a physicist may meditate on the
laws of physics for his experiments, so also
does the righteous
person meditate upon the law of God to
direct his heart, mind, and soul, and life,
his entire
body. And dear friends, it is important that
we meditate
upon God's law. I think one Puritan is
right when he when he says, without meditation,
the truths of God will not stay with
us.
The heart is hard. The memory is slippery,
and without meditation, all is lost.
When we encounter temptation in this world,
how are we to fight it? The way
that we see Jesus did is that he
quoted scripture. He had
scripture a part of his battle with temptation
and sin in this world. If we are
to discern the will of God in certain
circumstances, we ought to know it, and one
of the ways we do it is by
meditation.
How will we lead others as well into
the way of righteousness?
And it's through meditation. And there's a couple
of ways that the psalmist actually notes how
meditation
benefits us. The psalmist continues in verse 3.
Read with me.
The one who meditates, the psalmist says, is
like a tree planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season, and
its leaf does not wither, and all that
he does he prospers.
And so first we see that the one
who meditates upon God's law, he's compared to
a tree.
And a tree that's planted by streams of
water, and that water is God's word, and
it's multiple streams. In other words, God's law,
the object of our meditation,
is never ending.
It's abundant.
And it could do nothing but give you
life.
And it's something that will never end as
well. I'm a seminary student, and the more
that I study God's word, the more that
I, study the old and the new testament,
the more that eventually you begin to understand,
the less you know, and just the depths
of God's word itself. There is
so much to meditate upon,
and it is good for us.
2nd, the one who meditates upon God's laws
compared to a tree that yields fruit in
its season.
You see, meditation here conforms us more and
more to the image of Christ.
The more that we meditate, the more that
we are gonna bear the fruit of the
spirit.
Love, joy, peace, and kindness.
For those who are married, you will know
this. For those who,
who are not married, be informed.
The more you spend time with your wife,
the more you will pick up on their
mannerisms.
The more that you will pick on the
way that they talk. The more that you'll
pick on the way, pick up on the
way that they react. And here it's sort
of the same. The more that we meditate
upon the word of God, the more that
we know Christ through the scriptures, the more
that we will become like Him.
Mortifying the flesh. This is one of the
reasons why we ought to meditate on the
scriptures.
Meditation,
God's word helps us with spiritual
maturity.
3rd, the one who meditates upon God's law
says does not wither.
That is even in the difficult seasons of
life, there is a spiritual life in the
righteousness.
It it it will withstand the heat, the
blizzards, the storms.
As long as this tree is meditating or
or sitting by the stream of water, it
will not experience
death. It will not experience
physical
or spiritual
death.
The psalmist of Psalm 119,
verses 92 to 93 writes,
if your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished
in my affliction.
I will never forget your precepts,
for you have given me life by them.
It's often in the struggles and trials of
life
where, you know, the Christian life ends up
becoming very difficult.
Despair will lead into
easily falling into temptation.
Despair will easily lead into doubting the goodness
of God.
But if we are to meditate upon God's
word, it not only prepares us for that
coming, but also helps us to endure those
trials as well.
Those who meditate
will not wither. Meditation on God's word prepares
us to endure the hardship of the Christian
life. And so so far we've looked at
the way of the righteous. How the way
the righteous live. What they reject.
Who they love.
What they do, they meditate, their delights. And
now we look at the way of the
wicked. This is our final and last heading.
And look with me at verse 4.
It reads,
says, the wicked are not so, but are
like chaff
that the wind drives away. Verse 4 is
really short.
It is a short description
of the wicked.
And it's really revealing.
The wicked
live their life and act in such a
way that the words not so is actually
sufficient
to describe them.
Of just how opposite they are
of the righteous.
So,
case example that if you were to ask,
do the wicked delight in God's law? The
answer is not so.
If you were to ask, do the wicked
meditate upon God's law? You could be assured
that the answer is not so. Does the
wicked reject the way of the sinner? The
the the seed of the scoffer? The the
answer is not so.
It is sufficient to
describe them, but the psalmist even goes further,
and he compares them to something that is
completely
opposite
of the righteous. He uses another agricultural metaphor.
He compares the wicked to chaff.
And if you're unfamiliar with what chaff is,
chaff is that,
sort of thin membrane that surrounds a seed.
And when it came to harvest time, especially
grain, you would break this seed,
because it was necessary
to harvest,
the seed. So you were separating the chaff
and the seed from itself.
And this husk that surrounds it is really
dry. It's it's scaly. It's fragile. If we
were to compare it to maybe what it
might look like, it is, the closest thing
maybe to sawdust.
If anybody's ever cut wood, there's usually a
pile of just sawdust sitting around there.
This would be a comparison to what chaff
is. Chaff is something that is rootless.
That is, it's dead. It's not connected to
any sort of life.
Chaff is also weightless.
The farmer would have his winnowing fork and
shuffle through the grain, and when he would
lift the grain, the
chaff would blow away in the wind, and
the seed would would drop.
This is just how easily this chaff is,
is
is blowing. It's easily
moved around. And lastly,
chaff is worthless.
It's the reason why chaff is just simply
used for either starting fire or just throwing
in the fire itself.
Dear friends, the the wicked
are compared to chaff. That which is rootless,
weightless,
and worthless. And it's a reality
that we should all consider.
Now lastly, we read verses 5 and 6.
Read with me these verses. 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.
And here
is a text that speaks about the final
judgment that the Old and New Testament talk
about.
That one day the Lord will bring
every thought, word, and deed, whether good or
evil,
into judgment.
The book of Ecclesiastes says this exact thing.
Chapter 12 verse 13.
For God will bring every deed into judgment
with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
John the Baptist warned about this as well
in the book of Matthew, when he said,
his winnowing fork is in his hand, and
he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor.
And he will gather his wheat into the
barn, and he will burn up the chaff
with unquenchable
fire.
The psalmist, in harmony with the rest of
scripture,
teaches that the wicked will not stand before
God on the final day.
They will not be in the assembly or
the congregation of the righteous.
And why is that? Well verse 6 tells
us. For the Lord Yahweh
knows the way of the righteous.
On the final judgment, when the Lord clears
the threshing floor, he will
not have a hard time distinguishing
who is righteous
and who is wicked.
Just as a farmer could distinguish between a
tree and chaff, and just as a carpenter
can,
distinguish between what is wood and what is
sawdust,
so also on that day,
before the judgment of God, the Lord will
be able to distinguish the righteous and the
wicked.
And that word know is not merely an
intellectual knowledge of where they're at and who
they are, but it's one and that of
a shepherd.
It's a knowing that is intimate. It is
a knowing that,
cares, feeds, protects, and defends those we love.
This is one of the reasons why the
righteous are considered blessed, and why they're in
this blessed estate.
Well, this final destination of the wicked, however,
is simply described in one last word, which
is perish.
The righteous are those who obtain
life, those who are blessed, those who are
in that estate, and those who are
a part of the wicked perish.
And dear friends, these are solemn verses,
and therefore I wanna bring us back to
the question that we sought to answer at
the very beginning, which is, am I in
the congregation
of the righteous,
or am I in the congregation
of the wicked?
That was the question for us this morning.
And Psalm 1 is placed at the head
of the 150
Psalms because this question
is what he wants us to ask. This
is that question of supreme
importance. It is truly the difference, or may
be the difference between eternal life
and eternal death.
And I think if we're all honest with
ourselves, when we read the Psalm, it really
weighs heavy because
I think we all know
that
we have stood in the counsel
of the wicked.
We have walked in the way of sinners.
We have sat at the seat of scoffers.
Right? We fail to delight in God's law,
period.
Not always.
Especially, we struggle or even may even refuse
to meditate,
especially day and night.
We know that we are all unworthy
when we read the Psalm of the title
of righteous, or to even be in the
congregation
of the righteous. And that is what the
Psalm is intended to do to us. And
it's not meant to make us
fall into despair, but rather to seek a
deliverer for this.
Dear friends,
let Psalm 1 not lead you and me
to despair, but to seek deliverance in the
one who is righteous, and the one who
is righteous
ness for us, which is Jesus Christ. The
good news is that God sent his only
begotten son
to die a death that we deserve, but
not only that, but to live the life
that we cannot
to reconcile us and save us unto God.
He is the door that leads into the
congregation
of the righteous.
When we place our faith in him, God
promises that our sins are not only removed
as far as the east is from the
west, but he actually gives us the righteousness
of his own son
and credits it to us. It's the reason
why when we believe in Christ, he declares
us justified.
That is righteous,
innocent.
He credits his own son's righteousness
to us, and it's one of the reasons
why,
all Christians have eternal life, and there's no
there's not a fear anymore of that last
day
in judgment.
The only way sinners stand before a holy
and righteous God is if we believe upon
the one who is righteous. Jesus says, and
we'll end with this. In John chapter 5
verses 24,
truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears
my words and believes in him who sent
me has eternal
life.
He does not come into judgment,
but has passed from death to life.
This is the word of the Lord. Let
us pray.