Psalm 1:1-6 | The Cure for a Swollen Soul

Good morning church. Today in our series Rhythms of Residency we’re unpacking the practice of Scripture or scripture engagement and so I want to get right to the Bible first thing!

Please open your Bibles to Psalm 1.

As you’re turning there I want to let you know that this text has been working its way into my heart in a profound way this week.

In verse 1, this Psalm issues a warning about a progression that life puts us all on. The warning is about drifting into the seat of scoffers or mockers as the NIV says.

A scoffer—or a mocker—is someone who has lost hope and mocks anyone who still has it. They don’t believe in God, they don’t see the good in life, and they roll their eyes at anyone who does.

Now, nobody sets out to occupy that seat. You don't graduate high school with dreams of becoming a bitter cynic. But it is a posture that becomes increasingly tempting the longer you walk the road of life.

The older folks in here know what it's like to lose the idealism of youth.

When you are young, you believe you are going to change the world. You have mountains to climb! But at some point... reality hits. You climb the mountain, you achieve the goal, and it’s somehow less satisfying than you hoped. Or life blocks the road entirely, and you realize those dreams probably aren't going to happen.

If we aren't careful, that disappointment can harden us.

And gradually, without even noticing, you take your seat among the scoffers. You become a cynic. You stop expecting the best and only expect the worst. You become a hard-hearted, crotchety old grump—or as we like to call it in Midwest nice, you become a "Realist."

You know the type, right? The food at the restaurant is always bad—send it back. The city, the schools, the politics, "kids these days"—it's everyone else's fault. Nothing is good. It’s all going to hell in a hand basket.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

This cynicism, Church, is exactly the drift that Psalm 1 warns us against. It is the gravitational pull of the "way of the wicked."

Let's look at it together. We’re going to read all 6 verses, and as we do, I want you to notice the sharp contrast between the Way of the World and the Way of the Word.

Psalm 1 The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked

Psalm 1 NIV

1 Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. 3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. 4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Did you notice the progression in verse 1? First, you Walk (you listen to the advice). Then, you Stand (you stop and consider it). Finally, you Sit.

To "Sit" means you resign yourself. You settle in. You lose hope and become a "victim" of life. Life is hard, I can’t change it, so I’m done trying. You grumble and complain—perhaps not on the outside because you still care what people think—but on the inside, you have taken your seat. You roll your eyes at the people of faith. They still have hope… but just wait, life will wring that right out of them.

Notice where these folks end up in Psalm 1? Alone, not with the congregation of the righteous, they perish, they die alone in their sad scoffing!

Now, that is a bleak picture but it gets worse. The Psalmist continues and gives us another image in Verse 4. He tells us that if we follow the way of the world—if we drift down the progression of walking with the wicked, standing with sinners and finally sitting among the mockers—then the only thing we’ll find is wind!

Look at verse 4. The results of the way of the wicked? "The wicked are not so…" Compared to the tree that is stable and fruitful, the wicked "are like chaff that the wind drives away."

There’s an image for us: Chaff. Think of wheat harvest in July. Chaff is the husk that comes off if you roll it around in your hands. It’s dry. It’s weightless. It has no root system. When the wind blows, it doesn't stand; it scatters.

The Apostle James tells us in James 1 that being chaff is being double-minded. To be chaff is to be a perpetual doubter.

James 1:6–8 NIV

6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

They are Chaff.

And this is where things get interesting.

You see, when I walked us through the progression of walking, standing, and finally sitting in the seat with mockers, we were all like, "Good grief, ain’t nobody want that." Nobody wants to die alone, isolated from everyone and from God! So that feels pretty far from our reality. We would never follow the way of the wicked!

And then I said, "It gets worse, now we are talking about Chaff."

And on first pass, you might be thinking, "Yeah, I don’t want to be a dried-out husk either!"

But... not so fast on this one.

Think about it. Chaff is weightless. It just gets blown wherever the wind goes.

Doesn’t that sound kind of nice?

I mean, think about the weight you are carrying right now. The mortgage. The marriage struggles. The deadlines. The kids' schedules. The weight of the world. It’s a lot.

Wouldn’t it be kind of nice to be weightless? To just go wherever the wind blows? No responsibilities, just a free spirit, chasing adventure wherever it leads?

I don’t know about you, but this has been a pull on my heart for the last eight months, and it’s put me in what I’ve started to call a "funk."

I’ve been doing the duties of ministry, but my heart has felt heavy, and I started fantasizing about being light. I found myself drifting into what I call the "F.I.R.E." fantasy—Financial Independence, Retire Early.

I caught myself daydreaming about buying a cabin in the woods. Just me, a fishing rod, and a set of golf clubs. No email. No meetings. No sermon prep. No people needing me. Just escaping all responsibility until Jesus comes back.

It sounds like freedom, doesn't it? Or does it?

Church this fantasy, it isn't a dream of being a Tree planted by the water. It is a dream of being Chaff. It is a desire to have no roots. It is a desire to be weightless so I can just float through life on the breeze of my own autonomy.

And friends, I need to call this what it is. It is sin. It is "Walking in the Counsel of the Wicked."

Did any of you notice a detail about my fantasy? In my dream cabin, there was no mention of Rachel. There was no mention of my four children. It was just me. It was entirely selfish. I was "Standing in the way that sinners take," calculating how I could escape the pressure and leave everyone else behind.

And right now, I have a choice. I can choose to finally Sit in that seat of resignation... or I can turn back.

This is the pull of our world. This is the Drift. We are constantly pulled by the current of our culture to seek this weightlessness and Psalm 1 tells us it’s wicked!

If we feed ourselves on this “Counsel from the World"—the F.I.R.E. dream, the escapism, the autonomy to live life my way—we become chaff. We become spiritually weightless. We have no center. We are unstable in all we do; every anxiety, every headline, every mood swing blows us over.

And here is the connection I want you to see: If you act like Chaff, the Word of God is going to Chafe.

Remember Week 1 of our series? We said Jesus' Yoke is "easy"—it fits well. If that’s true, why does I dream of escaping my life and responsibilites sometime. Why does reading the Bible feel like a burden to you? Why does serving feel like a chore?

Is it because Jesus lied? Is His yoke actually heavy and harsh?

No. It’s not because His Yoke is bad. It’s because our necks are swollen.

Think back to the ox imagery. We are like an ox that broke out of the fence and ate sugar all week instead of grass. We have been feeding on the high-fructose corn syrup of the world's counsel: "You deserve a break. You should be happy. You shouldn't have to answer to anyone."

We are bloated on the fantasy of Autonomy. Because we lack spiritual weight (Chaff), we try to inflate ourselves with pride (Swelling).

So when we try to put the Yoke of Jesus back on—the yoke of duty, of love, of staying put, of washing feet, of sacrifice—that yoke rubs us raw. It chafes.

But listen closely: It is not the Yoke's fault. It is the swelling brought on by the drift. By walking in the counsel of the wicked and standing in the way that sinners take.

It’s the inflammation caused by the Way of the World.

That’s the bad news. We all get swollen souls. But here’s the good news: Jesus said, “I didn’t come for the healthy. I came for the sick.”

RESIST THE DRIFT

If we want to stop the chafing and resist the drift, we have to look at the only Man who never became a Scoffer. We have to look at the only Man who truly sat in the Seat of the Righteous. We have to look at Jesus.

Think about Jesus in the Wilderness temptation of Matthew 4 for a second. You can look it up later.

He was around 30 years old. He was right at that point where many men start to drift or look for an easier path. He was hungry. He was tired. And Satan came to Him offering the ultimate "F.I.R.E." dream—a life of glory without the suffering, an escape from duty and responsibility! He offered "Freedom."

Satan offered Him the Counsel of the Wicked:

"Turn these stones to bread,” he said. Make your life about comfort and instant gratification. Feed your hunger now.

"Throw yourself down,” Satan said. Force God’s hand. Get the fame and become a spectacle in an instant.

"Bow down to me," Satan said. I’ll give you power and the kingdoms of the world without Suffering. I’ll give you the Crown without the Cross.

And folks, Jesus could have said, "You know what? I’m done. These people don’t get it. They are so needy! I’m done! I’m going to the cabin. I’m taking the easy road." He could’ve followed the way of the wicked! He could have thought only of Himself and peaced out on us all. He could have drifted!

But He didn't. He stood firm. Why? How?

Because before He spent 40 days in the desert, He spent 30 years in the silence of Nazareth wrestling with the weight of the Word. He wasn't fantasizing about escape; He was "Delighting in the Law of the Lord."

If you go read Matthew 4, you will see that every time Satan spoke the "Counsel of the Wicked," Jesus responded with, "It is written..."

You see, He didn't just download verses to win an argument; He was shaped by them. His very identity was rooted in the Text. John tells us that Jesus was the text. Jesus was the Word of God with flesh on! And because the Word of God had formed Him, when the pressure came, the Word of God didn't rub Him raw—it sustained Him.

Jesus told Satan as much: "Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God!"

And if we stop there, we might leave here despairing, thinking, "Great, Jesus did it, but I can't."

So here is the Gospel, the good news, friends. Look closely back at Verse 3 of Psalm 1.

Psalm 1:3 NIV

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

Circle the word "Planted." In Hebrew, it is a specific word: Shathul. It implies Transplanting.

A tree, friends, does not plant itself. A tree cannot pick up its roots and walk from the desert to the river. It has to be moved. It has to be carried. The active agent in verse 3 is not the Tree. It is the Gardener.

And that Gardener plants this tree by streams of water. And I need you to know, this is not a naturally occurring stream… this is an irrigation canal. That’s what the Hebrew means. It’s an irrigation canal controlled by the Gardener!

Which fits perfectly if you know the rest of God’s Word. Remember what Jesus said about Himself? "If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and I will make streams of living water flow through them so that they never need a drink again!"

This is the Gospel of Psalm 1.You and I are born as Chaff. We are born as wild shrubs in the desert of sin. We cannot stabilize ourselves. But there is a Vinedresser who loves you.

Two thousand years ago, the True Tree—Jesus Christ—went into the wilderness and stood firm. But then, He went to the Cross. And on the Cross, the True Tree was cut down. He was dried out. He cried out, "I thirst."

Do you see it? On the cross, Jesus was treated like Chaff—blown away by the wrath of God—so that you and I, the double-minded drifters, could be Transplanted. He withered so we could be watered!

This means the cure for your swollen soul isn't to promise God you'll try harder. It is to sink your roots down into the reality of what He has already done.

THE REGIMEN: WRESTLING WITH THE WEIGHT OF THE WORD

So, if we are transplanted by grace... how do we sink our roots down? How do I get out of my funk and resist the drift of the world?

The Psalmist gives us the Resident's Regimen in verse 2: "but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night."

Now, let's pause. When the Psalmist says "Law of the Lord" (or Torah), he isn't just talking about a list of rules. He is talking about the entirety of God's instruction. For us today, this is the Word of God. It is the Scriptures—the Story of God, the character of God, and the will of God revealed to us in the Bible.

So the regimen is to delight in that—the Word—and to Meditate on it.

But we need to reclaim this word "Meditate."

There are a lot of ideas about meditation in our world today. But let’s be clear about what Biblical meditation is not.

It is not learning magic words or incantations to manifest what you want.

It is not "emptying your mind."

It’s not sitting cross-legged, chanting "OMMMM," and trying to achieve a state of nothingness.

Christian meditation is not about emptying yourself; it is about filling yourself.

It is a mindful wrestling with the weight of God’s Word.

The Hebrew word here translated as meditate is Hagah. It carries the imagery of a lion growling over its prey.

Picture that.

The lion isn't chanting. The lion is chewing. It is wrestling with the meat, tearing it apart, gnawing on the bone, working it over until it can be swallowed and digested.

That is what we, the Residents of Jesus, are to do with the Word.

We don't just read it to check a box. We chew on it. We wrestle with its weight at a heart level.

And I use that word "weight" on purpose. Remember, "Chaff" is weightless. It blows away. But the Bible tells us that God desires to give us weight. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:17 that our troubles are achieving for us an "eternal weight of glory."

Did you know the Hebrew word for "Glory" (Kabod) literally means Heavy? God wants to make you heavy. He wants to give you substance so you don't drift. And the way you get that weight is by wrestling with this Book.

It’s by spending time in it, and stopping and asking hard questions of yourself from it as you read. Like with Psalm 1: Wrestling with the weight of Psalm 1 might ask questions like:

"Is this true of me?"

"Do I really delight in God’s word, or do I hate his commands?" “Do I delight in them or do I ignore them?”

“Do these words feel light and easy to me or do they chafe against my soul? “

“If it chafes? Why? What part of my heart is swollen against God?"

"Is He really the King of my life, or is there a rival on the throne?"

And residents, this wrestling is intense because the thing you are wrestling with is alive.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us exactly what happens when we meditate like this:

Hebrews 4:12 NIV

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

It divides Joints and Marrow. This wrestling is surgery. It cuts deep to expose the "swelling" in our souls. It judges our selfish ambition. It exposes the "F.I.R.E." dream for what it is.

And yes, that wrestling will be exhausting. And yes, if the Word is dividing joints and marrow, it will eventually leave you with a limp.

Think of Jacob in Genesis 32. He wrestled with God all night. He refused to let go until God blessed him. And God did bless him—He gave him a new name and a new identity. But He also touched Jacob’s hip.

Jacob walked away blessed, but he also walked away with a limp.

Church, if you wrestle with the weight of God’s Word, you will be blessed. Psalm 1 guarantees it. But you will also get a limp. You will be humbled.

But that limp is beautiful. That limp is the Anti-Inflammatory for your pride.

It reminds you that you are not God. It reminds you that while God has a plan for your life, the universe does not revolve around you.

And look, I know this sounds daunting. "Wrestling with a sword" sounds dangerous. But you aren't doing it alone. You have the Author in the room with you. Jesus promised us in John 16:13 that "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth."

Which means, you commit to wrestle and God will provide the revelation.

THE PRACTICE

Now, this is beautiful theology—lions, swords, irrigation canals. But what does it look like on a Tuesday morning when the alarm goes off?

It looks like putting into practice the challenge I gave you all in our very first week of this series: Scripture before Screens!

I know I said it already, but here’s the thing about practices… we only get better at them when we practice them! So we’re doubling down on that one.

I want you to commit to not only start your day with Scripture before screens, but to come to the Word to wrestle with its weight.

Because that is the Big Idea today. That is the only way we stay planted by the irrigation canal of living water: We Resist the drift of the World by regularly and courageously wrestling with the weight of the Word.

And know this, when you do this... it may chafe.

And if it does, that’s a cue for you that there is likely some pride or swelling in your soul that’s making the yoke of Jesus feel ill-fitting.

Don't run from that feeling. Meditate on the Word with God’s Spirit and allow the Good Doctor to cut out whatever is in you that is preventing you from experiencing the joy and peace He offers!

And know this as well: it might take more than a few sittings with the Word to get your heart aligned.

This wrestling, it’s a process.

But here’s the final word of hope I want to leave you with.

God knows your heart.

If your heart—even in its sinfulness, like mine—struggles with selfishness, but you turn to God and acknowledge it... listen to me: God doesn’t expect you to transplant yourself!

Nope. Psalm 1:6 tells us that "The Lord watches over the way of the righteous."

Psalm 1:6 NIV

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

And 2 Chronicles 16:9 promises why He is watching:

2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV

9 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him...

He is not watching to catch you slipping; He is watching to catch you when you fall. He is looking to give you His Strong Support.

He will do the transplanting. He will do the healing. You just keep wrestling.

We Resist the drift of the World by regularly and courageously wrestling with the weight of the Word.