Psalm 1

Open your Bibles to Psalm 1

As we were planning this night of worship, I knew I wanted to preach on this Psalm, because, Psalms is the hymnbook of the Bible. What better way to keep our hearts in a spirit of worship than to look at the songs that GOD wrote?! And it just made sense to begin at the beginning…..

But I discovered something interesting about this Psalm a long time ago - this Psalm, this hymn of worship…..it reads a lot like it belongs in the book of Proverbs……right?! It’s telling us how to live, it’s telling us what our lives should look like.

And I believe that’s why God put Psalms one here, as a way of saying,

THIS is the kind of life that blesses God the most.

Because, if you’re here tonight, I believe one of the reasons you are here, is because you want to live a life that blesses God.

The life that blesses God the most is the life blessed by Him.

And tonight, I’m going to talk about what this blessed life looks like

And I’m going to tell you how to live that life.

And then, I’m going to tell you the benefits of doing that.

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And maybe you’re like me, and you’re like, okay. I’m SOLD! How do I do that, how do I live that blessed life. What does it MEAN to delight in God’s Law, in His Word?!

How to delight in the God’s Law

Find the Character of God in His Word.

Does the Bible, does God’s Word have laws in it? Yea. It does. But that’s not ALL that it is. More than anything, over and ABOVE anything, God’s Law, His Word is God revealing Himself to us. Revealing His character. And what we see in His Word is that He’s a loving Father, a protecter, a care taker. He’s a giver of wisdom, a punisher of wrongdoing, and the forgiver of sin.

The Law isn’t just what God commands - it’s what He reveals about Himself.

The God of the Universe, the Author Of Life desires relationship with YOU! He revealed Himself to YOU! He describes His Character to YOU!

I can’t think of ANYTHING more delightful than that!!

The second happiest day in my life was the day that I found out the woman that I loved…..Loved me.

The Happiest Day of my life. Was the day that I found out the God of the Universe. Loves me. And that He made a way for us to be in right relationship with one another.

The Happiest Day of my LIFE was when I found out that God wasn’t just waiting in the wings to strike me down, and to cast me into hell, and to punish me, but the He already PLACED that punishment on His Son FOR me!!!

And SO many countless days after that I’ve seen Him in His Word, I’ve seen His kindness, I’ve seen His greatness, I’ve seen HIs FORGIVENESS!!

And He reveals ALL of that in THIS WORD!

But let me tell you what else they do, and this is something I want you to walk out of here. And put into practice, I want you to

Cultivate the discipline of meditating on God’s Word.

And when we say meditating on God’s Word, what we mean is, thinking about it. Considering it. Rolling it around in your mind, in your heart. Asking God to reveal the meaning of it to you.

We’re really good at this. We’re really good about meditating on things….on thinking about them

Andie and the Hulken

That’s what it means to meditate here, to chew on it, to consider it, to fret over it, to mention it to other people. To not let it out of your mind until you discover it, and then to REJOICE over it……..

What we think about the most is what we most love.

Some truths in Scripture are easy to discern - John 3:16 For God SO loved the world that He gave His only Son.

Psalm 42:7 - Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.

That requires a little bit more work, a little bit more chewing. You’re going to be gnawing on that for a while.

And that’s good. Because when God lays open His Word to you, when He speaks to your heart in such a way that it touches something in your soul, that awakens this desire inside you for more. For something even deeper with Him.

Blessings of delighting in God’s Law

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Planted by streams of water

Stability

there might be storms on the outside of this tree, but the tree is stable

Our house in a thundersnow

Stability and peace don’t come from

yields its fruit in its season

Purpose

What’s the purpose of an apple tree - to grow apples

It’s like, I’ve never seen an apple tree sit down with the gardener and say, Gardener…..please. PLEASE reveal your will for my life. PLEASE!!! Where will I be in five years, Gardener?! What do you want me to be doing?!?!

See, God revealed His plan for your life the moment that you became His follower. His purpose for you is to abide in Him. And let His Spirit, and His Word abide in you.

You’re there saying, yea, that doesn’t tell me my five year plan, my ten year plan, who I should marry.

God, along and along, reveals those things to use. And it’s like the budding of a tree. Shoots come out, new growth happens, new, exciting things begin to emerge, and

Purpose isn’t something OUT THERE there you discover. Purpose is something inside you that God reveals.

and its leaf does not wither.

Thriving

Got didn’t intend for your life to be something you LIVE through….

Jesus says in John 10:10 that He came to give us ABUNDANT life!!!

In all that he does, he prospers.

This term, prosper….it has these three elements baked into it. That the one who delights in God’s law, God’s Word finds stability EVEN in the chaos of life, they find their purpose in the midst of a world telling them what they should do with their lives, and they lead thriving lives, in the midst of a time when it feels like everyone else around them is just barely hanging on, just barely getting one foot in front of another.

See, we look at prosper, and we go, ohhh, Money! Or, FAME, or, REPUTATION! You can look at people in our time who have had all those things, guess what….they lived miserable lives.

I can go down a who’s who of actors, athletes, artists……the makers of culture, who have all the money in the world, and don’t have a sense of security or stability….they have all the acclaim and fame that the world can OFFER and they don’t have an innate sense of purpose…..they might have friends, homes, cars, they litter their instagram feed with pictures of themselves on vacation, on yachts, living the best life that could possibly be desired, and they have this inner sense that they’re just dying on the vine. See. Those things aren’t how God defines prospering.

Which means our hearts were never designed to be satisfied by them…….

The wicked is what the Bible calls those people here. And it says in

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The chaff.

it’s the part of the grain that’s left over. It’s useless.

There’s no stability - we see the wind driving it away

There’s no purpose - it has no use

There’s no thriving - because chaff is already dead.

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There’s a way of the righteous. There’s a way of the wicked.

Let me ask you something. What do you have room for in your life tonight? Do you have room in your life for this blessed life, the life that God desires for you? Because I’m going to be honest, this blessed life, it takes up some space. This path of righteousness, it’ll take up more space in your life than the way of wickedness will. And maybe that’s the thing that’s been keeping you from it.

But let me ask you this - the work that it’s going to take, and it’ll take work…..but the work that it will take to delight yourself in God’s Word. Is it worth it to you tonight?

The Happiest Day in my LIFE was the day that I found out that God loved me; Let me ask you - have you had that day?

The days in my life that have been the happiest, the most blessed. Have been the days that I’ve found Him in His Word. When I meditated on it, and when I chewed on it and when, by the power of His Holy Spirit, He illuminated His Word to me. Have you had days like that? Because they take work. They take room.

Pray.