Psalm 1 (2)

Introduction

We just finished the Easter season

The epic cosmos changing greatest event in human history

Pretty big deal

So what do we do now?

Is it just something to celebrate and get back to the regular mundane of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps everyday to do this christian thing?

Psalm 1 is about to tell us that to live in light of easter we have to first unlearn some bad habbits

One of those is the habit of relying on ourselves to do this christian thing in our own effort

If All of the bible points to Easter then the rest of the in between is how do we live in light of it?

That is what we are about to embark on over the next 12 weeks

How do we walk in light of the epic of Easter

In the bible the word for walk is used a lot

It means the whole person the totality of why you do what you do and how you do it

It means the cause for all you do

In light of Easter we no longer walk to earn the resurrection. We walk in light of it in happy response to our saving

What is cool about today is that we get to see the whole bible even the Old Testament tells us to walk in light of Easter

The Old Testament shouts to us that what we long for is found in living in light of Easter

We start the journey in Psalm 1

Psalm 1 bridges the Old Testament wisdom to the Resurrection power:

In the garden we walked in the cool of the day with our redeemer

Easter means we are made new to return to the walks with our Jesus in the cool of the day

Psalm 1 tells us that our walking with Jesus is not a command

It is actually the chance to live the life we were always meant to

The MPS is this: In the garden the first adam walked into death following the counsel of the wicked. On easter the second Adam walked out the grave to make a way back for our walk in eternal life.

We Are All Walking Toward Something

Psalm 1:1–2 “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.”

I love the word blessed in this Psalm

The word in the Hebrew means happy

I love the honesty of this opening

God cares about your happiness

And He cares infinitely that you find it in the only way that can truly make you happy

Because he has been happy in the Trinity forever and we are made in the image of a happy God

That may be huge for some of us to simply know for the first time

God is happy and he made us in His image to be happy

So here is His concern for us ….He wants us to be aware maybe for the first time …

We are all marching to what we think will make us happy

It is the that simple and that deep all at the same time

Something is discipling you on how to be happy and the life you need to live to have it

That is the essence of discipleship

James Smith says

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit Chapter 1: You Are What You Love: To Worship Is Human

discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing. Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God

It is the first question Jesus asks of all of us in John 11:38

What do you think will make you happy and what life are you believing will get you there

Verse 1…happy is the one

Don’t miss this english class fun

The one is singular but what you are up against are all plural

The wicked …plural

Sinners …plural

Mockers….plural

it is a one against the masses mentality the author clear about us realizing

The Book of Psalms Psalm 1: The Way of Life

not only are the two ways distinguished by who travels down them, but by how many travel down the way of the world

The Book of Psalms Psalm 1: The Way of Life

One who walks in the way of the righteous will struggle against the traffic, banging against the currents of peer pressure and culture group-thinking mentality. Yet in spite of this, still there is one way of happiness

And the author is saying sin is always a progression

I say this often but the Dare program from grade school to stay off drugs didn’t go deep enough

There may be gateway drugs but there are surely Gateway choices

The author is showing the progression we have to self check

The Book of Psalms Psalm 1: The Way of Life

sin is a temptation that we first tries out, later becomes accustomed to, and let take root and finally becomes a habit or lifestyle

Here is the question he poses? Who are you joining on a walk with?

Is it the community you have here or is it the masses running of a cliff after worldly happiness

The Book of Psalms Psalm 1: The Way of Life

from listening to advice, to joining on a walk, to joining in living

There is another voice of advice the truly happy delight to hear

Psalm 1:2 “Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.”

The way to happiness is not to listen to the changing advice of people but instead listening to the happy voice of the happy God who knows the path to your own happiness

But here is what is cool

The way of the wicked was a plural community

But so is the way of God’s instruction

In the original context the word wasn’t read silently it was read aloud

The Psalmist is saying it is impossible to follow the way of God without the people of God

The verb has the sense of the soft murmuring of a crowd of people in deep expression of praise with depth and happiness

You are up against a crowd of voices telling you the worlds way to be happy….but you are surrounded by a crowd of God’s people just as happy as you want to be because they follow the happy God who delighted in saving you out of darkness into His glorious light

2 paths are in front of everyone

He goes on to say both produce a harvest of some kind

The Fruit of Each Path

Psalm 1:3–5 “He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.”

In the face of the suffering we experience or are carrying in here or will experience the idea of being happy is hard if not impossible

If we aren’t careful we can walk away thinking we are failures at this christian thing because I am not happy today

Following Jesus seems to have made things harder in my life not happier

The world seems to be winning and happy while we fight the dark nights and tears and hope deffered that makes our hearts sick

These verses are the collision of true Christian happiness and the human experience

This tree in verse 3 didn’t begin there

It didn’t grow up in a christian home playing upward sports with no suffering

The word planted actually means transplanted

It was in a place where it was dying and struggling but by the grace of God it was transplanted in a place where it had a chance in the storms of life

And to survive it was given deep roots

The roots come from back in verse 2…from the word of God

For that to make sense we have to know what the bible even is

Is it life hacks or basic instruction before leaving earth?

The book in your lap is the epic story of reality

Ultimately it is the revelation of God’s character

The roots take shape in the storms of life when and only when we have learned the character of God and know the story we are in and live according to it even when it looks like the bad guys are winning

That is what Paul means

1 Thessalonians 4:13 “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.”

he goes on to say the roots of our hope are in the story of Easter we just celebrated

Suffering doesn’t get the last word

Our tears have an expiration date

Knowing that doesn’t stop us from crying

It stops us from despair because our redeemer lives and the story and our redeemers character say everything sad will come untrue

That is what he means when he says everything we do prospers

We never lose hope

The Gospel wins

You cannot lose in the end prospering is guaranteed forever for those who walk the way of God

Those are the roots we grow when we are transplanted into His kingdom

The streams of the word feed us

The people of God in our lives encourage us and walk with us

And we are strengthened

Even against verses 4-5

Where he says even in the environment of the wicked we are growing

We aren’t escapists

We aren’t so heavenly minded we are no earthly good

We are growing in the midst of a brutal climate

For 2 reasons

So that God is seen as awesome through the saving of a mess like me

So that those being crushed by the worlds way want the flourishing you have …so we can tell them if a mess like me can be transplanted into new life so can anyone

The Psalm says walking in the way of God requires two things

God’s word and God’s people

We find a home when we are transplanted there

The Book of Psalms 1. God’s Way of Life

to follow in this “way” that

And what it produces is resilience

Not so the wicked

The Book of Psalms Psalm 1: The Way of Life

in contrast to the resilient tree, which retains its leaves even through the hot winds of summer, the wicked are likened to chaff , which is a helpless victim of the wind

Their hope is short lived in this life and in what is coming

When i read verse 5 I immediately thought of C.S. Lewis

He said “in the end there are only 2 types of people. Those who say to God thy will be done and those in the end to whom God says thy will be done…everyone in hell is there because they chose to be.

1 Peter says God’s desire is that all people be saved

But he won’t force himself on anyone

He will say in the end who said I want nothing to do with you i will give you forever what you wanted

A forever without me

That is hell

Eternal absence of God and anything good its a horrid nightmare we can’t imagine

They won’t stand with the multitude John saw singing worthy is the lamb because to them we were fools for crowning him King in this life

it has a courtroom feel

Their case won’t stand up in the judgment court

If you are in Christ you will stand in judgement and be found innocent based on the work of Christ

The wicked will present their case of being a good person or anything else beside Christ they thought would save them and their defense will fail and they will be found guilty because they rejected the only way to innocence

But here is the turning point for all of us

No doubt you are hearing this and thinking exactly those people are going to get what they deserve

But there is a shocking twist when we realize what this is saying

In the 1990’s a movie came out called the 6th Sense

No one watched the 6th sense once

Because you got to the end a realized he was dead the whole time

It changed every single dynamic and conversation in the entire movie

You had to re watch it and it was an entirely different movie

That is the point of this

We are the wicked who have told God our will be done

But God who is rich in mercy sent His Son to make us innocent

The only righteous one took the place of the wicked so the wicked could be transplanted into the kingdom of life

This is the 6th sense moment of Psalm 1

We walk in obedience not to earn innocence

We walk in obedience in response to the scandal of our innocence

Any God who would go to those lengths to save us can be trusted

We can place our lives in the hands of that God and trust what those hands are going to do with it

Return to Our Walk With Him

Psalm 1:6 “For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.”

Imagine Adam in the Cool of the day

Enjoying holding his wife’s hand in perfection walking along side Jesus

Close, trusted, grateful, happy, pure, awestruck

Does it blow your mind that no matter what you have done in this life the same Jesus wants the same walk with you?

that is what the literal watch means when it says he watches over the way

It conveys an intimate and internal care for the story of your life to get you back to walking with him

To get you back he took the most horrific walk the world will ever see

The Son who created and walked in His perfect creation with His creation

Now walked to His torture and execution at the hands of his creation

The Son who only ever knew close community make His death walk alone and forsaken

But it was His eternal happiness and fueled Him

Hebrews 12:2 or the joy that means happiness that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Walking with His Father again fueled His walk to the cross

Buying back you so He could walk with you was the happy thought that fueled each step

We do not walk to earn His happiness

We walk with Him in happy response to the walk He took to a Roman Cross for us

Ephesians 2:1–3 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked …

But Psalm 1 says we have been transplanted out of Darkness and death into life

That walk leads to ruin

We have all lived long enough to have tasted that ruin

But God Ephesians goes on to say…who was rich in mercy and happiness set his affections on you before he created a thing to do what it took to walk with you again

How do we live in light of Easter…we walk

Because of the walk he took for you and me