Psalm 1

This morning we’re embarking on a new sermon series and hopefully the start of a new tradition for summer time at Redeemer. We’re going to be spending some time walking through the psalms. This summer we’re going to take a psalm a week throughout the month of June, so we’ll cover psalms 1-4.

And here’s what I hope happens as we do this. Because you know what psalm we’re doing each week, I hope that throughout the week, at some point either at the dinner table or around the coffee table or in bed, you read these psalms as a family or a couple or just by yourself. Read these psalms as we go through them as a form of worship and prayer. These words have power, because they are God’s words spoken to you and for you, that you’d know him better. So open these psalms at home as we go through this together here.

Now, why are we walking through the psalms? For three reasons primarily.

First, the psalms teach us how to think rightly about God. It’s easy to forget, but this was the prayerbook and the songbook for the people of Israel, including Jesus! This was Christ’s book of prayer, and in it we hear some of the highest declarations of God’s goodness and greatness in all of Scripture. God is rightly depicted as being both transcendent and imminent. He is completely other, way outside of our wildest imagination, completely unfathomable in the greatness of his glory, and yet he is attuned to smallest detail of our lives, and with us in our darkest moments, guiding us step by step throughout the course of our lives, revealing himself to us as a loving parent, a wise counselor, and a true friend. So as we study the psalms, we learn how to rightly think about God.

Second, the psalms teach us how to feel. And by that I mean that faith isn’t just about thinking the right things about God, because at some point our knowledge of who God is collides with our present circumstances in life, and we have to figure out how to respond to the truth of God and the reality of our lives. And the psalms teach us how to navigate that. The psalmists go through significantly dark moments in life, and we hear how they process through those moments in light of the truth they know about God. And so we’ll listen and learn how we can respond to God’s truth, even when things are not working out in our lives. We’ll learn how to feel, not just think.

And finally, the psalms teach us how to talk to God. As we said, this is a book of prayer. And a lot of us have a really wacked-out prayer life. We talk one way in our normal lives, and then we come to prayer, and before we talk to God we put on this veneer of holiness and righteousness. We hide behind religious language, and we use words and syntax is completely different than what we do normally. It’s like we try to become different people - better people - when we come before God in prayer. But the psalms teach us to get out of that habit, and to approach God honestly. They teach us how to pray.

So those are the reasons we’re going to commit to studying the psalms in the summer, and I hope as we go through this over the years, the Lord works through his word to shape how we think and feel and pray.

So, that’s the intro. This week we’re taking a brief look at Psalm 1.

To start, Psalm 1 is an introductory psalm. Much like books have introductions where the author helps orient the reader so that they can be prepared to receive what comes next, that’s what this psalm is doing. It’s setting the stage and putting the reader, us, in the right position to hear the rest of the psalms, so that we know better what to do with them.

The whole psalm is about a contrast between the blessed one and the wicked. The righteous one and the sinner. And the contrast starts with a negative description of the blessed one. By negative description, I mean that they are answering the question, “What is the blessed one not?”

Psalm 1:1 - 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;

So we’re given three statements that give three postures and three kinds of people.

First, the one that is blessed does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. The wicked are those who either do not believe that God exists or he may exist, but he’s not particularly important in our every day lives. Either way the wicked make decisions with no regard for God. He doesn’t matter.

And so the one who is blessed, they don’t walk in their counsel. They don’t take their perspective on the world. They don’t live according to the worldview that God has no or little bearing on my life.

Second, the one that is blessed does not stand in the way of sinners. Sinners are people who know that God exists and know that he’s spoke, but they chose to have no regard for that he has said. They hear the words of God, and they choose to go their own way instead. The blessed one doesn’t stand in that way, meaning they don’t do the things that sinners do. They don’t hear God speak and then go their own way.

Finally, the blessed one does not sit in the seat of scoffers. A scoffer is someone who looks down on others and mocks them. They look down on the people of God who seek to live their lives according to his ways, and they mock them. This is high-handed self-righteousness and pride. And the blessed one does not take that posture. They don’t look down on others and mock them. They are not arrogant, not to their friends nor their enemies.

Okay, so the blessed ones are not taking counsel from the folks who think and live like God doesn’t matter, nor are they walking in step with people who willfully disobey God, nor are they taking the posture of the arrogant. These things are not a part of the blessed life, the righteous life, the life of the godly.

So what is? Because everyone knows that you can’t describe something by saying what it isn’t. We go through this all the time when we’re trying to decide where we’ll get take out. I’ll ask Melanie what she wants, and she says, “not pizza.” Now, that can help clarify, but it does very little in actually describing what it is that will make her happy and satisfied. So what is the defining characteristic of the blessed man or woman?

Verse 2: but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Now, frequently as we see as we continue reading the psalms, the psalmists will use what’s called parallelism. It was a common technique in ancient poetry, similar to how rhyming is a common technique in children’s poetry. Parallelism is a technique that connects two lines in either a comparison or contrast, so you’d expect the author to say something like, who is the blessed one? They are the one who walks in the counsel of the godly, and stands in the way of the righteous, and sits in the seat of the humble. You’d expect that, but that’s not what we get in psalm 1. That’s not the contrast that the author wants to highlight.

You see, the blessed one is not the one who listens to the right people, or who follows the right behaviors, or who has the right understanding of themselves. The blessed one is the one who delights in the law of God. Blessedness is not about the right friends, or the right tradition, the right behaviors. Blessedness is about delighting in the right thing.

The blessed ones are the ones that when they hear God speak, they are filled with delight. They are the ones who love to think God’s thoughts after them. They are the ones who come to the word of God not to receive a list of rules to follow, not to learn how to navigate a certain life circumstance, but they come to the word of God because they long to hear him speak. The love his voice so much that they come to it day and night. The law of God is like a feast for them.

Many of us grew up with the understanding that the Bible was a rulebook. It sets a fence around what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior. So we’ve come to believe that the Bible is the tool that we use to figure out what is right and what is wrong. It’s a fence. But for the blessed ones, they don’t see the Bible as a fence, they see it as a feast.

What God gives us in his word is delightful. It’s something you long to lose yourself in. Something you don’t want to leave. It’s the dinner table with your closest friends, and no one wants the night to end, because it’s such a delight to have them there. It’s the date night without kids - you want it to go on and on and on. This is how the blessed ones approach the law of God. It isn’t a fence, it’s a feast.

And then we get a metaphor in verse 3.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

When Melanie and I lived in Colorado, when we drove west to go to California or Utah, we’d take I-70 out west, and once you got past Breckenridge and Vail, you entered the high plains, and it was just brown and flat as far as the eye could see. The trees were all scrawny things. But as you neared Utah, you’d begin to see off into the distance, a patch of bright green, because right before Utah you’ve got the city of Grand Junction, and the Colorado River flows through the city, and all around the river are these big green trees with leaves and flowers! Even when the state experiences a drought and even in that high arid environment, those trees stay green because they are fed by the river.

Israel is the same way. Things don’t grow especially well in that arid climate except by streams and rivers.

The blessed ones, who meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, they are like these trees by streams of water. Even in dry seasons of life, when things are terribly hard, when life feels like a dumpster fire, the blessed ones do not wither away. They don’t die. In fact, even in those difficult seasons of life, the blessed ones bear fruit and flower.

Their life is durable and steadfast. This is what it is like to be among the blessed.

Verse 4-6: 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.

But not so with the wicked, the psalm continues. The author seems to say that everything he said about the blessed is not true of the wicked. They listen to the advise of the godless, they stand in the way of sinners, they sit in seat of the arrogant, they do not delight in the law of the Lord, the delight in all manner of other things. They take their counsel from Oprah. Their worldview is shaped primarily by NPR or Tucker Carlson. They look down on everyone who does not share their perspective on life.

And so they are not like trees planted by streams of water. Instead they are like chaff. Chaff is like what it sounds. It’s the flakey substance that covers the wheat seed. To get the wheat, the thing you want, you beat it against a stone, and the chaff is so inconsequential that is blows away in the wind, leaving you with what you really want. The chaff is fruitless. It’s not long lasting. It has no roots or substance. And when the family sits down to enjoy the bread made from the wheat, no one is thinking about the chaff. It is forgotten. The psalmist says this is how it is for those who are not a part of the blessed ones.

The chaff cannot stand before God’s judgment. In view of the infinite goodness and greatness of God, the chaff cannot stand. They cannot be counted as a part of the community of the righteous. The righteous are grounded and rooted like trees, but the wicked are chaff. They blow away.

And while the Lord knows the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked can only lead to destruction. The life that is lived where God is irrelevant and insignificant, no matter what you say or do to convince yourself otherwise, that life only leads towards destruction and death. And the Lord knows nothing of that life. On that road there is no water, no fruit, and no life.

So right at the onset of the book of Psalms we have laid out before us two paths. The paths of the blessed one and the path of the wicked. The way that leads to life and the way that leads to death, and there is no middle ground. What separates the two ways? You either delight in the law of the Lord or you do not.

So how do we delight in the law of the Lord?

Well Jesus sets up a very similar choice at the end of his famous sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7. He lays out three images that demonstrate the choice before us. He says there is a narrow gate and a broad gate through which we can walk. The broad gate leads to destruction, while the narrow gate leads to life. He says there is the tree that bears good fruit and the tree that bears bad fruit. The tree that produces bad fruit is cut down and destroyed, while the tree that produces good fruit continues to thrive. And finally he says that you can build your house on the rock or an the sand. The house that is built on the sand falls apart when the wind blows, while the house that is built on the rock stands fast.

In each of these images the common denominator is what? It’s Jesus. He’s the fault line. He says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like the those who build their house on the rock.” Here’s what I’m getting at. This contrast between the blessed and the wicked, those that can stand before the judgment of God and those that cannot; For Jesus, that contrast cannot be divorced from his words, his deeds, and his life.

And so what we see in Psalm 1, when we say that the blessed are the ones who delight in the law of the Lord, we’re not talking about some vague understanding of the law. We’re not talking about the law unspecified, we’re talking about something very specific. Because the law is specifically attuned to Jesus. The blessed delight in the law of God, therefore they delight in Jesus himself, who said that all the Law and Prophets speak of me. They witness about me.

How do you become those who delight in the law, when we recognize that law just constantly exposes us as people who are never good enough, never righteous enough, never holy enough, obedient enough to actually keep it? How do we delight in the law when our relationship to it is so desperate? By delighting in Jesus.

In Jesus we meet the one who spoke the law into being. In Jesus we find the king who enforces the law. In Jesus we find the one to whom all the law points and testifies. And in Jesus we find the one who perfectly obeyed the law in a way none of us have the slightest chance of doing. And in Jesus we find the perfectly obedient one who chose to be lifted up on a cross to die, chose to bear our sin and failure so we no longer must. Jesus bore on the cross our inability to delight in the law of God, and he put it to death by his death. And three days later, he came out of the grave in victory with the promise that all who trust in him, who follow him, who delight in him, they will live with him forever.

In Jesus we find not a lawgiver who is oppressive and cruel and vindictive, but one who blesses his enemies, who is gracious towards the sinner, and who gave his life when we wanted nothing to do with him. We the lawmaker and law-keeper who went to the cross for us, so that we’d be free from the penalty of our sin. We see in Jesus the one who made it so that we bear no condemnation for our failure to keep the law, because the perfectly obedient one took our guilt and destroyed it, and in its place he has given us his perfect record.

And what does this mean? It means, now when we hear our God speak, we don’t need to respond in guilt or shame or regret or fear or dread. No, when we hear our God speak, our hearts are filled with delight. When we hear the law of the Lord, we break out in smiles and laughter because in the law of the Lord we see Jesus, in his love and grace and power, laying down his life for us, rising to life for us, ascending to heaven for us, praying on our behalf for us. And when you see Jesus like this, how can you not delight in him? How can you not see that a life lived in obedience to this jesus is the blessed life.