Psalm 1: The Way of the Righteous
Psalms • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Call to Worship
Call to Worship
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Sermon
Sermon
As we finished up our series on the Character of God last week, I’d like to start something new, and so this morning we’ll spend most of our time in Psalm 1. Let’s read it together.
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.
In all that he does, he prospers.
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.
So like we did last week, let’s break this passage down bit by bit and hopefully we’ll see a fuller understanding of it.
Let’s start with verse 1.
Verse 1:
Verse 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;
What does it mean to be blessed? In the bible, there’s two major Hebrew words for the word blessed. (Bay-ruch) and (ash-ray). And they’re both interesting, (Bay-ruch) means to experience God’s favour or blessing, the person has been blessed by God.
It’s the word used when God makes Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1:22 it says
“And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.””
And the same word is used later in Genesis when God is telling Abraham that His wife Sarah will conceive even in her old age.
In Genesis 17:16, He says “I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.””
So whenever (Bay-ruch) appears it’s often talking about God showing favour to something, He’s blessing it, and prospering the thing or person for His purposes.
(Ash-ray) on the other hand is the word used to describe someone that has received (Bay-ruch), God’s blessing. When (ash-ray) is used, it’s as if someone is saying: that person, they have a good life. And this word is all throughout Psalms and Proverbs as the two books describe the life of the person that follows God’s laws. And it’s the same word used in this passage. Another way to translate it would be to say:
Psalm 1:1 “[Oh, the good life of] 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;”
Another thing that’s worth noting in this verse is the progression of the action words, let’s take a look at them, first is walk, then stand, then sit. One of my favourite things about the bible, is that the language it uses, especially when we’re looking at poetic literature like the Psalms, is really intentional. And that’s the case for this verse, that the language here, to walk, then stand, then sit, is intentional. In this case what we notice is that the verbs in the sentences are moving in a logical progression from a place of movement to a place of being stuck. And this is an intentional flow of logic as it pairs this progression with the words. Wicked, Sinners, and Scoffers.
Wicked fits in line with word we looked at last week, iniquity, it’s somone who’s behviour is crooked. Often times who’s thinking on right and wrong is backwards, they think that evil things are good, and good things are evil. And that fits pretty well with our common understanding of the word wicked.
Last week we also defined sinners, people that miss the mark. And when it comes to sinners in the bible, the mark that they’re missing is the great commandment to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. And so these people aren’t hitting that target, they’re not loving God or people the way that they should be, and to be like them is to miss the mark of truly following in the way of love that God has designed for us.
This third word scoffers are people who can’t appreciate goodness or beauty anymore, people that have become so jaded, that they’ve lost the ability to appreciate anything, all they do is mock and jeer at anything different from themselves. Maybe you’ve met people like that, who have become so hardened, that all they can do is rip things apart instead of learning to appreciate and create things that are uplifting and beautiful.
And so when paired with the progression of these verbs walk, stand, sit, we see that the more time that someone spends with these sorts of people. People that mix up good and evil, people that miss the goal of loving others, and people that mock and tear down what is good. The more that they’ll become like them and they won’t have a good righteous prosperous life, instead they’ll grow further away from God confusing good and evil, become hateful instead of loving, and showing contempt and making a mockery out of things instead of uplifting and appreciating righteousness and beauty. And they’ll get stuck their they won’t be able to walk away from it, instead they’ll grow comfortable with it, they’ll sit, and get stuck in this way of living.
And so this first verse is inviting the reader or because it’s a Psalm often times those who are singing these words, to stop and meditate on this idea, to think about their life, what kind of life do they want? Do they want a life that gets stuck in a way of living and thinking that fits in line with these people who are evil and hateful and jaded, or do they want to live a good life?
Verse 2:
Verse 2:
And that brings us to verse 2. What does someone who lives a good life choose to do? He chooses to “delight in the law of the Lord, and on [God’s] law [the person] meditates day and night.” This is a cycle, the person doesn’t delight in the evil mentioned in verse 1, instead they delight on God’s law.
The word law here is torah and it can mean law but in general it means God’s word, His teaching and His wisdom. Sometimes the word is used for the first five books of the bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, but it is also used to describe the word of God as whole.
And so here we see this cycle that the person delights in the word of God, and the more they delight in it, the more they meditate on it, which makes them delight in it even more.
And so we can see this almost infinite loop, where a person walking in the way of righteousness, is someone who constantly delights in the word of God, and in their delight they meditate it all the time, and the more they meditate on it, the more they continue to delight in it. And the loop just continues.
And the word meditate is interesting, in this context it means to recite something over and over to yourself whether it’s out loud or in your head, until the thing your meditating on almost becomes a part of you, you have it in your head all of the time.
And I think that’s a really healthy practice for Christians, that many Christians in the past did a lot of, but far too many of us today don’t do it nearly enough. We don’t repeat scripture to ourselves over and over until we have in ingrained in us, maybe we do a little bit, but nearly to the same extent that people used to do. Back during the time of the early church it would’ve been normal for many believers to have all of the Old Testament scriptures memorized, because there was such little access to having bibles to carry around with you, they would memorize it, and recite it to themselves and to each other, and it was ingrained in them.
We see early in the gospels when Jesus is in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, three different times He fights Satan by quoting scripture. And I think that that’s something that we should give more thought to. Pick verses or passages from the bible that you find really impactful, and read them over and over again to yourself every day until you know it deeply and can recite it. And don’t do it just as something to do, but as a way for you to meditate and think all the more about the word of God, and the truths that are contained in it.
And one of the very valid questions that we can ask, is where does living like this, living in a way where we are in the cycle of delight and meditation on scripture leave us? What happens when we do this? We find the answer to this in verse three.
Verse 3:
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.
This is a good reminder of the genre of the book of Psalms, it’s poetic, it’s not meant to be read at face value, but to try to understand the depths of it’s metaphors, and the truths that they contain. Because in this verse, it obviously doesn’t mean that the person who forsakes evil and delights in the word of God is a literal tree, but instead it uses rich imagery to give us a beautiful metaphor of what it means to have a good righteous life.
And here again there’s some cool parallels like there was in verse 1. Take for example the word planted, to be planted is to be attached to one a place, a tree can’t get up and move around, it’s movement is static, just like it is when someone is sitting. In the first verse we saw that someone who gets stuck in the way of the wicked, sinner, and scoffer is someone whose life comes to ruin. But here we see that by planting oneself in the streams of water, that nourish and bring life, the streams that represent the word of the Lord, that person who is stuck there is prosperous, they live a good life.
Another really cool parallel happens in this verse and it doesn’t go back to the beginning of this Psalm, instead it goes back to the very beginning, to the garden of Eden. Do you remember in the description of the garden of Eden that God doesn’t only mention the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that caused the fall, but He also mentions the tree of life. Watch the parallels.
The tree of life was planted in the middle of the garden, where there’s these four rivers that flow out bringing life to the garden.
The tree that represents a righteous person in Psalm 1, is planted by these streams or rivers of water.
The tree of life was amongst this group trees, and the description of them is that they are “pleasant of sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9)
The tree in Psalm 1, yields good fruit.
The tree of life, is exactly that a tree that gives life.
The tree in Psalm 1, is one that doesn’t wither, so it doesn’t die, meaning that it also gives life.
So what does that mean? This verse is using this parallel to make a point, the person that delights in God’s word, who meditates on it, and it’s be ingrained in them, and transform them, and shape their character and their actions. That person is like the tree of life, they are able to have this abundant life, one that yields good fruit for themselves and for others, one that leads to them having eternal life, and one that points others to the way of eternal life.
If we take it a step further, it’s like when Jesus declares the gospel to Nicodemus in John 3,
He says: John 3:15-16 “whoever believes in [the Son of Man] may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
A life dedicated to focusing on, believing in and living out the word of God, the bible, and the truth that it contains about Jesus. Is one that will lead to eternal life, and as that life is lived, just like the tree, it will bring fruit.
One of the assurances that we have that we are on the right track and are truly saved and following Jesus is if we see the evidence of the Spirit in our lives, and one of the surest signs that we have the Spirit is that our character reflects what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
And so what we see, is that being a follower of Jesus, means that we live the good life described in Psalm 1, that we do become like trees planted in the waters of life like in the garden of Eden, but our water is the living water, Jesus himself, who teaches us, nourishes us, and transforms us, and from Him we gain access to eternal life, and our lives begin to bear the fruit of the Spirit, and we will prosper, not that everything will always be easy, there’s a lot of times where life as a Christian is hard, but when we’re planted and watered by Jesus, then we will prosper in the end, because our hope is in the fact that we spend eternity with Him.
Verse 4 & 5:
Verse 4 & 5:
That is if we choose to live this life of righteousness, dedicated to living and believing the word of God. Because what do we notice in verse 4 & 5?
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;
In contrast to the righteous being like prosperous trees planted firmly by streams of water. The wicked are different, they don’t have a firm rooting in truth or righteousness, and so they get blown away by the wind, because they have nothing to hold onto.
It’s like in Jesus’s parable of the two builders. Matthew 7:24-27
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”
Those that hold fast to Jesus and to His teachings and believe in Him, and allow Him and His word to teach them and transform them have solid roots, because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and so those who are rooted on Him and His teachings have access to the way, are grounded in truth and can hold fast to it, and they are given eternal abundant life.
Vice versa, those that don’t have that grounding, they get blown away by the wind because they have no roots, when the storms of life come their foundations crumble and their lives fall apart because they aren’t grounded in Jesus, in the way, the truth and the life.
And watch verse 5, again it uses the same standing language from verses 1 and 3. Those that are righteous can’t stand in the way of sinners, any more than those who are sinners can stand in the way of the righteous. When God judges and holds all people accountable for their actions, those planted in Jesus are able to stand, knowing that He has them in His hand, He paid the price for them and they can stand firm and know they are forgiven. But those who haven’t repented and planted themselves on Christ, they won’t be able to stand during judgement, they’ll be held accountable for their actions, and they’ll have to die an eternal death instead of benefitting from Christ paying it for them, they won’t have access to eternal abundant life, they’ll be knocked down like a house on sand and their lives will crumble.
Which leads us to the last verse, verse 6.
Verse 6:
Verse 6:
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
The Psalm ends like it began, with a choice: what kind of path will we take? What kind of person will we choose to be? Will we be someone with a firm foundation who is planted in the word of God and in a right relationship with Jesus? Or will we be people who live wicked, backwards lives, full of sin and without any real foundation?
The Psalm tells us what happens to both sorts of people, what the benefits and consequences are and so we’re left with a choice. Do we choose to follow the way that God has set before us? To delight and meditate on His word and His instructions? To choose to ground ourselves in Him and allow Him to teach us and transform us? Or do we forsake Him choose our own way, and try to navigate a life without hope in Christ?
The choice the Psalm leaves us with is one we need to ask ourselves all the time, what kind of life are we living? Is it one truly grounded in Christ? Where is our hope? Is it in the fact that no matter what storms come our foundation is in Christ and so in the end we will prosper and have abundant life? Or is it in something or someone else?
Because ultimately, even if what we’re putting our roots in is something that’s good, nothing but Christ can be our foundation, our ultimate thing. Nothing else in our lives are stable like Christ is, and unless we put our foundation in Him than our lives are going to fall apart.
And that’s something we need to remind ourselves of daily. That we need to watch what we’re relying on, we need to watch and make sure that it is in Christ and nothing else, because it’s only then that we will grow and prosper. If it’s anything else our lives will become like chaff in the wind, and we won’t be able to stand.
So let’s pray and ask God that our lives would be ones grounded in Him and in the instruction and hope that he has given for us to build our foundation on.
Benediction
Benediction
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Meeting
Meeting
If you recall, we agreed in March to reassess on both ends in six months to see what the future would look like for the church and for Cass and I. We’ve now reached the six month mark and as Cassidy and I have reassessed and prayed about what our next steps should look like. We’ve loved our time here, and have loved getting to know each of you. However, we also feel that we are currently not equipped to be able to grow this church in the way that it needs to grow. We really want to see this church grow and thrive, but we feel that it needs someone with more pastoral experience than we have. On top of this, because I’m still in my masters degree at Acadia Divinity College, I am required to do two years of a program called mentored ministry where I essentially job shadow a different pastor and learn from them. Due to these factors, Cassidy and I have decided that it is best if we step down from ministry here. I will not be pursuing a pastoring job elsewhere, instead I’m going to spend a few more years getting education to become a more experienced pastor. So this is our announcement that we are resigning, our last Sunday here will be October 22. We wanted to give you as much time as we could before I really have to go and shadow another pastor. During the remainder of our time here we will work with you to try and find someone who can replace us. This really has been a wonderful opportunity for us, and you have all been really supportive. We love you all, and hope and pray that this church will find someone capable of helping you grow in the way that God has planned for you.