What is the Happiest Life?

It's the most wonderful time of the year. We're supposed to be merry. We're supposed to be spreading cheer. We're supposed to be having happy holidays. Why is this season so happy? Why is it supposed to be the happiest time of the year? I prefer spring and fall. I'm not a fan of the cold. In order to answer why is this particular time supposed to be happy, we have to ask the deeper, more philosophical question What does it mean to be happy? How does one attain happiness? And really what we're doing here is engaging in true philosophy. You see, the true philosopher asks, how do I attain the happiest life? Now, we typically think of philosophy as that weird speculation of asking weird questions that really just annoy us. That's not real philosophy. Real philosophy seeks the happiest life. We're going to seek today from God's Word what is the happiest life. We're going to be looking at Psalm 1 and this is what we will learn. We will be happy when we delight in God and not our sin. We will be happy when we delight in God and not our sin. Turn with me to Psalm 1. We are beginning a new brief series. We're just going to be looking at Psalm 1 and 2 before Christmas, and then we'll be going on to Colossians in January. But Psalm 1 is what we're going to be looking at first this morning. Psalm 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, 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, and all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff that the wind drives. Therefore, the wicked shall 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. We're looking at Psalm one, which is a unique song. It's not a declaration of praise to God. It's not a lament to God. It's a wisdom song. It's setting forth the way of life. It's setting forth the way to be happy. Really, it's the psalm of psalms. It's setting forth the trajectory of how the psalms are to be read. It's really an introduction to the rest of the Psalter because it's setting forth there are two ways to live. There are two different kinds of people. There are God's people and there are those who are opposed to God. Every psalm after this is looking at how to live in an evil world. Every psalm after this is the righteous praising God and lamenting the evil all around them. There is no neutral ground. This psalm makes it clear. There are two ways to live. There's God's way and there's the sinful, wicked way. As we look at Psalm 1, we can see three main sections. Verses 1 through 3 set forth the way of the righteous. Verses 1 through 3 set forth the way of the righteous. Verses 4 and 5 set forth the way of the unrighteous. They put forth what a sinner is. And then verse 6, well, it's a conclusion. It's a summary. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. It sets forth the clarity that there are only two ways. to live. Well, let's look at our first section. Verses 1 through 3. Here we see the happy person pursues God. The happy person pursues God. Now the first section here, verses 1 through 3, it really has three parts as well. Verse 1 tells us what the righteous person is not. It negates what a righteous person does. You see there the negative, he does not walk in the council, nor stand, nor sit. Verse 2 promotes what a righteous person does. So, verse 1 is negation, verse 2 is promoting, and then verse 3, it gives us an image, a metaphor for the righteous person, the tree. Let's look at this very first word, blessed. Psalm 1 begins like a benediction, blessed are the righteous. Blessed is the man. Blessed is really a synonym for happy. Happy is the man. It's a blessing for those who follow this instruction. As we see here in verse 1, the happy person keeps himself from bad company. The happy person keeps himself from bad company. Let me read verse 1 again. 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. Now it begins with negation. This is what a blessed person does not do. If you want to be happy, you keep yourself from walking in the counsel of the wicked. You keep yourself from standing with sinners, and you keep yourself from sitting with scoffers. All these three declarations, they're parallel. They're saying the same thing over and over again in a different way. In short, it's really saying the same thing Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. Bad company corrupts good character. If you want to pursue God, you're not going to associate with sinners. You're not going to tie yourself to them. While all three are parallel, there's also a progression here. Notice that the Blessed person, he doesn't walk, nor does he stand, nor does he sit. If you look at those verbs, you're seeing, I think, a progression of how one begins to walk with sinners, and then they get more settled and more comfortable with sinners, and they start standing with them. And then finally, they're sitting and scoffing with sinners. So this is the way we get accustomed to sin. Sin sets itself in on us. gradually. We gradually become established in sin, in sinful practices. It's the way you boil a frog. You don't bring water to a boil and then throw the frog in. The frog will jump out. So, Satan's way of getting us involved and entrapped in sin is to gradually get us involved with sin. You throw the frog in the water and then you start slowly turning up the heat. And the frog becomes more and more accustomed. They become more and more acclimated to the temperature until finally the frog is dead. Because he didn't realize that he was getting warmer and warmer and warmer. That's how we are with sin. We start walking in sin. We start thinking, oh this is normal. And we get deeper and deeper. It becomes more and more habitual. We get desensitized to it. Our hearts are already bent towards sin. Our hearts are already bent towards delighting in sin. We must keep ourselves from that company that makes us think sin is okay, that sin is all right, that sin is not dangerous. See, we cannot play with sin. It's not a toy. It's a weapon that destroys us. If we think we can play with sin, it's like trying to dance in a bear trap. You're going to get caught. You're going to be put in pain. You're going to be hurt. You're going to need to be rescued, and you're going to limp away. Sin isn't something to delight in. Sin isn't something to play with. We must see sin as it is. It is dangerous. Let's look at our second verse. The happy person delights in God's law. The happy person delights in God's law, verse 2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Now, this is very helpful. Verse 1 tells us what the righteous person or the blessed person doesn't do. Verse 2 sets forth what they do. See, religion isn't just about avoiding things. Yes, as Christians, we are supposed to avoid every evil and every appearance of evil. But Christianity isn't just what we don't do. It's not just regulating ourselves from not doing certain things. That just leads to self-righteousness and pride. Look, I'm better than everyone else. This is what I don't do. I keep myself from these things. No, true religion sets forth the proper object of our affections, and that is God. It's God's Word where we learn about God. Let's look at the word law here. What is God's law? Because it says we're supposed to delight in the law of the Lord. Oftentimes, I think we think of the law as a negative thing. It's the Old Testament way of thinking. It's all about the things we're not supposed to do and it's all about curses. That's not accurate. All of God's Word is His Law. God's Law contains blessings as well as curses. It contains the good instructions. It contains promises. It contains warnings. God's Word is good because God declares it. He's trying to set forth the way He created us to live. He created us to be happy, and He's telling us how we can be happy. The problem with the law is that we misapply it. We misunderstand it. The law was never meant to be obeyed to earn righteousness. The law was set forth to show us that we are unrighteous and to show us that we need to believe God and His promises and follow His good instruction. As I mentioned before, this is the most wonderful time of the year for some. I think there's one clear thing I can affirm that this is the most materialistic time of the year. This is the time when we're thinking about stuff we're going to be giving and stuff we're going to be getting. Takes me back to my childhood. Most exciting day of the season was when the Sears wish list catalog came. Now, some of you are young and, you see, we used to not order everything on Amazon. We used to have to go out and get fresh air and go to the mailbox and get a catalog out of the mail. And you were very excited about this because this was the material by which you would dream. I would fight with my brother, who would get it first? I'd memorize every page, what the G.I. Joe figures were, He-Man, Transformers. I would circle the ones I had to have, hoping I would get all of them. Every year I would meditate on it. I delighted in it. All the stuff I could have. And every year I was disappointed. I was spoiled. I never got enough. You see, that word, that magazine was not meant to bring me happiness. That magazine was built to sell stuff. The stuff of this world was not meant to make us happy. We were not created to enjoy and delight in the things of this world. We were created to delight in God and His word. I set my affections on the wrong things. I set my affections on the wrong word. Whereas if I set my affections on God's law, if I set my affections on God's promises, they never disappoint. They always fulfill. So we need to delight in God's Word with a childlike delight. Jesus himself says that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child, he shall not enter it. We're supposed to have a childlike faith. Now, too many people abuse that passage and say, well, a childlike faith, that means it's simple. It's OK for me to kind of just leave it at the basics. No, that's not what Jesus is teaching at all. He told his disciples to go and teach the disciples that you make everything that I taught. Our faith isn't supposed to be simple and basic. We're supposed to dig deep into God's word because we're delighting in it. A childlike faith is eager. It's excited. A childlike faith hangs upon the promises and the words. We have to ask ourselves, what keeps us from delighting in God's word? What keeps us from delighting in the law of the Lord? The law is good. God's promises are good. What keeps us from delighting in them? Well, the first option is sin. As Jesus said, blessed, happy. Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. That's from Matthew 5.8. A number of blessings come forth there. But clearly, happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. When we see God, we're happy because we're built and made to delight in Him. If you're not happy in God, if you're not delighting in God, go back and start tracing where you stopped repenting of sin when God's Word revealed it to you. You'll trace back to when you stopped being happy is when you stopped following God and you stopped repenting. Sin is a disease for happiness. It's so easy to love our sin more than God. Trace back and repent and begin seeking Him again in His Word. What's the second thing that might keep us from delighting? A cynical spirit. A negativity. This world does not satisfy. And maybe you've sought satisfaction in so many things, you think there's no way the Word can satisfy me. Yes, God promises that His means and His ways are different, but I've been so hurt. I've gone through so much. How can I be optimistic about God and His Word? Friend, know this. The fallen world is not meant to satisfy you for the very purpose that you would seek something higher and above. Don't let your cynical spirit of being disappointed with all the things in this world keep you from finding the joy and the happiness that you are meant to find only in God. Third, the third thing that would keep us from delighting in the law of the Lord. Casualness. Casualness. Potentially the most dangerous. Maybe you've become casual around sinners. You've become casual in walking and standing and sitting. What I really want to think about are those who have actually come and become casual at church. You've become casual in the congregation of God's saints. You've become casual in hearing the Word of God. You no longer come hoping to be confronted with sin. You no longer come hoping to be corrected by God's Word. You no longer come expecting to be comforted and cared by the gospel, by God's children. The most dangerous obstacle from delighting God's Word is being casual about it. Treating God's Word as if it's just one of the things you're going to do in the day, and then you're going to go about the rest of your day. We cannot be casual with God's Word. We cannot be casual with what we delight in. Friends, the cure is to trust God and long to delight in His Word. The cure is to seek God. To long for something more from God. To long to have a bigger vision of God. To have a better understanding of the Gospel. Yeah, we can get the words right in our head as to what the Gospel is. We're sinners. Jesus Christ died for us. He rose again. But the truths that lie behind those words The depths of the scriptures speak of it are enough to entertain and light our minds for the rest of our lives. Do not be satisfied with what you know about God and his word. Let's look at the second part of verse two. In his law, he meditates day and night. The happy person never stops delighting. Now, the danger here is that, again, we can be casual with God's Word. We can think that 10 to 15 minute devotion time in the morning, well, that's checking off the box. I have delighted in God's Word. That does not satisfy the second part of the verse. He meditates upon it day and night. The verse begins with your 10 to 15 minute devotion in the morning. But you have to delight all day long. You have to delight all night. Now, here's a question. What does your mind go to when you're not busy? What is it that you begin to think about when you're not busy? Is it work? Is it finances? Is it family? Is it worry? So, that's what you're delighting in most likely. Whenever your mind stops doing a project at work, do you begin to think about God's Word? You need to be setting forth God's Word constantly before your eyes, constantly in your head, so that that is what we delight in. Let's go to verse 3. Our image. He is like a tree, this happy person, planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does he prospers. Well, here we see the happy person has the right real estate. The happy person has the right real estate. One last reflection on the blessed man here in verse 3 is that he's like a tree planted by a stream. This is very much like what we heard about Joseph. As Jacob blessed Joseph, he said, you are like a vine planted over the waters. You see, he has to have that right source. A tree must have the water to bring its nutrients so they can grow strong, so they can grow large. See, having the right real estate, being close to God and His Word is what makes the tree strong. It's what makes the leaves not wither. It's what makes it fruitful in its due season. So, the tree has to have the right source of life, just as we have to have the right source of life, and it's God's Word. This is very similar to what Jesus teaches in Matthew 7. He says there are two different kinds of trees. One is evil. One has a curse and a disease inside of it. And its fruit is bad. And another one will be the good tree. And it produces good fruit. It has the right source. It has God. But the other metaphor he uses, build your house on the sandy foundation or the rock. One will build up a house that can stand the trials, stand the temptations. One will be washed away. Friends, we have to have the right real estate. We have to be next to God. We have to be in Christ, built up by His Word. Let's go to our next section. Verses 4 and 5. Here we see that the sinner and the wicked, they will be judged. The wicked are not so. A clear contrast. They're like chaff, but the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. Now, notice a strong contrast here. The blessed person, the righteous person, they're like a tree. Strong and firm and powerful, not evenly knocked down, fruitful and beautiful, but the wicked are like chaff. See, the chaff is that useless or worthless part of the wheat and the grain. It protects the grain, but whenever they're threshing the grain out, they throw up the branches and the chaff gets blown away in the wind. It has no foundation. And then it becomes part of the dirt and the dust. And it's done. It's dead. It did not ever accomplish anything. The wicked are not stable. They are not strong. They're worthless material thrown into the wind that becomes dust on the ground. It's a very harsh view, a very harsh image of the judgment. Sinners will not be allowed to be numbered among the congregation of the saints. They have thrown off God's law. They have refused God's righteous rule. They have turned away from God. And God being a just and holy God, He will judge them. Because God is holy, because God is good, because God is just, He will judge them. See, this sets up the psalter because every cry to God, Oh Lord, how long will you let my enemies prevail over me? This psalm takes the psalmist and the lamenter back to the fact that God will Judge and destroy every evil and wicked person. Judgment is clear. Now, it's interesting because verses 4 and 5, you contrast the tree to the chaff, but then you also have a strong contrast. In the sense that verses 1 and 2, they describe what the person is not and what the person is. Whereas verse 4 and 5, they just tell you what the ending of the wicked and the unrighteous will be. They just declare for you what the wicked will end up as, and will be judged. What I want to ask is, what makes someone wicked? What makes someone unrighteous? And it's simply this, it's refusing to recognize God as the Creator, and it's refusing to resign to His righteous rule. It's refusing to recognize God as the Creator and refusing to submit to His authority. It's rebellion against the law that's good. Now let me illustrate this with a clear example. We're going to still get into philosophy here. Friedrich Nietzsche, actually a pretty good philosopher because he is trying to figure out how he can make people happy. I appreciate him because he is so bluntly honest. Now I don't care for his philosophy, but I appreciate the fact that he's honest in what he believes and he's honest in what his intentions are. Last week we talked about Kant. The problem with most Western philosophers is they borrow capital from Christianity. Most of them, while denying the most basic dogmas of Christianity, the most basic beliefs of Christianity, they borrow ethics and morality from Christianity. Not Nietzsche. He cuts right to it. One of the most famous declarations of Nietzsche is that God is dead. Nietzsche says God is dead. He doesn't need Kant's postulated God for morality. He wants a whole new morality, so let's just get rid of God. No, he's not making an ontological claim as if God were once alive and now He's dead. He's making a virtuous claim. He's making a practical claim that God is dead. What he's saying is we no longer need the concept of God. Science has taught us what real cause and effect is in the scientific world. We no longer need God to help us understand the way this world works. We no longer need God to teach us how to live. We need to get rid of the idea that God is our creator, our ruler, and will be our judge. See, he's an aggressive atheist, which is really the only good kind of atheist to be. If you're an atheist, you should believe that we're leading people astray. You should try to correct Christians. He believed that the more we think about God as a judge, the less we're going to truly enjoy life. The second main part of Nietzsche's philosophy is what he called the overman, a superhuman. We will begin to enjoy life once we throw off God. We will enjoy life once we get rid of the idea that God is going to judge us and that God has instructed us how to live. Each one should find his own way. Some of the basic concepts here that Nietzsche teaches, and with blunt honesty, is this. Throw off the idea that you will be judged. Throw off the idea that God has instructed you. That speaks to our sinful hearts. If we're as honest as Nietzsche is, we're going to realize that that's what our hearts say. We are all sinners. All of us have gone our own way. We have done what is right in our eyes. See, his honesty should scare us because he's just bold enough to say what our hearts tell us in their sinfulness. That's us. Every one of us has decided we can think of things better than God can. We can think of how we can be happy better than God. Everyone after Adam has thrown God off. Everyone after Adam has said, God, your rules, your righteousness, your law, it's not good. I'm going to delight in the things of the world. Us, in our sin natures, in this fallen world, that's what our inclination is. The tragic irony is that what Nietzsche prescribed to be the cure for humanity was really just articulating more what the disease is. He's saying if you want to be a true man, if you want to be a man who truly enjoys this life, keep throwing off God's law. But that's what's going to make us more and more miserable. Another great philosopher, one that we follow, St. Augustine, said this, Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. We all long to be happy. We all long to be blessed. We all long to be fulfilled. And the sad, tragic truth is that without God's law, what we're trying to do to make ourselves happy only makes us more miserable. It only makes that happiness all the more impossible. God created us for a specific purpose and a specific way to enjoy Him and glorify Him forever. He alone can satisfy. He alone can make us happy. His Word alone can delight us in the way we are meant to be. But we search for that happiness in all other areas of life. Let's conclude. Let's look at verse 6. Our third and final section. There are two ways to live. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. We have two clear ways of living here. There's the way of the righteous, which is the way that delights in God's law, the way that God knows and cares for and keeps his people. And there's the way of the wicked, those who continue to kick and fight against God. If you look at this, verses one through three is a prescription for all humanity. Verses 1 and 3 is a prescription for how we're supposed to live if we want to be blessed. We were all supposed to keep ourselves from walking in the counsel of the wicked and standing with the sinners and sitting with the scoffers. We're all supposed to delight in God's law. Does it describe any of us? It's a prescription for all of us, but does it describe? Any of us? No. No one here can say, I have delighted in God's law supremely and perfectly all day, all night, every day of my life. None of us have the right to claim this blessed state. This passage describes no one here, but describes one person. See, this passage is prescribing how we're all supposed to live, but we've all failed. It describes perfectly Jesus Christ. It describes only one person because only one person has truly been perfectly obedient to God. Jesus alone perfectly delighted in the law and perfectly obeyed the law. He alone was the righteous one, the blessed one. See, Jesus Christ is God Himself, as we've already sung about. As we're preparing for Christmas, we're singing about when God came to be with us. When God took on flesh. See, God looks down at us and He sees that we're all going our own way. There's no hope for us. No one is righteous. No one delights in Him. And so He came down to be among us. God the Son took on flesh. became like us in every way except for sin. That way he could be the righteous one. He would delight in God's law. He would be perfectly obedient. Whatever he heard God say, he said and obeyed. Whatever he saw God doing, he did perfectly. See, while we were rejecting God, God was taking on our flesh. While we were rebelling against God, God was coming to love us. While we refuse God and His proper rule, God Himself, who took on flesh, allowed Himself to be mocked and beaten and spat upon and nailed to a tree to be hung to die for us. See, we cannot obey the law enough to be that blessed person, so God Himself came in Jesus Christ to let us share in His blessed estate. Jesus alone deserves that blessed estate. He dies for us because we are the wicked, we are the mockers. He dies in our place so the wrath of God is poured on Him instead of us. And therefore, we are no longer counted among the wicked who cannot be in the congregation of the righteous. We are taken up and we get to participate in His happy state. See, we're all supposed to be obedient, but we're all disobedient. But the one obedient Son, Jesus Christ, He obeyed. And if we believe in Him, we believe in His death, we believe in His resurrection, we believe in everything He taught us, we get to be happy in Him. We get to be happy. We get to be called into God's perfect kingdom. See, there's two ways to live. We can accept Jesus Christ. We can believe in Jesus Christ. We can believe in His promises of what He said, of who He said He was and what He did. Or we can reject Him. We can believe in Jesus and be set up into His happy estate and begin to pursue happiness. Or we can reject Him. We can reject God's good word. We can reject God's good law. And we will face the judgment alone. And that judgment will destroy us. The choice is ours. Will we believe in who Christ is as the perfect, blessed man? Or will we continue throwing God off and rejecting His right rule? Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, Your Word is good. Your Word is powerful. Your law is perfect and worthy of our every thought. Your praise is worthy of our every breath. And yet, we love to think about all the things of this world and talk about them. Forgive us, God, in Jesus Christ. Forgive us for not following Your Gospel truth. Forgive us, Lord, for not meditating on Your Word day and night and delighting in Your goodness. Forgive us in the name of Christ. I pray for anyone here who continues to reject The only way to truly regain the happy state you created us for. I pray that they will see Jesus. I pray that they will hear of His incarnation over and over again during the season. I pray that they will hear of His death and resurrection. That they will believe in Him. And they will find themselves truly happy in Him. And keep them miserable as they pursue the happiness of this world. The false lies of happiness of this world. So that they will confess Him. Lord, we praise You. We thank You. We pray that You will come again to bring us home. To bring us into Your glorified kingdom as glorified saints. so that we can see you face to face and have our happiness perfectly restored. In your holy name, Jesus Christ, Amen.