Sermon details
- Scripture
- Psalm 1
- Series
- Psalms
- Speaker
- Keith Goad
- Date
- 25 June 2023
- Length
- 43 minutes
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God's instruction for happiness
Good morning. As we consider this psalm, the word blessed here could easily be just translated happy. It's important we think about this. What is your philosophy of happiness? We all have one. You might not think of yourself as a philosopher, but we all have some idea, some notion of what it means to be happy. We set our schedules, we prioritize based upon what we truly believe is going to make us happy. It's an important topic for all of us. We can see this by the fact that you can go to the bookstore, and one of the largest sections you'll see are the self-help books, all with an idea or a philosophy of happiness. They tell you to be happy, you need more success, more or better relationships, more productivity, Less anxiety, less responsibility. They all have some slice of truth, some barely. There's always an assumption. You should be happier. You could be happier. There's something better. Well, this morning we have a real treat. We have God's instruction for happiness. Real simple. Real clear, this is the blessed life. This is the happy life that God provides. We're starting a short little series here in the summer. We'll be looking at Psalm 1, then Psalm 2, Psalm 3. Those three Psalms really form an introduction to the whole Psalter. The Psalms are God giving us words to speak to him. They're built on the law that God has actually already spoken down to us. So God gives us instruction, God gives us his word, his law, and then he even gives us these Psalms, 150 to speak back to him. And the first Psalm is the most significant here as the main introduction. It sets up the whole Psalter. It establishes the wise life that gives thanks to God. praises God, trusts God, brings complaints and laments and worries to God, even confesses sin to God. This Psalm, Psalm 1, is built on contrast. We see two main groups. There's the blessed, and then there's the wicked. There's the one who delights in the word of the Lord. There's the one who's walking in the counsel of the wicked. The contrast is important. There's participating in sin, delighting in God's word. Rooted down like a tree, blown away like chaff. Known by God, judged by God. There's two ways to live. We complicate things in our sin. God makes them very clear, simple, straightforward. There's two ways to live, with God, toward God, depending on God, or against God, away from God, rejecting God. Here we see instruction, God's blessed, happy life. Three parts, three points. There's the activity, that's verses one and two. The source, that's verses three and four. The comparison there shows us the importance of source and strength. And then five and six, the end, judgment. First, let's look at the activity, verses one and two. What you do, what you delight in. Blessed is the man. There's meant to be an anticipation, all right, what comes next? And as we think about this, we're wrestling with not only what God says, but we've gotta let God's word evaluate us. There's three negatives, things a blessed man does not do, and then there's two positives. Notice that contrast, but is the significant point.
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.
Verse one sets up a pretty clear declaration. There's three activities, walk, stand, sit. There are three prohibitions, and it's possible these are progressing. First, you're willing to kind of walk with somebody who's wicked, maybe then you're standing with them, and then you're getting more comfortable to sit with them. There's possible progression, but it's also just holistic. These activities with those who are against God are not going to lead to the blessed life. The life that is blessed, there's an internal aspect, there's a focus. The negatives are focused on what you're doing. You're walking, standing, sitting, but notice it's about delighting in God's law and meditating on what he has given day and night. That contrasts. There's outward activity versus inward contemplation. Well, let's look back at verse one one more time. There's walking with the wicked. The wicked, that would be like criminals, those who are doing clearly wrong deeds. Those are clearly breaking laws. Sinners, the most basic way we think about this is someone who's missing the mark, always a little off, never quite stable or trustworthy. Scoffers, they're dismissive, they mock, they refuse authority, they especially are against authority. Do not walk with them. Do not stand with them. Do not sit with them. Someone who delights in God's law learns how to appreciate those prohibitions. Those who meditate upon God's law and love God's law and realize what a good law it is, realize when he says no, there's something wonderful about God saying, don't do that. Why is the blessed life not among the wicked, the sinners, and scoffers? I think one clear answer is
bad company corrupts good character.
That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. One of the reasons you wanna guard against who you're constantly around and who you're walking with, who you're standing with, who you're sitting with, what kind of activities are they doing because we are learning from others. You're not an island that can just resist all this input. We need boundaries. Children, this is very important as you're considering what friendship is, who you're choosing to be friends with, what kind of friend you're choosing to be. Where are you seeking to go and are your friends going there with you? Where are you seeking to go and are your friends committed to going there with you? If you're with friends who are constantly causing you to be disrespectful to teachers, parents, those are not good friends. They're scoffers. If you're constantly with friends who are tempting you and daring you to do something that you know is against the rules, that's the wicked. If you're friends with somebody who's always getting in trouble, just seems unruly, that's a sinner. Don't choose friends because of how much fun you think someone is. Choose friends based upon you want to be more like them. They're helping you become more like the person you desire to be. The important for us as adults, we're not immune to this kind of persuasion. Who are you spending time with? Who are you becoming like? The blessed man. He does not participate in the presence of sin. He does not walk, stand, or sit. But the blessed man, he delights, he enjoys God's law. He has received the instruction from God, he has received God's good law, and he meditates upon it constantly. Now, as you think about the word law, the word law has a range of scope in terms, it could just refer to those 10 commandments, could just refer to the first five books, the Torah, books of Moses, it could refer to the entirety of the Old Testament. I believe here we're seeing all that God has given to us in his word. How helpful and clear this is, God has given us his word so that we can read it, know it, delight in it, to be happy. God's law is a gift. There's a helpful way in which we think about law and gospel or law and grace, but the first beginning point is for God to tell us his law is an act of grace. for God to tell us on Mount Sinai, where it was terrifying, it was a gift. Because that law reflects Him, that law tells us what is good for us. I think about all those self-help books and their advice for happiness, they're gonna tell you something. Almost all of them are gonna say something very similar, and it's going to say something like, stop listening to yourself, talk to yourself. I'm gonna say that's actually good and right. We have to decide what's gonna be on the record player. We have to decide what kinds of thoughts we're going to entertain, what kind of thoughts we're gonna practice. That's good and right. But here, our psalmist, God himself, is telling us something even better. Stop listening to yourself. Listen to God. Listen to God. Let God's word be the constant on your record player. Let God's word be the constant going back to what your screensaver is, what you're regularly going back to and thinking about, meditating upon, enjoying. Key question, believer. Do you delight in God's law? Another way to ask the same question, do you enjoy being ruled by God? Do you desire to be ruled by God? But by delighting in His law, you're recognizing He is authoritative and good. He is sovereign, and I want to come under what He has said and recognize His rule is good. It corrects and straightens my crooked path. As we wrestle with what it means to delight in God's law, I want to give a little theology of law here. There's three purposes of the law. The first purpose is it serves as a mirror. We look at it and we get to see sin we probably excuse as something good, right, or fine. God's law first shows us how sinful we are. You're supposed to delight in that. We're supposed to delight. that God's word is truly good, and it shows us areas that we're not even aware of yet that are wrong. You're supposed to delight in that. There's something good about a friend who will tell you when you're wrong. God is that perfect friend whose word is a mirror. And the reason it shows us we're wrong is it reflects God's goodness, his perfection, his holiness. And so when we look at it as sinners, we're able to see sin that we would not have otherwise seen as sin. We're gonna see sin that we make excuses for. Now as we look at God's law, you're not delighting in the sin you see. What we do with that mirror is so important. We don't delight in it so we know how to clean ourselves up. We don't delight in it so we try to figure out how to get back to God. No, we delight in God's law that shows us our sin so that we can cry out to him who forgives sinners. God's law is a mirror to delight in, because it doesn't just show us our sin, it shows us he's the savior. God's law doesn't just declare us all the ways we've failed, but it declares all the ways in which he's brought about this perfect salvation, all the promises he made that we know Christ has fulfilled. God's law we delight in because it shows us his goodness and therefore our sinfulness. So we cry out to him. The second purpose of the law is, well, it's a curb. It sets up boundaries. This is where the nots do not, do not, the prohibitions are good. Most of the Ten Commandments or prohibitions don't do this. Laws protect us from sinful inclinations. God is good to tell us what not to do. Do not eat of that tree, do not covet. We delight in God's word because it tells us what's out of bounds. To be very clear, the first step of discipleship, deny yourself. You've gotta know what you're supposed to say no to. You cannot be a disciple if you do not delight in saying, hearing God say no. You cannot be a disciple without hearing God say no. Secondly, or thirdly, the third purpose, it's a guide. Not only does it show us our sin, it shows us boundaries, it sets our direction towards the goodness of who God is. It sets us and our life apart to know him and his way so that we get near him. The law shows us who is most lovely, so we might love him. It shows us what is the good and righteous life that he has designed us for so we might be happy. God is good. He has given us a good law to direct us. One of the things there is we wrestle with God's law and what it does and how it corrects us is the goal of hearing the no's, especially these no's of don't walk, don't stand, don't sit, The life that's just worried about the things you're not supposed to do, it's not a life of joy. It's a life of fear. We have to understand it's doing two things. It's keeping us away from sin, but it's drawing us closer to God. We're like children. Better than saying, no, don't do that. That's not good. Let's redirect. Our hearts are twisted and turned. God is constantly redirecting. The way to be redirected is not just to think, how do I stay away from all the sin? Well, that's going to be a frustrating, painful task. No, the goal is to say, how do I protect myself from sin and meditate in a way that I get closer to God? How do I learn to enjoy Him more? The happy life, the blessed life. You're not seeking the company or counsel or participating in the sins of others. You're not walking, standing, or sitting. You're lighting it. you're meditating upon, you're enjoying God's word. Let's be clear, God's word is sometimes difficult to read. Whether it be a complicated concept, a story that is challenging, or whether it just be our own complacency, worry. We do have to recognize this word was meant to do what we've done already and that it's meant to be heard with each other. There's a helpfulness that, yes, by all means, if you don't have a Bible, please take that Bible with you and read it. The gift we have to be able to sit with our own scriptures, our own copy to hear God. But if you're not doing it with others, you're not doing it right. It's a book for the church. It's a book for people. It's a book to be read with each other. We need to learn how to share God's word with each other. So first is the activity. Are we walking, sitting, walking, sitting, sitting? Are we meditating? Are we delighting? The next continues the picture, and we see two contrasting What are you like? Here we see the source. There's a source. And the contrast is a tree and chaff. The chaff is that outward protective shell of the wheat, of the seed, and it's only helpful for a little while. It's a preparatory protection that needs to be removed so the seed can actually, well, be planted and then develop roots. A tree rooted. chaff blown by the wind. This will give you a comparison of what a blessed man is who delights in the law of God. And that's the important part. The blessed man who delights in the law and meditates upon it,
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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 he does, he prospers.
The tree is a strong, it's powerful. There's a steadiness to a tree. But what I wanna see here is it's planted by streams of water. There's a rooted in, there's a stability. The blessed man who lies to the law of God, it's like the tree that has a root system and a source of strength, a stream, it needs water. The roots, they need to consume water so that tree is dug in deep, strong, and healthy. Roots are desires that go deep into the soil, getting rooted and grounded. Here, I believe the rooted and grounded of the tree that's healthy and strong is, well, it's God's law, it's God's word. Getting rooted in. Getting stabilized and depending upon His Word makes you strong, sturdy, healthy. This is in contrast to our culture's lie that, well, the more you are free to be you and the more to discover your own self-realization, then the happier you are. In contrast to the idea that you're just a noble savage that has all these internal desires and needs to come have the freedom to burst out. No, you need God's Word. so that you can be rooted in. Get tied down, rooted, meditate. Let the word of God be your foundation. Psalm 1 is the introduction to the whole Psalter, but Psalm 1, I believe, is also a meditation from Deuteronomy 6, 4. Deuteronomy 6 is one of the most significant verses in how the Old Testament develops.
Here, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.
And then God declares you must meditate upon these things in your heart. The law of God must first be on your heart and you must teach it to your children diligently when you're sitting, when you're walking, when you're lying down, when you're rising up. Notice there that holistic activity. Do you now picture why the Psalter, the psalmist, would say delighting in God's law is in contrast to sitting and walking and standing with sinners? Because if you're meditating on God's law, you're talking about it with your children while you're sitting and walking, while you're lying down and rising up. There's a holistic world here. Notice how important that activity is. Notice how important the conversations with your children are. He then goes on in Jeremiah 6 to say, you put it on your hand. And your forehead. Everybody look at your forehead real quick. These are probably not just for you. They're for everybody else. A constant reminder of one another. A constant understanding because they're on the doorpost, they're on the gate. There's a way in which we're reminding each other because we need to remind it of God's goodness and his laws. We're meditating upon it together. As we sit, as we walk. As we think about the New Testament, the church must be built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. How good it is that God's given us his word, the gospels, the letters, how they instruct us and how they warn us, how they correct us. Church, what an idea of us sitting and walking with another, building each other with God's word. What a picture of a home built on Christ the rock. Put scripture on your doorpost, sure, I don't think we need to be as obliged there from Deuteronomy 6, 4, but is your home, does it carry the aroma of Christ? Does it carry with it the words of scripture? Do we talk to each other with God's own word? The individual, a life built on God's Word. According to James 1, someone who's received that implanted Word is dug down deep into our heart because we're not just hearers of God's Word, but we're doers of it. If we're not working at being rooted in God's Word, notice the contrast. The wicked are not so. They're not rooted, they're not grounded, they're not stable. They're like chaff. That hard outer shell that's good for a season because it protects the seed, but when it's come to its own maturity, it needs to be knocked off, it needs to be blown away. There's no stability, there's no strength. The chaff, it's worthless, it's meaningless. There's no strength. The blessed man, the righteous man, the winds blow. The seas roar, but if your roots are in Christ and his word, if your life is built on the rock, you don't get moved. That's the picture. How good it is that God has given us the only thing that really keeps us stable, him and his word. A tree with shallow roots or weak roots, it's blown over even. It's pretty incredible. There's red oaks, and there was a storm in Kentucky where I live there, and there were these red oaks that were blown over. And red oaks, they don't have a tap root. Their roots go wide, and these huge red oaks would be knocked over, and the root system was just significant, large, like as large as a stadium, or the stage, stadium, yeah, that's something, stage. And on the site, the root systems were incredible. Well, the white oaks outside, they have a tap root. A root that goes down, that makes it even stronger. I encourage you, when you walk out, there's two trees on the left of the sidewalk. One is healthy, strong. The other is weak, and we've had to do a lot more pruning to it. You can see it, it's not as healthy. Well, it's next to the blacktop, which is bad for the root system. Its roots are less healthy. Gets the same amount of sun, same amount of rain. But the root system, the source, isn't as healthy because of the blacktop. Friend, think about this. The tree's health and life, it's about location. Source, healthy rooted life, not in the place of scoffers, not standing with sinners, not walking with the wicked. I ask you, believer, are you in a healthy place? Are you seeking to put yourself regularly in the places where you'll get healthier roots? Are you regularly with those who are, without directly attacking Christianity maybe, but giving you doubts or distracting you or pulling you away? Where are you? Significant question, where are you? Where are you intentionally seeking to be diligent and placing roots in that are determining who you are? It's a gracious question God asks Adam when he's hiding from him. It's an important question for us as we think about where is my time and energy and investment? Another way of asking is does my heart have a healthy diet? Am I consuming God's word? Am I meditating upon it in a way that it helps me delight in Him? If we live like the wicked, if we live blown by every wind, we started with Proverbs 1, that's what Pat read earlier. That's the beginning of the Proverbs. The life that has wisdom, that has a fear of God, That life when they hear Lady Folly's voice resist, but the unrooted life does not. The life that has no roots, when they see money or power or whatever entices you, they don't know how to resist, but the life of wisdom that fears God, they know how to repent, flee. It's important for wisdom to know God and his word. As we've been thinking about how Psalm 1 functions in the Psalter, when trials come, this is your strength, this is your power. We delight in God's law so that whenever there's trouble, we learn how to lament properly to God. You can turn to Psalm 77 or Psalm 13. Psalm 1 is the beginning. If we don't know that God and we do not have roots into His faithfulness and strength, we're not going to be able to pray those prayers that turn us from complaining to rejoicing in how God is good. Even more so, the Psalter gives us confessions. If we do not have God's Word and know that He is good, we won't know that we can go to Psalm 32 and 51 and confess knowing He forgives us. The Christian life needs to be rooted in Faithful, dependable. Notice the life has the right source. That's the main contrast with the chaff and the tree, but there's more about this tree. It grows strong, it has healthy leaves, it bears fruit. Remember here, we were just in Jude not too long ago, and this vivid, the vivid pictures of Jude. One of them being a tree twice dead. uprooted, because it did not bear fruit. We can go to Jesus' own words, where he is the vine, and the Father is the vinedresser, and whenever we're obedient, we're bearing fruit, God actually prunes, and that pruning is difficult and painful, but it helps us bear more fruit, but if there's no fruit, cut off. Again, the key point there, it's source. But one of the blessings of a tree that's strong and healthy It yields fruit. It yields fruit. A tree that's healthy produces more health. A tree that consumes water as roots and energy from its leaves, there's fruit. And it produces fruit for others. It produces fruit to spread and abound. And how fun is that? Instead of being a consumer of others, you're rooted in God and you're blessing others. That's the picture. What a picture for us, church. What a picture for your home. What a picture for your life. God has given you his good word to be rooted in, to grow strong, steady, healthy, bear fruit for others. On Wednesday night, we've been doing a Fruit of the Spirit kind of devotion series, It hasn't been directly tied, but we've been walking through each one, and as I was wrestling with this, we think about spiritual fruit. It is important that we, in our own works, do not produce spiritual fruit. The Holy Spirit produces. Whenever we do our sinful works, we are creating havoc and disorder. But if we think about the Holy Spirit produces that fruit, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul does begin and end that section with the command, walk in the Spirit. There is the command, walk in the Spirit. We can't just assume that if we just lollygag around, the Holy Spirit's gonna produce something. Well, we can't pretend if we're sitting, standing, walking in the Council of Centers that the Holy Spirit's gonna produce something. No, no, the Holy Spirit who gave us his word invites us to walk in the spirit so that the Holy Spirit would produce something. We too often wanna be so emphatic on grace that there's no expectation that God invites us to walk in his spirit. That's an act of faith by grace. So that the Holy Spirit would actually produce the fruit we long for. It is not passive Christian. In all he does, the blessed man prospers. Finally, the prosperity gospel. Wickedness does not produce real happiness. It can't. Wickedness produces misery, destruction. You can make lemonade out of lemons, but you can't make a pie out of the filth of sin that tastes sweet. This is not, let's just take all the things bad and try to make it better. No, no, we cannot use wickedness and think that God's designed for us to be good and righteous in his own in any way can produce real happiness. Now this prosperity, it does not mean there are no thorns in the righteous man's garden. It does not mean that every child of theirs will obey. perfectly, it does not mean that every investment will come back fourfold. No, it means that his desire is to know God, and God will bless that. It means that he seeks to be obedient to God's will, and God will bless that. It means he practices faithful discipleship of his children. That doesn't mean the children are gonna be perfectly obedient, it just means he's going to be able to faithfully discipline and disciple his children. It doesn't mean he's going to be able to stand every trial without ever stumbling. No, it means God is going to keep him. And as he practiced standing firm on his word, he will not get tossed to and fro completely. It means he practices confessing sin. He knows the God who helps him see his sin and knows that when we confess sin, he is faithful to forgive. He practices crying out to God in despair. He knows God hears him. Prosperity means we're We're growing closer to God. We're growing closer to the happiness he's designed for us. We need to come together. Know that God's word is good. Know that God's word is for us to enjoy together. Know that delighting in his word leads to true happiness. The last two verses also have a contrast. For the wicked,
therefore the wicked will not stand 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.
The contrast really is there in verse six, but let's look at verse five and think about how that is in contrast with verse one. The wicked, they might be standing with other sinners, but they're not gonna stand in the presence of God. The sinners, they're not gonna be able to stand in the congregation of the righteous, but sinners do stand with one another. There's a way in which, just a clear picture of who we are with, and is that going to help promote us to be with God in his presence? The contrast is side by side here.
The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
The Lord knows, it's not just intellectual knowledge, there's a personal knowledge, there's a way in which God is, his eye is on those whom he loves and love him and are seeking to know him through his word. The way of the wicked, the way of the unruly, the way of the disobedient, they will die and there's a judgment. Significant to ask because this too is God's word and it is a mirror for us right now. What will it be like to stand in the judgment of God? What could possibly be our posture, our position, our words? If you're not a believer this morning, if you're not a Christian, we're so thankful you're here. The command here isn't to make yourself better, get closer to God, clean yourself up. No, it's, there's an invitation here that's important. There's a warning right here that if someone continues in sin, if someone continues in sin, not looking to God's word, not repenting of sin because of God's word, not seeking to believe God and trust God, there's going to be death and there's going to be judgment. The choice of this whole text is actually back in one and two. Will you continue to walk in sin? Or will you turn to God? When you actually get to that judgment, there's no choice. The choice is all the way there in verse one and two. Will I continue in sin against God, moving away from God? Or will I turn to God? And by turning to God, we know in his word, not only do we see our sin, but we see that God has made promises to save us from our own sin. We know in the New Testament, it was written after the Psalms, that Jesus Christ is that Savior and he is the only Savior. He himself is the power of God and the wisdom of God. God himself came to be like us because we could not save ourselves. He became like us so that when he died on the cross, he died in the place of all who believe in him. He died so that we can trust him. Because on that cross, he died for sin. He died as if a sinner, even though he was perfectly righteous. He died so that we might be forgiven. He rose again so that we might actually live this new, blessed, happy life. If you're not a Christian, the temptation is going to be, how do I do more to get this blessing? At first, of course, you take up the Word and read. Begin in Matthew. There, over and over again, you'll see the wisdom of Jesus Christ and the foolishness of our sin. Ask somebody near you who brought you or you came with. Read it with me. Help me see who Jesus is as the wisdom of God and the power of God who helps me as a sinner. Notice here, this is an absolute statement. Those who continue to practice and persist and participate in sin, they will not stand in judgment. They'll be speechless. They'll be hopeless. The judgment's coming. The only hope anyone has in that judgment is that Jesus Christ himself stands for us and declares, I died for their sin. They believed in me. They've been washed clean. That is the only hope we have. Believers and unbelievers, that is the only hope we have. If you're a believer this morning, notice the only choice you've got is in ruining two. Are we participating, walking in the counsel of the wicked? Are we spending more time with those who pull us away from the faith, or are we intentionally spending time with those who are helping us delight in God's word? Are we rightly seeking to know how to meditate and know more of God so that we might delight in His law? We might be rooted like a tree strong that bears fruit so that we might truly enjoy all the blessings of God. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for the clarity and the simplicity of this psalm. Thank you that you've given every human being a desire to know blessing, prosperity, happiness. Forgive us for all the ways we do go wayward. Forgive us for the ways we isolate ourselves away from you and your word and its goodness. Forgive us for wanting to meditate upon things that we believe are entertaining us but are destroying us. Lord, help us to see you in all of your glory, in all of your goodness, to know how to praise you as our future Psalms will show us. To know how to trust you and submit to you as our future Psalms will show us. To know how to come before you and confess our sins to you as our future Psalms will show us. We thank you, God, that you are good. You've given us your law to set us on your straight path by faith in Jesus and his death and resurrection. Help us to know how to delight in you and your word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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