Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Psalm one. This is the word
of the Lord. Blessed is the man
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who walks not in the counsel of
the ungodly, nor stands in the path
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of sinners, nor sits in the
seat of the scornful, but his delight
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is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day
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and night. He shall be like
a tree planted by the rivers of water
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that brings forth its fruit in its
season, whose leaf also shall not wither,
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and what he does shall prosper.
The ungodly or not so, but
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are like the chaff which the wind
drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall
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not stand in the judgment, nor
sinners in the congregation of the Righteous,
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for the Lord knows the way of
the righteous, but the way of the
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ungodly shall perish. Thus far this
reading of God's holy word, the grass
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withers in the flower fades, but
the word of our Lord endures forever.
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Now, this morning we looked at
the fourth be attitude, and of course,
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the the word be attitude comes from
the Latin word for a blessing.
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So it's the it's the the beatitudes
are really the blessings. That's really what
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it means, because each one starts
with blessed is or blessed are, and
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this evening we have before us,
as it were, David's be attitude.
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Blessed is the man, he says. So I thought that this would be
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a good way to kind of add
a little bit into our study of the
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beattitudes. This morning we talked some
about the importance of trusting in God's promises,
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and the best way to trust in
God's promises is to read God's word,
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and that's really what this psalm is
about. It's about making sure that
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scripture reading and scripture memory and focusing
on God's Word is such a blessing to
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us. So let's see how many
of us know our catechism. I bet
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everybody's got this one. What is
the chief end of man? That's pretty
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good. That's pretty good. I
guess Y'all got to be plus on that
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one. There's a little mumbling going
on, but yes, man's chief end
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is to glorify God and enjoy him
forever. And if you stop and think
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about it, that really is a
definition of worship, isn't it? To
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glorify God and enjoy him forever,
as or as John Piper famously wanted to
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amend the first answer. Our chief
end is to glorify God by enjoying him
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forever now, in this this salt, in the Psalter we have here this
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morning, the are this evening.
Excuse me, it's the worship book.
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It's the hymnal of the Old Testament
Church, and it was thought that the
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very best thing to start this with, just like the the first question of
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the catechism, grounds us in what
worship is, as the Old Testament Book
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of worship starts. Right here we
find this Psalm and it tells us that
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if we're going to worship God,
we have to know his word, because
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it's as we know his word that
we come to know him and his person
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and his attributes and, as I
said this morning, his promises. And
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this first psalm is categorized as a
wisdom psalm because it teaches us something of
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wisdom, and the Hebrew word for
wisdom means skill and living. If you've
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ever wondered, like, what is
wisdom and how is it different from knowledge?
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Where knowledge is knowing stuff, wisdom
is knowing how to do stuff.
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It's to live skillfully in God's world. So the main theme or the main
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thing that I want to communicate to
y'all this evening is that if we are
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going to live skillfully in God's word
world and if we're going to worship God
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God properly, which is our primary
purpose in life, then we have to
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know God by knowing his word.
And so I'd like us to look at
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this psalm and two parts. You
can see it in your bulletin insert.
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It's in there. And I'd like
us to see that this psalm describes,
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first, two kinds of people and
secondly, that it describes two kinds of
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ends. So our psalm begins by
telling us about the ungodly. Blessed is
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the man who walks not in the
counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in
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the way of sinners, nor sits
in the seat of the scoffer. The
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first word of the Psalm is blessed
and, as I've noted in our mourning
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sermons that I've been doing like on
occasion, the word blessed means supremely happy.
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So supremely happy, he says,
is the man who doesn't do this,
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that and the other. And as
we've seen in the our study of
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the beattitude, Jesus picks up on
this word in those be attitudes where he
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describes the sort of person who inherits
the Kingdom of Heaven. So this is
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sort of the flip side. Jesus
says blessed are the poor in spirit.
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Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed
are the meek, blessed are those,
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as we saw this morning, who
hunger and thirst after righteousness. But here
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in our psalm this evening, the
psalmist tells us that those who are complete,
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those who are supremely happy, are
those who have void something before the
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psalmists tells us what the character of
the blessed is. First he tells us
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something of what the character of the
blessed is not, and he does that
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in three steps. Here he describes
the ungodly and three parallel lines and they
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descend from bad to worse to worse
than that, and his point is that
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there is a progression in sinfulness.
I Love Charles spurgeon in his his series.
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Are His too, book volumes,
two volumes on the psalms. I
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really commend it to you. It's
very good devotional reading and in this he
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says something I want to read the
y'all. He says, when people are
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living in sin, they tend to
go from bad to worse at fear.
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At first they merely walk in the
council of the careless and ungodly who forget
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God. They're evil is rather more
practical than habitual. But after they become
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habituated to evil and they stand in
the way of open sinners who willfully violate
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God Commandments. And if left alone, they then go one step further and
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become themselves pestilent teachers and tempters of
others. And thus they sit in the
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seat of the scornful. They have
taken their degree in vice and, is
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true, doctors of damnation. They
are installed and looked up to by others
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as masters in bullial you have to
love that nineteen century language. But his
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the progression here that he's describing is
threefold, of course. First the sinner,
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the ungodly person, that the fellow
who is not blessed. First he
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sort of just walks with morally bad
people. This fellows not really thinking about
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what he's doing, is just sort
of going along with the flow. He's
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just doing what the crowd does.
But next the Psalmist says what we see
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is that people take a stand in
their sin. They say this is what
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I want to be, I like
this, this, this is what I
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want to do. And finally we
find that they start to wallow in their
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sin, thinking that that, you
know, this is what life is all
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about. In people in this stage
will often mock or deride those who seek
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to live differently from the way the
crowd does. They have, as it
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were, gotten so far down that
broad way that leads to hell that they
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can't even remember where they made the
turn on to that road anymore. And
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you know, you can almost watch
people make this progression. I think we
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see it pretty clearly. You know, when when you confront somebody about something
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or when they're rebuked or when their
sin is exposed, you know, when
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your sin is exposed your you're faced
with a choice, aren't you? Either
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choose to keep going that way or
you choose to stop and turn around.
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And before people are exposed in their
sin, yeah, they just sort of
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go along, they're just sort of
doing their thing, but when that sin
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is pointed out, if they don't
repent, they will take a stand.
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They won't be forced to call good
what is evil. And then, because
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people generally like to hear that sort
of thing. People who do that will
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start to gain an influence and and
they'll start to make fun of people who
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don't sit, that is, who
don't live in their sinful, hardened way.
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As spurge and said, they take
their degree in vice, and is
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true. Doctors of damnation are installed
as professors of sin. You See,
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what we find here is that the
ungodly person is defined by those with whom
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he associates, that is, the
wicked, the sinners, the mockers,
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those people with whom he associates in
form his thinking and thus for arm his
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character, and ultimately they draw him
into hell with them. And the Psalmist
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says that the blessed man has no
fellowship with these folks and their unfruitful works
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of darkness. But the blessed or
the righteous person, that the supremely happy
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fellow, isn't just marked by what
he avoids but by what he embraces.
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The righteous person is defined by his
association with the Lord, but verse two.
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But his delight is in the law
of the Lord, and in his
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law he meditates day and night.
See, the righteous man or woman isn't
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defined by having spiritual or godly friends, or by church membership or or by
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being good or anything else that he
or she may do. Rather, the
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godly person is defined by her relationship
with the Lord. And notice that it
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is isn't because she meditates on God's
word. Is a duty. Time spent
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with God isn't a box for him
or her to check. Rather, it's
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a meditation, a steeping, if
you will, like tea in God.
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And it comes as the hearts delight. When the Psalmist says that we delight
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in the word, the word that's
used, there's a word that's used of
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our response to the truest joys of
life. It's not just something you like.
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It's the joy of the newly wed, the joy of the best of
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friends who haven't seen each other in
a long time, the joy of seeing
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your child come into the world.
That's the kind of delight he's talking about.
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But I don't know about you all, but when I think about that,
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my gut feeling is to look at
this and say, but how can
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I delight in the Law of God? I mean it, isn't that just
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a bunch of rules? Well,
actually it's not, because the word for
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law and the Old Testament is tolera. We think of law from a Roman
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perspective, of the Statute Book.
You know, the law is don't spit
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on the sidewalk, don't walk your
dog in Sabino Canyon, don't drive on
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the wrong side of the street.
That's what we think of the law as.
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But the word Torah doesn't just refer
to law, it refers to all
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of God's word, because the word
for Tora means law, but also it
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means teaching or instruction. And so
to delight in Tra is to delight in
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meditating on God's word, is to
delight in God's character. It's to delight
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in God's ways. To delight in
reading his law is reading about God.
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That helps us understand him. And
you remember in Luke, Chapter Twenty four,
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on the Amais road, that Jesus
says that the whole of scripture is
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about him, right from Genesis one
one through all the begats and through all
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those sort of confusing minor prophets and
and through the whole thing, all the
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way to the very last page of
revelation. All of scripture, Jesus says,
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is about him. And so if
you think about it, that means
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that all of scripture is his gospel, it's good news about Jesus. All
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of scripture is Tolerah, it's instruction
in his good news. It's for this
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reason that a really good friend of
mine he when he whenever he gets up
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to preach, when whatever book of
the Bible he's reading from, he says,
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listen to the Gospel According to Moses
or the Gospel according to Daniel or
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the Gospel according to first Peter,
because it's all good news. And we
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see that the blessed, I said, person meditates on the word day and
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night. Now, the Hebrew word
for meditate, I think, is it
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really interesting word. It literally means
to mutter or to growl, to mutter
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or to growl. And so when
the PSALMIST says, as he's talking about
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someone who diligently studies his Bible,
it's someone who is repeating it to himself,
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somebody who's reflecting on it, someone
who's considering scriptures meaning and application for
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his life. It's like, if
you imagine, it's like someone who's got
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a puzzle piece. You know when
you're working on one of those two thousand
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piece puzzles and you can't figure out
where this one piece goes and you're sitting
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there and you're going, well,
where does this is it? They're right
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here, and that is for right
there. It's very here, as it
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fit right there, and you're kind
of mumbling to yourself. You know you're
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turning it this way and that you're
looking for the right fit. And so
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the meditative person literally is a mutterer. He's mumbling to himself, so fixated
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on what he's doing that he doesn't
even realize he's doing that. And in
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the same way, the person who
meditates on God's word reflects on how it
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applies or impacts his or her life. You know, you sit there and
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you know you come away from church. Perhaps he said, well, what
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is it? What did that sermon
mean for? What did he mean by
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that's how we love our neighbor as
our self? What? What? What
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is? What is this meditating,
this mumbling thing? What does that have
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to do with my daily devotions?
HMM, he's cogitating, he's Mumblings,
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murmuring to himself, he's he's meditating, and the psalmist says that the godly
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person does this day and night.
When your first get up in the morning
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you're thinking about the word. As
you're going through the day, you're thinking
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about the word. Is You're laying
down at night, you're thinking about the
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word. And and if you stop
and think about it, isn't that just
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natural? I mean, you know, when we when we really reflect for
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the Christian when we really reflect on
what Jesus has done for us, isn't
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it natural to meditate on him day
and night? I mean, look at
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how he loves us. When the
disciples saw Jesus has sacrifice and later saw
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his resurrection, the love of God
that he gave to them so changed and
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riveted those fellows that they were never
again the same. The good news of
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Jesus Christ was so good that they
spent the rest of their days meditating on
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it and telling others about it.
And so this evening I want to ask
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you what it is that you meditate
on. Do you steep yourself like tea
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in God's word when you rise up
in the morning? Do you try to
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train yourself to start with thanks to
God for a new day and remember is
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his word? What I often did
for Benjamin, our son, when he
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was little, as I would,
I still kind of do it sometimes just
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to annoy him but I would go
into his room and I would sing,
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this is the day, this is
the day that the look it's a so,
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you know, you start the day
thinking about God. When we're laying
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down at night, are we pondering
our worries or do we stop and think
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about his promises? And one big
one for me is I'm A. I'm
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an anxious, nervous, depressive basket
case. And so what what I have
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to do is to remember every day
be anxious for nothing, but in all
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things, through prayer and supplication,
with Thanksgiving, make your request known to
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God. In the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard
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your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, Our Lord. I repeat it like
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a mantra. What do you do? Do you meditate? Do you mumbled,
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you memorized, you repeat? Do
you apply, or does the counsel
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of the ungodly and the way of
the sinner and the scorn of the scoffer
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run around in your head? What
do you expose yourself to? More God's
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Word or the world's wisdom? Remember
that this threefold progression that we see in
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verse one, this is the fruit
of just meditating on the counsel of the
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ungodly. So I want to do
something tonight. I want to give all
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of Y'all UNASSIGNMENT, and here it
is. Try to find some sin problem
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you have or some weakness, some
foible, and memorize a promise from scripture
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that's particularly meaningful to you about that. Memorize it and then, when you
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when you feel tempted, are you, you feel like whatever it is,
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it's creeping up on you, meditate
on that word, turn it over in
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your mind, think about it,
reflect on it, and if you do
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that, I promise you it will
be good. It will make you blessed,
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and that's because this sort of thing
is indescribably wholesome to the soul.
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In fact, that's what you were
made to do. That is what godly
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worship is. That glorifies God as
you enjoy him. And so we see
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that in the first two verses,
starting in the third verse, we see
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that there are two kinds of ends
that correspond to these two kinds of people.
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And in verse three we see the
blessed end of the person whose delight
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is in God and in his word, and that blessed ends is that he
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has a has a health and a
wholeness in his soul. Listen, he
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shall be like a tree planted by
the rivers of water that brings forth its
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fruit in its season, whose leaf
also shall not wither, and whatever he
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does shall prosper. The meditative,
godly person is like a tree that draws
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spiritual nurt nourishment from an abundantly flowing
stream. The idea of the word picture
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is of a person sinking his or
her roots so deeply into scripture that he
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drinks continually from Christ's well. James
Boyce, in his commentary on this,
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said this. The land around might
be quite dry and barren, the wind
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might be hot, but if the
tree is planted by the stream it will
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prosper and yield fruit. It's the
very thing we see here in riparian areas
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out in the desert. Yeaman can
be bleak, but if there's a creek
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bed, even if there's no water
in it, there's water under the surface
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and you see these big cottonwood trees
and what have you growing up and they
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give shade. That's the idea that
the PSALMIST has. They prosper and they
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yield their fruit, and of course
Jesus said that. You will know people
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buy their fruit. Our hearts desires
percolate up into a lifestyle, into fruit,
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whether good or bad. If we
delight in what is wicked, we
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know that the fruit of our life
will be nasty. But if we delight
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in the Lord, our lives will
be marked by blessed fruit and, the
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psalmist says, our leaf also will
not wither. The righteous meditative person is
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someone who becomes a source of shade
and refuge in a dry and a weary
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land, like a shade tree.
People will come to you. You may
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you may feel like you're a great
big mess, but other people will resonate
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with Christ and you. They may
not know why they're coming to you,
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but they find that as you meditate
in scripture, people come and they find
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shade from the harshness of life in
your presence. But though we long to
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bear fruit and though we long to
be a blessing, we can't just look
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at God as some sort of divine
vending machine right. We can't say to
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ourselves, well, I want people
to feel shaded by me or whatever,
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however you want to talk about it, and think that if we just put
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the right coin into the right spiritual
slot, that will get the blessing we
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want. That's not how things work
with God. You can't set your eyes
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on the blessing as what your goal
is. You have to set your eyes
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on God, is your goal,
and the blessings will follow, because otherwise
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what we're doing is we're seeking stuff
from God, and if we seek stuff
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from God, will discover in the
end that we find nothing. Seek first
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the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things will be
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added unto you. So we can't
seek stuff because if we're delighting in stuff,
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we're not delighting in God, and
stuff is whatever we want more than
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we want God. Happiness, peace, security, a nice home, family,
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whatever it is that we delight in
more than Christ, in him crucified,
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that is stuff. But on the
other hand, if we're delighting in
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God and we're seeking him first,
then, as I quoted a moment ago,
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Jesus says, all these things will
be added, unto you. But
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with all of this said, we
have to make the caveat, or the
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reminder that there's only one person who
ever really and truly exemplified what the psalmist
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says here, and that, of
course, is the Lord Jesus. But
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then the objection may come up.
They we may say, will wait a
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minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
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Preacher, you just said that Jesus
exemplified this, but he didn't live
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a very blessed life, did he? I mean Jesus is life here on
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earth wasn't so great. He was
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
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I memorize that one right. But
if we think that way, what
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we're doing is we're forgetting something very
important, and that is that Jesus did
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everything that he did with a larger
goal in view. He suffered, yes,
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but did that not give him the
blessing of having you and I as
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his friends? He died, to
be sure, but his father raised him
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up to rule over all creation and
he gave us the church, to be
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Jesus his bride. And in the
same way, though it may sound a
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little odd, the trials of the
Christian life for very often the way that
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God uses to help us to see
his love and his faithfulness to us.
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So through the crosses and the losses
and the sorrows of this life, at
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though, they will come even to
those, maybe particularly to those who is
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shoe evil and delight in what is
good. Yet in the end, the
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hardest of times help us to become
that tree that bears fruit in its season.
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Through those hard times, God uses
our circumstances to make us drive our
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roots ever more deeply into Christ,
to cling ever more resolutely to Jesus,
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so that through those Chrises, through
those trials, as we cling to the
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Gospel, we become more like Christ. And is that happens, we will
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find that people see Christ in us. But the Psalmist says that the ungodly
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are not so. The ungodly are
not so. They are like the chaff
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which the wind drives away, the
chaff withered, useless, dry. And
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really, isn't that what life is
like apart from Jesus? Withered up,
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when we live our lives delighting in
anything more than Jesus, it's a life
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that's separated from him who brings us
life and that abundantly. It is a
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withered up, dry, worthless existence. And I want you to notice as
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well. Right here he says this
and verse for the ungodly are like the
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chaff. Look back to verse one. Remember he has the ungodly who walk
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in the Council of this are the
people who walk in the council the ungodly,
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then, the people who stand in
the path of sinners, than the
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people who sit in the seat of
the scoffer. He's not talking about the
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sinner or the scornful, he's talking
about the ungodly fellow, that is,
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the guy who's just walking along.
This is the fellow who's just going with
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the flow. He's not even thinking
about being bad. He's probably not really
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thinking about much of anything. He's
just going through life not thinking about God.
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That's the withered up life, and
in fact sometimes the saddest person is
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the fellow who is neither hot nor
cold and finds that he goes to destruction
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for absolutely nothing. It's the ungodly, he says, that are like Chaff,
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as Solomon said, their vanity empty
without substance, and in verse five
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we see that because they are like
the chaff, they're swept away from God's
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presence. At the last day,
therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in
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the judgment, nor sinners in the
congregation of the Righteous, for the Lord
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knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the ungodly shall perish
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on the last day when all of
humanity is raised up again at Christ's returning
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to stand in the judgment. Those
who have chosen to delight themselves in worthless
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vanity and sin and godlessness will be
cast out of the congregation of those that
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stand before the judgment seat. But, by contrast, those who've delighted themselves
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in the Lord will remain before the
Lord at the judgment and they will not
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remain in God's presence because they're better
than the other people or because they've been
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good boys and girls or because they've
deserved it somehow for all of their Bible
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memory program that's not what he's saying. Rather, they will stand in God's
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presence because Jesus will look at them
and he will say, Father, I
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have known these people. I've taken
all of their punishment, for all of
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their sins in my own body.
For them, I've been pierced and striped
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and nailed to a cross. For
them, I have taken your full and
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complete wrath. I have known these
people, but as for them, I
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have not known them. And for
those who've hated God in this life,
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whether passively or actively, whether by
walking in the counsel of the ungodly or
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by standing in the way of sinners
or by sitting in the seat of the
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scornful. The Lord will look at
those people and he will say be gone,
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for I never knew you. And
though we don't, that can make
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us uncomfortable. We don't really like
the doctrine perhaps of judgment and hell.
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It may offend us. Yet if
you stop and think about it, that
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really is the best verdict upon people
like that. Want you to listen again
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to what spurgeon has to say,
because he says it better than I.
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Sinners cannot live in heaven. They
would be out of their element. Sooner
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could a fish live upon a tree
than the wicked in paradise. Heaven would
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be an intolerable hell to an impenitent
man, even if he could be allowed
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to enter. But such a privilege
will never be granted to the man who
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perseveres in his iniquities. You See, if you've hated God in this life,
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then to live with him and his
glory and blessedness forever would be a
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living hell to you. But,
and as Solomon said, this is the
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conclusion of the whole matter, though
the way of the ungodly shall perish.
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Yet the Lord knows the way of
the righteous. His eye is on the
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righteous, like the hymn we sang
when you pick that. His eye is
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on the spare. I was like, I was going to mention that tonight,
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because his eye is on the sparrow. And if his eye is on
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the Sparrow, this small, Insignificant
Bird, how much more is he concerned
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with you, for whom he died? He sees every step, he sees
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every breath, every hair is numbered, and his care and confir concern for
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those who love him is never ending. And at the end of the day,
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there is no greater joy, no
greater fulfillment, no greater blessedness then
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to know that, for the sake
of his great love for us, our
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Abba, our father in heaven,
watches over us and knows US completely with
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a deep and abiding compassion and invites
us to spend time in his word to
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read about his wonderful, endless,
boundless love for us. And that,
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friends is good news. Amen,
let us pray
