Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Psalm 1 is where we are beginning this series in the Psalms. If you weren't here last week, I gave you a little bit of an introduction as to the nature of the Psalms and what we're in store for over the course of the next several weeks. We're looking at a few select psalms in this series, and we're not starting with Psalm 1 just because it's the first psalm and it seems like a good place to start, but we're starting with Psalm 1 because Psalm 1 along with Psalm 2 form the entryway to the book of the Psalms. You can think of Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 as sort of like doorposts or gate posts with an arch above it. Blessed is the man who enters into this study. And so Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 really lay down the theological themes that are going to accompany us through the rest of this book. We're not studying the rest of this book, but if we were, you would see that those themes trace their way all the way through the Psalms.
And it's not just the theology, but the structure and the purposes of Psalm 1 and 2 really give us an indication of what the Psalms are about. Just as important as Psalm 1, Psalm 2 introduces us to a King whom Yahweh has established, and He has given to this King the nations as an inheritance. So in Psalm 1, we have a contrast between the righteous and the wicked. Psalm 2 is likewise a contrast between the righteous and the wicked, but in Psalm 1, it's the contrast between righteous people and wicked people. In Psalm 2, it is the contrast between a righteous King and wicked kings. And so the themes are very similar in each of these two psalms.
And Psalm 1 stands at the head of this book and serves as something of a preface to the rest of the book of Psalms. In fact, Spurgeon in his commentary on the Psalms says this: “It is the psalmist's desire to teach us the way to blessedness and to warn us of the sure destruction of sinners. This then is the matter of the first psalm, which may be looked upon in some respects as the text upon which the whole of the Psalms makes up a divine sermon.” Now consider that. Psalm 1 gives us the theme or the statement, the overarching point on which the rest of the Psalms is a commentary. So it's important that we start here just thematically.
Psalm 1 is also what is classified as a wisdom psalm. There are a number of them. Psalm 37, which we're going to be looking at later in this series, is also a wisdom psalm. The wisdom psalms describe the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked and contrast those two ways. The wicked and the righteous are compared side by side, and the path of wisdom and righteousness and blessing is commended while the path of folly and rebellion and unrighteousness and destruction is to be avoided. And so these two paths are put side by side just like you would have in the book of Proverbs where the way of the righteous, the way of the wise, is compared with the way of the folly or the way of wickedness. And the psalm calls us to walk in wisdom and to apply the law of the Lord because wisdom is not about a mental skill. Wisdom is a moral skill. Wisdom is not a mental skill, it is a moral skill. You can have somebody with more degrees than a thermometer who has graduated from the most prestigious, intellectual educational institutions in the world and they can be a complete and utter fool of the worst order because folly is not an intellectual handicap. Folly is a moral handicap. And so you cannot divorce wisdom from righteousness, and you cannot divorce folly from unrighteousness, for to pursue the way of foolishness is to pursue wickedness, and to pursue the way of wisdom is to pursue righteousness. These two things go hand in hand because wisdom is a moral skill, not a mental or intellectual skill.
There are two groups that are contrasted in Psalm 1. Psalm 1 separates all peoples who have ever lived into two groups, and the contrast between these groups is the subject of this psalm. In fact, that's a very easy way to divide the psalm. You could divide the psalm into two halves. Verses 1–3 describe the righteous. Verses 4–6 describe the wicked. This contrast serves us well here at the beginning of the Psalms because as you enter the Psalms—in other words, as you enter to worship in the Psalms—you are confronted with this truth faced with it at the very outset, this fundamental question, which one are you, wicked or righteous, wise or a fool? In other words, are you pursuing righteousness or wickedness? Do you live your life in wisdom or in folly? Have you abandoned the way which seems right in your own eyes to pursue the way of the Lord, the way of truth, the way of wisdom? Where is your delight? Is it in the law of the Lord, or is it in the company of the ungodly? Is your life transformed and driven by God's revelation and His truth? Do you delight in Yahweh and His truth? Do you live by an eternal perspective, or do you live for and by that which is passing away? That is the question that confronts us with the very first psalm and in fact with the very first passage in that first psalm.
So as I said we could divide the psalm into two halves. That would make for two good sermons. Verses 1–3, the righteous; verses 4–6, the wicked. But we're not going to do that. We're going to go a little bit deeper and observe that there are three specific contrasts between the righteous and the wicked, and if you are thinking that sounds like three separate sermons, you are right. You get a prize today. First, we're going to notice in verses 1–2 the paths of the righteous and the wicked are contrasted. Read verses 1–2: “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” That's the path of the righteous, contrasted with the path of the wicked.
Second, in verses 3–4, we see the product of these different respective lives or paths. We would call this the prosperity of the blessed man in verses 3–4. Look at verse 3:
3 He [that is, the righteous or blessed man] will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. (Ps. 1:3–4 NASB)
Notice the contrast there, the prosperity of the blessed man in verses 3–4.
And then in verses 5–6 we're going to notice the prize of the blessed man. “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous [that's the prize], but the way of the wicked will perish.” So we have contrasted here the path of the blessed man with the wicked man, the prosperity of the blessed man with the wicked man, and then the prize or the outcome of all of that for the blessed man and the wicked man.
Let's look first today, and today is going to be verses 1–2, at the path of the blessed man. I'm going to give you a few observations here, just three of them before we jump into our outline for today. I want you to notice that the blessed man is the righteous man. We just read through the psalm, and you'll notice that the righteous are not mentioned until verses 5–6, but that certainly identifies the blessed man of verses 1–2. So the blessed man is the righteous man of verses 5–6. And by righteousness here, we are describing one who seeks Yahweh and obeys God's Word. So we're going to be in Psalm—over the course of this series, we're going to be in Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm 37, and Psalm 49. And there is a contrast in each of those psalms between the righteous and the wicked. This contrast is going to be a theme that we're going to follow throughout this series. You're going to see a number of other contrasts between the two of them. But when we describe the righteous in these psalms and in the Psalter, we're describing one who seeks Yahweh and who obeys His Word, who walks in the law of the Lord.
This is not to suggest that they are inherently righteous because what makes a man righteous is of a different theological question. How is a man righteous and made righteous before God? Verses 1–2 is not the path to righteousness. In other words, if you obey the law and delight yourself in the law and don't do these things and do certain other things, then you are bestowed righteousness—that's not how it works. What makes a man righteous is a different theological question, and I would assert that there is a work of grace that is needed before a man can be righteous because none of us are born righteous. “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10 NKJV). So something must happen in the heart, in the soul, of a person to make them righteous, to give them righteousness. The work of God is manifested then in the walk of the righteous. The righteous man who has been made righteous by the regenerating work of God and by the dispensing of grace to that individual, that work of righteousness in him, that man will walk in a certain way, and then he will be blessed accordingly.
The word wicked in our context here describes the ungodly, the condemned, the criminal, or the guilty. It's a little more benign than our English word wicked might suggest. When I say somebody is wicked, you think, OK, well, he's not a garden-variety pagan, not just your average person that I'm sitting next to. He must be talking about Pol Pot or, you know, Saddam Hussein or Hitler. I mean, that's wicked. But the word translated “wicked” here is a little softer, a little more benign than that. It describes, generally speaking, somebody who was outside of the covenant, an unbeliever, yes, but somebody who stood condemned. They weren't forgiven and therefore were not righteous. Our English word wickedness suggests a malevolence that is severe, but this word is just describing a guilty one, somebody who is not a follower of Yahweh, who walks in such a way, gives no thought to God whatsoever.
In fact, this type of wicked person that we're describing here in verse 1, this could be somebody who is very nice in human eyes. It could be somebody who is not a believer but pulls over to help you change a tire on the side of the road or to give you a ride to the next town when you've run out of gas. It could be the people that you're camping next to or that you're living next to that share their produce from their garden with you and bake cookies for you on occasion and treat your children with kindness. It could be the little old lady who lives next door who gives no thought to God. It doesn't have to be the little old lady living next door who's cooking up meth and dealing it out of her garage along with cookies. Doesn't have to be that type of a person. It's just the person who, in a very generic fashion, gives no thought to God whatsoever in their day-to-day life. That's the wicked described in verse 1. Not somebody who's on the FBI's most wanted list. She may have concern and love of a kind for people in her life, but she doesn't have love and concern for God and His standards. This person rejects the Creator, chooses to live in violation of His commands, and refuses to humble themselves and receive salvation. That's the person that we're talking about. Maybe one of the nicest people that you ever meet face-to-face in this world, but they still are classified in God's eyes as the wicked, the ungodly, the unbelieving.
Second, I want you to notice the reference to blessedness in this verse. It begins with that. “How blessed” is how it is translated, but the very first word of the verse is “a blessedness.” It is what is called an abstract plural, which means that we do not know if it is intended to be taken as a noun or as an adjective, and it could be both. And the plural of the word indicates that the author has in mind here a multitude of blessings. So he could be describing the condition of the man or the blessings that fall upon the man. If he is describing one or either of those, he is talking about a heightened state of happiness and joy. In other words, the state of this man is very favorable, and his circumstances are enjoyable, and he receives this kind of blessedness that is multifaceted and variegated. In other words, the plurality, the plural of the word, indicates that what he's talking about is not just a particular blessing but blessings of all kinds of all natures in all circumstances at all times.
So this is a man then described here in verse 1 who could recite to you the various ways that he has been blessed. He may have been blessed with family or with financial prosperity or with a business or a degree of freedom or a status or a talent or a skill or an ability or wisdom or whatever it is. God's blessings can be multifaceted and variegated, multicolored. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But the man described in verse 1 is someone who can sit down and recite to you the ways in which God's favor has rested upon him in various degrees, in various ways, at various times in his life. He lives a life that can be described as enjoyable and blessed and abundant, and he can see the hand of God in it. He may live in complete and abject poverty, but he knows blessings that the rich do not have. He may live in absolute prosperity in a free land and he knows blessings that the poor do not have. These are all kinds of blessings that we're talking about. And so how blessed is the state of this man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.
Now, many people want to be this man. And by the way, we're going to—let me back up for just a second. We're going to see in the Psalms that blessing is not always financial. Sometimes it is. It's not always material. Sometimes it is material. But sometimes, as you're going to see in Psalm 37 and 73, sometimes material prosperity is a curse and a damnation upon somebody, not a blessing. See, wealth is not necessarily a blessing. Can be, can also be a curse, depending on what God is intending to do through that prosperity. So you can't just look at “I'm a great businessman and I've been blessed and I have all these things. The hand of God must be maybe upon me.” No, no, whether the hand of God is upon you in that or not is determined by a bunch of other things. You cannot just look at that. That may in fact be God's hardening activity on your heart. You have to evaluate that based upon other criteria.
Many people want to be such a man who is described in verse 1, the blessed man, but they don't want to have to do the things that the blessed man does—turn away from wickedness, turn away from the counsel of the ungodly, and delight themselves in the law of God and meditate on it day and night. They want the blessing, but they don't want to go through the path of blessedness.
Now, just as an aside, and I know I don't need to say this, but I want to say it to be on record. We're talking about the blessed man, and blessed is the man. This is not gender-specific language. It's not only men who have this available to them. This is the man or the woman, we would say, the person who is so characterized. But gendered language is used, so that's the language that I'm going to use when we're just talking about humanity.
Third observation, there is here a negative description and a positive description. Notice in verse 1 he is described negatively by what he does not do. And then in verse 2, he is described positively by what he does do. Now, negative descriptions can be very helpful because they preclude a whole bunch of things. For instance, if I say he walks in the way of righteousness, it might be that he walks in the way of righteousness and walks in the way of foolishness from time to time. But if I say he does not walk in the way of foolishness, then that indicates that we're talking about the other side of it. It precludes one by describing him in terms of the negative. And I think that that is the effect here of this verse.
So there are then two things that mark this man in verses 1–2. Number 1, he is marked by what he avoids in verse 1, and he is marked by what he absorbs in verse 2. By what he avoids and by what he absorbs, and that is our outline for this morning. These two things characterize the path of the blessed man. First, by what he avoids. Verse 1: “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” Notice there what he does not do. There are three parallel phrases there that describe this man. Three parallel phrases: walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, sit in the seat of scoffers. And in each of those phrases, there are three elements in each phrase: walk, stand, sit; counsel, path, and seat; and then wicked, sinners, and scoffers. And with each of those phrases, the author bumps up the intensity of his description a notch. So each one becomes a more intense description of a certain lifestyle or influence. Let's look at all three of them.
Walk in the counsel of the ungodly or the wicked. Walk is an idiom, particularly when used in Hebrew poetry and in wisdom literature like the Proverbs. It is an idiom that describes how one lives, how one conducts themselves. It can be used as an idiom to describe their ethical or moral behavior, how they conduct themselves and walk through life, the way in which they live, their course and their conduct. The imagery here describes a movement that goes down a course. These people who are walking are coming and going, moving and living, behaving themselves according to certain counsel. And the word counsel here, when it talks about the counsel of the wicked, it describes advice or plans or purposes, a consultation, strategy or designs. The wicked plan their lives without God, design their lives without God, and give advice apart from God's standards. In other words, the wicked leave no room in their counsel or design for divine revelations, not informed by the Word of God. This is what marks the counsel of the wicked. It is not informed by the Word of God. The wicked live their lives apart from that truth.
So this describes then in verse 1 one who would take their advice, counsel, or guidance from the wicked and be swayed by it. Like wind that would blow somebody into one course and then into another course as they drift along, blessed is the man who is not swayed by and walks his life according to the counsel of the ungodly. The path of this person is a path that does not have God's perspective on it. The counsel of the wicked is advice that one would give with no consideration to divine truth at all. So there is the constant chattering of godless people that sway their thinking, and blessed is the man who is not moved or influenced by those ungodly who leave no room for God in their thinking.
Now, in order to violate this command or this precept, you don't have to go down to the nearest penitentiary and drag the worst hardened criminal off death row and sit down for a one-on-one to take life advice from them. We're not talking about that type of wicked. To be in violation of this command, you simply have to give heed to a successful businessman who has built his life and his empire apart from God without any counsel or advice from Scripture at all and who lives his day-to-day life without giving any thought to it. And those types of people will give you that counsel. They will give you advice. It might be the educated uncle whose perspective on education and jobs and careers and wealth begins to sway you. It could be the neighbor who tells you all about their life and their marriage. It could be the coworker who has been around for a while offering advice on how to get by in the marketplace or in the office. It could be the guidance counselor at school who gives you perspective on your emotions and your thinking and your feeling and your future, and they are pagans. They're wicked. They're ungodly. They have no thought for God in their hearts and in their minds, and they're giving you advice apart from Him. The blessed man is one who is not moved by that. He is not influenced by it. To walk his life out according to those ideas would be to violate this command.
This is a way of living that leaves God out and is a form of evil that is practiced. A man begins to walk. He's simply living his life, going about his conduct, and he is swayed by the counsel of the ungodly. So he crosses once in a while into sound wisdom, but he begins to be influenced one direction or another by the advice of those who leave no room for God. This is somebody who is influenced by evil counsel. And this can be very alluring, by the way, because often the counsel or advice of pagan people is exciting and enticing. They can promise you success and financial rewards, security and safety. Often the advice of the wicked or the counsel of the wicked seems reasonable. It seems to have worked for them, and so if I just pursue what they have done, it could work for me as well. And so it can be very alluring. But the one who is blessed is not going to order his steps according to the counsel of the ungodly.
Second, we have “stand in the path of sinners.” Now, this is more intense than the previous statement. And you may be thinking to yourself we have somebody who was walking at one point and now he's standing, that seems less intense instead of more intense. Right? Like if we went from walking to running in the path of the wicked, you could say that's an increase in intensiveness, except the idiom here or the figure is not designed to communicate motion. It is designed to communicate relation to evil. It's not motion that is in view. It is one's relationship to evil. The imagery is one who has gone from being influenced by ungodly counsel to now they have stopped and they have taken their stand in the path of the sinners. Now you're talking about one who is standing in that godless counsel, not one who's simply drifting by it but one who has come, who has paused, he has stopped in the path, and he is giving consideration to what he has been hearing, and now he is taking his stand with the other people who have been giving him this counsel. It is to be fixed and hardened in the evil. This person is fully aware of the ungodliness and they are giving it consideration and reasoning now in this lifestyle. They're standing there, and they have become to a degree incorrigible in their unrighteousness. And the word way here refers to a lifestyle or a path you follow. See, it has gone from practicing these things to now becoming a habitual, habituated, practice now. We've gone from being influenced by evil counsel to standing in this evil counsel and being comfortable with it, taking your stand with it. We've gone from influence to identifying with those who are wicked and ungodly.
The word sinners here is not the generic term for sinners, just all lost people, like your garden-variety pagan. Now you're talking about people who are not just lost, but they are willful, aggressive transgressors of the law. These are people who know what is right, and they have begun to now consider that that is what they want to identify with. This is open and considered rebellion. What was once influence has now become a conviction. You see, the one who has been influenced by the ungodly counsel of wicked men just meanders through life, and he is swayed by it, he is influenced by it. But then when you stand, you go from influence to conviction. Now, what was being told to me is now actually my truth. And now I'm settling down in it.
And that's the third step, sitting in the seat of scoffers. The third step is taking his seat so as to become immovable and to dwell there, to settle down and remain there. And the word seat there is a word that describes, of course, the place where one sits, but it was also used of a throne and of a chair. It was a place of authority in some contexts. Sometimes it would describe the teacher in an assembly, somebody who would sit down, have a position of influence or authority or effectiveness. So now we've gone from being influenced to identifying, and now this person is now beginning to influence others with that wickedness. You see how each degree we are progressing downward into this path of sin. The imagery here is joining with others, and it could be translated—the seat of scoffers could be and has been translated “dwelling place” or “assembly.” It means to really take your place alongside those who have also stood in the path of wickedness and to sit down in it, and now you have become ensconced in it. Now you have become settled in it. It's gone from conviction to, “This is my life and I would be willing to die for this, and I want to influence others to do the same.”
Psalm 26:4–5 says, “I do not sit with deceitful men, nor will I go with pretenders. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.” You see what the psalmist is describing there? I am not going to settle down and dwell with those who are the wicked and the ungodly. I'm not going to have that seat of scoffers. The word scoffer refers to one who is a mocker. They ridicule that which is good and true and beautiful. Not just that they don't believe it, but they mock it. Now they are assaulting righteousness. They malign the way of righteousness. They chide and belittle those who live according to the law of God. The scoffer is proud and insolent, brazen and barefaced in his rebellion. He scorns reproof, does not take correction, rejects righteousness and wisdom, and he mocks God and mocks God's truth and eventually mocks God's people. The scoffer is an influencer for evil. He's not just influenced by it. He doesn't just identify with it. He is now influencing others to join him in this path. That is the scoffer. He is a missionary of wickedness. They're teachers of every evil and ungodliness. They're believers in every form of unbelief.
Now, there is obviously an inevitable downward spiral of sin that is described here. You go from being influenced by it to identifying with it and then to influencing others in the same course. Spurgeon said this:
When men are living in sin they go from bad to worse. At first they merely walk in the counsel of the careless and ungodly, who forget God—the evil is rather practical than habitual—but after that, they become habituated to evil, and they stand in the way of open sinners who willfully violate God's commandments; and if let alone, they go one step further, and become themselves pestilent teachers and tempters of others, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful. They have taken their degree in vice, and as true Doctors of Damnation they are installed, and are looked up to by others as Masters in Belial.
Spoken like only Spurgeon could speak it.
James Johnston in his commentary on the Psalms says this:
There is a downward spiral in these three negative descriptions. A man or a woman settles into sin by stages. He walks, then he stops and stands, and finally he sits down. First he is influenced, then he identifies with them, and finally he spreads his sin to others through his laughter and his sarcasm.
We've all seen this, haven't you? This is the path of every apostate. This is the path of every denomination or church or school or organization or ministry that goes from being together for the gospel and a coalition around the gospel to being almost a mockery and a scorn amongst those who actually love the gospel. At first you take a stand, and then you begin to kind of entertain ideas about what might be true and what might not be true, and then pretty soon you are identifying with these people, and before long you are mocking righteousness.
This happens, by the way, when you have somebody in your family who is influenced in that way. Imagine, maybe some of you don't have to imagine, the parents who send their little princess off to college, and you think, “Man, she is just a rock-solid light for the gospel. She is going to go away. I wouldn't be surprised if by Christmas she has evangelized half the campus and half the professors there are making professions of faith in Christ and there's baptism services every Friday night down in the quad and in the fountain there. This is going to be fantastic.” And then she comes home at Thanksgiving and you think, you know, something's off. She wasn't saying that stuff three, four months ago. You’re thinking, “I didn't teach her that. Where'd she come up with those ideas? That language does not sound like how I raised her.” Her thinking becomes influenced in directions that aren't quite right, and you wonder, “Where's this coming from?” And so then you ask your little princess, and she says, “Well, you know, I read some books and I know some people and talked with the professor. Right now it’s just a conversation, just a dialogue. I'm just kind of mulling these things over. After all, Daddy, isn't that the purpose of university, to kind of expose ourselves to ideas that we've never been exposed to before?” And you think, “OK.” She goes back after Thanksgiving break and comes home at Christmas so she can introduce you to her vegan boyfriend Garrett who's pursuing a degree in environmental justice. And if he doesn't have his free trade soy milk latte every morning with his avocado toast, he just can't even. And he won't ride in your SUV, and you wonder, “What happened to my princess?” And now she tells me right before she leaves to go back after Christmas break that they've actually moved in together and they're living with each other. And you think something has radically happened. Because now she's gone from simply being influenced by the ideas to identifying with the ideas, and then she comes home after the second semester and she's rolling her eyes to everything you say about going to church or living in a righteous way. And you are not sure what exactly happened. You know that it cost you thirty grand, but you're not sure exactly what happened to your little princess.
I'll tell you what happened. She went away and rather than delighting in the law of God and meditating on His precepts day and night, she became influenced by the ungodly and the wicked, and then she took her stand with the ungodly and the wicked, and then she begins to influence others in ungodliness and wickedness. And you paid for it. That is a tale as old as time. That is a tale that is repeated in our land every school year, and it is tragic beyond description, but that's the path that people walk.
This is the path of the wicked. Their progression and sin is described here, the product of their life and their work is described, and their end is described in verses 5–6. But blessed is the man who departs from the wicked and is not influenced by them, does not stand with them, and does not join with them in their evil influences. The blessed man is marked by what he avoids.
Now second, I want you to notice, he's marked by what he absorbs. Verse 2: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” The Word of God is his delight. This verse describes the law of God as it affects both his heart and his mind, his head. Did you notice that? We wouldn't necessarily distinguish between those if we were thinking in Hebrew terms, distinguishing between the mind and the heart. But we can see here identified both the affections as well as the thinking, and these two things are connected because our thinking influences our affections and our affections influence the way that we think and how we think. So these go together.
But I want you to notice first his affections are influenced—the Word of God and the heart of the blessed man. The blessed man delights in the law of God. There is a delight there. The word law is a translation of the word Torah, which simply means instruction. He delights in the instruction of Yahweh, in contrast to the instruction of the ungodly—keep that in mind. That's the contrast here. The blessed man delights not in the counsel of the ungodly. He sees no value in that. He sees no blessing in that. Instead, he delights in the counsel or the instruction of Yahweh. And the word Torah can refer to the law of Moses, and it is used that way, but generally speaking, and I think this is the idea here, it is intended to refer to the revelation of God as a whole. I think we can apply that to all of Scripture. Blessed is the man who not just meditates upon the first five books of the Bible, the law of Moses, but all of revealed Scripture. And I think that the psalmist may indeed have in mind here particularly the Psalms, which is this collection of books that follow this psalm. Blessed is the man whose delight is in these things described in this book.
Now, you might think that the godly would be described more positively in terms of his association, since he's described negatively in terms of the associations that he rejects or avoids—the wicked, the sinner, the scoffer, etc.—but the blessed man is not described in verse 2 in terms of his association, like “Blessed is the man who instead associates with the wise or the righteous or the godly.” Instead, he is described here by his affections, what he loves, what he delights in. He delights in the Word of God. He takes pleasure in it and joy from it. The truth of God thrills his heart. The righteousness of God revealed in the revelation of Scripture delights him, brings him joy. The works of God described in the Bible bring him comfort. He wants to know the God of truth who is revealed in the Word of God.
The wicked delight in things as well, by the way. They delight in folly. They delight in foolishness. Proverbs 2:13–14 says, “From those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness; who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil.” Proverbs 10:23 says, “Doing wickedness is like sport to a fool, and so is wisdom to a man of understanding.” Proverbs 13:19: “Desire realized is sweet to the soul, but it is an abomination to fools to turn away from evil.” See the fool, the wicked person, delights in his evil and in his wickedness. They delight in the counsel of the wicked man. The blessed man delights in the counsel and the instruction of Yahweh. Sinners delight in rebellion, the righteous delight in revelation and in truth.
And when the heart is changed and the affections of the heart are changed, then salvation results in this reordered affection. When the heart is changed, that salvation which has changed the heart results in a reordered affection. Suddenly, the things that I once hated, I now love. The things that I once loved, I now hate. There is a change of affection, a change of priority, and a change in my loves. So the blessed man delights in Scripture and what life and light it brings, the wisdom it contains, the truth that is there. He delights in submitting to truth and obeying truth. He delights in the God who is revealed in Scripture, the works of God that are described in Scripture, and the goodness and the righteousness of God that are described in Scripture. The joy and the pleasure of this delight is evidence of his salvation since the unrighteous or the ungodly do not delight in the law of the Lord. That's what Romans 8 says. The heart of the unregenerate does not submit itself to the law of God and it cannot. It hates the law of God. It will use the law of God so long as the law of God and the revelation of God and the instruction of Yahweh affirm whatever he wants to do. And so he will use the Scriptures in that way, the ungodly one will, but he does not delight in the pure, unadulterated truth of the Word of God. So that once you have been saved and regenerated, reading the Word of God is not a drudgery for you. It doesn't mean it is always as thrilling as it was the first day you got saved and cracked open your Bible to see what God had to say. It doesn't mean that. But it does mean that it will not be a drudgery. It will be a priority. Singing the Word, applying the Word, praying the Word, and hearing the Word preached will bring the righteous or blessed man delight. Memorizing it, meditating upon it, and applying it are his precious activities and his joy.
Now look how the Word of God affects the mind in verse 2. “In His law [that is, in Yahweh's Torah] he meditates day and night.” It's not just the heart that delights in Scripture and is filled with joy by it, but the mind dwells upon that same Scripture. “His delight is in the law of the Lord [that's the heart, the affections],” and in His law he gives his thoughts, his meditations, day and night. The word translated “meditate” here means to groan or to growl or to utter, to mutter or to murmur something. It's sort of a soft-toned reciting or speaking, murmuring and muttering. That's the idea behind the word. When you speak something over and over as you're chewing upon it in your mind and it comes out of your mouth, that's meditation. You're thinking upon something, dwelling upon something. It's not—it's the opposite of the kind of meditation that's practiced by other religions, Eastern religions, where the goal is to empty your mind. This is not that. This is to exercise your mind. It is to fix your mind on something and engage your mind and your thinking on truth, on the law of God, so that you're churning it over and over again inside of your heart and your soul, and then it becomes like well-driven nails into your heart and mind upon which you hang truth and you hang your life. It settles it into the heart and mind.
Imagine a day in a culture, and this would have been the nature of this time back when the psalmist wrote, but imagine a day or a culture in which Scripture is not as readily available as it is to us. Nobody here would have a copy of Scripture except for me, for instance. And you might go then to the synagogue or to the place of worship, and you would open up a scroll. And you would open it up and hear it read and hear it preached and hear it explained and recite it a couple of times, and they would roll up the scroll, and you would have to go your way, and you wouldn't see that again until you came back to the place of worship and they opened up the scroll. How would you get that Word of God into your heart and into your mind? When they opened up the scroll and they read it there in the place of worship, you might be trying in your mind to recite those phrases and to get that down into your heart and mind. Then you would walk away from the assembly and you would be going over and over in your mind to commit it to memory, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (vv. 1–2). You go over it and over it and over it and over it to commit it to memory, murmuring it to yourself, uttering the phrases. And the point of doing that meditation is to drive that truth down into your heart so that it informs your affections and it informs your lifestyle.
And you do this day and night. Day and night. That is a rhetorical device called a merism. It's to take two things that are opposite sides of each other and to refer to both of them to include everything that is in between. It's like saying, “I searched high and low.” It doesn't mean that you just searched high and you just searched low, but you searched high to low. In our family, we used to have this thing when the kids lived at home and we would be planning something special and we would say—you're smirking because you know where I'm going with this. We would say, OK, we're going to go do something tomorrow or tonight or this afternoon or whatever, but before we do, we just have two things that we need to do. And they would say, “OK, what's that?” Clean up the upstairs and clean up the downstairs. And by that, I meant everything. And then they would catch on to that, and I would say it again, something like that, for another event, and they'd say, “Oh yeah, clean up the upstairs, clean up the downstairs.” No, no, no, it's not that. “Oh, what is it?” Clean up the inside, clean up the outside. That was a merism intended to incorporate everything in between.
Same thing here. The man of God, the blessed man, meditates upon the law of God day and night. And he's not simply saying once a day or once at night, but he is saying in all circumstances, at all times, in all of life, in every affliction, in pain, in prosperity, in want, in times of good, in times of bad, when it is in season, when it is out of season, when the marriage is going good, when the marriage is not going good, when the kids are obedient, when the kids are disobedient, at all times and in all places and in every circumstance, we are to meditate or churn over the Word of God, the law of God, in our hearts and our minds. Because the blessed man then is seeking counsel from God found in Scripture. He wants to know, “What does the Lord say about how I conduct my business, the decisions that I make in business and how I do commerce? What does God's Word have to say about how I relate to my spouse and lead my family or submit to my husband? How does the law of God instruct my children and train my children and treat my children? How does the law of God tell me how to relate to my neighbors to resolve conflict, to use my time? How does the law of God affect how I worship and speak and sing and pray and think and spend my money and spend my time and spend my other resources?”
The person who is thinking constantly in terms of God's instruction, God's truth, is wanting to bring all of life underneath of that banner of Yahweh's instruction. And in doing so, they will avoid and skew and cast off the counsel of the wicked and the path of sinners and the seat of the scoffers. None of those things will mean anything to him because his delight is not in everybody's counsel. His delight is in the instruction of Yahweh. That is what he wants to know. The blessed man delights in God's counsel because he has God's truth then and he can apply it and think upon it and reason it out in all of his activities each and every day.
Now, you and I cannot live spiritually productive and fruitful lives if we are living our lives according to the counsel of the wicked. That's the bottom line. You cannot live a fruitful and productive life if you are taking your cues from those who hate your God and do not submit to Him and give no thought to His truth. If you are to know these multiplied blessings described in verse 1, then you have to order your steps according to God's truth. His instruction must be your meditation all the day and His truth must be the joy and delight of your heart. If you cannot have God's Word and God's wisdom inside of your heart and your soul and it is not put there and it is not lived out and it is not obeyed, then you cannot be the blessed man of verse 1.
And just as walking and standing and sitting in the wrong path require effort and intentionality and purpose and consideration, so does meditating upon the law of God each and every day. These things take effort. But these are the things that produce spiritual blessings in the lives of God's people. You cut yourself off from that truth and bringing all of life under the banner of Yahweh's instruction, then you are cut off from the blessings that are described in verse 1. It's not natural to do this, to meditate upon the law of the Lord and to seek to bring all of life under His instruction. I understand that this is not simple. You're not going to master this this next week. It takes effort. It takes a lifelong pursuit, and this is the lifelong pursuit of the blessed man.
Meditation and instruction from God creates delight in the inner man, and the delight of the inner man motivates the meditation. These two things go together, and I want you to catch this. If you catch nothing else, catch this. Meditation and delight in the truth go together. If you say, “I don't have any delight in these truths like I should,” then you must meditate upon the Word of God. You say, “Well, I would if I delighted in it.” No, you start with meditating on it so that you will delight in it. Because the meditation on that truth will affect your affections. And then your affections will drive further meditation and intake of that truth. But if you cut yourself off from that truth and you will not read it, you will not study it, you will not think upon it or memorize it or discipline your mind and your affections to bring yourself under it, then you are not going to delight in it. You won't have any joy in it.
Now, you and I have to confess that everybody in this room has violated one or more of the stages of verse 1, right? Of that descent in sin? We have. We have violated them. Everyone in here has walked at some point at some time in the counsel of the wicked. We have done this sometimes for years of our lives, maybe before we were saved and even after we were saved. We have not done this with anything that is close to the perfection that verse 1 requires. Now you say, “Hold on a second. It is perfection that verse 1 requires?” It is perfection that verse 1 describes. You see, the perfect tense or the perfect mood of those verbs in that passage describe somebody who has never been involved in these forms of evil. Old Testament scholar Willem VanGemeren says this:
The perfect mood of the verbs in each of these cases [that is, walking and standing and sitting] emphasizes that the godly are never involved with anything tainted with evil. In other words, the blessed man has never sinned. They do not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, the wicked, and they never have. They do not stand in the path of sinners and he never has. The blessed man does not sit in the seat of the scornful and he never has.
So since all of us have violated that, and Psalm 1:1 says blessed is the man who has never violated that, then how can any of us be the blessed man? We can't. This is why we have Psalm 2. Psalm 2 introduces us to the blessed Man. He is the Man whom Yahweh has chosen. He is the Man whom Yahweh has chosen. He has seated Him on Zion. He is giving Him the nations as His inheritance. And I want you to look at how Psalm 2 ends. Verse 12—He is the one to whom we must do homage forever or be destroyed. “Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”
See, there's only one blessed Man who has never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, who has never stood in the path of sinners, who has never sat in the seat of scoffers. There's only one blessed Man who has spent His days and His nights meditating upon Yahweh's word, for whom you could say that He took total delight in the law of Yahweh and never violated that law in anything. That blessed Man came here—it is the Lord Jesus Christ who came here and lived out the requirements of Psalm 1:1 so that we can be blessed men according to the instruction of Psalm 2:12. Look how Psalm 2:12 ends. Psalm 2 ends with, “How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” Psalm 1—blessed is the man who has never done that. But we've all done that, so how can I have that blessing? Good news, blessed are those who take refuge in the One who has never done that so that they can be blessed, not because we have fulfilled the requirements of Psalm 1:1, but we can be blessed because another has fulfilled the requirements of Psalm 1:1 on our behalf. Jesus Christ lived that perfect life, and He died that death in our stead so that His perfect obedience to Psalm 1:1 and all of the law of God becomes credited to us in the eyes of the Father as if we have obeyed those commands. Blessed is the man who has never done it. I've done it. Well, blessed is the man who takes refuge in the Man who has never done it. That's where the blessing comes to us, because of Christ and only through Christ.
And you and I are conformed to the image of Christ when we reject the counsel of the wicked and the ungodly and instead we set our hearts and our minds to delight in the law of God and to meditate in it day and night. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ did, and when we follow that example, we are conformed to His image and we are blessed not because we have fulfilled Psalm 1:1 but because another has fulfilled it on our behalf. That is how we are blessed.