The Way of the Blessed, Part 1 | The Way of the Blessed

Psalm 1:1-6

Psalm 1 is, as you know, the gateway to the Psalter, to 150 psalms, which is the really the songbook of Israel. And the psalms in their entirety, they describe the, the life and the experience of the believer. From positive to negative and everything in between, the songbook of Israel provides an outlet and an expression of praise to God and prayer to God in all of life and its experiences.

The Psalm 1 speaks of the one who pursues God, the one who God has chosen for himself, opened the eyes and the ears and the heart to understand truth. Now the psalmist provides expression for the blessed man. The puritan writer Thomas Watson said of Psalm 1, he said, quote “This psalm may not unfitly be entitled The Psalm of Psalms. For it contains in it the very pith and quintessence of Christianity. It is short as to the composure, but full of length and strength as to the matter. This psalm carries blessedness in the frontispiece. It begins where we all hope to end. It may well be called a Christian’s guide, for it discovers the quicksands where the wicked sink down in perdition and the firm ground on which the saints tread to glory.” End quote.

So by now, you should be in Psalm 1. So follow along as I read this psalm to you. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

The first word of that psalm, both in the Hebrew text and in its English translation, is the word, blessed, which I hope you can see ties this directly to our study of the Sermon on the Mount. The beatitudes. Jesus’ ascriptions of blessedness upon the poor and the hungry and the weeping and the despised. He used the Greek word makarios, which translate the Hebrew word, which is used here, the word ‘ašrê, blessed.

Blessed, that’s the first word in Psalm 1. So we could say legitimately whatever is predicated of the blessed man in Psalm 1, the same is true of those Jesus called the blessed in the Sermon on the Mount and vice versa. And notice how the psalmist begins in verse 1, “Blessed is the man,” which emphasizes every individual. Then how he ends in verse 6, “the way of the righteous,” which refers to the righteous as a group of people.

So the psalm isn’t just about the individual pursuit of righteousness. The blessed man is a member of a corporate community. He is a member of a people who are all characterized by the same qualities. These qualities, these are the redeemed of God. these are those who are on the righteous way. The same ones that Jesus described as the poor, the hungry, weeping, the despised, all the same.

Psalm 1 here is a picture of God’s people. People as a corporate group and individually, every single one of them. Those for whom Christ died; for those whom he has loved, those whom he has given himself to save, those whom he has given the Holy Spirit to sanctify. And again, I come back to what I said at the beginning, this is what makes me so grateful to be engaged in pastoral ministry here among the saints of this church. There is no greater honor bestowed among men, no greater privilege than to do what I’m doing here, to deliver the Word of God to a congregation like this, to the people of God. You people are described so accurately here in this psalm.

For you older saints, you who are entering into the silver or golden years of your lives, time is growing short, isn’t it? I’m not trying to start out with a bummer. I’m just saying the clock is ticking. The wick is growing shorter and shorter and burning out. Time is growing short, isn’t it, for you older saints? You, you look ahead to that day when as the psalmist says here, you will enter the congregation of the righteous. And with each passing year, you realize just how powerful and how true these truths are in this psalm.

For those of you who are in the, let’s call it the middle years, say late twenties, early thirties all the way up into your fifties. Whatever your situation, in the middle years of your lives, you’re, you’re busy. Busy with family responsibilities, busy earning a living, all the while you’re juggling so many things, you’re trying to keep your priorities straight, right? God, family, work, ministry. And as you pursue your life together, you are demonstrating to everyone how the central focus and aim of your life is the kingdom of God and his righteousness. There is no other concern of yours in comparison.

For you, the Lord’s Day is the most important day of the week. For you and your family, you’re training them to think that way. For you, keeping the truths of Psalm 1 front and center in your thinking is a daily fight. It’s a daily struggle. You’re surrounded by counsel that comes from non-biblical sources. You’re bombarded all the time with temptations to distraction by the world around you. Sometimes the technology that you have to use to do your jobs is the very thing that’s trying to take your heart and your eyes and your attention away from the God that you love and serve.

You face pressures every single day. And the trials you face, they reveal vulnerabilities in you. They put the pressure, reveals cracks in the vessel, you might say. Exposing sinful thoughts, habits, behaviors. All that is by God’s good grace and kindness because he wants to strengthen you. He wants to reveal that, that he may shore it up and cause you to grow more Christlike.

Those of you who are still young, just starting out perhaps, maybe in your teens or all the way into your twenties, late thirties, perhaps this psalm is most impactful for you because it sets the course of your life. By charting your course according to this psalm, Psalm 1, you put yourself on an upward trajectory which guarantees that your life will be significant, fruitful, productive in the Lord.

You ignore or put off what this psalm teaches at your own eternal peril. But for those who pursue it, in the end it is the Lord himself who as verse 6 says, “knows the way of the righteous.” He’s gonna be there to open up heaven for you and to welcome you in saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

So the senior saints and all of us in the middle years, we’re praying for you younger people. We’re cheering you on that God will grant you the grace of regeneration and saving faith. We’re praying that God will give you clarity of mind to turn away from the many and the crippling and the defiling distractions of this very attractive, very alluring, very invasive, and yet all-enslaving world. To turn away from all that and give yourselves wholly and completely to the way of the blessed that’s described here in Psalm 1.

So whatever your age, whether young or old, whatever, whatever your station in life, whatever your situation, this psalm is divine wisdom for you. And all, all, for all of you at this church, for all of us, it’s really a holy and blessed privilege, isn’t it? A unique gift that we have to belong to an assembly of believers like this. Precious people, saints of God committed to pursuing the way of the blessed. We’re doing all that by God’s grace, not our own works, but by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. He’s given us such a precious gift to be doing this together, delighting in the Word of God.

You probably noticed when we read the text that this psalm is filled with contrasts. That is the characteristic of the Bible’s wisdom literature to teach wisdom by way of contrast. And that’s, that’s really what the psalmist does here. He’s describing the blessed man by contrasting him against the wicked. You can see the first contrast in verses 1 and 2 is between two hearts, really. One that is tempted by and drifting toward the wicked ever closer. He’s walking, then he’s standing, then he’s just sitting down and getting comfortable. And the other heart is by contrast fixed in delight, raptured in the joy of God and his Word. That’s one contrast.

Second contrast, verses 3 and 4 pictures the result of the counsel that each heart receives and delights in in verses 1 and 2. So the one who delights in God’s Word is like a well-watered tree, strong and tall. While the one who follows the temptations of the world sinks into lifelessness, uselessness like dead chaff driven away by the wind.

The final contrast, verses 5 and 6, it pictures the end of the righteous and the wicked. Both of them are pictured there standing in the king’s court where all loyalties of the heart are revealed, and sentences are rewarded, passed out, handed out. Again, very powerful imagery to paint the contrast between the way of the righteous, which the Lord himself knows thoroughly, and that of the wicked, which the Lord will judge. The wicked and his way will perish in the end.

So that’s how we’ll organize our brief exposition of Psalm 1 according to those three contrasts in those sets of verses. So the first point, the vitality of the blessed way. The vitality of the blessed way, that’s point one and that’s verses 1 and 2. The vitality of the blessed way is found in the law of the Lord, which is lifegiving. To advantage himself of that lifegiving vitality, the blessed man must actively and constantly turn away from the dead end futility, which is the end of the unbelieving way. Look at verses 1 and 2 again, “Blessed in the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

In verse 1, the psalmist gives three warning signs to caution the one who would be counted among the blessed. First warning sign: don’t follow the unbeliever’s counsel. Second, don’t endure the unbeliever’s lifestyle. And third, don’t seek acceptance in the unbeliever’s world. All of this has to do with influence, doesn’t it? The influence of the unbelieving mind and heart.

So first warning sign: Don’t, don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked. Don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked. The Bible describes the wicked, that’s a class of people, a group of people and it uses these words to describe them, the Bible does: evil doers, ruthless, tyrants, vicious, foolish, transgressors, liars, and faithless. Not a very positive look, is it? Those terms describe behavior.

And it’s behavior that so comes to characterize their lives that that behavior is enough to identify them that way, as those kinds of people. When God looks down and he casts his omniscient gaze on the world, and he looks through these peoples’ behavior and he looks into their hearts, he doesn’t see somebody who’s simply misguided, someone who’s simply misunderstood, or had a bad upbringing. Maybe his mom didn’t rock him long enough when he was a kid. Switched too early to formula, or whatever it is.

He sees them, instead, biblically as proud, arrogant, haughty, haters of righteousness, vile, polluted, treacherous, unstable. Now I know all of you work with co-workers, you have friends and neighbors, you have loved ones, maybe who don’t name the name of Christ. And on the outside, they don’t appear to be what’s being described here. They appear to be very nice, very kind.

But you have to set aside your own fleshly judgment and realize that God sees not as man sees. For man looks on the outward appearance, that’s all we can do, right? We’re finite. We’re limited. We’re creatures. “Man sees not as God sees for man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks,” where? “On the heart.” Everything that the Bible predicates to these people is true.

So when God looks down at humanity, he doesn’t say, Oh, how precious, ‘A’ for effort, everyone. Good job. You get a smiley face on your life for trying real hard. It’s because of what’s in their hearts that they treat others with utter contempt in the pursuit of their own goals, their own ambitions, their own lusts, their own desires.

You may not always see this, because of God’s common grace and restraining grace, he withholds the very worst of humanity most of the time. Sometimes we see it unmasked. But the Bible says because of what’s in their hearts, out comes things like violence, and oppression, and greed. They’re engaged in plotting against and trapping the poor and the weak. They are willing to murder to gain their own ends. Watch out who you partner with in business. Watch out who you connect yourselves with by contract. Because the Bible says the wicked are dishonest in business and predictably bear false witness in the courtroom.

Well that’s the Bible’s description of these people that are called the wicked. And if you’re familiar with Scripture, you’re gonna recognize all those descriptions I just gave you are not my own. They’re biblical language. And I can give you all the references. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, but here’s one you can write down. Paul summarized the wicked in Romans 1:29-31, which is, by the way, a summary indictment of the entire world in its sin. No one excepted. Not Jew, not Gentile, not male, not female, not young, not old. Nobody is excepted from this indictment.

He described the wicked as, Romans 1:29 and following, “filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, hater of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

Sounds like today’s headlines. Sounds like what I read in the news all the time. But all that to say following the counsel of the wicked will only lead you to where they are, which is the way of death. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25, both of them say the same thing. “There is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death.”

The verb there is “to walk in the counsel of the ungodly.” It’s the verb halak. It refers to the way you live your life, your aims, your pursuits, your ambitions, your priorities, how you spend your time. That is the counsel that we cannot take, we must not take from the ungodly. Because their worldview will only produce the lifestyle and behavior that is condemned by Scripture and leads to certain death and that’s the first warning sign.

We’ve passed by that first warning sign and we come to the second. Don’t stand in the way of sinners. Don’t stand in the way of sinners. The word sinner here designates someone who is a committed habitual transgressor. He, there is the law of God, and he pushes beyond the boundaries of that law. Whatever God says don’t do, he wants to do. Whatever God says do, he does not do and doesn’t want to.

He will not be turned away from his sinful lifestyle. That is, frankly, beloved, that is the kind of person our society rejoices in, the one who pushes all boundaries, will never be told no. This is the kind of person our society glorifies in its media and its entertainment and its stories. And then to stand with sinners, that means we are enduring or even accommodating their lifestyle, which eventually leads to approving of their lifestyle and then celebrating it. And far too much of that going on today.

But the Bible’s clear. We’re not to condone or endure the lifestyles of committed habitual sinners. This isn’t a matter of trying to legislate some kind of Christian morality that’s gonna usher in the kingdom of God. Rather, this is a matter of your heart. Watch out, beloved, that your own heart does not become tolerant of sin. Whether your own sin or the sin of other people.

I’m reminded that, of that every time it comes to the issue of entertainment. To be on guard against the power of media to dull our sensitivity to sin. I quoted earlier from Paul in Romans 1:29-31. I stopped short of the end of that chapter, verse 32, which says, “Though [all those people] know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

Do we give approval? Even tacit approval by the things that we participate in, enjoy? Look our attitude toward sin, as we learn from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Our attitude toward sin should be one of weeping, one of great sorrow. The psalmist said in Psalm 119:136, “My eyes shed streams of water because they do not keep thy law.” Belove, is that your attitude toward sinners and their sins? That your eyes stream, shed tears at, of lament and sorrow and pain and grief, that you watch sinners destroy their lives?

Very hard to, for people to weep over the sins they’re enjoying in their entertainment, isn’t it? But as Paul wrote, Ephesians 5:11-12, “Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.” So we can’t stand in the way of sinners, enduring and approving of their sinful lifestyle.

And again, if we turn away from the counsel of the wicked, we’re gonna stand away from the way of sinners, as well so that we’ll be far from standing in it. Certainly, we won’t take a seat with them, as in the final warning sign here in verse 1. Don’t sit in the seat of scoffers. The reference to a seat here, it pictures an assigned seat or a, a reserved place of respect and authority. Maybe in a, in a king’s court. Or today, you might think of it as a position of influence such as a, a political a, appointment, or a university seat or chair. You’ve heard before a professor holds the chair of philosophy in his department, or the chair of English department. That’s the idea here.

To sit in the seat of scoffers is not just to sit down among them, but it’s to seek a place of acceptance among them, approval by them. We want to be appreciated and recognized and upheld by the world around us. This has been, sadly, the downfall of many Christian colleges and universities and even, even seminaries that were once sound. They’ve eagerly sought acceptance, academic respectability, approval among the scholarly elite. They long for the recognition in the halls of the academy and they try to find their own seat at the table among those who are something in the world’s eyes.

Well, that will only come through compromise, because the world is not gonna budge. They’re not gonna give an inch. But individual Christians, and now churches and formerly Christian denominations, they’ve all done the same things with, today it’s the LGBT issue, but we could go back and say it’s the same thing with sexual immorality and cohabitation and divorce and on and one it goes, all the way back decades and decades in this country. We know. We understand.

We’re not just pickin’ on the LGBTQ whatever other initials come after issue. All of that is a fruit of seeds that have been sown for many many years, of which all of us have been guilty of accommodating. We haven’t been clear enough in the church to call people to repentance for every sin issue. We pick and choose, isn’t right.

People have ignored, especially these so-called or professing Christians or churches or denominations, they’ve ignored the warning signs of Psalm 1. They’ve passed right through, blown right by, descended into compromise and the utter oblivion of their former Christian convictions, they’ve walked in ungodly counsel. They’ve stood in the way of sinners. They’ve given approval of their sin. And now, they seek approval from sinners. They cheer them on in their rebellious and destructive pursuits.

And becoming comfortable with sinners and sins means sitting down with the scoffers, joining them in their scoffing and sadly, that’s what we’re seeing among many professing, so-called Christians, churches, and denominations; they actually mock people who hold fast to Christian conviction. They mock all of us as being on the wrong side of history.

It’s a tragic thing, isn’t it? Because the Bible tells us that the company of the scoffer is the last thing we would ever want to seek. A scoffer or a mocker is really a fool who mocks the truth of God because there is no fear of God before his eyes. One commentator described the scoffer pulling from the Proverbs, these things here. He described the scoffer in this way, “the scoffer, or the mocker, is first marked by attitudes and actions that smack of corruption, discord, and gluttony. Because the scoffer walks in the same world as the wicked and the fool, the mocker is detestable and must be avoided lest his influence sabotage the walk of the wise. The presence of the scoffer or the mocker is a disruptive element to be driven out of the midst of the righteous.

“The simple gain insight from the mocker only when they witness his demise. And demise is indeed the mocker’s promised destiny. Pride and haughtiness delude the scoffer and the mocker to delight in his own derision and like the fool, to despise knowledge, to scoff at it. Such pride bars the way to wisdom and insulates such a person from the positive impact of discipline and rebuke and instruction.”

Look, that’s a bleak picture of the scoffer. There is no hope for the mocker. He’s become so wise in his own eyes that he cannot be turned from his course of inevitable judgment and destruction. Absolutely hopeless. So why would anybody want the scoffer’s approval? Why? Not only that but seeking acceptance from the world is downright dangerous. James 4:4 says, “Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Therefore whoever wished to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Oh, don’t put yourself on that side. Don’t put yourself there. Pay heed to these warning signs.