The Way of the Blessed, Part 2| 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 walk, stand, sit sequence here is the way of the world, isn’t it? This is how the world lives. This is how the world goes. This is how unbelievers do their thing. But notice verse 2. There is a strong contrast between verse 1, verse 2, which leads and turns to the way of the blessed man. The blessed man is characterized by turning away from those unbelieving influence, by refusing to listen to unbelieving voices. The blessed man, he heeds the warning signs of God’s Word. He turns his heart fully to God. As it says in verse 2, “He delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” You see that picture there? What is that a picture of? Turning from one thing, turning to another thing. What is that called? Repentance.

This is the lifestyle of the Christian. It starts with initial repentance unto salvation. And it continues on through life as like Martin Luther said, “The Christian life is a life of repentance.” Repent from what? Repent from sin, self, allegiance to the world, allegiance to Satan and all his principles. Look, God is a holy God. He does not tolerate one sin.

And we are born guilty of that in sin, born into sin, sinners by nature, and by practice. Will any of us stand before a holy God with our sin? No. We’re under condemnation. We’re born into wrath. We’re born into condemnation. All that we can look forward to is the fearful day of judgment when God will condemn us and send us to hell.

But. Some of the precious words in the Bible, in Ephesians 2, “But God.” But God, because of the great mercy that he had, he, he raised us up with Christ. He saved us by his grace, giving us faith that we might believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who died for all of our sins on the cross, taking away the wrath of God. Propitiating it, satisfying it in his death on the cross.

And by God’s grace all those who put their faith in Jesus Christ are covered with the perfect righteousness of the spotless Son of God, who lived this life perfect, free from sin. God approved of that sacrifice by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. He lifted him up, raised him. Jesus was seen. He appeared to many, his disciples. He appeared to many. He was raised and ascended into heaven. He is bodily, right now, at the right hand of the Father.

And he sends preachers like me, preachers like you, he sends us out of the world to preach that message that all who listen, all who heed, all who repent of this verse 1 way, they put their faith in Jesus Christ will receive eternal life. How does that happen? How does that happen? His delight is in the law of the Lord. We’re not born with delighting in the law of the Lord. How does this happen?

It happens, Psalm 1, doesn’t unpack it for us, but it tacitly alludes to it. It implies it strongly. Regeneration has taken place in this blessed man’s life. The Holy Spirit has come in and made this man alive. We know regeneration has taken place because of that little word in verse 2, the word delight. Delight. The word, delight, takes us right to the affections of the heart.

Listen, when we’re walking in the way of the world, what are we delight in? Sin, right? We delighted in, I delighted in getting away with it. I loved to sin and then I loved getting away with it. I loved covering it over with lies. So did all of you. Now we don’t delight in that at all. Now there’s something that’s changed internally. Now we delight in the Word of God. We have an affection for truth and righteousness and God and his nature, his character, his, all of his perfect attributes.

And what we hate now is not God, not his Word. No, it’s sin. We hate that. We hate unrighteousness. So this is not some superficial or dispassionate admiration of the Bible as history. No. God’s Word causes this man to experience emotional joy, rapturous delight. It is his greatest pleasure. Because that attitude is so diametrically opposite of man’s natural state into which he’s born. We know something has changed in the heart.

The blessed man is the one who by God’s grace has been awakened to repentance and saving faith. He’s been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. He’s received new life from God. And for those who are born again, they and only they have the power to leave the seat of the scoffers, to turn away from the way of sinners and to ignore the counsel of the wicked. Only those who’ve been born again have eyes to see and ears to hear the wonderful things in the law of the Lord, right?

Now the fact that his delight is in the law of the Lord, that explains his behavior. “On his law he meditates day and night.” Why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he indulge himself in what God has freely given day and night? This reveals a new, a saving relationship with the giver of that law, the writer of that law, who is here the Lord. Now do you see a relationship there?

Well take a look at the word, law. The word law is the word torah. And torah, you’ve heard that before, refers to the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, right? That’s torah, that’s the law of Moses. And the word torah is the noun form, it comes from the verb, the Hebrew verb yarah, which means to teach, to instruct. So the word torah can me law as in law code, or can mean and as it often means in Scripture, simply instruction or direction or simply teaching.

So the blessed man here, he delights in the instruction or the teaching of the Lord. This isn’t some guy who’s in love with the law code like a lawyer. This is someone who’s in love with instruction coming from his God. So this is, this imagery here is one of relationship, one between the teacher, who is the Lord, and the blessed man, who is the willing, the eager, the appreciative student.

There’s an intimacy implied here, a love between student and teacher that develops and grows. Especially when the student recognizes this, this profound value that he has in the Word of God. A pricelessness of what’s being imparted to him. Like the psalmist, Psalm 119:97, “Oh how I love your law! It is my mediation all the day.” This isn’t just any instruction; it’s the law of the Lord.

Notice the word, Lord, in our Bible. It’s in all caps in our English translations. That’s a reference to the divine name Yahweh, which is a nominal form of the verb hayah, which is the Hebrew verb of being, to be. That is, he is not the God who was or the God who will be. He is the God who is. He is the ever-present eternal God of being. He is.

You may remember in Exodus 3:13 and 14 when Moses met God at the burning bush. God called Moses to serve him, leading Israel out of Egypt. And Moses asked God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?” Moses isn’t asking here for God’s secret name like a, like a code name that Israel will say, “Okay, that’s the right God. Okay, we’ll follow you.”

It’s not about him having some kind of a, a shibboleth that they, they can, he can reveal to them, they could trust Moses to follow his leadership. Rather he’s asking God, “What assurance is there in your character? What attribution? What name do I give the people?” Their trust has to be in God as God. So they can break free from the fear of their Egyptian oppressors, from the fear of those Egyptian gods and they could put their confidence in God’s ability to deliver them from bondage.

And so God told Moses, “Here, take this back to Israel, say to them: I am who I Am. Let them know I Am has sent me to you.” That is the divine name, Yahweh the I Am. And with a little reflection and thinking about what I Am signifies; it signifies the eternally self-sufficient lifegiving one. Yahweh has no need, no want. Instead, he has all power. He has the power of life. As Jesus said, John 5:26, “The Father has life in himself.”

So the blessed man, he’s come to know that God. And so he delights in learning the Word of this immortal self-sufficient lifegiving God. He gives himself to meditation, reflection, prayerful reflection on that lifegiving word day and night. Why? Because by constant meditation on the Word of God, he finds it to be vital for his existence, lifegiving, motivating, stimulating, provoking. Saving his soul.

The word meditation there, it’s an onomatopoeic word. The word is hagah. And it’s, it’s the deep, quiet sound that a dove, have you ever heard a dove cooing? Makes that sound when it’s moaning, or, or maybe hopefully you haven’t heard this sound, the low guttural growl of a lion as it stalks its prey. Hopefully, you just see that on TV. But in the same way, like the, like cooing of a dove or the, the low guttural growling of a lion, in the same way mediation, kind of refers to that what some comes out, sometimes comes out of us as kind of an audible muttering to ourselves and thinking about the Word of God.

It’s, it, it’s really internal musings and prayerful reflection, but sometimes it comes out as audible mutterings, even outright speech. The one who meditates often on God’s Word, he, he sort of mutters about it under his breath, mulling it over, reflecting upon it. Praying it through with God, talking to him about it, to understand its meaning, its sense. To think carefully about its implications and how to put it into practice in his everyday life because nothing delights him more than to do what his God does.

Meditation is the practice of every true believer whose heart is inclined to live in the pattern of wisdom set by his teacher, his divine truth teller, his divine mentor. To walk as he walks. The blessed one does this day and night, which along with the passive verb tense here, or along with the verb tense, I should say, not the passive verb tense. But the psalmist makes his point emphatic here. Meditation of the blessed man is, is habitual, it’s a regular habit and pattern of his life. It’s a continual practice.

Listen, when you recognize the eternal worth of God’s Word, when you recognize the incredible condescension of God that he who gave this lifegiving instruction, is the same one who comes to teach it to you by his Holy Spirit, the internal, indwelling truth teacher. There’s no sense of burden meditating day and night on his word. We become meek, teachable, ready to receive the wisdom of God, grateful.

We come to God’s Word, the preaching, the teaching of God’s Word. We come with an attitude of reverence and humility, teachable, ready to learn with diligence, eager to work, to listen carefully. When you recognize the intrinsic value of divine instruction, you pursue it with joy, diligence.

We’ve noted the progression of the warning signs in verse 1 from walking to standing to sitting. And as I said, that walk, stand, sit sequence, it pictures there in verse 1 a progression from a relatively casual association with the wicked to end up in complete identification with them. That’s not good. In fact, it’s the very picture of dying because the descent in the unbeliever’s way goes from walking to standing to sitting. It goes from mobility to immobility. It goes from activity to inactivity. From walking to sitting. And the next step along that trajectory is death. It’s the grave.

But the way of the righteous also pictures a progression. One that starts with the lifegiving vitality of God’s Word, instruction in the way of righteousness. You say, Yeah, I, I can understand that, but where’s the progression of the righteous? What’s the trajectory? Well, notice verse 3, the trajectory of the blessed is pictured by a living, growing vitality of a well-watered tree. You see that there? That’s our second point. You can write this down in your notes: the productivity of the blessed way. The productivity of the blessed way. When our lives are connected to the lifegiving vitality of God’s Word, they will grow fruitful and strong like the tree in, in verse 3.

But whenever someone is disconnected from the vitality of God’s living word, listening instead to the counsel of the wicked, he’s cut off from the source of life and just withers, dries up and dies. He’s like chaff of verse 4. So look at those verses again. The blessed man, verses 3 and 4, “He’s like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, it’s 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.”

So the blessed man meditates. The blessed church meditates. So let’s do a little meditating of our own and see how this imagery of the productive tree provides us with the perfect picture of the life of the blessed man. First, he is like a tree. The mature tree is a picture of vitality and of strength and of usefulness. But a mature tree, it doesn’t start out mature, does it? It had to grow. And growth takes time, patience, travail, struggle.

This is God’s way, isn’t it? To plant the seed of the gospel into the soil of a prepared heart and then cause that seed to germinate, we might call that the supernatural work of regeneration. And over time, that tree, that blessed man grows. First, a little leaf breaking through the ground. Then a young sapling. And over time, a strong healthy productive fruitful useful tree. How?

Look at the second observation, by being planted. Secondly, being planted next to the water source. “He’s like a tree planted by streams of water.” Picture of a planted tree. Planted. Hidden in that passive voice there of the verb planted is who? The divine planter, the one responsible for the life and the health and the cultivation of this tree. And when God plants his trees, when he plants his blessed and beloved people, he makes sure they’re well supplied with connection to his lifegiving Word.

The word, planted, pictures a tree with a strong root system, healthy, vital. It’s tapped into the lifegiving supply of rich soil and clean flowing water. The Word of God, which is always flowing and never runs dry because it comes from an eternal source, an infinite source, God himself. No drought effects this supply. A planted tree is immovable, unshakeable in the storm like the blessed man who never uproots in the trial. He may bend and bow, he’ll never break.

Because of strength and supply, thirdly, the blessed man like the strong tree is fruitful and productive. “It yields its fruit in its season, it’s leaf does not wither.” Fruit is not only a sign of life, it’s the sign of good health, of usefulness and productivity. Cause you realize a tree may have trunk and branches. It may have stems and leaves, but if it bears no fruit, as Jesus said, it’s good for nothing but the fire, right?

So trees, the trees that God has truly planted, they are strong, they’re productive and they are fruit bearing trees. If they’re unproductive, God cuts them down and sends them to judgment. Biblically, fruit is pictured in a lot of ways. I, I could go through this, but for the sake of time, I’m just gonna condense it to one image. Galatians 5:22-23. What does it say?

“But the fruit of the spirit is [what?] love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Right? That’s the fruit of the Spirit. That’s fruit that grows because the Spirit is present. And all those images and all that fruit, you know where it’s pictured perfectly, clearly? Christ. Look at Jesus Christ. And you see, you see the blessed man of Psalm 1. You see him, his image here reflected in Psalm 1.

All that sweet, pleasant fruit comes in its season. That is to say, it comes according to the will of God. Fruit bearing is on God’s timetable. It’s growing and appearing at the appropriately time. But whatever the, the season, there’s another remarkable sign of the strength and the health and the productivity of this tree, this blessed man, it’s that little phrase in the middle of verse 3, “and it’s leaf does not wither.” Isn’t that something?

The most delicate part of this tree, flimsy little leaves, they are strong and healthy and living. The lifegiving nourishment from streams of water coming up through the root to the tap root up to the trunk out into each and every branch and through every stem extends to little tiny leaves. Making sure the leaf does not wither even in drought. No part of the tree, no part of the life of the blessed remains untouched or unaffected or unstrengthened by God’s lifegiving water.

Fourth mark of productivity for which the psalmist must depart from tree imagery to complete the picture here. “In all that he does he prospers,” end of verse 3. Trees don’t plan and act and prosper. They just sit there, don’t they? They grow. My daughter, climbs on them. That’s what trees do. They’re there for her pleasure and God’s glory. But the psalmist wants us to understand that the blessed one is one who, by constant exposure to the Word of God, by continual delight in the instruction of Yahweh, he begins to think like his teacher.

And he plans his life according to the will of God. Luke, Luke 6:40, Jesus said, “A pupil is not above his teacher, but everyone after he has been fully trained will be like his teacher.” That’s what happens to the blessed man who delights in God’s Word. He grows strong like a tree, yes, but he also becomes an active participate in his own fruitfulness. Productivity is not just a matter of passive growth; it’s a matter of active growth as well.

This is a picture of planned productivity. The blessed man makes plans of righteousness and Lord is pleased to grant success. Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord,” and he’ll do what? “Give you the desires of your heart.” Why can he say that? Because as you delight yourself in the Lord, his desires become your desires, then he gives success to all your desires.

In this the blessed man reflects his maker because the blessed life is a matter of both being and of doing, of knowing and planning and doing his will. So to be the living, thriving, fruitful, productive trees God has planted us to be, it requires we remain vitally connected to Jesus Christ. Now, I was going to have you turn to John 15, but just write that down. John 15:1-8. That’s a perfect illustration of all of this. Productive branches remain in the vine. Dead branches are cut off. Productive branches remain and they’re pruned to bear more fruit.

The blessed way is like that strong well-watered tree. And those who are described as blessed are deeply rooted in the lifegiving vitality of God’s living Word. Because of that, they’re deeply rooted in the source of all joy. The source of all true happiness, the enduring rock of blessedness. And in the end, the blessed will be envied by all. As I told you before, that is wrapped up in the idea of blessedness.

They have their lives built on that which is like the strong tree. That which is profound, not shallow. That which is steadfast, not fleeting. That which is fixed on absolute truth and objective reality, not on changing feelings and subjective circumstances. Like a well-watered tree, the blessed are those who transcend all the little moments of life to endure to the end, not subject to changing circumstances.

But the wicked, verse 4, “The wicked are not so.” In other words, whatever is true of the blessed and the righteous, this grove of trees planted by God, not so the wicked. The language is stark and arresting. The righteous are alive, but the wicked are dead. The righteous are strong, but the wicked are weak. The righteous are planted and permanent, rooted, and fixed. The wicked are temporary, not rooted but blowing in the wind.

The righteous are fruitful and productive. The wicked are dead, dry, and utterly useless. Just send them away. Anything asserted about the righteous, the opposite is assumed of the wicked. They are, verse 4, “like chaff that the wind drives away.” This pictures the process of winnowing as you understand from Scripture, practiced for thousands of years using the power of the wind to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the heavier grain falls to the ground, while the wind blows this worthless husks of the grain, the chaff. They’re discarded as worthless.

It’s interesting that only those productive lives, productive according to the will of God because of the vitality of the Word of God, only they will survive the final judgment. The rest, they perish. The eternality of the blessed way. Eternality, I realize that that theologically might be a wrong category to speak of eternality because we’re not really eternal in the sense that God is. But I had to have something that rhymed with vitality and productivity, so there you have it.

Eternality, that is to say we will go on forever. We have a starting point, yes, not like God who goes eternally in either way. We have a starting point, but we will live eternally on into eternal life. Young people, middle aged people, take heed of this point. Pay very careful attention to these final verses. It’s typical when you’re young to think that you’re going to live forever, from before the foundation of the world.