Title: The Blessed Man Scripture: Psalm 1
Type: Series Where: GNBC 9-27-20
Intro: After getting out of the Army, my father went to college. One of the jobs he worked while in college was construction, helping to build a golf course. On a certain planned fairway there stood a massive tree, after the men came and cut down the tree, it was Dad’s job to remove the stump. For a couple of days he tried to dig out the tree and then pull out the stump using chains and a pickup. Wouldn’t budge. Boss came and chewed him out. Told him to get dynamite. Went to the hardware store and purchased a stick of dynamite. Buried under the stump. Rolled out the wire for the charge. Muffled Thump. Didn’t even budge the stump. Boss came and chew him out again! Stump out or fired. Went back to the HW store and purchased 12 sticks of dynamite. Dug hole under the stump. Tamped down tight. Rolled wire back from it to behind the pickup. Plunged the plunger. BOOM! Parts of tree went 100s yds. Dived under truck so not hurt. Stump gone! Crater! And you guessed it: Boss still cussed him out! Now, point of story is not my father’s penchant for explosives, but rather, the reason stump was so hard to move and took so much effort was the size and depth of it’s roots. Psalm 1 paints a picture of the blessed man as a tree firmly planted. Strong roots.
Prop: Psalm 1 presents us with a picture of how a man is blessed in the site of God.
BG: 1. Psalm 1&2 different from all other in 1st Book of Psalms (1-41) no superscription of David.
2. Psalm 1 is very similar in form and content to Proverbs.
3.
Prop: Psalm 1 presents us with a picture of how a man is blessed in the site of God.
I. The Practice of the Blessed Man. Vv. 1-2
A. What the Blessed Man Does Not Do: Negative. V.1
1. The Blessed Man Does not Participate in Sin.
a. We see in this passage that there are 3 classes of or steps in sin pictured in this Psalm: walking, standing, sitting. The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. Notice there is a progression that takes place: walk, stand, sit. Walking and come in contact with, stand you stop and take time, sit, you enjoy the company of the ones you are with.
b. Who make up these three classes of sinners today? 1. “wicked” are merely the ungodly, they leave God out. They leave God out of life. Out of school. Out of the workplace. Out of their family. Out of their marriage. Out of their business practices. They leave God out. There’s no time for church, Bible reading, prayer. 2. “Sinners” are actively sinning. Sinners aren’t sinners because they sin, they sin because they are sinners. Can’t help themselves. Natural inclination is to sin. They don’t consider how their lives may offend God because they don’t care about God or His law. 3. “Scoffers” are the 3rd category. Scoffers look down on God. They mock God and His word and His Son and those who believe in Him. Illust: Last week pictures appeared of Des Moines Community School Superintendent Thomas Ahart ( Which were taken 2 years ago.) openly mocking Christian faith, and prayer in a picture with his vulgar wife. He’s a mocker. He’s scoffing at the beliefs of 1000’s of the children and parents he is supposed to equally represent. (What would have been the outcome had been Islam, Judaism, Black Lives or LGBTQ movement?) Outrage!
2. The Blessed Man Does Not Listen to the Counsel of the Wicked.
a. In this passage we see regression, deterioration, and degeneration take place. Young people, many of you here today are college age. All of a sudden you have been transported from your tiny Iowa or Illinois or…town and sent off to the U of I. You are separated from your parents/grandparents and their faith and you are plopped down in the middle of Godless Central. Surrounded by people who simply leave God out of life. Surrounded by people intent on sinning. And, you probably have a professor or two who will actively mock your faith, your parent’s faith, your upbringing, etc. What are you supposed to do? They look so smart on paper. They sound so wise in their counsel.
b. As long as people have a low view of sin and the law of God, they will be unable to grasp their enslavement to the darkness of rebellion against our Creator. Seeing the true glory of the gospel requires us to see the darkness through which it shines in all its fullness
B. What the Blessed Man Does Do: Positive V.2
1. The Blessed man delights in the Law of God.
a. I Jn. 5:3 says: “This is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commands are not burdensome.” Salvation by grace thru Christ never leads to lawlessness. Liberty never leads to license. In Christ we live above the Law by the Spirit. Of course we don’t keep the 10 Commandments to be saved. But being saved we don’t willfully break them. We realize we cannot earn our salvation by keeping the law. We recognize that Christ alone has done that. By faith we appropriate that work of Christ to ourselves. After we are saved by grace thru faith we see that we are living on a higher plane that before and we see the fruit of the Spirit in our lives (Gal. 5:22-23).
b. The blessed man is passionate about the WOG. It says he delights in it. What do you delight in? Kids? Home? Career? What consumes your and my thinking? Illust: New relationship. Classes. Sports. Money. Politics. Think about night and day. The Psalmist says this is the mark of the blessed man.
2. The Blessed man meditates on the WOG.
a. “meditates” – Christian meditation is radically different from Eastern. Eastern empties the mind. Christian meditation fills the mind. Illust: Cow chews the cud. Bessie goes out for breakfast, nice green grass wet with dew…not my idea of breakfast, but hers. Bessie starts chewing on that grass. Well, cows have a stomach with four separate compartments. Enjoys cud for a while in one and goes to the next, so forth. Illust: Thomas A’Kempis, in commentary on this passage said: “I have no peace except with the Book in a nook.”
b. Today’s Christian needs to spend time with the Lord meditating on and reading the WOG. Do you remember what it says in James 1:23-25 “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror, and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it--not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it--they will be blessed in what they do.” All too often my QT’s are hurried and harried and I forget what I have read and left unapplied to my life.
C. Applic: J. Vernon McGee once said: “My friend, God has no plan or program for you to develop as a believer apart from the WOG. You can become as busy as a termite in your church (And have the same effect!) but you won’t grow by means of activity. You will grow by meditating on the WOG, going over it time and time again in your thinking until it becomes a part of your very life. Our church: 20/20 Vision.
II. The Power of the Blessed Man v.3
A. The Placement of the Blessed Man.
1. “He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water.”
a. Illust: Earlier this year we were in TX, visit daughter’s family. Drove to a little town called San Saba. About as Texas as can get. Has a famous boot and hat store. Summer it was dry and dusty. Nearly everything was brown from lack of rain. San Saba is also famous for growing pecans. On the way out of town saw this massive orchard with 1000s of pecan trees lined neatly in rows. Lush green leaves with trees full of pecans. Then I noticed the irrigation lines that went to every tree so every tree would have enough water in that hot, sandy setting, to produce fruit. Now as I look back on that experience it’s obvious that those trees neither planted nor sustained themselves.
b. Look at v. 3 with me again. The comparison here again is that the blessed man is like trees firmly planted… God’s trees aren’t wild growing trees, rather, they are planted trees. They are planted by God Himself. So, the blessed man, according to Ps. 1 is the man who God has planted. God has called unto salvation. God has empowered. God has equipped. Power in the fact plenty of water to grow.
2. The Arborist Plants the Trees in a Position to assure Growth.
a. “firmly planted by streams of water.” Again, notice the location the Psalmist knew that in order for planted trees to have a chance for survival in that harsh ME climate, they would need a source of water. So, he plants them by the streams of water.
b. Illust: Even the most cursory reading of history reminds us that it has always been so: the message of Jesus thrives in what appears to us to be the most adverse conditions, in the most uncertain times, and in the most unlikely places. Indeed, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Neither the blunt cudgel of secularism in the West or the sharpened scimitar of Islamism in the East have a chance. Against all odds, in the sprawling refugee camps of northern Iraq, where Yezidis, Christians, and Kakais have fled from ISIS invasion, Kurdish evangelical churches and Christian schools are being planted. Though the CIA has failed to infiltrate the rare earth mining operations of rural North Korea, the Chinese house churches have succeeded. In closed countries such as Myanmar, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Afghanistan, Albania, and Somalia, the fierce persecution of Christians has hardly put a damper on the thriving underground church. Why? Because these are Christ’s trees, firmly planted by Christ Himself.
B. The Power of the Blessed Man.
1. The Power of the Blessed Man is in the Word of God.
a. In Is. 55:10-11 we read: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” God compares His Word to the life giving rain that waters the earth and causes vegetation to grow. The WOG is to the believer what rain is to plant life: Impossible without it!
b. Central to the biblical worldview is the power of the Word of God. Scripture presents this truth in various ways. Isaiah tells us that just as precipitation is sure to cause plants to grow, God’s Word accomplishes its purposes (Isa. 55:10–11). Paul explains that the Lord saves His people by means of the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1:18–25). Jeremiah makes the point by saying, “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29). Fire and hammers destroy and demolish—so we should expect the Word of God to afflict our consciences and bring us to the end of ourselves. Yet fire and hammers also refine and shape—so we should expect Scripture also to purify us and build us up in godliness. As Christians, we need to experience both aspects of God’s Word
2. The WOG Empowers the Blessed Man to Bring forth Fruit in Season.
a. V.3 We see here that God’s firmly planted trees bring forth fruit in season. Now notice, that doesn’t say that it brings forth fruit all the time. How many times a year do fruit trees in Iowa produce fruit? One time a year. Long growing season. First there is the cross pollination and then the blossom and the bud, then the small fruit begins to appear and over time it begins to grow. Frost, drought, disease and pests always at the ready to ruin the crop. Yet over time, and with the diligence of the farmer, in time, the tree presents a harvest of fruit.
b. II Cor. 2:14-16 tells us: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ's triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?”
C. Applic: You see, the Spirit of God uses the WOG to bring the message of the Son of God, by the plan of God to either the people of God who accept it as the aroma of life or to the lost as the aroma of death. Do you or I bring about that fruit? No, not at all. God does it as we faithfully proclaim Christ.
III. The Permanency of the Blessed Man. Vv. 4-6
A. The Insecurity of the Ungodly.
1. The Ungodly won’t stand in the Judgment.
a. Verses 4 and 5 contrast the blessedness of the righteous against the backdrop of the peril of the wicked. The first line of verse 4 signals us that a contrast is at hand: “Not so the wicked!”
b. The nature and destiny of the wicked are contrasted with that of the righteous by a change of figures from trees to chaff. Trees and chaff differ in several significant ways. First, the tree is different from chaff in its nature, for the tree has life. Second, chaff differs from trees in its value. Trees are of great value. Third, chaff differs as to its destiny. I read earlier this week that in some parts of the US the chaff of rice is used to fire furnaces which then produce electricity. What a frighteningly accurate picture of the fate of the wicked! They will not stand but will burn!
2. The Ungodly won’t be with the Assembly of the Righteous.
a. Illust: Over the years I have heard many a non-Christian joke about their eternal destiny. Saying stupid things like: “I want to go to hell so I can party with all my friends.” Friend, please don’t be so flippant with your soul. Life without Christ is a dead end street both here and now and in eternity. The only thing you can expect is damnation and destruction. Prov. 10:28 says: “The prospect of the righteous is joy, but the hopes of the wicked come to nothing.”
b. I think we can safely conclude from this and other instances of judgment in the OT that the Israel understood divine judgment to involve a removal from the congregation, which excluded an individual both from fellowship and from worship. i.e. Ceremonial uncleanness. The point was clearly made that sin results in separation from the congregation. The same principle abides in the New Testament. Sin in the life of the saint which was willfully maintained, even after a rebuke, was to bring about discipline. (I Cor. 5:1-13)
B. The Absolute Security of the Godly.
1. Notice the Lord’s Role in the Blessed Man’s Security.
a. The psalm concludes with an explanation for the different destinies of the righteous and the wicked. Verses 1-5 have described some of the critical differences between the righteous and the wicked. Verse 6 explains why the fate of the two differs.
b. Notice verse 6. It doesn’t say that the Lord watches over the righteous and punishes the wicked. Rather it says, “… the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Why this emphasis on the ways of the two rather than on the people themselves? I believe the answer is simple: Men are blessed or condemned on the basis of only one decision—the way in which they have chosen to walk. There are only two ways from which to choose and every person is in one way or the other. The judgment some will receive is the result of their decision to walk in the way of the wicked. The blessings others will obtain are the result of their decision to walk in the way of righteousness.
2. The Implications of the Way one takes.
a. Illust: Read: Frost’s “The Road not Taken”
b. Christ gave us several warnings about such things. (Read Mt. 7:13-14). Broad is the path of destruction and many follow it. Narrow is the way of salvation and few find it. J. Vernon McGee said: “The broad path starts off wide like the large end of a funnel and narrows and narrows until it becomes very small, tight, and confining, and leads to death. The narrow way starts like the opposite end of that same funnel, yet as you continue it becomes broader and broader, leading to life and life more abundantly! (Jn.10:10) What a glorious picture of the blessed man!
C. Applic: Two men. Two ways. Two destinies. One way ends in death (Romans 3:23). The other ends in eternal life. God declares what is right and what is wrong. We are living in a time where no one seems to know for sure what is right and what is wrong. God does. His standards don’t change because He does not change.
