Psalm 1:1-6
Delighting in the Law of the Lord
Woodlawn Baptist Church
November 2, 2003
Introduction
In this morning’s message, we took a brief look at a passage of Scripture where Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” A lot of weight hinges on that little two-letter word “if,” because in that word hangs the difference between following Jesus and not. It is the difference between life and death, heaven and hell, the wide gate and the narrow gate, the blessed, abundant life, and a wasted, impoverished life. Following after Jesus has never been easy, nor has it been cheap. Following Jesus will cost you everything; it will cost you your life.
Do I mean that following Jesus will cost you all your money? Or your job? Or your family? It could, but it may not. Following Jesus means that you’d be willing to loose all of those things, including your very life if following Him demanded that, but more than anything, following Jesus is about you dying to your right to live your life in pursuit of your own agenda. Take Abraham for example: there was a man who followed, and when God demanded that he sacrifice his only son Abraham obeyed. God waited till the knife was drawn back before He stopped what was happening. Why? Because He knew that nothing, absolutely nothing stood in the way of following after Him, not even his only son Isaac.
Well Brother Kevin, what are you getting at? I’m getting at this: when you boil it all down, all you are left with are the decisions you have made for or against Christ. Are you for Him or against Him? Are you following Him or are you not? It’s your choice, but the choice you make has very real and very pointed consequences. So, it is not only my Christian duty to warn and encourage you, it is one of my greatest joys to point you in the way of God. The psalmist experienced such a thing when he penned the words to the psalm we are going to look at tonight. Psalm 1 is an important psalm in this sense, because it serves as a gateway to understanding and applying all the rest of them. As we read this psalm tonight, I want you to consider three contrasts that are clearly made: the contrast between the righteous and unrighteous, the contrast between the delights of the godly and ungodly, and the contrast between what their lives produce. We’re going to conclude right back where we have started, and that’s with a choice, because even the most simple reading shouts forth the writer’s warning and encouragement to take great delight in the word of the Lord. Let’s read all six verses now.
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
The People
Look at verse 6 again. It says,
“For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
Now turn to Romans 3:10. There Paul says,
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one…”
This verse and the thoughts that follow are taken from Psalm 14. I want you to turn to that Psalm now and look at something there.
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
Now in Romans 3:10 Paul says that there are no righteous people, and David says in Psalm 14 that there are no people who do good, meaning the same thing. Well how can it be that there are no righteous people, but in Psalm 1 we find that the Lord knows the way of the righteous? Does the Bible contradict itself? Let’s read on in Psalm 14 for help in verses 4-5.
“Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? Who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord. There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous.”
David clarifies what he means when he says that there are no righteous people, because in verse 5 we see that there is a generation of righteous ones. What he means is that outside the sphere of God’s special sanctifying work men are enslaved to sin. But within the sphere of God’s sanctifying work people are righteous. How does God make an unrighteous man righteous? You don’t have to turn back there, but you will find the answer in Romans 3:21 and following. Paul says that the righteousness of God is imputed to you when you place your faith in Jesus Christ, not because of anything that you do, but because of the shed blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God takes you, guilty and sinful and short of His glory and He declares you to be not guilty, not sinful and full of His glory. In other words, He justifies you and declares you to be righteous.
Now you might ask yourself, Why bother having to see all of that in Psalm 1? I think it is important to see because too many people will go to that Psalm and treat it like its some sort of formula. If you do this or that you are righteous. If you do not then you are ungodly. That is wrong: you can’t be righteous – but you can live in such a way that allows the life of Christ, the Spirit of God to live through you and express His righteousness. The only righteous thing in you is Jesus Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit. Without Him you aren’t anything.
So, you’ve got these two groups of people – those who are righteous and those who are not. That leads us to our next contrast, which is…
Their Delights
Go back to Psalm 1 now and let’s read the first two verses.
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”
Here you have two delights that are contrasted. I want to narrow our thinking for a few minutes and ask you to lay aside our group of unrighteous people. Let’s think about our group of righteous people, because that’s really for whom the Psalm is written. He is trying to get you who are righteous, who have been washed in the blood of Christ to consider that there are two ways to go in your life, but only one of them leads to a blessed life. God is a wonderful God. He allows you the freedom to make choices. “If any man will come after me…” If you want a blessed, abundant kind of life, you will have to make a choice.
What does it mean to be blessed? Look at that word with me. The word means to be supremely happy or fulfilled. But there’s something else that you can’t see in your English Bible. The word blessed in the Hebrew is a plural word, which implies either a multitude of blessings or that your blessings are greatly intensified. Do you get that? We’re not talking here about a man who goes around with a smile on his face. The psalmist is saying that there is an abundant, joy-filled, God-praising, life-loving kind of life out there that awaits the man or woman who would but have it. Do you want blessing in your life? Do you want that rich, full sense of happiness that’s rooted in moral and mental and physical well-being?
I think here we find a telling tale. There are many believers who fail to enjoy the blessedness that God has for them. It may be you. Perhaps you struggle with depression or endless days of sadness and grief. It may be that you are not depressed, but neither are you particularly excited about living either. You just go through your days and work and sleep and you don’t really get all this blessed stuff. The first two verses of our Psalm give a great diagnosis of the problem.
The blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, he does not stand in the way of sinners, nor does he sit in the seat of scornful people. Do you notice the progression here? First you are walking along, but something captures your attention and you stand there. Last of all you sit for a while. This happened to me last night just as it has happened to you before. I had been out for a little while last night, and when I came home my family was gathered around the television. I had no intention of watching TV, but instead was headed for the bedroom to do some reading. As I was walking through the room, something on TV captured my attention, so I stood there watching it for a while. Before long I found my place on the couch and sat for a while. I never did go do that reading.
I suppose that we could go through and define what ungodly people are, what sinners are and what scornful people are, but let me refrain from doing that tonight. You know what those people are. They are people who aren’t living by God’s Word, but instead have turned aside and are following their own ways. These people aren’t necessarily people you know and hang out with, though they could be. They may be the modernists, the humanists, the atheists, the ungodly, sinful, scornful people who are shaping your views through media like television and print and radio. You see, the Psalm is a Psalm of contrasts, so when in verse 2 the writer comes along and talks about the man who delights in the law of the Lord, you ought to see that in verse 1 he is talking about someone who delights in the thoughts of man.
I might be talking about Dr. Phil and Oprah. This might be Kenny Chesney or Petter Jennings. It could be an endless number of people. Do you remember your parents telling you that you are known by your associations? You will be like the people you hang out with? There is so much truth in that statement. I told you this morning about how television networks have made marriage a sport and your life little more than something with which to gamble. There’s nothing people won’t do for the million-dollar prize and a few minutes of fame. How much of that does it take to shape a person? Not as much as you think.
You will be known by your associations. You don’t have to tell me what you delight in – I already know; not by what you tell me, but by the fruit of your life. Look at verse 2. One writer has suggested that this verse won’t allow you to think in terms of associations, but I disagree. I realize that verse 1 is talking about people, but the people are not the emphasis, it is what they offer in terms of ideas and thoughts and advice, it is the counsel of the ungodly, the way of sinners, the seat of the scornful, and now in verse 2 the emphasis is not on the person of God, but rather on what he has to say to you through His law.
The word delight is a powerful word. How do you delight in the law of the Lord? The British scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia series (you might be more familiar with the child’s book titled, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) found the psalmist’s delight in God’s law bewildering and mysterious. He said that he could understand how one could delight in God’s mercies, visitations and attributes, but not how one could delight in God’s law. You do not delight in law, not really. Rather law is something you respect and hopefully obey. In fact, in one place in the New Testament, the law is called the ministration of death.
I think verse 2 gives us an indication as to how a person can delight in God’s law. He is not talking so much about delighting in particular laws. For instance, the psalmist wouldn’t necessarily delight in a law that says, “Do not steal.” That’s not what he’s talking about. Notice that he says, “and in his law doth he meditate day and night.” For the ancient Jew, saying that he delights in the law is much like what we might mean if we said that we love history or physics or archaeology. But, of course, it is so much more than that. The word law is used to refer to all of Scripture, all of God’s divine revelation, so that when we study the Bible, we are really learning, not just about human beings or nature, but about God.
To delight in the law of the Lord is to delight in your study of God’s Word so you might know Him. I have been thinking some about Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians in the third chapter of his letter. He prayed that they would know the love of God and that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul talked about the riches of God’s glory, about the width and the length and the depth and the height of God’s love! I think about that and can’t help but think that most of us just don’t have a clue. We think we’ve got God figured out. We know a few things about Him, enough to get us by and then we settle in for a good night’s sleep. Listen, there is so much more!
So, instead of delighting or taking pleasure in the words and the ways of the wicked, the one who is truly happy and fulfilled is the man who finds pleasure in meditating on the Word and the ways of God. As one preacher put it, to delight in the law of the Lord “is an indication of the new birth, for…the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. As a result of the inward, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, however, the godly find that they love the law of God simply because it conveys to them the will of their God. They do not rebel against its exacting demands; their whole being approves and endorses it…Delighting in it, the godly will meditate in it, or pore over it, constantly, day and night.”
The contrast may be put like this: what you delight in is the difference between loving sin and loving the ways of God. The one group loves sin’s ways and hang around to see what happens. The other loves God and seeks him in Scripture, where He may be found.
Well let me ask you this. What if meditation and the study of God’s word are drudgery? Now be honest: have you ever found that to be the case? It is not that you don’t love God’s Word, but that it becomes drudgery to study it and spend time in it. It is not a pleasure. What are we to do in that case? Something is wrong that needs to be addressed. All people experience this feeling, even the writers of the Bible, and you will go through seasons where you want to study and others when you don’t. The answer is not to walk away and turn on the TV when you don’t feel like studying. If you do that you won’t go back; it is too easy to walk away the next time.
When you find yourself in that situation, where meditation and study are not a delight, then let me encourage you to pray – express to God how you feel and what you are going through. I find it helpful in these moments to write my prayer, because it gives me the opportunity to see what I am saying and think through the problem. Most often my lack of pleasure has nothing to do with the Bible, but with something else that is going on in my life. You cannot study and meditate if you are fighting with your family. You cannot take pleasure in the Word if you are living in sin. So pray, there may be some things you need to take care of in prayer before you open the Word.
After you have prayed, and after you have resolved any unconfessed sin, then work through that drudgery and get into the Word. Sometimes the only way to get over it is to work through it. Do you think that I always delight in study? Do you think that it is always a pleasure to open God’s Word and work up three sermons on three different subjects from three different passages every week? Of course not! It becomes drudgery and it is work. How I often wish I could stay in one place for a while and just study without having to get prepared for speaking. It is in those moments that you just have to work through your feelings and be faithful to the study. The rewards will come in due time.
There are going to be times when the television, or the computer, or the kids, or the bed, or some other thing is calling you, but you know that you ought to study and meditate on God’s Word. When that happens, learn to discipline yourself and stick to the task at hand
Having considered now the people and their delights, let’s talk about…
The Results
Verses 3-5 say,
“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.”
The person who delights in the law of the Lord is compared to a tree. There are four things that I want you to notice about this person as the writer compares him to a tree.
He has a constant supply of nourishment
Where is the tree planted? By the rivers of water. When we lived in Mexia, my dad used to take my brother and I hunting in the Navasota River bottom. Mexia is an area where there is one particular kind of tree that flourishes, and that is the Mesquite tree. Everywhere you go you find them. They grow just about anywhere, and they don’t need much water, but they’re usually small and ugly. However, when we would get down to that river bottom, things were different. The Mesquite trees gave way to pecans and oaks and other massive trees. I used to be amazed at how fields of mesquites would break off about 100 feet before a river, then start up about 100 feet on the other side, and everything in between would be big trees. Why? Because down there in that fertile ground was where the big trees flourished and grew, down there where there was a rich and constant supply of nourishment.
You and I have got to have spiritual nourishment that is supplied in the Word of God if we are to grow tall and mighty. Most Christians starve themselves on small diets of nutrition, but like the mesquites, they are generally small and ugly, but for the few who will stay near Jesus Christ in His Word and will put forth the effort to delight in His Word, a rich and full life is supplied.
He will be fruitful
If you delight in the Word of God and meditate on it day and night you will yield your fruit in season. You will be a fruitful person. The Lord needs more fruitful people! You know them. They are refreshing and nourishing to be around. You go away from them fed. You go away strengthened. You go away with your taste for spiritual things awakened. Their mouth is a fountain of life. Their words are healing and convicting and encouraging and deepening and enlightening. Being around them is like a meal. This is the effect of delighting in the Word of God and meditating on it day and night. You will yield fruit in season.
He will be durable
Your leaf will not wither. The point here is that hot winds are blowing and the rain is not falling and all the other trees that are not planted by streams are withering and dying, but in spite of all the heat and drought, your leaf remains green, because delighting in the Word of god and meditating on it day and night is like being planted by a stream. The happiness of this person is durable. It is deep. It does not depend on which way the wind is blowing or whether the rain is falling. It gets its life from an absolutely unchanging source: the Word of God.
He will prosper
There is some question as to what this really means. Does it mean that f you delight in God’s Word and meditate on it that you will make a big profit and your health will always be good and there will be no food shortages or car accidents or violence against you? It might, but then again it might not. Bad things happen to good and godly people who also delight in God’s Word, so it’s not necessarily talking about physical blessings. However, I would quickly add that God does delight in blessing those of His people whom He knows delight in His Words and Ways. There is a kind of prosperity that money can’t buy, and that’s a life characterized with an abundant, overflowing sense of purpose, joy, love, peace and hope that comes only from a right knowledge of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now those are the blessings of the man who delights in God’s law, but the ungodly are not so. In Bible times, when the men worked the harvests on the threshing-floors, they would take the grain and throw it up in the air. The real grain was heavy enough that it would fall back to the ground, but the chaff would blow away. It was good for nothing but to be cast out. That’s how the Lord sees ungodly people who don’t delight in His Word, worthless and good for nothing.
Conclusion
Two ways, which should you choose? God knows the righteous from the unrighteous, the godly from the ungodly. Verse 5 tells us of a time when our two groups will stand before the Lord. The Bible teaches us about these two judgments, the Great White Throne judgment for the lost, and the Judgment Seat of Christ, when the saved will appear before the Lord. Verses 5 and 6 tell us that the Lord knows who is who, and neither of the two will have to worry about being in the wrong group.
Do you know which group you will be in? Will you be among the righteous, those who have confessed their sin before God and called on the name of Jesus to save them? Or will you be among those who have never come to the place in your life where you could do that?
If you are among the Lord’s saved, are you enjoying a life that is overflowing with the blessedness of supreme happiness and fulfillment? I hope that you are, and that you are one of those who delights in God’s Word, meditating in it day and night, continually and expectantly. If you haven’t been, then what’s keeping you from enjoying that blessing?
