For Sermon Central researchers: I have posted a series of 15 sermons on the Psalms. In recent personal studies I have found the psalms to be richer and more thought-provoking than I had fully appreciated. I had too often swept swiftly through psalms without slowing down to inquire as thoroughly as I might have into the depths of meaning and feeling that are expressed by the psalmists. Upon deeper examination and reflection, I find the psalms to be highly relevant to Christians in every age. My most recent foray into the psalms led me to present a series of studies of selected psalms in a class environment.
In my classes I did not examine every psalm, or every verse of the ones I did. Rather, I presented selected psalms that I believe to be representative of the collection in the book of Psalms. The studies were held in a class environment suitable for pauses for questions and discussion, and to pose “thought questions” where the meanings are not readily apparent, as is often the case in poetry. My notes include suggested points for such pauses, and I have not removed them in Sermon Central posts.
I developed the material with the view in mind that the series may be well used as sermons. There is an introductory sermon that describes what psalms are (whether they are in the 150-chapter book or elsewhere) and explains my approach to the series. The psalms I selected were presented in no particular order in the classes; however, I suggest that anyone using this material as a series begin with the introductory sermon and follow it with Psalms 1 and 2 in that order, as the first two psalms function as a pair. Beyond that, the selected psalms may be presented in any order.
To get as much enjoyment as we could from our study, I did some of the reading from the KJV, which I believe is the most beautiful of the English bible translations. For clarity we also used other versions, mainly ESV, which I have used for several years and the one I have come to prefer.
PSALM 1
In the Introduction to Psalms last week we closed by talking about some words and expressions that occur over and over in the psalms, like themes.
Enemy, enemies, enmity, foe foes appears 109 times.
Wicked & forms 97 times
Evil - 75 times
Iniquity iniquities sin sins transgressions 74 times
Afflict, afflicted, or affliction appears 35 times.
Cry, cried, or crying appears 49 times
Deliver or one of its forms - 78 times
“Deliver me” or “Deliver my soul” - 24 of those 78 times
We discussed the significance of this – whether the man after God’s heart was a miserable, brooding, wretchedly unhappy person - consumed by his failures and misfortunes - someone who in today’s parlance we might call a “whiner?”
We concluded that he was not a complainer.
What it shows is that when he was down, he talked to God about it.
God loves that!
Clearly, David was a man of great faith and consuming love for God, who exulted in thoughts of God.
The psalms of David are a window to his mind.
They reveal David as a man who struggled…
…he struggled because of
...his enemies
…his conflict with Saul, not of his making
…his love for Jonathan, and the dilemmas it created
…his family problems
…most of all, he hated his sins
David does not write just for himself; he writes for others.
Many of the things that afflicted David afflict us.
He and other psalmists wrote for all of us, and we may take their prayers and praises as our own.
As a counterweight to the many references to crying, pleading, fretting about enemies, wickedness - David’s own wrongdoing and that of adversaries who brought evil upon him…in Psalm after Psalm, David turns those morbid thoughts into prayers, trust, thanksgiving and praise.
Salvation 72
Save or Saved 43
Righteousness 59
The Lord is 56
Blessed is … and blessed are and Blessed be … 53
Glory 50 times
Refuge 47 times
Faithfulness 42
Joy 41 times
Rejoice rejoicing rejoiced 40
Trust 36
Your face 21
Justice 21
Teach me 17
Redeem, redeemed, redemption 17
Heritage 17
David had a consuming love for God that seems to have gone ahead of everything else he valued in life.
When he turned to God, God invariably delivered.
Is that a lesson for us? I suggest that David was a man who could see both sides of life vividly, he ended up loving and praising God.
Psalm 1
The first thing to notice is the “firstness” of this psalm.
Its position in the arrangement of the collection of psalms is (I believe) no accident.
Along with the second psalm, the two psalms go ahead of all other psalms, and set the context or furnish the stage for all that follows.
In this respect the book of Psalms is similar to the book of Job. If a person who does not know Job’s story began reading it at chapter 3, he will be confused throughout the 40 remaining chapters.
Psalms are not quite that dependent on reading chapters 3 - 150 with chapters 1 & 2 in mind, but the first two are a sort of envelope for the others.
Psalm 1 is about the blessed man, why and how he is blessed, and the condition of the unblessed.
Psalm 2 is about the Messiah’s universal sovereignty - and nothing can prevail against it.
Read Psalm 1 in KJV
I. The blessed man is not the one who counsels, walks, and sits with the ungodly, sinners, and the scornful, but the one who delights in the law
On its face, the psalm requires little explanation. It is not difficult to understand.
Reduced to the skeleton of the psalm, it is in the form of a beatitude:
Blessed is someone…and why the someone is blessed.
I found 24 beatitudes in the Psalms.
I will point some of them out as we go along.
Psalm 1 can be described as a contrast of the righteous and the ungodly, and what happens in each case.
My purpose is not to make the primary message of this psalm any clearer than it already is…but to meditate on the words of this unknown psalmist.
The psalmist’s words reveal divine truth from heaven.
First the psalm speaks of counsel and avoiding walking according to that counsel.
When you seek counsel, to whom do you go?
Not a foolish person, or a wicked person, but a wise person of course.
When you seek counsel, you are looking for understanding.
You go to a person you believe has clarity of perception and thought - perhaps one who has experience in something you are undertaking, or an ordeal you expect to undergo.
Specifically, the psalmist speaks of the counsel of the wicked (KJV ungodly).
Have you ever received the counsel of the wicked? (I won’t ask what it was, or if you followed it. But I can tell you the outcome if you did.)
Vs 1-2 - Walking… standing… sitting …
Is this simply poetic repetition, or do the three expressions mean different things?
When people live in sin the natural tendency is to go from bad to worse.
At first they merely walk in the counsel of the ungodly, who forget God. They do something knowing it is wrong, but are persuaded by the rationalizing counsel of others.
After that, they become habituated to evil, and they stand in the way of open sinners who willfully violate God's commandments
If that course is not reversed, they go one step further, and become themselves contemptuous of those who are upright, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful.
But the blessed man, to whom the blessings of God belong, avoids such advisors as these. He puts away ungodly counsel and the practice of evil things - or as Paul would say it 1,000 years later, if you “put to death the deeds of the flesh” (KJV – “mortify the deeds of the body”) you will live.
The blessed man is one who delights is in the law, for he shall be like a well-watered tree.
Delights in the law?!
When I was working for my daughter part of what I did during the 3 ½ months of tax season was to prepare tax returns for her to check over and sign. Some of them were pretty simple, but others, especially where a business interest was involved, were quite complex and open to interpretation.
The multitude of such situations is governed by tax law.
I had to learn a lot about those laws, but I didn’t delight in them.
Much of what we do in our lives is regulated by law.
Federal laws are published in a series of books called the U.S. Code that is the official compilation of the laws of the United States.
In my career days an associate of mine whose duties required him to have extensive knowledge of law had a large section of one wall covered by a bookcase containing volume after volume of the U.S. Code. There are 54 titles of the Code, some of which span multiple volumes in print.
A new print edition of the U.S. Code is published every 6 years, with annual supplements in the intervening years.
It is massive.
Do I live by it? As far as I know, I do insofar as it is relevant to my actions.
Do I delight in the U.S. Code? Not particularly.
I read other things in preference to the U.S. Code.
How is it possible to love law?
But the psalmist says the blessed man does.
Just a few examples out of many:
Psalm 119:97 Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.
Psalm 119:113 I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.
Psalm 119:163 I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.
David isn’t talking about the U.S. Code. That’s practical and useful, but it’s not delightful.
What particular law did the psalmist say delighted him?
“The law” in this psalm’s original Hebrew is the word torah.
Torah was used in a variety of ways by those who lived under its dictums.
Often - and correctly - Torah refers to what people are commanded to do.
More broadly, the expression “THE Torah” with the definite article, is the first 5 books of the bible, written by Moses as he received them from God.
Exodus 33:1-11 - read
In this psalmist’s time, little more of the bible had been written than what Moses wrote. The books of Samuel, maybe some of the psalms, and probably not much else.
The Torah was a large part of the scripture that existed at the time.
The Torah contained more than the commands and requirements that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Torah contained history, poetry, prophecy, and law.
But the law was not merely something to be obeyed.
It was a treasure to be cherished - something to wake up to gratefully and go to sleep on.
It wasn’t just that it was law. The Torah was words from God.
The psalmist describes in this psalm blessing that is in the word of God!
How much more, then, should we prize the entire written Word which it is our privilege to have copies of it in all our houses!
Do we delight in the law of God?
Are you happiest when you immerse yourself in the study of it?
Is it foremost in the daily occupation of your mind?
Does Psalm 1 describe the way I feel - no, not the way I feel but the way I am - about the words of God?
The blessed man meditates.
“Meditate” demands openness of mind.
We may not find the blessing that is available in the word of God that we revere if we try to force it to circumscribe that which we already believe to be true, but to learn what is true, even if it turns something we believe upside down.
We mustn’t insist that the word of God reinforce something I think.
Or that my father thought.
We mustn’t have the attitude, “My teacher couldn’t have been wrong.”
Or Brother Hathaway or some other influential figure in the church is always right. I go by what he says.
What is there about the law that requires meditation?
Can’t we just read it and be done like looking up a tax law?.
Isn’t everything plain in the bible?
Just look up the answer and be done with it?
No.
If we just grab what we want from the surface of the pages we are treating the bible as a repository of sound bytes.
To plumb the depths of God’s word - as if we ever will - requires the surrender of our minds to it, to the exclusion of every pre-formed thought and the business of daily living.
Why do I seem to understand it less than I did when I graduated from college?
Because I have learned that there is much to know that I still have not learned.
II. The blessing - to be like a well-watered tree
V3 “And he shall be like a tree planted;” not a wild tree, but “a tree planted,” chosen, wanted, cultivated and secured from the final and terrible uprooting.
Why do I talk about uprooting of trees?
Because Jesus said,
“every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up:” Mat 15:13.
“By the rivers of water”
The life-giving water that nourishes the tree - without which it cannot survive.
What is it that the soul cannot live without?
Rivers of pardon and grace, the rivers of the promise and the rivers of the communion with Christ, are never-failing sources of supply.
We will die without that water.
The soul of the woman of Samaria was going to die, if Jesus had not come to her.
Because he came, she and others had an inexhaustible supply of living water.
“that bringeth forth his fruit in his season”
The blessed man - who delights in God's Word and being taught by it - brings forth patience in suffering, faith in times of trial, and joy whether in want or prosperity.
“His leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever he does shall prosper.”
I am dumbstruck by this promise of blessing!
We cannot always reckon the fulfilment of a promise by our own eyesight, or according to our preferences.
How often, if we judge by our own sense of rectitude, we come to the conclusion of Jacob when his sons came back from Egypt with orders from Joseph to return with Benjamin:
All these things are against me!
For while we are keenly interested in this promise, are we so tried and troubled with daily pressures our sight falls on the opposite of what this promise foretells?
But to the eye of faith the word is sure, and our works are prospered, even when everything seems to go against us.
It is not outward prosperity which the Christian most desires, but soul prosperity
It has often been to the soul’s health that a child of God should be poor, bereaved, and persecuted.
Our worst things are often our best things.
III. The unblessed – like chaff – will not stand with the righteous
V4 We have now come to the other side of the coin.
The coin will not stand for long on its edge.
When it tips, one side will be up, the other down.
In this verse the contrast of the poor condition of the wicked contrasts with that fair and pleasant picture of the law-lover.
The good things said of the righteous are not true of the ungodly.
Notice the use of the term “ungodly,” for, as we have seen in the opening of the Psalm, these are the counselers in evil.
Blessed is the man who does not walk in their counsel.
IV. God can tell the difference
V5-6 “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 saints long for heaven, for no evil ones shall dwell there, as the angel told John on Patmos Island:
Rev 21:27 But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.
All our associations on earth are mixed.
The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat.
• There is no threshing floor that is thoroughly purged from chaff.
• Sinners mix with saints, like dross mingles with unrefined gold.
• God's precious diamonds still lie in the same field with pebbles.
In “the general assembly and church of the firstborn,” described by the Hebrew writer, not a single rebel’s soul will be admitted.
Sinners cannot live in heaven. They do not belong there.
V6 “The Lord knows the way of the righteous.”
When we struggle, he knows what the struggle is.
He numbers the hairs of our head; he will not suffer any evil to destroy us.
“He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10)
V6 cont. “But the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
Not only shall they perish themselves, but their way shall perish too.
It is as if the name of the righteous is carved in marble, but the name of the wicked is written on the face of water, to vanish even while it is written.
