Sure Blessings - [Psalm 1]

I was riding my bicycle about two weeks ago over on Route 62 and it was getting to be dusk and the car must not have seen me and 25 miles an hour on a bicycle maybe doesn't seem that fast unless you're on the bicycle with, you know, spandex and that's about it.

And the car didn't see me and it was just coming head on. And sometimes I have a yell that informs the other car, hey, watch out, you know, hey.

And then I had another yell that I didn't know that was in my system and it was, I'm going to die.

And so I just held on and went, ah, and I just thought, you know,

Kim always says, well, I just wait for the phone call of, you know, the accident and, you know,

I'm in the ambulance and I always want to make sure I'm at least well enough to tell them to put the bike in the ambulance too.

But I thought this is, this is a disaster one. This is, I'm going to die. And I just held on and turned to the left.

I started to go sideways and the car missed me by about a half an inch on the right -hand side. And then

I almost felt like Superman in a sense, thinking

God's not finished with me yet. If I was God, I would have never recruited him into ministry, yet God is not finished with me yet and I have other work to do.

Maybe it's just for today, but I have other work to do. And Richard Baxter said, you should preach like a dying man unto dying men.

I thought, Lord, if you'll give me an opportunity to preach again, I'll just preach with everything I have. Maybe the tank's on empty, but I'll preach with everything

I have. I get to preach again today. In South Africa, I think

I'm set for about 45 to 50 different messages in the next few weeks and every one might be my last.

And so I'm really looking forward to preaching to you today.

If you're a visitor today and you don't like preaching, you're not going to like this church. Actually, we love preaching here, don't we?

Who would ever think of it? What the world says is old school, don't preach to me, some kind of negative thing.

We love preaching. Jesus was a preacher. God had one son and he made him a preacher.

And strangely, with intrigue, God says, I'll change people's lives and make them more like Christ by having the word proclaimed to them through a frail, fallible, sinful man.

And he'll make us more like his son through preaching. So if you turn your

Bibles to Psalm chapter 1, I would like to preach to you today Psalm 1.

My prayer is that the Spirit of God will so direct this to you that you'll think

I'm talking to you and only you. People say, well, how'd you know that sermon was from me?

I didn't, but the Spirit of God did. If you've heard Psalm 1 preached a hundred times or only once,

I think you'll be re -encouraged today as you read this porthole to all the Psalms.

This Psalm that contrasts the two ways, the two different approaches to life, the righteous way and the unrighteous way, the narrow way and the broad way, if you will,

Psalm chapter 1. We're going through the Sermon on the Mount, but because of my travel schedule, we're just picking up a few different select

Scriptures to reinforce this theme. And that theme is that the Bible is sure, trustworthy, reliable, and it should captivate you.

I'll also tell you ahead of time that this morning, going over the sermon for one last time,

I said, Lord, I want to rededicate my life to you to study this word with enthusiasm, with haste, with a compulsion so that you might be honored.

And that's what I'm after today in you. I hope you'll say, Lord, you've given me a love for your word, but I want to love it more.

I want to not be forced to read and forced to study, you know, back in the old camp days, you know, no devos, no breakfast, you don't have a devotional, you can't have a breakfast.

I hope you just see the text today in such a way where you think, that's what I want.

That's what God is pleased with and may the spirit of God be desirous to change my life so I might love

God's word all the more. Psalm chapter one, we've been doing Psalms at nighttime here in the summer, but this morning

I want to look at Psalm chapter one, the contrast of the righteous and the wicked.

Basically, I could summarize this Psalm by saying that this is a Psalm that talks about blessings for those who delight in God's word and obey it.

For those that want God's word so much to be preached to them, they want to memorize it, they want to read it, there is blessings for the

Lord. I would call this Psalm soul food, S -O -U -L, soul food, food for the soul.

It was about last year, we were at Sterling Beach and we looked down at this grandpa who was babysitting a grandson at the water.

We began to talk and I kind of try to think every person could be a potential target for the gospel. You know, you try to see that neon target on the back.

I don't look for a neon E on the head, but I look for a target on the back. They've all got them. You say, you know, how are you?

I began to look a little closer and the guy had blood on his shoes, he had blood on his hands a little bit too.

I'm going to have to be a rescuer and call the police. Superhero pastor calls

Sterling Police, rescues his grandson. Hi, how are you? Oh, I'm doing well too.

What do you do for work? I'm a butcher. Oh, okay. So I thought, you know what?

He said I was a butcher for Julia Childs a little bit and now moved over here into Lemonster.

And so I went there. He said, well, hi pastor from Lancaster.

I said, give me the best steak you've got. He said, you'll want it an inch and a half thick for grilling, won't you?

Oh, sure. Yeah. That's the way I went. I mean, I don't know what to do. It's like going and buying a gun.

Do you want some ammo? Oh, yeah, I guess. You want some for your home? What do you mean for my home?

You know, Teflon coated? I don't know. I just act like I'm going along with the flow. Yeah, I want it that way, inch and a half thick.

I went home and ate that steak and it was so good it melted in my mouth.

I don't want teriyaki sauce. I don't want some kind of stuff on top to mess it all up. I don't want to do what

I did back in Nebraska and put some kind of ketchup full of high fructose corn syrup. I don't want anything. I want a little salt and that was it.

It was the best. Just an inch and a half thick, just nourishing.

The poor dog was wagging its tail and I thought, you know, for some old stupid Shaw's Hamburg, you might get a bite, but for this, you beg till kingdom comes, you're not getting a bite.

I couldn't believe it. I left 445 in the morning a couple of weeks ago. Chuck picked me up and Emily was supposed to babysit the dog and five minutes before I leave, the dog gets sprayed by a skunk.

Thanks, Emily. Got to go. What do you do? What do you do? Okay, now back to the text. For those who are visiting, you go, that guy's got too many stories.

This Psalm, Psalm one is, is meaty. You can kind of quickly read through it and say to yourself, well,

I kind of get it. But almost like every other passage of scripture, as you start to analyze it and as you start to see, oh,

I, I see some of the parallelism. I see that it's a poem and, and it's not some propositional truth.

Enjoy God's word. It's said in such a way that you think, yeah, it's captivating me.

It's getting my attention. It's expanding and I see that this is something that is important.

It's weighty. Alexander White, a famous Scottish man said to his theological students,

I envy you young men with your ministry before you and especially that you have a lifetime of explaining the

Psalms to your people. Psalm one, the way to blessedness is through the word of God.

If you want happiness, you want satisfaction, you want contentment, you're looking for bliss.

You're looking for a share. It is through the word of God. God has ordained it that way. There are no ways of osmosis.

There's no ways of getting around it. If you want satisfaction and blessing, it is through and always through the word of God.

That is Psalm chapter one. What an appropriate way to dive into the Psalms. It's like the

Psalm stands at the very beginning to say there's two ways on this path. There's the way of delighting in God by delighting in his word and there's the way of the unrighteous who shuns the word and wants his own way, his own path.

Here we have the Psalm book, a hymn book of the ages. I don't know about you, but in my most exhilarating times of joy and my most devastating times of depression,

I go to the Psalms and they refresh my soul. They teach me again about the importance of the word of God.

If you'd like changed character, if you'd like changed a personality, if you'd like a transformation of your body, soul, mind and spirit, it is found through scripture.

Scripture will be the core of your life. That's Psalm chapter one. Psalm chapter one's promise is that your life will be radically changed as the spirit applies the word to your life.

And so let's just go ahead and walk through this Psalm that shows us two kinds of people in the world.

It's like Jeremiah 21 .8, you shall say to this people, thus says the Lord, behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.

That's exactly what the Psalm does. It's like the narrow gate and the wide gate.

God blesses a particular kind of life. Of course, in the scheme of systematic theology, he has blessed the

Christian with every blessing in this heavenly places in Christ. We can't get any other blessings, but part of his ordained blessing comes to the conduit of the word.

And that's why Psalm one is helpful to us today. The godly man is blessed and the wicked man is miserable, and it all revolves around what he or she does with the word of God.

True or false? This Psalm is a wisdom Psalm. There are different kinds of Psalms.

You might know imprecatory Psalms, God kill them. But this is a wisdom

Psalm because there's two ways of life, the way of blessing and fulfillment and the way of misery. Let's go to verse one as we kind of enter the porthole of the porthole.

This doorkeeper, gatekeeper, Psalm one, Jerome called it the preface of the

Holy Spirit. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

What a great way to start the whole Psalm book. How blessed. There's blessings for someone.

Wow, what a way to start. It's like somebody standing at the starting gate with a gun.

Bang. How blessed. Wow. That makes me want to listen.

It makes me want to listen. You want satisfaction? You want bliss? You want a complete, full life, independent and irrelevant upon circumstances?

Well, the Bible is going to tell us how to have that. How do I have deep -seated joy and contentment in God even though my life is falling apart?

The Psalm will tell us with almost an if -then kind of promise. How blessed.

Now, how many people's translation says happy? Happy's got a nuance. Blessing is a nuance, but make sure you include in the blessing and happy nuance the nuance of to be envied.

You want to be the kind of person that someone else envies and they go, man, that guy serves a great

God. Look at the blessings that person has. There's a nuance to this word, to be envied.

Anderson said in his commentary, as an expression of envious desires and renders it to be envied is the man.

I think of that situation, listen, as I read 1 Kings 10, now the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the

Lord. She came to test him with difficult questions. Nevertheless, I did not believe the reports until I came, she said, and my eyes had seen it.

And behold, the half was not told me. You exceed in wisdom and prosperity the report which I heard. How blessed are your men.

How blessed are these servants of yours who stand before you continually and hear your wisdom.

They're to be envied. Yes they have satisfaction and bliss, but they're to be envied.

Your people should be, I envy your people to serve a king like you. Well here the king is not

Solomon, the king is God himself. But did you notice the text?

It's a conditional blessing. This is not a blessing for each and every person.

This is not a blessing for all those redeemed of Yahweh. This is given to us so that we exercise our duty and responsibility before God.

On one hand there's blessing, on the other hand there's not. And do you notice that the passage, you can't tell it in English, but how blessed isn't a very good translation, it's plural.

Blessed in Hebrew is plural. How do you translate that? Blesseds?

That doesn't sound right. Blessednesses? That doesn't maybe even sound right.

I don't think they at all sound right, but it is a plural. Oh the blessedness, maybe is the idea.

Oh the extra, extra blessedness that this man has, are certainly applied to a woman as well.

Oh the blessings of this person. And what you also can't tell in the

Hebrew, besides having it be a plural, it's also intensive. There could be an exclamation point there.

Oh how happy, happy, very happy, very blessed is this man. It's an interjection.

Oh the ultra, extra, above and beyond blessedness. And so here we have the

Psalm book and Psalm 1 itself beginning with this beatitude. For all people? No.

For pagans? No. For all followers of Yahweh? Certainly there are blessings, but this particular blessing has a condition.

And it's a condition for who? How blessed is literally that man?

You look at a football stadium, there's 80 ,000 people there, and it's like God is saying, see all those people there, 80 ,000,

I'm going to go to the one down on the 42nd yard line and seat

J3, and that man right there. All the people are there watching a game, but that man right there is the blessed one.

He makes it very particular. Out of a thousand people, 80 ,000 people, this one and no other man receives the blessings.

This one -of -a -kind kind of man. How could we have that kind of blessing?

And Psalm 1 gives us the answer, and so if you're taking notes today, let me give you the three human responsibilities that God requires of His people to receive these kind of blessings.

Three human responsibilities, certainly that the Spirit of God would help us obey. But He doesn't default to that,

He just says, this is what I said before you, choose life as it were. Three responsibilities that Yahweh requires of His people would require of you.

If you'd like to receive this kind of intense, plural, bliss, satisfaction, you'd like to be envied, as it were, because God is such a great

God as He dumps forth His blessings upon you. Human responsibility number one, if you would like to have these blessings, then you, number one, must shun worldliness and all it contains.

You must swim basically against the current of the day. How do you have a life that results in God's blessings?

Number one, shun worldliness. Do you see the passage? Now if you don't know

Hebrew, you're going to think this is kind of getting some kind of gradation here. First you walk, then you stand, then you sit, but let's just read it first and then talk about it.

How blessed is that man? Oh, the blessednesses of this particular man who, what?

Number one, does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. When you take a look at poetry in the

Old Testament, there's something called synonymous parallelism.

All right, let's close in prayer. Synonym parallelism, he's trying to say something, but he's not saying it with a propositional statement, avoid worldliness.

He says, I'm going to tell you to avoid worldliness and all it contains by giving you three parallel synonymous things that we shouldn't try to pick apart for some kind of gradation.

Don't stand, don't walk because producing you stand and then you sit down. If you want to say something in Hebrew, holy, holy, holy, you get the point.

Say it three times. If you want to get the point in Hebrew, you say, holy, sanctified, set apart.

You get the point. And that's exactly what he does here. This is synonymous parallelism. It's not some kind of grading system.

If you were a Jew, you wouldn't go, oh, there's some kind of getting closer to sin isn't good.

You wouldn't say that. You'd say avoiding worldliness and its mindset is exactly what I need to run from. And it's said in a poem, in beautiful Hebrew poetry, it's logical.

The point is not gradation. The point is totality. The point is not tiptoeing closer to sin before you snuggle it.

The point is see the sin over there, see the influences over there, run, don't stop. Be totally disassociated with the wicked.

And so he says there, the first one, using this parallelism, don't walk in the counsel of the wicked.

You know what the word walk means, don't you? Don't make it your lifestyle. Don't make it your habit. Don't have some kind of ongoing characteristic in your life that would walk in the counsel of these other people.

It's a way of conduct. It's a lifestyle. Don't frame your views with the two -by -fours of other people's ungodly worldly wisdom.

And counsel there just means advice. It means a principle. And this is not, don't drink alcohol, don't smoke cigarettes, don't go to R -rated movies.

This is something much more insidious. If you think worldliness is, you know, avoiding dried leaves that are hung upside down, putting your mouth lit on fire, and inhaled, you're going to miss it.

Now, if you want to do that or not, that's a different point, different subject. But here it's the kind of thing that says, all right, what is the world selling?

The world is selling, for instance, there are plenty of things they're selling, but one would be religion.

Just be good, just throw God a few bones, just be baptized, just be consecrated and confirmed, do something for God, have some kind of engagement with God, and everything's going to be fine.

Only have them in a few areas of your life, and don't integrate them in all the areas, and you're good. That's called religionism.

That would be an example of counsel of worldly people that we would want to avoid. Maybe another thing that they would be pushing would be secularism.

You don't need religion. You can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you're sufficient.

You can do what you want, when you want, you don't need God. I can handle my own affairs, you just reject

God completely. Maybe the worldliness here would include individualism.

Maybe it would include materialism, live for today, matter is all that matters.

I will accumulate things and forget about anything spiritual. But the point here is, when people are giving this advice that doesn't say integrate

God into all systems of your mind and life, then it's somehow ungodly counsel.

And Paul, who wrote this, the psalmist says avoid it.

These people give bad counsel because look what kind of people they are. They're wicked, they're

Rasha people. This is not murderers and gang members and terrorists and drug dealers.

These are people who just have no time for God. These are people that don't want to spend any time with God. These are people that push

God to the fringe if they do think about Him at all. These are the kind of people who say, you know what, there's going to be no judgment day, we've all been made by chance, time's eternity, and we believe in evolution, and these people are wicked.

Literally, they're unloosed. They're loosened. And the writer says, just avoid these people.

I don't know about you, but if you're ever walking through the desert and you see something coiled up and it makes a little sound, well, you get down on all fours and come over and you make this little sound, and you kiss, right?

Of course not. Those that have loosened God's anchor from their lives are not the ones who should be telling us how to think.

And then he, with synonymous parallelism, gives another synonym for the same thought, but parallel.

And so he says, don't walk in the counsel of the loosed, and don't stand in the path of sinners. Don't loiter where they go.

Because these people deviate from the path, they miss the mark and don't hang out there.

There's a standard, God's law, and they say, I don't care about this standard. Maybe later, maybe when

I'm older, maybe when I have kids. And also, don't sit in the seat of scoffers.

You can see it in your text, chapter 1, verse 1. Don't sit in the seat of the scornful. What's scornful mean?

A mocker, a derider, those that would ridicule. Take holy things and make them profane.

Take great sacred things and make them regular. They're self -sufficient.

They're prideful. I love the Proverbs. How about this one, Proverbs 21, 24. Proud, haughty, scoffer are his names, who acts with insolent pride.

Don't you tell me what to do. The people that say that, you avoid.

Spurgeon said, the seat of the scornful may be very lofty, but it is very near the gate of hell.

Maybe it's by outright ridicule and rejection, or maybe it's indifference, maybe substituting the word for psychology, for anything else.

The writer of the psalm says, avoid ungodliness and its mindset at all cost. Reject it.

Bad company corrupts good morals. Watch out. Turn from.

Go the opposite direction. So the writer of a psalm says, you know, if you'd like blessedness, if you'd like to be envied, if you'd like to have the blessings of God poured out in your life, then run from this worldly thinking.

But you just don't run from thinking, then you're going to run to something else. Just like in repentance, when you first come to faith, you turn from idols, and then you turn to serve a living

God. It's the same thing. We put off, Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4, and then we do what?

Put on. So here comes responsibility number two. If you'd like to receive the blessednesses of God, by the way, could this be just spiritual?

Could it be physical? Could it be financial? This is certainly no word faith kind of message today.

I don't know what blessings you will get from God, but God says you'll get them. So if you want your best life now,

I'd assume that you'd want to do what Psalm 1 says. One, run from worldliness.

Number two, not just shunning the worldliness, but saturate your mind with Scripture.

The people that God blesses, there's a little if -then thing, and here it is. God has blessed you in Christ, of course.

Other passages of Scripture would teach that. But this particular kind of blessing, it's if you saturate your mind with Scripture.

You satiate your mind with Scripture. How about glut your mind with Scripture? Verse two, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. Instead of having the ungodly people force their mindset into your brain, you're going to have the

God of the universe determine how you think. Correct? Don't think this way, think this way.

We could also say, how do you avoid number one? How do you avoid verse one?

Then do number two, do verse two. You say, you know,

I'm kind of tired of this whole Christianity thing. I'm having a bad day, and you tell me to read a Bible verse and call me in the morning. I remember one time years ago when

I first got here, someone said, you know what? Mike's not a very godly Bible counselor, not a very good pastoral counselor.

Well, that's true. That's why I hired Steve. But I don't know what to do, so when people come to me with problems, what do

I say? Well, Maslow said, B .F. Skinner's second volume, you know,

I read Nietzsche. I'm sorry, it's pronounced Nietzsche, and this is what I think you should do. What do you think I might do?

Well, I don't know your problem, but I know the God who knows your problem, and here's some Bible verses to think about, and why don't you read such and such?

And I was criticized for trying to tell people in the midst of their pain to read the Bible. Now, I don't mean take a

Bible verse and call me in the morning, but I do mean to delight yourself in the law of the

Lord. That's how you receive the blessednesses of God. That's exactly what the text says. It all goes back to the word.

It's simple, yet it's difficult. His delight. Now, my text says in chapter 1, verse 2 in the

New American Standard, but his delight, you could give it a little more oomph, but rather, his delight is in the

Torah of God. God's direction. You say, God, I don't know how to run my life.

I need direction, and I delight in your direction. God, I don't know how to think about the world. Tell me how to think properly in your revelation.

I don't know how to think about my sin right, the Savior rightly. I don't know how to think about the second coming properly.

God, help me through your Torah. This is not only Mosaic law.

Watch out for this particular Sabbath, and do this, that, or the other. This is God's instruction, God's teaching.

Make your delight in the teaching of God, his revelation. Not just limited to the first five books of Moses, but all of God's divine revelation as a guide for your life.

Can you imagine the God of the universe says, here's how I think? Wouldn't that be neat?

Wow, I get to know the thoughts of God? That's exactly what happens here. The opposite would be, boy, this

Bible study is cutting into my time. Kind of impinges on my style. I've got to read the

Bible again today. Some kind of restriction, and I kind of feel cooped up when

I do this, and burdened. You know, this may be good for the elders and the deacons, but it's kind of just confining to me.

I don't like it. All this study your Bible, have you read the Bible stuff? You don't know how hard my life is.

That's not what the text says. His delight. How about that? Delight. His pleasure.

You're pleased. You're happy with the truth of God, the truth found in God's Word. You can probably go back and just think about it sometime.

The first time when you realize, for instance, that God chose you in eternity past. That should freak you out.

God chose me, not based on my holiness, but that I would be holy later. Not based on what

I would do, but He would make me holy. He chose me when I was dead. He unconditionally chose me.

Wow. I feel favored when

I read the Bible. I feel good. I treasure the

Word. If you delight in someone or something, how does that manifest itself?

Did you know when King Ahasuerus in Esther chapter 2 had his little beauty contest?

Maybe it wasn't too little of a beauty contest. It was a big beauty contest. And all the girls, after all their preparation, would come stand before King Ahasuerus.

And if he liked them, if he found pleasure in them, if he, the exact same word here, delighted in them, they were asked to what?

Come back. This word is used for a man taking pleasure or finding delight in a woman he loves.

For who she is. Shechem, son of Hamor, had delight in Jacob's daughter

Dinah, Genesis 34. Now, let's just make it very easy.

Love letters. I save love letters from my wife.

I have a little thing. It says love letters. If you know the right drawer to go to in my house, you'll find them.

Only for me to know. You know what I did the other day? Kim was gone in California and I was here.

I got them out and I read every one of those things. I thought,

I can really trick a girl, can't I? She said that about me? And you know what?

I love to hear from her. Even though it was written a long time ago, I love to hear about this girl in whom my soul took great delight and still takes great delight.

One I love so much, I just Xeroxed it and sent it to Kim in California without any other note.

So we have this love letter from God. I don't care about this.

I already read it. I've got a bigger trial than trying to sit here and put my nose in the

Bible. If I got those love letters out and looked at them and said, you know what?

I'm going to burn them. Who cares? I'm going to go file them over here in the round file, whatever they call it, to put them in the dumpster.

What would you think about me if I took Kim's love letters and did that? You would say I was pig -headed, a fool.

What would you say about yourself if you took this love letter and said, you know what? This is the way to blessedness and I'm delighted in this great love letter from God and not in the mood.

Start reading those love letters from your wife and you'll get in the mood of saying, wow, I can't believe how much my wife loves me.

How about this? Psalm 119 .35, make me walk in the path of thy commandments for I delight in them.

Some people show more delight to the Red Sox and the Celtics and the business that they're in compared to the

Word of God. I know I need a reminder and I'm not scolding anybody. I'm just saying we can serve ourselves well to be reminded that the

Word of God is the vehicle for blessings in a Christian's life. Oh, how I love thy precepts,

David said. Revive me according to thy loving kindnesses. Therefore, I love thy commandments above gold.

Yes, fine gold. If you delight in someone, do you spend time with them?

Verse 2. And in his law, this blessed person who delights in the law of Yahweh, the

Torah, our instruction of God, and in his law he meditates day and night, replaying in his mind.

You know what the word meditate is? It's translated a couple of different places in the text. It's translated as growl, as a young lion growls over his prey,

Isaiah 31. It's also translated in Isaiah 38, I moan like a dove.

And translated in Isaiah 16, moaning for raisin cakes. And here's what it means.

You're thinking about something so often, it starts coming out of your mouth in little moaning murmurings.

You're thinking about it so much that somebody looks at you and you look like you're doing this. And it starts coming out.

You know, this is for all you Reformed Baptists out there. This is biblical moaning when you hear a word of God and you go,

Mmm. Mmm. It's not really a word coming out, but it's like a whisper.

You're reflecting on something so much, you're replaying on it so often, that it's just kind of there. I can't believe that God chose me in eternity past.

I can't believe that Jesus died for me. I can't believe that God is sovereign over every little detail. I can't believe all this.

And before you know it, here comes this meditation. Here comes this groaning and growling.

We have a growling ministry around here. And not just to think about, but with the purpose to obey.

Preoccupied with something, you just begin to talk about it. It's on your lips. It's in your heart.

And the text, if you look at it, he meditates. It's imperfect in the Hebrew. That just means it's habitual.

It's the equivalent of a present tense in the Greek. Over and over and over and over.

Thinking about something. It's a delight, not a burden. How often, day and night, with regularity, with consistency, with joy.

John Calvin said, God is favorable to none but those who devote themselves to the study of divine truth.

This verse talks about meditating on God's word day and night. Almost like Paul says in 1

Thessalonians 5, that you pray without ceasing. It doesn't mean you're closing your eyes, but it's just part of your life as you breathe.

It's just regular. And so to hear you just thinking about God's word, savoring every little bit of it.

Rehearsing on God's standards. Like Psalm 143, I'll meditate on all your doings.

But there's one more. There's one more human responsibility that God is pleased with, so much so that he gives blessednesses.

The first responsibility, shun worldliness. Second responsibility, saturate your mind with scripture.

And the third responsibility, it's almost like a PS or a reminder, but I'm going to call it a responsibility anyway.

Remember that Yahweh's ways are worth it. Remember that the Lord's ways are worth it.

How many people go around telling you, you know what, it's not worth it. You're going to get robbed if you're a

Christian. You're going to have a bunch of to -do lists and things you're not allowed to do. God's ways are always worth it.

Cause and effect right here. They're worth it temporarily on earth and they're worth it forever as well.

Look at verse 3, temporarily on earth. And he will be like a, what?

Tree. What do you call those big things that roll in the old westerns?

Tumbleweed. He'll be like a tumbleweed, just pushed wherever the wind goes.

All dry and arid. No, you need to know what the trees are about here. The tree and the picture of blessing.

He'll be like a tree. What kind of tree? Firmly planted by streams of water.

I sat there last week in a conference, a Bible conference. Listening to preacher after preacher after preacher in the middle of the redwood forest looking at it.

Thinking there's the stream and there's the redwood just shooting up to God with all its vibrancy.

Like a tree. Planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its seasons. Its leaf does not wither.

And in whatever he does, he prospers. Mixing those metaphors so we understand.

The picture in the Old Testament is a tree would often say to the reader, it pictures a godly man.

The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree. He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon, Psalm 92.

How about Jeremiah 17? Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water.

Vibrant, healthy, stable, secure. And literally, look at the text.

He'll be like a tree firmly. You need to write a few letters in front of that word planted. T -R -A -N -S

The text does not say planted but transplanted. It is a passive verb. Somebody has to do the planting.

You don't plant yourself. It's like you were dead in Christ because you were dead in Adam. You're dead before you were in Christ.

You're dead in Adam and God saves you and then plants you. He transplants you from one environment to another.

Dead in sin, alive in Christ. Transplanted. Taken out of a bad environment, put in a good environment.

By channels or streams of water. Abundant water. Overflowing water.

Brings forth its fruit in season. The leaf is not going to wither. And in whatsoever he does, he shall prosper.

That's worth it on earth. And then look at the options, verse 4. What are the options? What's the flip side?

The wicked are what? Not so. But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.

So we've got the tree and we've got the chaff. Like chaff. What's chaff by the way?

And is chaff used in the Old Testament very often? Here the wicked are like chaff.

The slightest breeze just makes that chaff just blow away.

Psalm 35, let them be like chaff before the wind. Job 21, like chaff which the storm carries away.

Hosea 13, like chaff which is blown away from the threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney.

What can you do with chaff? Make a little monument maybe, a little chaff monument.

Smoke chaff, mold chaff, eat chaff. What do they do with chaff?

Nothing. That's the idea. Tree, fruit, prosperous, chaff, dead, useless.

So you need to think fruitful, useless. Here's the way I set before you, the psalmist says, the way of fruitfulness and the way of uselessness.

It's amazing. The wicked, the rasa, those who aren't in a covenant relationship, they're like what

Barnes said. Let me just quote you the verse. The wicked do walk in the counsel of the ungodly, do stand in the way of sinners, do sit in the seat of the scornfield.

It is against all preaching etiquette to say, I don't feel too good today. So when you make a blunder, then you have an excuse.

But I knew it was going to be bad after getting a couple hours sleep last night and flying in from California. And I thought, you know what

I need? I need some kind of, I like to brush my teeth all the time and just have mints and everything.

So I got one of those little banaca sprays. And I'd go up to the kids in California, you know, open up, trust daddy, you know, five times.

And the kids are like, dunk. And so I thought, you know what, I'm at home and I need to get a little squirt of that.

So I thought, I'm just going to do two squirts to myself. Man, I bought some hand cleanser and a little spray thing to take to my trip to South Africa.

And it was just all alcohol, anti -detergent, whatever it is for your face. It's not supposed to go in your mouth.

So for me to say the wrong verse isn't too bad compared to that. So I'm going. They do not delight in the law of the

Lord, Barnes said. They do not meditate on His Word. And they are not like a tree planted by the waters. They are not green.

And they are not beautiful. And they are not fruitful. It's like a tumbleweed over a precipice.

The covering of the seed, the little piece of chaff, is not good for anything. It is debris.

The tree has life. The chaff does not. The moral of the story, verse 5,

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment. Why? They can't stand its test.

Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. They're not going to stand. You know what will happen to them?

I quote John the Baptist. And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire.

As for me, I baptize with water for repentance. But he who is coming after me is mightier than I.

And I am not fit to remove his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. And his winnowing fork is in his hand.

And he will thoroughly clear his threshing floor. And he will gather his wheat into the barn. And he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

This is future divine judgment for sure. God bringing every act to judgment.

And then he says in verse 6, It's not just worth it on earth.

It's worth it no matter what. Because the text says, For the Lord Yahweh, personal name of God, knows the way of the righteous.

But the way of the wicked will perish. What's that word, know, there? He knows about?

He intellectually knows? No, he knows intimately. He knows protectively.

He knows thoroughly and is going to do something about it. Personally, taking care of us eternally.

He knows us. As a husband knows a wife, so much more does

God intimately know people and He will protect them and watch over as He has chosen them and cared for them.

Just like Jesus, the risen Savior, saying, I know my sheep. And just like Jesus, the risen

Savior, who said, I never knew you to the chaff. The way of the righteous, what does the text say?

Is known by God. But the way of the wicked will perish. Spurgeon said, sooner could a fish live upon a tree than a wicked in paradise.

Heaven would be an intolerable hell to an impenitent man, even if he could be allowed to enter.

But such a privilege shall not be granted to the man who perseveres in iniquities. May God grant that we may have a name and a place in His courts above.

And so now we have the psalm. We have a psalm that says there's blessedness for the man or the woman of God.

And the blessedness comes with some condition. And the first condition is, don't think the way the world thinks.

The second condition is, delight in the way God thinks and show your love for God as you delight in His Word.

And then lastly it says, you know, it's going to be worth it. It might not seem worth it now, but it's going to be worth it.

Why do you think preachers preach? Why do you think Scripture is ordained to be read? Because God's people are to be underneath the direction and understanding of the

Word of God. And it was said to Israel, I say to you, Bethlehem Bible Church, Deuteronomy 30,

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the

Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him. For this is your life and the length of your days that you may live in the land which the

Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, to give to them. The choice is yours today, the choice is yours every day.

The most amazing illustration I've ever read about a man delighting in the law of the Lord is described by Robert Sumner in a little book called

The Wonders of the Word of God. The victim's face was badly disfigured and he lost his eyesight as well as both hands.

This man was hurt in an explosion. He was just a new Christian and one of his greatest disappointments was that he could no longer read the

Bible. Then he heard about a lady in England who read Braille with her lips. Hoping to do the same, he sent for some books of the

Bible in Braille. Much to his dismay, however, he discovered that the nerve endings in his lips had been destroyed by the explosion.

One day, as he brought one of the Braille Bibles to his lips, his tongue happened to touch a few of the raised characters and he could feel them.

Like a flash, he thought, I can read the Bible using my tongue. At the time Robert Sumner wrote the book

The Wonders of the Word of God, this man had read through the entire Bible four times.

His delight was in the law of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, we rejoice this morning that we get a picture into the psalm book, even of the

Savior. I think of Jesus singing the psalms. And Lord, you've preserved this psalm for us.

And now preserve this psalm in us, Lord. Lord, we'll need your Spirit's help.

We can't do it alone. And He, the mighty, omnipotent Holy Spirit, will have to help us remember these words and will have to help us delight in your law.

For those Christians today, Lord, who are already delighting in your law, I pray that you'd give them perseverance and joy.

For those who are struggling, I pray that today would be a day of repentance and then great joy knowing that you're faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

And Lord, for those who are here today visiting who have no delight in the law and think that it's restrictive and have no desire for Christ Jesus, I pray today that they would have you humble them so that they might bow their knee and confess