Psalm 1 Is NOT About You | Theocast

One of the most famous Psalms that most everybody reads, because it's at the beginning of the book, is

Psalm 1. And Justin and I want to help you understand the distinction between the law and the gospel from Psalm 1 and start by this statement.

Psalm 1 actually is not about you. It's not about how God blesses those who obey Him. I know that's a very bold statement, but if you keep listening, we're gonna show you, you don't show up until Psalm 2, and that's where the gospel is.

Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism.

You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy, that you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what

Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

And we have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism,

Reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Today, we're gonna have conversations, and the hope is that you're uplifted and encouraged from all of scripture.

And we come to you from the perspective of a Reformed confessional and pastoral. That's the heart of what we're doing.

And Justin, at the end of the day, we're hoping to bring all the clutter off the gospel, bring

Christ to the center, and then remind us what the real purpose of the kingdom is, which is not social transformation, but gospel proclamation.

There we go. There was a new intro. Never done that one before. True. Your host today -

It is an election year, too, man. There you go. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

One of, yes. And I'm John Moffitt. I'm the janitor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

So, it's true. I do clean the bathrooms. I do clean the bathrooms at the office.

All right, Justin. This is episode two. We're already wound up and encouraged and maybe a little tired from talking.

And what you mean is our second episode today. Yeah. Yeah. So, a couple of announcements for you if you're new to Theocast.

One, GRN's coming up maybe a few weeks away. And it is, so that's the

Grace Reformed Network. It's a network that Justin and I are a part of. There are 10 churches in this and it's growing.

So, if you want to learn more about it, you can go to gracereformednetwork .org or go to theocast .org. There's a link there.

But every year, we are going to be having our General Assembly where we gather together to encourage one another, talk about theology, and then add new churches to our network.

This year, it's gonna be July 30th and 31st is our conference that happens before the

General Assembly. And Justin and I will be speaking there along with several other pastors. We're gonna be having panels.

Each night, we're gonna have a service where I'll be preaching and Justin will be preaching. It is a small, intimate, wonderful little conference.

It's gonna be held in Nashville. And last year, it was our first one. And so, this will be our second one, which will be our first annual.

And we're pretty excited about it and we'd love for you to come. It's like $20. It's ridiculously cheap, just a suggested donation.

So, you can go to theocast .org right there in the homepage. Register for that and we'd love to see you there.

The other thing is, Justin, we have a growing community. I mean, about this time, we're probably over 1 ,500 people in the app.

And it's wonderful in all of our episodes, Justin and I's sermons, the lecture classes, the classes that you and I have been teaching throughout the year are on there.

And then, just an amazing community. People ask questions and have their interaction and dialogue immediately.

It is nothing like social media or Facebook. Really not allowed there to be fighting.

It's just a really safe place for encouragement. And so, I would encourage you to come. It's free if you wanna be a part of the community.

And if you wanna support what we're doing, there's options for that as well. Justin, last week, we talked about John 3, 16 and how often we can talk about the -

Yeah, sorry, John 3, 1 -15. We talk about the gospel and yet ever never get to the gospel.

And today, we wanted to pick another passage that is a beautiful passage, one that all of us love.

But have we possibly missed the person that it's speaking of in the passage?

Are we talking about the wrong person? So, Justin, let's go talk about Psalm 1 and 2, my friend. Let's take it over.

Psalm 1 and 2, it's the beginning of the Psalter. And as one pretty popular commentary states, that Psalm 1 and 2 functions like the doorkeeper of all of the

Psalms. And that's interesting. I don't disagree. I mean, I think Psalm 1 and 2 does set the table for the entire

Psalter. It's intentionally there in the beginning. And many who are listening might realize this. Psalm 1 and 2 originally were a unit.

So, they're broken apart in our modern English translations. But really, in the original, even

New Testament manuscripts, when Psalm 2 is quoted, it's referred to as the first Psalm. So, this was all of a piece.

And that's gonna matter somewhat for how we understand it. And we'll get to that in just a minute. The interesting thing is, in thinking about Psalm 1 and 2 as a doorkeeper for the

Psalter, the way people read it really sets us up for discouragement and disaster before the train even leaves the station, if you think about it.

Because the way that Psalm 1 begins is with these well -known words. "'Blessed is the man who walks not "'in the counsel of the wicked, "'nor stands in the way of sinners, "'nor sits in the seat of scoffers, "'but his delight is in the law of the

Lord. "'And on his law he meditates day and night.'" Now, we could nerd out a little bit and talk about the tenses of the verbs and all these kinds of things.

But what this is stating is that, not just in a general sense, but in an ongoing all -or -nothing kind of way, "'Blessed is the man who never walks "'in the counsel of the wicked, "'who never stands in the way of sinners, "'who never sits in the seat of scoffers, "'who always delights in the law of the

Lord, "'and lives in light of it.'" That meditation word right there, a lot of times when we hear the word meditate, we think personal devotions.

That's not what it's about. It's like you literally live your entire life responding and acting in every case in accord with the word of God.

Like that's who the blessed man is. Okay, so my first observation out of the gate, we're just kind of off and running here.

If Psalm 1 and 2 is the doorkeeper of the Psalter, how does anybody get past the threshold of the first verse?

Right. If we are saying that here, because here's the understanding.

Psalm 1 posits to us, it just puts this beautiful contrast, right, of righteousness and wickedness.

Here's what righteousness looks like, here's what wickedness looks like, and we need to be righteous. If that's the framework through which we read this, and this is the doorkeeper of the

Psalter, how does any person get past the first verse, let alone the verses that follow it? And I think that's a dead giveaway,

John, that we are reading the Psalms. I mean, we do this with all scripture, but we're reading the Psalms through the lenses of what we need to do.

We're reading the Psalms through the lenses of works righteousness and law -keeping as a means of attaining these things, rather than rightly reading the

Psalms through the lens of God's anointed one, Jesus Christ, who is our

Savior. And so that's gonna be the fun thing to do today, is to help our listeners think about this very well -known section of scripture, and maybe look at it in a way that's different than they've ever looked at it before.

And I joke about it, I said this at the end last week, but some people may have tuned it out. I remember when

I preached this a few years ago, I said, you know, in the words of the old song, you probably think this

Psalm is about you, and it's not. It's actually about somebody else, like you alluded to. Maybe we're thinking this is about the wrong person.

And in short, I mean, laying our cards out on the table, the blessed man of Psalm 1 is Jesus. It's not us.

And so we're gonna unpack that a little bit. Well, even the word blessed, Justin, is confused for people. It means to be in or under the favor of.

Exactly, favored. In or under the favor of. So favored by God is the man who does this.

This is a well -known commentary. I'm just gonna read this to you, because I just thought it was funny. This popped up in my

Bible. We were laughing ahead of time, because Justin uses an actual hardbound, because he's godly, and I'm just a child, so I use a computer.

Or I'm just a Luddite, I'm a dinosaur. I use a hard copy of the scriptures, yeah. Yeah, I have one that sits on my desk, but anyways.

It says, the opening phrase of the Psalms, blessed is the man, is an appropriate introduction to the book of Psalms. The Psalms encourages individuals, as well as the community of God's people, to live for God's glory.

That's the introduction. And this is the expositor's Bible commentary. So, Justin, this is what's hard.

If someone were to sit down, grab a very popular commentary, conservative, Ben Gimarin is very conservative, and they read this, they can immediately, and this is what's so hard,

Justin. The number one question you and I always get is what is a law gospel commentary that I can buy in the

Bible? And that's just hard. There aren't a lot of options. Not to say that they're not out there, but it's not like here is the one book that will give you the proper commentary on your

Bible. I will say, while we're here, Augustine on this is really good.

Ironside on this is really good. I mean, Augustine says right out of the gate, regarding the first three verses, he says, this is to be understood of our

Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord, man. Come on, man. Well, Luther, Luther does the same thing.

Yeah, Luther says that it's speaking of Christ literally. That's what he says. It's speaking of Christ literally.

Right, so we are not saying anything new here in seeing that Jesus is the blessed man of Psalm 1.

And I'll just go, again, we're just saying it all. I'm just saying it now. Isn't it marvelous in seeing how Psalm 1 and 2 hang together?

Psalm 1 begins with blessed is the man who, and then Psalm 2 reveals to us precisely who it is.

It's the Lord's anointing. Right, and yeah, so you're exactly right.

I mean, I could talk for a long time about how discouraging contemporary commentaries are. In particular,

I can remember, I mean, I think I even had this as a part of my introduction to the sermon on Psalm 1 and 2 I preached back in 2021, like how discouraging it is to pick up a modern commentary and read it because it is all conservative, well -intentioned, like you said, but it's all seen through the lenses of us and how we live and righteousness, wickedness.

We need to choose the way of righteousness and don't hear what we're not saying. At a secondary level, sure, we can talk about Jesus who is our

Savior and then we can talk about Jesus who was perfect and we do, by God's grace, seek to emulate

Him. I mean, why would we not? But that is not the message of this text.

Can I put it to you this way, Justin? Yeah. If my daughter wanted to make chocolate chip cookies and she comes to me with a cookbook and in the cookbook is how to cook an apple pie, but she's gonna try and use that recipe,

I'm like, that's not what that's for. And there are passages in the Bible that are very clear on how the

Christian should live. Of course. So we just have to be careful that if you come to me and say,

John, how should I live? Well, then I'm gonna go to some parts of the New Testament and say, here are very clear. Here's the third use of the law.

Well, you have God's moral law and all those things. That's right. And I mean, even from this text, it's fine to say like, yeah, we shouldn't walk in the way of sinners and sit in the seat of scoffers and it's good to meditate on God's law and live.

We can say that. There's definitely law in this passage and it's definitely, it's good,

I love it. It's beautiful because it teaches me what Jesus actually is. But the point of it is telling us this is what a blessed man is.

Exactly. And it's not relative. He didn't say if they relatively do not walk in the counsel of the wicked.

So I'm sorry, we're getting ahead of ourselves. No, I already said that. You're exactly right. This is, you never do. This is the question of Psalm 15 and other

Psalms. Like who can ascend the hill of the Lord? It's somebody who basically has loved

God with all his heart and has never done wrong to his neighbor, right? I mean, that's it. And there's one. And he's written of in Psalm 24, like Jesus' ascension, you know, as he's making his way to heaven, like in a cloud of glory and the angels are greeting him, like open up the doors, you know, oh, ancient gates.

I mean, this is that the King of glory may come in. He's the only one, man, who can ascend the hill of the

Lord. Who is the King of glory? Bro, it's, but anyway. Like, so let's just continuing to make our way through the passage a little bit here.

I mean, we're not gonna look at every word and every verse, of course. But we've begun with those first two verses, like blessed is the man who is this.

And then there's a beautiful analogy that he's like a tree, the blessed man planted by streams of water, you know, that yields fruit in its season.

Its leaf doesn't wither. In all that he does, he prospers, right? Well, I mean, Jesus is absolutely that.

I mean, to consider like he even calls himself the living vine, like in John 15, for example, and everybody who's attached to him.

I mean, we will have life and we will bear fruit in him, right? And so he always accomplishes what he means to accomplish.

And so this same analogy is used in the prophet Jeremiah about a godly person, you know, that you're like a tree planted by a stream of water.

That's Jeremiah 17, eight. But you know what the truth is about us, John? Jeremiah 17, nine.

The heart is, right, desperately sick and wicked and who can understand it, right?

So it's like, I don't know that this is a statement about us that we are like just oaks of righteousness planted by streams of water.

It's clearly talking about the blessed man who is the Messiah, right? The wicked are not so, right?

So here's a contrast. Like you wanna talk seed of the woman, seed of the serpent kind of stuff, right?

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the

Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish. How will we stand in the judgment? We're not gonna stand in our own righteousness.

We're gonna stand in the righteousness of the blessed man who is Jesus of Nazareth, right?

Man, it's good. You have other thoughts on the first, that's Psalm one. Yeah, no, we can keep going.

Justin, I think what's so hard is that I'm gonna take a little bit of a pivot before we continue because I wanna release the valve.

I wanna release the valve a little bit of some people who are listening to this and they're like, guys, you are not preaching the authorial intent of the text.

You're going outside of authorial intent of the text, right? Because when the writer wrote this Psalm, he did not say

Jesus. He did not say the angel of the Lord. He didn't say the Messiah. He didn't say the seed of Eve. He didn't save any of those things.

You are projecting that upon the text. So Justin, if I were to say that, how do you respond?

I mean, two things. I mean, first, I think Psalm one and two taken as a unit, that falls flat on its face because the

Messiah comes up immediately in Psalm two. But then the other thing that I would say high level is that original authorial intent is wonderful.

We trust that the Psalmist had a true understanding of what he was writing, but we do not trust that he had an exhaustive one.

And we concern ourselves with original authorial intent at a human level, yes, but we concern ourselves even more with the divine author's intent.

And then we take all of biblical revelation into consideration. And so then we think about, all right, how did

Jesus and the apostles understand the Psalter? How did Jesus and the apostles understand this first Psalm, Psalm one and two taken as a unit?

And what we call Psalm two is cited all over the New Testament. And it's always interpreted in light of the

Christ. It's always interpreted in light of Jesus. And so that's key for us in understanding this whole unit.

So to say that there's no Messiah in Psalm one is insane when Psalm two was a part of Psalm one originally and Psalm two is all about the

Messiah. So it's very clear that this, we're gonna get, and I'm gonna tie verse one of Psalm one to verse 12 of Psalm two when we conclude.

And I think you'll see how it's such a beautiful poetic bookend. Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

Theocast Community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there.

Past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. I'm gonna jump in here and then let you go to chapter two for us.

What is hard, Justin, is actually learning how to read the text. What's funny is that we're being accused of not taking it literal.

Let's go back just for a second and take it literal. If you read Psalm one, you should close your

Bible. Let's say you wake up in the morning and I'm like, all right, I want to hear from the word of the Lord. And you read Psalm one and you don't see

Jesus, you're gonna do two things. You're gonna either relativize it, which you've already said, or you're gonna walk away utterly crushed.

It's like, I'll never, I'll never be blessed of God because I can't do that. Like that's,

I can't even do it while I'm sitting here because I continue, like delight in his law day and night.

Huh, man, I'd like to go a day, forget the night. You know, I can't do that.

And so if you're not, if you're not utterly crushed by Psalm one, you are relativizing it.

You are making it achievable. And that's not the design. The design is to show you what a blessed man is.

A blessed man is perfect in all areas of life. He's perfect in all areas of life.

That, if I could, Justin, is it fair to summarize that Psalm one is the perfect, righteous, obedient person?

Yes, that's what it is. It's the perfect, righteous, obedient person. Exactly, and to preach it any other way is to gut the text of its wonder, of its power, of its glory, of its holiness.

So you have no promise of being blessed unless you're the perfect, righteous, obedient person.

That's right, so then continuing right on, again, in the original, this would have been a part of all of a unit, it's all of a piece.

So we've just said the way of the wicked will perish. And then immediately, why do the nations, why do the peoples rage, right?

And why do they plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the

Lord and against his anointed, his Christ. They're rebelling, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us, right?

So that's the rebellion of fallen man, raging against the

Lord and against his Christ. We don't want him. Against the very thing that Psalm one just talked about.

That's the opposite of Psalm one. Exactly, exactly, we don't want him. We don't want his rule. We don't want his authority.

We don't want anything pertaining to him, right? That's the way of the wicked. I mean, the way of the wicked is where we just were at the end of Psalm one.

And then the Psalmist goes, this is what the peoples of the world do. This is what mankind does.

We rebel against God. Then we get a glimpse into the Lord's posture. So like on the one hand, like this doesn't even register.

The Lord kind of scoffs at the way that the nations rage and plot against him, holds them in derision.

On the other hand, he's long suffering and he's patient, right, we know that that's true. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury.

And what does he say? As for me, I've got my king, right? Not worried about this.

As for me, I've got my king and I've set him on Zion, my holy hill in the heavenly Jerusalem. Who is he?

Verse seven, I'll tell of the decree. This is the Christ speaking right here. The Lord said to me, you are my son and today

I have begotten you, right? And ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.

This is the Lord speaking to the anointed. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

There's so much that we could say here. But this, Psalm 2 7, you know, this language is repeated effectively in Christ's baptism and transfiguration for sure.

But the way that Paul, for example, will use this in Acts 13. He cites

Psalm 2 7 pertaining to Jesus's resurrection. That's right. Right, and the nations will be the inheritance of the

Christ, right? That's verse eight. This is important, brief interjection here. If we don't have some covenantal lenses when we read

Psalm 1 and 2, we're gonna miss some things. In particular, the lens of the Davidic covenant, right?

How there is going to be a Davidic king who will represent the people who will accomplish everything that they need.

That's really important. That's who the Lord's anointed will be. He's gonna accomplish righteousness, gonna keep the law for them, represent them, all those things.

And then we need to see also the eternal covenant of redemption that was made between the

Father and the Son before time and space were a thing, where the Father, this is the arrangement.

Like, Son, you are going to save a people through the work that you will do, and your reward for the work that you do will be those people.

Bodily resurrected to live with you in a new heavens and a new earth forevermore. And so you, anyway, go ahead.

Well, just jump in. The writer of Hebrews is trying to defend the

Messiahship of Christ, and writes in Hebrews 5 .5, so also

Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, and then guess what he quotes?

You are my son, today I have begotten you. So he quotes Psalm 2. So if you're wondering why it is that we would so dogmatically say this is about Christ, it's because, well, we've got probably three or even maybe four examples, because he quotes it again in Hebrews 1 .5.

So you've got Acts 13 .33, Hebrews 1 .5, Hebrews 5 .5, where they keep saying, they're quoting

Psalm 2, which Psalm 1 and 2 is a package, and they're saying this is of Christ, this is of Christ. So we can have this encouraging conversation and really a very confident conversation, because the commentators on the

Old Testament, which is the authors of the New, made that application for us. And that's why the

Reformers are like, this is of Christ. Please be encouraged and read this, that Christ is the blessed man who becomes the blessed man on our behalf.

Now, so if we want to talk about imperatives in the passage, we're getting to them. So now the

Messiah, we know he's gonna inherit his people. When it comes to those who are not his, verse nine, you'll break them with a rod of iron.

I mean, this is pointing to all kinds of things in the book of Revelation, for example. It is also a reference back to Genesis 49 about how the scepter will never leave the house of Judah, for example, too.

But we can move forward, beginning in verse 10. Now therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth.

Here's an imperative, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

That sounds like Revelation six, where it's the wrath of the lamb that people are terrified of.

They're asking the mountains and the rocks to fall on them in Revelation six. So there's some warning and some serious words.

I mean, you wanna talk about a word of law, like a good word of law to preach? It's that here's the standard,

Psalm one, perfection, man. Never walking in the counsel of the wicked, never standing in the way of sinners, never sitting in the seat of scoffers, always delighting in God's law and meditating on it day and night.

That's what's required of you. And the reality is, as fallen human beings, we've rebelled against God.

But here's what you should do. Understand God's holiness and understand God's standard, that you haven't met it, and understand that because of that,

God's judgment is coming. And you've committed cosmic treason. And in light of your treachery, you will face condemnation.

So here's what you need to do. Even if, even if, with all your strength, you have tried to become the best, the blessed man.

If you did not do it perfectly, you are still in rebellion against God. Even if you've tried your best.

That's right. And so here's the best part of this whole thing. The last line. The last line.

So kiss the son. So this is verse 12. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

And then this, blessed are all who take refuge in him. Come on, can we stop and have an applause?

So here's the deal. How does, remember, all of the units, Psalm one and two. How does Psalm one begin?

Blessed is the man. How does it end? Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Blessed is the man. Here's the righteous one. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

That's gospel there, friends. That is like, that's rock of ages cleft for me. That image of refuge is beautiful.

You know, I'm preaching in Exodus right now and just got done preaching the plagues. And man, in the seventh plague with the hail, you know, there's the warning, there's

God's law, right, that goes out. Like this is what's gonna happen and any man or beast that's in the field is gonna die. And some of the servants of Pharaoh even heed that warning and take shelter, right?

And you're sheltered from the wrath and from the judgment and from death, right? Like that image of taking refuge.

You preach the law and then we exhort sinners. We herald Jesus and say, hide yourself in him, right?

Rock of ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee. Come on. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure, right?

Save from wrath and make me pure. I mean, this is the good news. And so when we preach Psalm 1 and 2, we preach law in good ways, but we preach

Jesus as the blessed man. We preach the reality of our sin and judgment. And then we herald it from the rooftops.

Blessed are everyone who take refuge in him. And when you hide yourself in Jesus, everything that's true of him is true of you.

He is like an oak of righteousness planted beside a stream of water. He is the one who's never done any of these bad things and always meditates on the law of the

Lord and delights in it day and night. And in him, the same is true of you as for us, the way the Lord views you, man.

That is the doorkeeper of the Psalms. And we should preach it that way rather than, rather than, hey, here's righteousness, here's wickedness, choose righteousness.

That's not the point. Justin, it's such a beautiful example of what real law gospel looks like.

When you read Psalm 1, you should read it with like, oh, blessed is this man. All right, here we go.

And by the third verse, you should just be, oh, dear God, I am damned.

Because that's what he says. God's angry wrath is upon anyone who was not the blessed man.

Well, then what am I to do? Blessed is everyone who takes refuge in that blessed man.

What does that mean to take refuge, Justin? It means that you find your safety and your security in what that man has done.

This is so important. It's what he's done. And Justin, what is he talking about here? Going back to Pat's book,

Abram Drath's book on the act of obedience of Christ. He is talking about you can rest and find security from God's wrath and find his favor and love upon you because a blessed man means that he is favorable, he's loved, he's cared for.

But why? Because we have found the refuge in the blessed man. And this is how you set captives free.

This is how you wake up in the morning and say, oh, I cannot wait to glorify the king and show everyone.

I wanna show everyone in the world the blessed man because they too can find refuge in him.

I mean, that's how we respond to that song. But many people, Justin, instead they walk away as I have and you have for many years.

We walk away so discouraged. Or we lower it and then judge people for not reaching our new little law of what a blessed man is of, and here's all the list of things that they should be doing.

And hopefully the listener's been encouraged by this, but that phrase, if you wanna get something tattooed on your wall or your arm, blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Boom. What a verse. Beloved of the Lord, you have his favor. You are in Christ Jesus and nothing is changing.

That's not going away. That is, you were talking and I was even just thinking about my own life and waking up each morning and all the little things you do.

You walk in the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you're getting ready for the day. It's like, man, what a perspective to have that I am blessed of God because I am hidden in Christ and the favor of the

Lord is not going anywhere. Really, really powerful. Let me relay this,

John. This was an anecdote that I found. So Harry Ironside, a Bible teacher, he wrote some stuff on Psalm 1 and 2 and I think this anecdote is really powerful.

And so it's not original to me, but I'm gonna try to do it some justice here and I trust this might encourage the listener.

So Harry Ironside tells a story about a visit to Palestine by another man named

Joseph Flax. So Joseph Flax makes a visit to Palestine and Ironside tells the story.

So Flax had the opportunity to address a group of Jews and Muslims and he discussed with them

Psalm 1. What a text, right? You're talking to Jews and Muslims about Psalm 1.

So he reads it and he asks the question, who is this blessed man of whom the psalmist speaks?

This man never walked in the council of the wicked or stood in the way of sinners or sat in the seat of mockers. He was an absolutely sinless man and nobody speaks a word.

So Flax asks, was he our great father Abraham? And an older man answers back, no, it can't be

Abraham. He denied his wife and told a lie about her. So Flax then asked, well, how about the lawgiver

Moses? Maybe it's about him. Someone else speaks up, no, it can't be Moses either.

He killed a man and he lost his temper at the waters of Meribah. So then Flax suggests David, maybe it's

David. And it wasn't David. And then Ironside said there was silence for probably minutes.

Nobody's got anything. And then an elderly Jewish man stood and said, my brothers,

I have a little book here. It's called the New Testament. I've been reading it.

And if I could believe this book, if I could be sure that it is true, I would say that the man of the first Psalm was

Jesus of Nazareth. And it's like, you're doggone right. It is

Jesus of Nazareth. Like what a word. I mean, it's a group of Jews and Muslims and the

Bible teacher is rightly positive. Who is the blessed man? Abraham? No. Moses? No.

Is David? No. And then it's crickets. We don't have anything. And then a

Jewish man who's been reading the New Testament says, you know, I've been reading this little book. And if I could believe that it's true, I would say that Jesus is the blessed man of Psalm 1.

Exactly right. And so may we never read Psalm 1 and 2 in any other way than to see that Jesus is the blessed man in whom we have taken refuge and therefore we have the favor of God.

Praise the Lord, man. What a wonderful word. This is

Psalm 34, six. This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers him. Oh, taste and see that the

Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Amen. I mean, this is the

Psalm talking about our despair and who it is, the angel of the

Lord. That's Jesus, by the way. That's the son of God. The angel of the Lord encamps us and who should fear.

Amen. Right, it's like the gospel is all throughout the Psalms. Jesus is all throughout the

Psalms. And so if we can learn to read it this way, it really does help us understanding if it's required, if the

Psalm is requiring perfection and obedience, you need to ask yourself, where do

I find the relief from this? Because no one can live up to that standard. We aren't saying, we don't pursue righteousness.

There's nothing in the Psalms about that, that we just give up. But when it comes to God's obligation of what he demands, you should rightly find yourself looking for something other than yourself.

And that's what the point of Psalm 1 and 2 is. So hopefully, as you can see, Psalm 1 is not about you.

It's about Jesus. And Psalm 2 is about you. Why? Because we are the blessed ones in Psalm 2 because we've taken refuge in Jesus.

Amen. So any other thoughts, Justin? No, I'm good, brother. I'm encouraged by the conversation. I hope the listener has been helped by it.

Kind of a short and sweet one today. And I could start reading a bunch of other Psalms, but we might save that for another time.

Amen. Well, hopefully this was encouraging to you. Justin and I thoroughly are thankful to be a part of this ministry.

And those of you who have donated and given to it, you are continuing to allow thousands around the world.

We just got an email from YouTube that says that over 1 .7 million people, or 1 .7

million downloads of people have watched our videos. So that's all because of you guys of allowing us to talk about the gospel.

And so thank you. I know sometimes we say that, but it is literally true. Justin and I do not edit these.

We don't do anything with these. We have a team that does that, and that's what allows us to be full -time pastors and then do this podcast once every other week.

And so thank you for allowing us to do that. We're so thankful it encourages you. I can promise you it encourages

Justin and I. All right, my friend, or just as a reminder, if you skip the intro,

GRN, Graceful Network Conference is coming up July 30th, 31st, $20 suggested donation.

We'd love to see you there. We'll see you next week. Hey everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you.

And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it. But we also need your support.

And it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people. So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.