Psalm 1: (The Blessed Life)

2 views

May 16, 2020

What does it mean to have "The Blessed Life"? Who defines it? How does someone get it? Or better yet, once you have it how do you keep it and enjoy it forever? Join us for our very first message in the book of Psalms where we examine the life of blessing!

00:01: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Shepherd's Church podcast. My name is Kendall, and I'm so blessed to be bringing you this sermon and this new series on the
00:10: Psalms that we are beginning today. Now, we're essentially going to be looking at trying to understand all of life through the lens of Christ.
00:19: And specifically, we're going to be looking at how we are to live as the people of God.
00:26: How do we live as men and women who are fundamentally different from this world? How do we navigate our complex emotions or difficult situations, the stress and anxiety of life?
00:39: How do we handle the attacks that come from the enemy or pandemics and plagues and disappointments and joy?
00:45: How do we, as men and women who have been thoroughly blessed by God, live out the blessed life?
00:56: And trust me, when I use this phrase, blessed life, I'm not talking about what the world would consider the blessed life.
01:02: I'm not talking about what society would call blessed. I'm talking about what God calls blessed, which is learning how to live like Jesus in every avenue, every sphere, every sector of our lives.
01:17: It's learning how to submit every emotion, every situation and struggle, every joy under his lordship, which is why we're examining a book like the
01:28: Psalms, because the Psalms is kind of this unique book that speaks openly and honestly about every feeling situation, every up and down.
01:38: There's times where the book of Psalms looks like it's at the highest heights and then there's times where it explores and dives into the lowest lows.
01:49: You can observe men like David and Asaph and others who, at times, it seems like they're ready to leap out of their skin with joy and then at other moments, they're in the darkest moments of despair.
02:04: You see, Psalms makes no pretension that life is always happy, but what it does do is it makes the argument that no matter what is going on in your life, no matter what is happening, you can be blessed.
02:24: You can live the blessed life. No matter if you're up or down, hot or cold, no matter if your life is at peace or if it's in the throes of chaos, no matter what situation that you are in, the
02:35: Psalms not only speaks to you, but it can also speak for you as you wrestle with this life and as you learn to live out the blessings that God has for you, even while you live in a world that is thoroughly filled with curse.
02:54: So with that, I want us to start this series on the Psalms where Psalms begins, and that's in Psalm 1.
03:02: So let's read Psalm 1 together and then let's examine what it actually has to say for our life.
03:11: This is what the psalmist says. 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, but his delight is in the law of the
03:28: Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree that is firmly planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaves do not wither, and in whatever he does he prospers.
03:45: The wicked are not so, for they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
03:51: Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor the sinners in the assembly the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
04:03: This is the word of the Lord. Now before we jump into Psalm 1,
04:10: I just want to make a very quick note about the Psalms in general. This Psalm is the first Psalm, and that's intentional.
04:17: Just like a preface or an introduction to a book is going to try to give you some clue or some understanding about what the book is going to be about that you are reading,
04:27: Psalm 1 gives us a wonderful insight into the meaning and the purpose of the entire book.
04:34: You see, it's argued that this Psalm, Psalm 1, was composed just a little bit later after all of the other
04:42: Psalms were collected, and in that way it could be a sort of a theological introduction to the book and a summary of everything that's going to follow.
04:54: So today, I want us to keep that in mind as we look at Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is going to actually impact what we learn about every single other
05:04: Psalm in this series, and it's going to be a sort of unifying theme that is going to help us understand the entire book.
05:13: So let us dive in and let's examine this particular Psalm together, but even more so with a more meta -focus.
05:22: This is going to be the way that we examine the entire book together. The writer of Psalms begins it this way.
05:30: He says, blessed is the man or woman here. Blessed is the person. And that's going to answer the question that he is trying to answer.
05:40: What is the blessed life? What does it mean to live a life that is filled with blessings? What does it mean to actually be blessed?
05:46: And he's going to introduce that topic to us right away. And he starts by actually defining it from the negative.
05:56: He doesn't begin with the positive. He begins with the negative. He says, 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.
06:06: The very first trait of a godly man or woman and the first evidence that you are living a blessed life is this trinity of negative examples that he gives right here.
06:19: It's that you don't hold counsel with the wicked. You don't have friends who advise you towards godliness and you don't follow the advice of people who don't have the spirit of God.
06:29: See the very first negative example that he gives is that you do not walk in the counsel of the wicked.
06:37: Now, you may say to yourself, but what about ministry to them? We're to be the salt and the light to this world.
06:44: Yes, we are. We are to share the words of life with the wicked. That is true.
06:51: We are to point them to the gospel and pray for their repentance. We are to love on them even more fiercely than we love ourselves and care for them just as Jesus has cared for us and we're to serve them with the same kind of passion that fueled him to kneel down and wash his disciples' feet.
07:05: Yes and amen to that, but we're not called to walk in their counsel.
07:12: Like a wise king who surrounds himself with good and faithful advisors, you and I as children of God may be called to serve lots of people and minister to lots of people, but those who have our ear and those who pour into our lives must be godly.
07:30: As Christians, we have the responsibility to surround ourselves with men and women who will point us towards righteousness and godliness and honor and character and purity.
07:39: Look we have no need of friendships and counselors who are going to celebrate sin in our life.
07:45: And while we may justify this and argue that we're to love all people, which is true, we're to be missional and we're to share
07:51: Christ, it's very often that when we share the company of the wicked, when we allow the wicked to speak into our life and give them a voice in our life, then they're the ones who are actually going to lead us further away from Christ than we're actually leading them towards him.
08:07: To this end, I would just simply ask the question, who are you allowing in your life? Who are you giving voice to?
08:16: Who are you allowing to speak into you? Because that's going to tell you a great deal about whether you're experiencing the fullness of God's blessing or walking in the path of sinners, which is the second negative aspect.
08:29: Notice what the psalmist does. He says, do not walk in the counsel of the wicked.
08:35: And then he says, do not stand in the path of sinners. And then eventually he'll say, do not sit in the seat of scoffers.
08:42: What we notice here is that there's this negative downward spiral in the path of wickedness.
08:48: At first you're walking and you're healthy. Next you're only able to stand. Finally, you have to sit down because you're so broken.
08:58: The psalmist is literally saying that it is a blessing not to walk in the counsel of the wicked so that you will never stand in the pathway of sinners.
09:15: He's saying that is a blessing not to go down those well -worn paths of worldliness, not to engage in what the sinner finds amusing.
09:26: He's saying that you will be blessed and you will be happy in this life and you will have the things that the
09:31: Lord promises you and you will experience all of the glorious fullness that the Lord has for you if you avoid those enticing pathways of sin.
09:46: Even though the narrow way of godliness looks cumbersome to the traveler, it looks tiring to the pilgrim who has already traveled a very long way.
09:57: It looks difficult for the sojourner who is in route to the heavenly kingdom.
10:02: It is the way of everlasting peace and blessing to everyone who walk upon it.
10:08: The New Testament says that broad is the way of sin. Narrow is the way of righteousness.
10:18: Narrow is the gate. Few will enter it. And let's just be honest, the broad way of sin pulls with a sort of demonic magnetism.
10:29: It looks like a beautiful path, promises all kinds of pleasures and fulfillment and gain and it's all this sort of awful illusion from the enemy himself.
10:39: It's like a wasteland and a desert tempting you further in and further in when the oasis that you've been chasing after never actually materializes.
10:50: To live the blessed life as a people who have been blessed by God, we must remember who we are to God.
10:57: We must remember that we were bought and paid for by Jesus Christ and dwelled by the Holy Spirit to live redeemed and holy lives.
11:06: The vanity of this world and the sins of this world are not food for us. They're only poisons that weaken us and cause us to be spiritually sick and unhealthy.
11:17: They're like a band of robbers that steal us away from the greatest joys that we can have through godly living.
11:25: See we must surround ourselves as Christians with counselors in our life who will aim us in the direction of Christ.
11:33: And we must be on guard not to walk down into the paths of sinners and stand with them in those paths.
11:41: And thirdly, we must never sit down into the seat of scoffers. Notice again how the writer introduces this topic through three negatives that communicate this downward trajectory.
11:54: We are walking in counsel, that takes us to where we're standing in sin, and then before long we're seated in scoffing.
12:06: At first the psalmist says we'll entertain their counsel, soon we're participating in their sin, and when it's all over you and I would be indistinguishable from the world.
12:14: He essentially tells us that if we go down these roads, then we will end up just like them.
12:20: When they mock God, we'll mock God. When they laugh at His grace, we'll laugh at His grace.
12:26: If we go down those awful, nasty paths, then soon we will be just like them.
12:33: Grace will be something that is a foreign and an unnatural thing to us, and if we listen to their counsel long enough and we find pleasure in their sin hard enough, then scoffing, mocking, sneering, and jeering will be as natural to us as breathing.
12:47: You see, the point of living the blessed life as a child of God is not allowing yourself to go there.
12:53: It's negative. There's negative things in our life that we must weed out of our life, and we must not allow ourselves to go there.
13:00: I would even argue that if you just take care of just the first one of these negative commands, then all of the others will never grab hold in your life.
13:07: If you would just establish a pattern of wise, godly brothers and sisters in your life and at all times who know you well enough not to be impressed with you and who love you enough to confront you and who have enough tender, merciful passion for you not to continually allow you to return to your own sinful vomit, but they would argue with you and they would point you to Christ and that they would pull you out of the pathway of sinners so that you don't downward spiral into the pit of scoffers.
13:41: To be blessed and to experience the full bounty of the Lord on this side of heaven means that we will need to lay aside many of the things that the world loves so that we can have what the world cannot have.
13:55: And I think that begins with surrounding ourself with a community of people who love us enough to look out for us.
14:04: And hear me correctly here, even though we as Christians are going to have to give up a lot of things in this life, there's negative things that we're going to have to lay aside in order to walk with Christ.
14:18: Do not fear. You're not going to be deprived because if you are in Jesus, you are always going to be well supplied.
14:30: See, we started off the psalm by talking about three negatives. Don't walk in the counsel of the wicked.
14:36: Don't stand in the pathway of sinners. Don't sit down in the seat of scoffers.
14:43: Those are all things that you can't do, but I'm arguing that you are going to be infinitely well supplied because there's three positive things that the psalmist is going to tell us that we must do.
14:56: And those three positive things are going to leave us full and never empty, well supplied, experiencing the bounty of God.
15:06: So what are those three positive things now that the psalmist tells us that we must do if we want to have the blessed life?
15:13: He says, contrary to the wicked, his delight is going to be in the law of the
15:20: Lord. And in his law, he's going to meditate day and night.
15:25: And he will be like a tree that is firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.
15:35: And whatever he does, he prospers. I love so much here that the psalmist, what he does is he completely eliminates moralism and legalism right off from under his feet because there's this temptation to believe that if you, if you will just abstain from sin, if you will just flee from unrighteousness, then you will have
16:06: God. That if you just do all the right things by not doing all of the wrong things, then you can have
16:13: God. But those people who do that do not delight in the law of the Lord. They don't sit spellbound over their
16:20: Bible, staring into the word, salivating over its truth, drinking up the pages of scripture, bound up in its blessing and meditate on it day and night.
16:29: You see, if the psalmist left it with just the three negative commands, then we would have had every idea justifiably so that the way to be blessed is just by avoiding wickedness.
16:43: But every legalist does that. Every moralist does that. Every Buddhist does that.
16:51: Many atheists are doing that. You see, right at the heart of legalism and moralism and do -goodism is not joy and not delight.
17:01: It's not the positive aspects that the psalmist is saying. It's this agonizing and destructive pride that if I could just be good enough, then
17:10: God is going to love me. And if I could just impress him with better behavior, then he's going to forgive me. And let me just tell you that that sort of motivation is crushing.
17:21: It's no blessing at all. Thank God the psalmist doesn't just mention the three negative things that you must avoid, but he also mentions the three positive things that you must have.
17:34: And I know that this is crushing because I've lived this way. I spent all kinds of effort as a young man trying to eliminate my sin, but I never had any joy.
17:47: I didn't pick up my Bible and view it as the greatest treasure that was going to propel me into the deepest depths of joy.
17:54: I looked at it like it was a rule book. I looked at my
17:59: Bible like it was a noose around my neck. Like a millstone that was pulling me down into the depths of the
18:07: Pacific Ocean where I would never get out alive. I looked at it as this sort of thing where I would grind out a sort of shallow and joyless religion.
18:20: And then I would pitifully offer that back up to God, who I believed with all my heart was looking down upon me with a dour frown.
18:29: I never said these things out loud, but I felt so much shame. I felt like I was standing naked before the
18:37: Holy God exposed because all my good deeds were not good enough. His word was unattainable to me.
18:47: His love was inaccessible for me. There was no joy. After I had given my greatest effort and realized that it was still lacking,
18:58: I stood before the God that I had created in my head, and I was faced with two options.
19:05: I would either have to convince myself that I could try even harder this time, and maybe that would be enough.
19:13: Or I'd have to come to the realization that I could not give any more. I could not try any harder, and I would just need to give up knowing that I would never make it.
19:25: And in a way, that's much of the story of my life. On this sort of roller coaster in seasons,
19:31: I would do everything that I could in my strength to abstain from sin, to not listen to the counsel of the wicked, to not stand in sin, and to not sit in the seat of scoffers.
19:42: I would do those three things, but I never had any joy. And in other seasons,
19:49: I would realize that I can't do those things, and I would go down into the counsel of the wicked, and I would stand in all kinds of sin, and I would scoff, and I would try to convince myself that I could get some sort of pleasure and fulfillment and happiness in sin and hedonism and everything else, but never did
20:08: I have not even a modicum of biblical joy. In both ways, trying to abstain from sin and trying to run towards sin,
20:19: I never had any joy, and I never understood these three positives, delighting in the law of the
20:28: Lord, meditating on it day and night. And the reason I didn't understand it is because I was not planted.
20:36: This is a really important point in the psalm. It was not until God's word was planted in my heart that I actually understood the kind of blessings that the psalm is talking about, that I actually understood the kinds of positives that the psalm is talking about.
20:53: You see, right here in the middle, in verse 3, is really the point of the psalm.
21:02: Did you notice what he said here? He said, blessed is the man who delights in the law of the
21:09: Lord, which is positive action. He said, blessed is the woman who roots all of her life in the word of truth, that's positive action.
21:16: Blessed is the family and the marriage and the relationship who surrenders to the pages of scripture, positive action again.
21:23: But you cannot have those things unless you are planted. There's two ways to miss
21:29: God. You can spend all of your energy and effort trying to avoid sin, and you'll have no joy, and you'll only have religion.
21:40: Then you can spend all of your life running towards sin, and you'll have no joy, you only have hedonism. But there's a third way, and the third way is to actually be planted.
21:53: And I'll be honest with you, this is one of the great discoveries of my life that I could not manufacture joy.
22:00: I could not work myself into it. If left to my own devices, I would choose either religion or hedonism.
22:06: Those were my two options. I couldn't read my Bible enough to obtain it.
22:11: I couldn't have true joy and true blessing from sin. It was only until I was planted by the triune
22:20: God that I was grasped by the infinite. That actually had the joy that this was talking about.
22:28: You see, no matter how religious you are, no matter how hard you try, you won't have biblical joy and biblical blessing in this life until the
22:35: Lord plants His word into your heart. Let's look at what the writer of the
22:40: Psalms is saying here in verse 3. It's fundamentally beautiful. He says,
22:48: He, the blessed man, the blessed woman, the blessed family, will be like a tree firmly planted by the streams of water.
22:54: Now, I don't want to state the obvious here, but I think it's important for us to talk about this. He is comparing us to a tree.
23:01: We're not wise scholars who had this great epiphany about life and about God.
23:07: We're not a scientist who stumbled upon the cure to sin, and we chose Him. We're a tree.
23:14: And mind you, one that just so happens to be firmly planted by life -giving waters.
23:21: This is not a seed that accidentally fell. This is not a seed that was blown by the wind.
23:28: And this is not a seed that was pooped out of a bird that was flying overhead. This is a tree that was planted.
23:35: The text says that it was planted, which means that something outside of itself acted upon it with intentionality.
23:46: Dare I even say, while we were as useless in our sin as a seed in a plastic bucket,
23:54: God took us, and He planted us, and He caused our roots to grow down into Him and into His word, and He provided everything that we would ever need for life.
24:09: I mean, let's be honest here. What's the alternative? The tree planted itself? You have this sort of tree that's withering away out in the desert, unhappy about its current location, so she wisely decides to embark upon this wonderful journey, surveying all of the various topographies, stumbling around until she finally finds this wonderful paradise and digs her roots down into the soil because it's well -fed by these streams of water, and that's what happened?
24:39: Of course not. Trees don't do that. You don't have to be a budding dendrologist to understand that.
24:45: No one would ever happen upon a single tree that was planted firmly upon the shore of these rivers and say, wow, wise move,
24:54: Mr. Tree. We would immediately know that the person planted it, but even if it were possible that this tree just so accidentally ended up there, the text says that it was planted.
25:04: The text says that there was something intentional about it, that a power outside of the tree made every preparation for this tree and planted it exactly where it was going to thrive.
25:14: The text tells us that there's intelligence in its location. There's intentionality in how firmly it was established.
25:20: Even the word that the psalmist uses lets us know that this tree was not a seed that was dropped or blown. It was planted.
25:29: And of course, we see what this means for us. Either we planted ourselves in faith by some accident, a random chance, and we just so happened into the right church to make a decision, or the text really is what it says it is, and God planted the word in our heart, that God planted faith in our heart, that God himself cultivated the perfect location for us to grow.
25:51: And he planted us beside of his son, who is the fount of living water. And he planted us firmly in the soil of his word, and he brought about the life -giving rays of his son, and he caused us to grow by the fruit and the power of the
26:05: Holy Spirit of God. See, either we have to believe that faith was somehow our work, and we chose it, and we came to it, or that the triune
26:15: God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the one who is working in our life to bring us to faith and given us every resource so that we would grow in our faith.
26:28: Verse 3 says he was planted like a tree, firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does, he prospers.
26:40: So in order for us to be blessed and have the blessed life, we must avoid the counsel of the wicked.
26:47: We must not stand in the way of sinners. We must not sit in the seat of scoffers.
26:56: Our delight must be in the law of the Lord, and we must meditate on it day and night, and we must be planted and established by God like a tree that is firmly planted.
27:09: And that's the point. When we are planted by God, then all of those other things will be true.
27:15: We will avoid the wicked. We will not stand in sin. We will not sit in scoff. We will delight in the law of the
27:23: Lord when we are planted, and when we are planted by God, it is a firm planting.
27:31: The roots dig down in such great depth that no storm could ever cause us to be uprooted.
27:38: When we are planted by God, we are safe and secure in Christ because he's the one who planted us firmly.
27:47: When we are planted, we're planted beside streams of living water. Notice that the psalm doesn't mention a single stream.
27:54: He mentions a plurality of streams, many streams, indicating that there's this sort of never ending supply of water.
28:03: For us as Christians, we're planted beside the living water, the never ending fount of Christ that never dries up, that it's always supplied so that over the course of our life, there is an infinite amount of grace and health and nourishment and strength that can be ours just by being planted and rooted in Jesus Christ.
28:30: Because God planted us in Christ, we will be fed and nourished by Christ. Because God planted us, we are going to produce fruit.
28:43: When a tree doesn't produce fruit, it's because of a faulty root. And since we know that any root that is connected to Christ will bear fruit, he says that in John 15, and since we know that the
28:55: Holy Spirit has promised to produce that fruit in us, then we know that because God is the one who planted us, the most natural yield of the
29:03: Christian's life will be the fruit of the Spirit. Like Paul says in Galatians 5, our lives will naturally grow to produce love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self -control.
29:18: Because God is the one who has planted us, we are going to produce fruit. And that might not happen overnight, but the direction of our life is going to be towards increasing fruitfulness.
29:28: As Jesus prunes us and shapes us and corrects us and cuts away the dead branches of our life, we are going to be producing fruit.
29:41: Because God planted us, the psalmist says that we will never wither. The psalmist says that this kind of tree never fades, it never dries up, and it never withers.
29:53: Well, if you're a Christian, then you're the sort of person that is never gonna fade and never gonna dry up and never gonna die.
29:58: You're not, you might have seasons of your life here and there where things don't look so great on the outside, but you're never gonna wither on the inside.
30:07: You see, what you've got to do is you've got to stop looking at the top half of the tree and start looking at the bottom half of the tree so that you can understand what's actually happening here.
30:17: And you might be confused and saying, what do you mean by that? But what I mean is that a tree is almost identical above ground as it is below ground.
30:29: You see, the roots underground, if you were to be able to see them, look almost exactly like the branches do above ground.
30:39: So when the roots go further down into the soil, the limbs reach higher and higher into the air.
30:47: So the health of the tree actually is more dependent upon the root system below than it is on what's happening even above ground.
30:54: You can have hurricanes, and you can have blizzards, and you can have blistering hot droughts above ground.
31:05: But with good roots, the tree is fed, it is anchored, and it's even healthy.
31:11: Even if there's a season above ground where everything else seems to be going crazy. You see, the same is true for us as believers.
31:21: If you're anchored in Christ, there may be seasons of your life where you feel especially weak or especially given over to fear or whether or where you're struggling with a particular sin or experiencing nothing at all but defeat.
31:34: There may be seasons of your life like right now during this coronavirus pandemic where you're afraid or you're frustrated or you're angry or you're feeling judgmental or you're just giving over to different sins.
31:47: And life above the soil often looks detrimental.
31:54: Life above the soil looks chaotic, but what does life look like below the soil? You see, we have to stop looking at our circumstances above and start looking at where we're rooted.
32:06: If you're rooted in Christ, you can never wither. If you're rooted in Christ, you're permanently and eternally established and you will remain.
32:15: No Christian can ever die when they're connected and rooted to such an amazing Christ. So the point that we're trying to get at here is that to be blessed, to live the blessed life, you must be connected to Jesus Christ.
32:30: And when you're connected to Jesus Christ, you avoid sin because of love for Jesus, not out of duty, not out of religion.
32:38: And you're going to avoid wicked counselors because you have the true counselor, the Holy Spirit inside of you, and he's going to guide you to surround yourself with men and women who love you and who care for you and who want the best for you.
32:51: Because you're in Christ, you're never going to go down into the seat of the scoffers, stand in the way of the sinner, because you are rooted immovably in him.
33:00: And because you're in Christ, you will learn to delight in the law of the Lord. You will learn to love the
33:05: Bible and cling to the word and read it and memorize it and sink your roots down into it and bear fruit because of it, because you are in Christ and because you have been saved, because the tree gains every nutrient that the soil provides and every bit of water that that river supplies.
33:27: And in the same way, if your roots are in Christ, you will begin feeding on Christ and you will begin learning the things of Christ and you will begin learning those things because they're revealed in his word.
33:37: And you will begin learning those things because the spirit of God is writing them on your heart so that over the course of your life, you will begin to love the things that God loves because you are rooted to Christ and Christ loves
33:50: God most. And all of these things are true for you, the
33:56: Christian, but they're not true for the wicked. The psalmist says in verse four, the wicked are not so, but they are like chaff, which the wind drives away.
34:08: Therefore, the wicked will not stand in judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. The psalmist is making actually a pretty powerful point here.
34:18: Not only do the wicked have none of the blessings and promises that are given to the people of God that are listed above, they have nothing at all anchoring them.
34:26: You see, the reason that the Christian is blessed, the reason that the Christian loves the Lord and hates sin is because they are anchored to something firmly.
34:35: Unlike the tree that is planted, the wicked are going to be blown away because they're not anchored to anything.
34:42: They can't stand during the awful day of judgment because they're not connected to anything but themselves. That is the point.
34:53: Another point that we see here in verse four, because the psalmist seems to communicate that in this life that we're living in right now, this human moment in space and time, that there's this sort of mixed gathering of peoples.
35:12: The wicked live right alongside of the godly during this life. The wheat are living right alongside of the tares in this life.
35:22: The sheep are living right alongside of the goats, the righteous along with the unrighteous. In this life, there is this mixed sort of gathering that the psalmist is kind of intentionally highlighting here and pointing us to the truth that there is going to be a coming day when everything is going to be made plain, a day when the wheat is going to be gathered into Jesus's heavenly barns and the tares are going to be thrown into the eternal fire.
35:46: There is a day when the wheat is going to fall down at Jesus's feet and the chaff is going to be blown away by the winds of hell.
35:52: There is a day when the goats are going to be expelled from the good shepherd's flock and they are not going to be allowed into that celestial pasture ever again.
36:01: And far from that being a sad day, that's going to be a glorious day. For the
36:07: Lord himself is the author of salvation and we must not pity the tares. We must not feel sad for the chaff and for the goats.
36:14: The Lord himself reminds us that they are without excuse, that they can look up to the of God, but in their wickedness and in their sin, they have refused to repent.
36:24: They have gone down into the counsels of the wicked. They have stood in the pathways of sin and they have sat in the seat of scoffing and mocking
36:32: God and they have gotten what they deserve. The point the psalmist is making is not here an appeal for salvation.
36:40: The point here is a promise for the believer, for the Christian on what heaven is going to look like.
36:48: And that's an important distinction. The Bible does give salvation appeals. That's not what the psalmist is trying to communicate here.
36:55: He's trying to communicate that the wicked are going to be blown away. The wicked are not going to stand in the day of judgment.
37:01: The wicked are not going to make it into the heavenly assembly.
37:06: That is what he's saying. And he's saying that we are to rejoice in that fact because heaven is going to be this perfect gathering, no longer of a mixed group, but of a pure group of people who have been purified perfectly living before the throne of grace for all of eternity, where there will be true joy and blessing forevermore.
37:34: I think Charles Spurgeon says this really well when he says every church has one devil in it. The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat.
37:45: There is no floor which is yet thoroughly purged from the chaff. Sinners mix with saints as dross mingles with gold.
37:55: God's precious diamonds still lie in the field with pebbles. Righteous lots are on this side of heaven continually vexed by the men of Sodom.
38:05: Yet let us rejoice. Let us rejoice. Because in that general assembly in the church of the firstborn above, there shall be by no means admitted a single unrenewed soul.
38:18: Sinners cannot live in heaven. And for Spurgeon, and I believe for the psalmist as well, this is a wonderful thing that we can hope in.
38:30: For when the world is purged of all of its evil and when all of the pain and suffering and sin and rebellion and chaff and tares and goats are all put away, and let us be perfectly honest here, when all of our pain and our suffering and our sin and our rebellion, our chaff and our chaff -like behavior and tare -like deceptions and goat -like manipulations, when all of that is put away, the only thing that is going to be left is that which is anchored to Christ.
38:54: The only thing that is not going to be blown away is that which was anchored to Jesus, rooted in Him.
39:01: You see, heaven and the new heavens and that glorious new earth that is promised to us in Revelation 21 through 22 is our final home, and it's the final home for everyone who is rooted in Jesus Christ.
39:14: When all evil is purged from without us and from within us, all wickedness is cleansed, the only thing that is going to remain is fullness.
39:24: No disease, no death, no malice, no annoyances, just joy, pure joy, everlasting.
39:31: See, that is what we are waiting for as the believer. That is the real hope that we're going to have when we end up there because of what
39:40: Jesus Christ has done. You see, this psalm ends with the most beautiful promise.
39:52: You may be asking yourself, how can I have any real hope that I'm going to end up in heaven?
39:59: How can I have any real hope that I'm going to be among the ones who are called blessed? How can I have any real hope that I'm not going to be blown away like the chaff?
40:09: This psalm ends in the most beautiful way. The same God who this psalmist says is the one who planted us is also the one who knows the way to get us home.
40:22: The psalmist says like this in the final verse, for the Lord knows the path of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will certainly perish.
40:35: You see, the Lord knows the way of the righteous. He knows that way intimately. Because 2000 years ago, he came to this earth and he walked that path in front of us.
40:49: Every single millisecond of his life, he perfectly embodied every stroke and letter of the psalm.
40:56: He didn't take counsel from the wicked, nor from the sinful religious leaders.
41:01: He didn't stand in the path of sin. He was, but he made friends of the sinners. He didn't sit in the seat of scoffers, but for his perfect righteousness, he was nailed to the throne of rebels.
41:19: You see, this Jesus came to a world where righteousness did not exist. There was no one who was righteous, not even one.
41:27: Even the very best men that had ever lived and the very best women that had ever lived had fatal flaws.
41:37: Adam, the once perfect, weakly allowed his life to eat from the poison fruit he brings and he brought sin on every single one of us.
41:44: Abraham, because of fear, he gave up his wife to another man. Moses murdered someone and at the end of his life, he rebelled against the
41:51: Lord and turned away from him in anger. David not only murdered an innocent man, but he slept with and impregnated his wife.
41:57: And those are the heroes. Those are the very best of us. And all of them fell.
42:04: Every single one of them fell so that the world that Jesus stepped into was a hopeless one. And the one that he landed upon was in total darkness.
42:14: None had any hope. None had lived out this Psalm and none of them could be ever considered to be blessed.
42:22: None of them could have ever looked like this tree that was firmly planted along the shores of these great rivers.
42:28: And yet, this is the world that our Christ stepped into. And this was the plan of God that Christ would make for himself a blessed people.
42:39: That Christ would call for himself a people who were righteous and who were blessed. And the way that he was going to do that, the way that he was going to make us into that kind of tree that this psalmist is describing is by being nailed to his tree.
42:54: He's going to make us into a tree that is firmly planted by the living waters by being firmly nailed to a wooden cross.
43:04: To firmly plant us on the shores of his grace and to feed us with his living water, he was going to be beaten.
43:10: And the blood and water was going to flow so that your sins and my sins could be forgiven.
43:19: And on that tree, our curse was poured out upon him so that his blessing could take root in us.
43:31: Jesus Christ alone is why this Psalm can ever make any sense. He's the only reason that you and I could ever be called blessed.
43:40: He's the only reason because he rescued us out of that. That's where we were. When he found us, we were in the seat of scoffers sitting right by the gates of hell.
43:51: And he delivered us. And he made us into people who delight in his word and who grow strong in our faith because our roots have been sunk down into Christ.
44:05: And because of that, there were people now who produce the kind of fruits that the spirit wants to produce. Our faith is a
44:11: Christ alone kind of faith. In Christ alone, our hope is found.
44:19: He is our light, our strength, and our song. Let's pray. Father, I love how you begin your book of Psalms, your hymn book, the book of your songs that you wanted your people to sing with this
44:40: Christ -centered Psalm demonstrating to us that we cannot be blessed.
44:46: We cannot live the blessed life apart from Jesus Christ. And Lord, as we venture into this book and into different messages from different Psalms, and we examine different emotions and different feelings and different situations that the
45:05: Psalmist are going to honestly share with us and teach us through,
45:10: Lord, I do pray that we would remember that the reason we are blessed, the reason that we can know
45:17: God, the reason that we will stand on the day of judgment when the wicked will be blown away, the reason for all of that is
45:25: Christ and Christ alone. And Lord, I do pray that we would revel in that, that we would rejoice in that, and that we would remember that each and every moment of our days.
45:40: Lord, thank you for rooting us in Christ. He really, truly is our only hope.