Psalm 1

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“Delight in the Law of the Lord,” Psalm 1 (Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 14, 2018) 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; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. PRAY We are taking the first two Sundays of 2018 to focus on the subject of prayer. In three weeks, February 2 and 3, our church is hosting a seminar led by the author Paul Miller on prayer. You can register for it on our website, and I hope these two sermons encourage you to be a part of that event. Paul Miller’s book entitled A Praying Life has had a profound impact on me. Last week we looked the Lord’s Prayer and this week we are studying the first Psalm. That might seem an odd place to go to on the subject of prayer, because the word “prayer” is nowhere to be found in Psalm 1. However, as many scholars have noted, the Psalms, the 150 Psalms found in book of Psalms, form the prayer book of the Bible. The Psalms are basically nothing but prayers to God. So while Psalm 1 may not contain the word “prayer,” it is itself the gateway to a book full of prayers. And unless you go through this gate, you won’t be doing much prayer at all, nor will you pray with power. James 5:16a: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” According to James, there is prayer, and there is great power prayer. We don’t want to be ineffectual in our prayers – when we pray, we want our prayers to work. Psalm 1 shows us how our prayers can work. If we want to pray powerfully and effectively, we need to know three things from Psalm 1. We must know the Scriptures, we must know how to live, and we must know the way of the righteous. In case anyone notices later on, I won’t address prayer again until the end of point two – I’m going to lay a foundation then come back to prayer. First, we must know the Scriptures. Psalm 1:1-3: “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; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” We don’t get to see this too often in Mississippi, because we get so much rainfall, but in more arid climates its common to see trees dying due to drought. The tree gets sick, it can’t produce fruit, and its leaves become dry, brown, and brittle. But a tree planted by a stream of water, a

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tree with roots that reaches into a river or a canal, is virtually immune to drought. It’s always got water nearby so it’s always in a healthy condition. The leaf is always green and it bears fruit precisely when it should. If you want your life to be like that – spiritually healthy and producing fruit of the spirit – Psalm 1 says you must know the law of the Lord, because then you will know the Lord himself! Look at an almost identical passage to Psalm 1, written close in time to Psalm 1, Jeremiah 17:78: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. 8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” It’s clear from these verses that to know the law of God is to know God, because the Bible is the self-revelation of God. If you want to know the God of the universe, then you must know his Word. And his Word is all you need to know God. Wayne Grudem, in his systematic theology, says this: the Bible “contains all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly.” One of the most irritating trends in modern American Christianity over the fifteen years I’ve been in ministry is this whole business of so-called Bible teachers standing up in front of a crowd and saying, or writing in their books, something like this: “God told me so-and-so. I got a fresh word from the Lord, and he told me this.” They put words in God’s mouth and imagine conversations with him, passing off his half of the conversation as if they are sure that’s what God would say in that situation. Sometimes, I realize, all these Bible teachers are doing is speaking carelessly – they say, “God told me this” when they should have more precisely said, “I feel like God is teaching me this.” I understand that. God does move in our lives in such a way that we see things we didn’t see before, we understand things that confused us before. That’s perfectly appropriate. That happens to me every single week, and most days. But when you say, “God told me this” and you mean it – you really mean God told you something new about his character or the way he works in the world, he gave you some word that, for all intents and purposes, is as authoritative as the word he gave Peter, or Paul, or John, or the Psalmist when he wrote Psalm 1 – that’s an assault on the Bible. Whether you realize it or not, you are saying, “The Bible is not sufficient to teach you everything you need to know for salvation, for trusting and obeying God perfectly – you need an extra word, a fresh word, from the Lord mediated through me.” That is the kind of stuff that leads to cults and horrible abuses in the name of religion. To the extent you are claiming to speak for God outside of what he has said in the Scripture you are committing blasphemy. It shows contempt for the Almighty. So, please, I urge you, stay away from people who claim to teach the Bible but say foolish things like that. We don’t need a fresh word from the Lord – because we already have a living and active Word from the Lord in the Scriptures. Our job in the church is to study the Bible, to search it, meditate on it, and obey it. In 2 Timothy 3 the apostle Paul wrote this to Timothy, a young pastor, but these instructions apply to anyone who wants to follow the Lord: “But as for

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you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions [there is plenty of that today], 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5. Notice, no hint from Paul that Timothy needs to seek a “fresh word” from the Lord – just study and apply and obey the Scriptures already written. I can imagine someone out there saying, “But, J.D., what if someone really does think they have a ‘fresh word’ from the Lord? Wouldn’t we need to hear it?” Here’s my answer: if you think God may have spoken to you, how could you ever be sure it really was God? How could you be sure it wasn’t something you dreamed up on your own? Some projection of your own psychological need? How could you be sure it was God speaking to you, and not a demon? How could you be sure it wasn’t indigestion? No one could be sure it was God giving them a fresh word – that alone should compel us to stay far away from all this “God told me” talk. Finally, I can imagine someone out there saying, “OK, but just say that a bright, shining angel came to me and said, ‘I have a fresh word from the Lord that you need to tell all the Christians in your town.’ What if that happened?” Well, first of all, you’ve just described how Mormonism supposedly got started. That’s what Joseph Smith claimed, and he and the false religion he started have led millions astray. That should give you pause. But more than that, the Bible even addresses this issue. Paul says to the church at Galatia (a church that was being led astray by false teaching): “ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8. 8

Paul is saying that even if an angel did come to you and tell you something from God, unless it matches up with what the Bible already says, ignore it. And if it’s got to match up with what the Bible already says, then why worry about hearing it and passing it on to others? You already have it in the Bible! Friends, there is absolutely nothing you need to know about God, how to trust him, how to obey, or how to be saved that falls outside the sixty-six books of Scripture. As my favorite hymn on this subject puts it: “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent Word! What more can he say than to you he hath said? To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Second, to pray we must know how to live. “He [the one who delights in the Scriptures] is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In

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all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.” Psalm 1:3-4. In the ancient world the way they harvested grain to make bread was, first, they would reap the grain – cut it down in the field and gather it together. Then you’d take the reaped grain to the threshing floor (which was a flat place that had a lot of wind blowing through it), and you’d thresh the grain by stepping on it or getting an animal to walk around on it or by beating it with sticks. This would knock the kernels loose from the husks (or the chaff, the shell of the grain which had no nutritional value and could not be made into bread). Then, finally, you’d winnow the grain. You’d take a pitchfork and toss everything on the floor high into the air. The kernels would fall straight back down. But the chaff, because it was so much lighter and less substantial, would blow away with the wind. If you don’t meditate on the Scriptures, the Psalmist says, you’ll just be chaff. In your life, you’ll be blown wherever the prevailing winds take you. In the book of Ephesians the apostle Paul uses a similar metaphor, when he says that if we know the Bible “we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” Ephesians 4:14. When you’re chaff, you are pushed around by the world. You’re the opposite of the tree, as you have no roots. And you don’t want to be chaff, because when you are two things are true of you: first, you don’t know where to stand. Everyone needs certain non-negotiables in their life. When it comes to how to handle your money, or how to raise your kids, or how to do business, we all need to know certain things are right and certain things are wrong. They are non-negotiable. We don’t budge on these things. If you don’t have that, you’ll get blown around by the circumstances in your life. You’ll get pushed around by stronger personalities in your life. Or, if you don’t have the non-negotiables and you have the strong personality, you might wind up being the bully. You don’t want that. If you meditate on the Scriptures, though, that doesn’t haven’t to be you. Psalm 119:99-100: “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. 100 I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.” It’s hard when you’re young and just starting out, college, or in your twenties, to know where to take stand, especially when you are dealing with folks ten, twenty, thirty years older than you. It’s intimidating. But when you know the Scriptures, you have substance to your character, and you don’t have to get pushed around by those strong personalities. Second, if you are chaff, you don’t know how to live; you only know how to cope. Life isn’t easy – we all will encounter many difficulties, many trials, many heartaches. And the temptation we will continually face is not to deal with the hard things in life, but to avoid them one way or the other. In other words, we will be tempted to cope with life, instead of living it. Be honest with yourself for a minute. Why do you watch all the television that you do – all the Netflix, Hulu, sports? Why are you on Instagram and Facebook so often? Why do you play as many video games as you do? Why do you eat what you eat and why do you eat the amounts you do, even when you know you’re not hungry? Why do you feel like you can’t relax when

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you get home at night until you’ve had that drink? Why do you shop so much? Why do you feel like you have to get out of town so often? Why do you feel so compelled to exercise so much or work such long hours at your job? That’s not to say that there’s necessarily anything wrong with any of those things, but if you find that you do those things so that you can numb yourself to the difficulties of your life and just check out for big slices of your day, that’s a problem. Do you do those things because it’s a deliberate act and you derive real satisfaction from them? If so, great. That’s the favor of God. But if you do them because it’s the only way you know how to cope with how hard life has turned out to be then you’re not living life; you’re just getting blown around by it, like chaff, and that’s no way to live. Let’s bring it back to prayer. What is it about meditation on the Scriptures that will cause you to pray? When you know the Scriptures, you’ll be wise. “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple …” Psalm 19:7. And wise people know two things very, very well: you’ll know God and you’ll know people. Because you know those things, you will pray. You’ll know God. You’ll know he is not the clockwork God of the deists, who just set the universe in motion but has no interest in nor is involved in what takes place on earth. But, likewise, you’ll know he’s not a cosmic sugar daddy in the sky, just ready to give you whatever your hormones might want. You’ll know, instead, he is the Lord God omnipotent. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is immortal, invisible, God only wise. He is holy, holy, holy and, therefore, he’s worthy of all “blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might … forever and ever” just because of who he is! If you know God, you won’t be able to help it – you must pray prayers of adoration to him. But while our God is the almighty God, he also cares for his people. I love Matthew 10:29-31, where Jesus says, “29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” When you know God is like that, you’ll give all the details of your life and the lives of those whom you love over to him in prayer, because you know he cares for you. Second, you’ll know people. Everyone has some amount of dysfunction in their lives – you do, I do, we all do. It is common to man, and becoming a Christian doesn’t get rid of it. I don’t want to discourage anyone but some of the junk you’re dealing with in your life right now you’ll never get rid of – not until you go to be with the Lord. We are all messed up! People who aren’t wise just look at the dysfunction in themselves and in other people and either think they can fix it or throw their hands up in despair. But the wise, those who have meditated on the Scriptures and therefore understand things about the fallen human heart, see patterns in

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the mess. They see little details in the way people are wired. Because they are wise, they know they can’t do anything directly about the mess, so they aren’t into simply pointing out flaws. But those patterns and details give them insights into people so they know how to pray. Paul Miller at one point in his book writes this: “Less mature Christians have little need to pray. When they look at their hearts (which they rarely do), they seldom see jealousy. They are barely aware of their impatience. Instead, they are frustrated by all the slow people they keep running into. Less mature Christians are quick to give advice. There is no complexity to their worlds because the answer is simple – ‘just do what I say, and your life will be easier’ … Surprisingly, mature Christians feel less mature on the inside. When they hear Jesus say, ‘Apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5), they nod in agreement. They reflect on all the things they’ve done without Jesus, which have become nothing. Mature Christians are keenly aware that they can’t raise their kids. It’s a no-brainer. Even if they are perfect parents, they still can’t get inside their kids’ hearts. That’s why strong Christians pray more.” A Praying Life, 57-58. One last thing under this point: you may notice that I haven’t said anything about how to meditate on the Scriptures in this sermon. I haven’t given you any techniques. The reason is I don’t think I have anything helpful to say about it. One very respected teacher writes that you could meditate on a famous verse like John 11:25, where Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life,” by repeating the verse many times, each time emphasizing a different part of the verse. “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” I have never done anything like that with the Bible and I probably never will. If it helps you, great, but it would only annoy me. I’ve never been able to meditate according to some technique. Instead, the meditation I’ve done over the years meant reading the Bible over and over again, trying to carefully think it out and (this is key) apply it to every area of my life. And I think if you do that the Bible will become more and more the lens through which I view the world. I think sooner or late everyone will have to that if they want to be wise and pray. Third, to pray we must know the way of the righteous. Psalm 1:5-6: “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Who are the righteous? Everyone deep down thinks they are righteous. Put another way, everyone thinks they are a good person. “Sure, I’m not perfect,” we say, “but I’m not evil, either. I’m good.” We all manage to think we are good because we can name three people who are meaner than we are. It’s kind of like someone who makes a million dollars a year who insists he’s middle class because he knows three people richer than he is. Everyone thinks they are middle class, and everyone thinks, deep down, they are good. We think we are righteous. But all your study and meditation on the Scriptures must lead to one conclusion: there is no one righteous, no not one. That’s Romans 3 – we have all sinned, and fall short of the glory of God. We know from studying the Scriptures who God is – he is holy, and we also know from the Scriptures we are not. That creates a problem for us because we cannot stand before God in his holiness. We deserve to be punished by God for our sins.

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We need to be made righteous, because we can never be righteous by ourselves. Only the Scriptures can tell us how, because only the Scriptures tell us about Jesus. I used to think it was a knock against Christianity that we know next to nothing about Jesus outside the Bible. No other ancient source tells us anything about him. I used to worry about that, as if it were some kind of evidence Jesus didn’t exist after all, but now I see how it’s God’s gift to us, because there can’t be any confusion about Jesus if you study the Scriptures. The Bible makes it clear: Jesus is not primarily a teacher. He is primarily a righteous Savior for the unrighteous, and there is no source from antiquity that can contradict that. Jesus is God in human form, and in his life on earth he never sinned. He never made a mistake. He was perfect. But then he voluntarily died on the cross to take our place, and all who believe that Jesus was righteous for them, righteous in their place, will not be punished for their sins. Instead, our sins will be forgotten by God and we will be reconciled to him. If you ask, “Why would God do that? Why would he send his righteous Son to die for the me, someone so obviously unrighteous?” The answer is: we don’t know. He didn’t need us, he didn’t have to do it. There is no reason outside the character of God. It’s only God’s grace and mercy and love. Only through studying and meditating and applying the Scriptures to your life can you even begin to know the God who would send his Son for you. But when you do, you will pray. You’ll want to know him better. You’ll want to trust your life all the details of your life to him. You’ll want to see him work. You will pray, and I want us all to pray now that God would move in our hearts so that we would as a church give ourselves to the work of prayer. AMEN.

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