said something about preaching,
I thought I might have missed something there. It's okay, that
song preached enough that the reality is, if you understand
that last song especially, but all that we sang this morning,
you heard probably greater truth than most people will hear this morning. So turn back with me to Psalm
1. Psalm 1. And give me a minute here. If you look around or listen
to popular culture, and lately I like to date myself, there
was a TV show and they had their theme music, and this is from
a while back, and they said, come on, get happy as part of
the theme music. I'll let you guys decide if you
can figure that out. No Googling, please. But get
happy. The idea is there is that it's
something that's in your control. In fact, if you look around for
either books or videos or podcasts or songs or whatever on what
it means to be happy or how it is that you can be happy, I found
it interesting, first of all, in our probably post-modern era
that a lot of these books talked about according to science, or
we have a scientifically based method, or here are 10 songs
scientifically proven to bring happiness. But the message of
all these books and songs is don't focus on what you can't
change. Focus on what you can change,
and sometimes they'll say mostly, And be positive. That seems to
be the message that's there on being happy. Focus on what you
can change, not on what you can't change, and be positive. Well, this passage, and I was
raised in, I shouldn't say raised, in my adult life, I was part
of fundamentalism, and they would say, don't confuse happiness
with joy or being blessed. But essentially, these are related
words. So the world will tell us, and
to the extent that these books help you and aren't contrary
to biblical principles, you know, be positive, right? Focus on
what you can change and not on what you can't change. Those
aren't bad messages. But I think that the writer of
this psalm and those who arrange the order of the psalms for inclusion
into scripture wanted this idea to be there. How is it that a
man can be blessed? How is it that we can be happy?
What is the wisdom of God on this matter? God is not silent. Doesn't mean you take two Bible
verses instead of going to the doctor. I wouldn't advocate that. But what it does mean is that
we ignore the message of scripture at our own peril, that our happiness,
that our attitude in life isn't to get happy by scientifically
proven music, but it's by looking at things in light of the word
of God, and looking at things in the light of the counsel of
God. And I believe that both the writer,
usually this is ascribed to David, but if you notice, this psalm
and Psalm 2 do not have a psalm of David, which is part of the
Hebrew text, but generally speaking, people believe this is a psalm
of David. But the writer of this psalm
and the arranger of it wants us, again, to use this psalm as a way for us to understand
what it really means to be blessed, what it really means to be joyful,
and use it as a way to understand how it is we're to look at life. A caution that I'll put in here,
and again, maybe I'm overly cautious, maybe this wasn't part of your
religious background or upbringing, But some people will use this
passage and passages like this as, these are your choices. You
have two choices and one leads to salvation and the other leads
to damnation. I don't believe the writer is
writing to the lost. He's writing to the saved. He's
writing to those whose Sins have been forgiven because
of the Savior, who later would be revealed as Jesus of Nazareth,
but he's speaking to those who are believers. He's not looking
at this as a condition to become saved or even to evaluate your
salvation. So having put those thoughts
out there, I guess as precautions, let's look at the text. And it's
a very succinct to the point text that uses the idea of parallels
to get the point across. So there are two men, there are
two ways And there are two thought patterns that are evoked here. And in the first section, he
talks about the blessed. He talks about what is not true
of them. He talks about what is in their
heart. And he talks about what they are by way of analogy. And
then when he talks about the wicked, he talks about what they
are by analogy. Interestingly enough, he does
not talk about what is in their heart. And then he talks about
what is not true of them. So he inverts the order of what
he's going to talk about. And then there's a conclusion
which we'll get to, Lord willing, in due time. So the blessed man, blessed or
happy, is the man. And again, it's important. This
is not a command. He's not giving instruction on
how to be happy or how to get happy. He's talking about what
is true of them in principle. And then, interestingly enough,
he starts off with a negative. What is not true of them? He
says, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel
of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the
seat of mockers. Now some older translations,
and it's not a textual issue, use the word ungodly, and perhaps
that's a better way to look at this, because when you look at
the ungodly versus the godly, and you understand it in light
of the text, you get a better picture of what's going on here. I think the main point that he
wants to get across here is whatever shapes your thinking shapes your
life. Or to put it another way, your
thinking reflects what you're a part of. Now some see in this
the walking and the standing and the sitting as sort of a
progression. I'm walking, I stop, and then
after I stop I sit down where it's a regression. And perhaps
that is the idea here. And some, when they look at this,
they tend to, and I know before I did this study had this idea
he's talking about the grossly wicked. Those that many people who aren't
even believers in the Lord Jesus Christ would look at and say
they're bad, they're wicked. And certainly it's true we don't
want to walk in their counsel or stand in their way or sit
and mock others based on their belief system. But I think that this is true
of those who are ungodly, or a way to look at it, atheistic
in their understanding of God. phrase or I guess a quote that's
always stuck with me from a Christian author back in the 70s and 80s
as he said in a lot of churches if the Holy Spirit is even there
you could take the Holy Spirit out and nothing would change
in their church. And he said, you should see how
much of a tragedy that is. If the God, the Holy Spirit,
is not at work in a church, and they're able to go along by what has been called therapeutic deism, the idea that
you can just do some sort of behavior modification, keep people
busy enough that they can't sin, if that really is the extent
of their so-called Christianity, that is the counsel of the ungodly. What is it that we believe? about
the truth. Do we believe that, you know,
we went to, some of us, if you did, went to a religious school,
whether it was a college, a university, or even beyond that, and because
you were smart enough, and because you were in the right group,
You were able to discern the truth, and really the problem
with everybody else is they just haven't worked hard enough at
it, right? That whole idea of a so-called
Protestant work effort. We can look down our noses, as
it were. We can look at people and say,
what's your problem? And I can say a bad place for
that is social media, especially lately. You read what some people
that you thought had their heads firmly on their shoulder and
you wonder where else their head could be based on how they react. And what you fail to see in that
and what I fail to see in that is apart from God, that's where
we would all be. To the extent that God doesn't
work in our life as professed believers or true believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ, To the extent that the Holy Spirit isn't
guiding us into truth, to the extent that the flesh guides
us, we're walking in the counsel of the wicked, or of the ungodly. We're acting in life as if God
doesn't exist. That's not the way to blessing,
at least in this life. That's not the way to happiness
in this life. That's a way to to conflict,
that's a way to discouragement, not saying that we won't suffer.
I heard it said by some, and I felt it myself, our works fiscal
year ends on April 30th, and May starts a new fiscal year,
so I have my yearly review. And I could say honestly to my
boss that this last year was probably one of the hardest years
I've ever had in my life. No, when we say that we're happy,
we're not talking about some sort of emotional high or some
sort of conditioned response. We're talking about God is able
to give us, even in difficult circumstances, a sense of his
presence, a sense of his grace and love for us. And I can say
even though this last year has been personally hard for me,
it's also been one of the most rewarding
years for me personally and spiritually. Is that because I did the right
things? No, that's by the grace of God
and by the mercy of God. And the psalmist is saying to
us, wisdom tells you don't listen to the ungodly. Don't listen
to those who want to take God out of the picture. Don't listen
to those who think that their strength is in man, as we heard
read earlier. Don't listen to that. Don't mock
the idea of a simple trust in God. Don't be like that. We know the world can be like
that, but we shouldn't be like that. So what's a positive way of explaining
this? What is the counsel or the way
of thinking? Or, interestingly enough, if
you turn over, depending on how your Bible is laid out, but if
you look at Psalm 2, It says, why do the nations conspire and
the people plot in vain? That word plot is the exact same
word that is here, meditate. So it says his delight is in
the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.
Now, there are times in scripture that this term is used to speak
exclusively of the mosaic law, but there's lots of reasons to
believe that is not the point of the writer here. In fact,
I would even take it away from the idea of scripture in general
and just say God's instruction. Now God instructs us through
the word of God as it's evidenced to us and illuminated to us by
the spirit of God. So if you want to rephrase this,
the godly or the blessed delights in the instruction of God or
all of God's words. And on all of God's words or
all of his instruction, he meditates day and night. Well, I'll tell you, and you'll
get tired of this if I keep doing this, but I will never delight
in fish anything. We went to a food truck thing
not very far from our house. We had skipped breakfast and
we needed to do something for lunch and there was a food truck. Actually, what was there, like
30 or 40 of them and a bunch of other things there. My wife is like, there's one
that smelled really good. It was barbecue. Well, there's
three or four barbecues. We go around. Which one does
she pick? The one that has shrimp, right? I know that's technically not
fish, but I classify everything. If it came out of the water,
that's where it lived the majority of its life. I just lump it into
one category. And you could ask her, according
to her, it was great. And she delighted in the flavor
that was there. I went for the land shrimp beef. I went for that. Very good. They didn't, if they intermingled
it, I didn't notice it. But no one had to tell her to
delight in that. And for me, you could say it
was the best thing ever and I could try it and I would not delight
in it. So again, I bring this up and
labor this point to say, it's what God has placed in our heart
that causes us as believers to delight in his instruction, to
delight in his word. Because the flesh is still here,
we don't always delight in it as we ought. But if we're unhappy,
we're feeling down about what life has been throwing at us,
one of the things to meditate on And God has, I would say,
brought me to this more and more. It's not that I stopped reading
scripture altogether, but there was a time where it was a bit
of a drudgery for me. And I would say in this last
year, God has renewed my appetite, as it were, for his word. And as a result, even though
things have been difficult, there are times where I'm very frustrated
and at the end of myself. But God has given me the ability
to delight in His instruction. And, maybe it's just getting
older, wake up in the middle of the night, and God brings
to remembrance His Word. and he causes me to think about
it. And this idea of meditate is
an interesting word. It can be and is translated elsewhere
as cooing like a dove or growling like a lion or even like the
idea of muttering. It's not a passive thing where
you look at it and you're thinking about it. It's like just constantly
there. You're like, what does he mean
by this? You're saying that. You're thinking
that. You're working it through. You're chewing on it. Like good
food, you want to savor every bite. You want to understand
what's there. That is the idea behind what
is here in delighting in the instruction of the Word and meditating
on it day and night. Now, obviously we can't be up
724, but the idea is that it's always timely. God is bringing
to your remembrances word and you are led by the Spirit of
God just when you need it to consider what God has said to
you. And what does that result in
by analogy? He is like a tree, verse three,
planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season,
whose leaf does not wither, and whatever he does prospers. Now, a lot of times, and I believe
Joe would bring this up time to time, a lot of times you have
people who are fruit inspectors, right? They want to look closely
at your life and go, a real Christian, how long have you been a Christian?
How long have you been a Christian and you're still thinking this
way? Yeah, that doesn't seem like the fruit of the spirit
to me. No, if you think about this, what does a tree have to
do with the fruit it bears? I mean, even using the analogy
of how to be happy and only doing the things under your control,
even if a tree had some of these things under the control. Can
a tree move from the rocky place, you know, between the pieces
of concrete place where no water goes, that somehow it sprouted,
can it move from there close to a river? No. It can't do that. If it's a... like a thorn bush, it can't suddenly
become a apple tree or a coconut tree or anything like that. No,
what's being spoken of here by analogy, even though it will
come up a little more fully later, I think it's important to say
here, it's a tree planted. It's a tree placed. in a certain
location and it's put there by God. And God puts the tree in
a place where it will always have the nourishment that it
needs. The stream will never run out.
And if you think about it, it's very interesting, this analogy,
this comparison is here. It's the same thing that is in
the garden. There's a tree and there's a
river. And in the book of Revelation,
there's a tree and there's a river. And the reason that they are
there in part is in a Environment heavily dependent on finding
water, finding a tree and water and a tree that produces fruits
was an immensely important thing. And this picture shows how little
it has to do with us. Now, it also shows you it isn't
ever bearing fruit. It says fruit in season. Some seasons that we're in are
not fruit bearing seasons and other seasons are. But God is
the one who has to bring you there. God is the one who has
to water you and plant you and cause you to prosper. And this
is not monetary prosperity, although People can be prosperous in that
way. This is spiritually prosper. So for the blessed, what's not
true of them, they don't walk in an ungodly way. They don't
think in an ungodly way. What's in their heart, the instruction of God in a delight
for it. What they are by analogy, just
like a evergreen tree that has everything that it needs, all
the water and nourishment, and is of the type that bears fruit. It's interesting, he spends a
lot of time talking about that, and then, as I said, he abbreviates
and leaves out and reverses the order here. So right after talking
about a tree, And hopefully you can picture it in your mind,
maybe a tropical sort of thing. I like tropical things, so I
guess you have to go with my thinking unless you bring something
else to mind. You know, you're there, there's
this beautiful tree, a beautiful river, and there's just fruit.
Like, lots of it. And it's good fruit. Then your
comparison here is chaff. that the wind blows away. Now
I'm probably one of the least qualified people here to talk
about chaff, but essentially you have a grain, and outside
the grain there's this husk or hole, kind of lightly over the
top, and then when the grain ripens, you don't want to eat
that. You want it to go away, right? And so in ancient times, one
of the things they would do is take the grain on a windy day
and throw it up in the air with the idea that those, that chaff
would blow away. Now, I don't, some health food
seems like this to me, but I don't sit down and think, give me a
big plate of chaff, right? I mean, that's what I wanna eat.
No water, just dry, I'm just gonna munch that down. No, but
I can see a big plate of pineapple. Pineapple doesn't really grow
on trees, but you get the idea. Bananas or fruit that grows on
a tree. It's like, give me a bunch of
that. But the wicked, the ungodly,
those who live in a way that rejects God, they're like chaff,
that the wind blows away. So what's true about them? Well,
they won't stand in the judgment. And they won't be in the assembly
of the righteous. Compare that to the one who doesn't
stand in the way of the ungodly or the way of sinners or sit
in the seat of the mockers. What they're saying here, what
the psalmist is saying here is they're inconsequential, unedifying,
unbeneficial, non-beneficial material that will be blown away
by the wind. And they will never stand with
the people of God. Why is that? And I think it's
important here for us to follow the text where it takes us and
understand here a little bit about what he's trying to say.
Again, a comparison here as a conclusion. For the Lord And the NIV is interpreting
here, the word here is knows, and I think that knows gets the
idea across to us better. For the Lord knows the way of
the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. And it's interesting in literature,
how often the idea of two roads come up. And really, this is
the idea of two roads. But in almost all of at least
Western literature, when we talk about the two roads and the two
ways, it's the person there who's making the decision on which
way to go. And in fact, a lot of Christian
tracks right evangelistic tracks like Here's Romans Road, right? Here's the you know pick the
way that you're gonna follow choose what you need to do and
and I do believe in time after God regenerates someone and gives
them grace and faith they do Believe they make a profession
but it the way that it's presented so many times is that This text
should be rewritten to say the righteous know the way of the
Lord. Now we should, right? But that's
not what our text says. Our text does not say for the
righteous know the way of the Lord and choose it. And the wicked
don't know the way of the Lord so they perish. No, it says the
Lord knows the way of the righteous. And the reason I didn't look
at any translator notes, but I assume part of the reason why
the translators of the NIV said, watch is over, because it gives
this additional idea. We who believe in the sovereignty
of God, and the effectual call of God, and the election of God. See how this watching over and
knowing our way makes sense. Before time began, God chose
a people for himself. And those of us who belong to
him, he knew our way. He knew from beginning to end
every little detour, every little bump, every little hiccup, every
trial, every victory as it were. The Lord watched over that. The
Lord provided for that. He knows our way. He's the one
who planted us. He's the one that made sure that
water and you could depict that spiritually speaking or analogously
to the gospel. He knew that he would bring the
gospel to us. He gave us the Holy Spirit. He
brought us to life. He knows our ways. There's nothing
you're gonna do in your life, child of God, that's gonna surprise
the Lord. He's watching over you. He knows
you. And he doesn't know you because
he looked down the corridors of time and realized, well, you
know, this person, they seem pretty good. Oh, look at there,
in 2025, they made a decision for Christ, so they're one of
mine. No, he knew before you were even born the way you would
go. But the wicked, And it's interesting,
it's abbreviated here, the way of the wicked will perish. So what's the wisdom here that
we can take, not only to our reading of scripture, but to
our life? Well, first of all, as I said,
this applies to those who believe in Christ. And I think there's
nothing that prohibits me from saying that if you're thirsty
for the truth, if God has placed in your heart a desire to forsake
your own righteousness and trust fully and completely and wholly
in the righteousness of Christ, you should do so. And if you
do so, keep in mind that you did so only because God placed
it in your heart, changed your heart, raised you from the dead,
and gave you new life so that you could believe. So that's,
first of all, the way to look at it. And then, second of all,
as you go through life, and there are things that frustrate you,
and things that bring you to the end of yourself, know that
the sovereign God watches over you. And he calls you righteous. And maybe in the back of your
mind saying, you know, I actually probably have more in common
with the wicked than the righteous. I mean, careful there with the
righteous part. But we know If we're in Christ, all of our
sins have been taken care of by him at the cross, and all
of his righteousness is imputed to us. So there are two men in
view here. One is the old man, Adam, and
one is the new man, the new Adam, the second Adam, Christ. If you're
in Christ, you're in the way of the righteous. To the extent
that you do not fulfill, if you look at it that way, the obligations
of this passage, he did. What man ever lived meditating,
delighting in the law of the Lord more than the Lord Jesus
Christ? He produced fruit in season. His fruit never withers or goes
away. But that's our comfort, our comfort
is that the Lord is the one who watches over you. One writer put it this way, God
sees but two persons in the world, the godly who are in Christ and
the ungodly who are in Adam. Came across a quote from Joe
I believe I had posted it earlier, but just going to read it again
here in closing. What is it that if you had it,
you would count yourself to be blessed, adequately blessed,
abundantly blessed, even if you had nothing else that you wanted? Is there anything like that to
you? Is there any kind of blessing if you had it? It wouldn't matter
the condition of your life, your health, your finances, your emotions,
or anything like that. None of that would matter. You
could still say, I am blessed. David knew of a thing like that,
and he said, blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven,
and that is from Psalm 32, if you want the reference. Eric?