I often love to ask myself who I want to be in ten years. What kind of a person do I want to be? What kind of character traits do I want to be known for? What do I need to do right now to set the ship of my life sailing in that direction? This kind of vision driven assessment of my life is oftentimes hard and exciting at the same time.
I want to live a good life. I want to leave a godly legacy. I want to please the Lord with my life. But as I take stock of my life I typically find I have shortcomings. I have weaknesses. I have blind spots. This realization creates what I like to call a holy tension in my heart. It’s the tension between how I am right now and how I want to be in the future.
The Psalms are an excellent place to live in this kind of tension. The Psalms are a goldmine of precious truths that are set against the backdrop of human experience and emotion. They are a collection of individual poems and songs that were written over the period of a thousand years in Israel’s history. And they’ve been a main staple in the spiritual diet of my life for over nineteen years. Likewise, many Christians across the span of history have testified to the power of the Psalms in their lives as they have sought to live rightly and to honor the Lord and to leave a godly legacy.
In the Psalms we find instructions for living the godly life. We find warnings for avoiding sin and wickedness and rebellion. We find comfort for life’s most troubling circumstances. The Psalms literally engage our emotions, our thoughts and our lifestyles with their raw and honest words. The writers of the Psalms don’t pull their punches. They don’t lighten their language to appease our modern sensibilities. And they don’t shy away from describing the brokenness and painful complexity of the human experience in light of the perfect faithfulness of God.
The Psalm we are studying today sets the tone for all the other 149 Psalms that follow. The Psalmist says: 1 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 the 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.
This is a cold hard look at the contrast between a godly person and a wicked person. It doesn’t gloss over the description of the miserable life that is produced by wickedness and sin and rebellion. But it also speaks with absolute clarity about the blessed life of a godly person who loves God’s Word and pursues righteousness at all costs.
The Psalmist Says That The Godly Person Is Blessed (1 – 3)
It’s not the description that you might expect. It’s not the portrait of the godly person painted by so many social media feeds today. It’s not the picture of someone who is concerned with all the ungodliness out there. It’s the picture of someone who is concerned with godliness in here. He doesn’t fight sin out there. He fights sin within. He’s not mastering God’s Word out there. God’s Word is mastering him within. He’s not a wild rebel in control of his own growth. He’s a carefully cultivated tree with deep roots of strength and fruitfulness. This is the portrait of a godly person who has a blessed life. But why is he blessed?
#1: The godly person is blessed because he turns away from sin (1)
The Psalmist says: 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. Wicked people go from bad to worse. Godly people go from bad to better. Wicked people start out walking with other wicked people and then they take their stand with other wicked people and then they sit down in the filth of their wickedness as they laugh at godliness with other wicked people.
The godly person does not do this. The godly person does not walk, stand or sit in the filth of wickedness, sin and mockery of what is godly. Godly people walk away from wickedness. They stand against sin in their own lives. They don’t laugh and joke about the things that God calls evil. They turn away from sin. They don’t make friends with sin. They don’t call evil good and they don’t call good evil. The godly person is blessed because he turns away from sin.
#2: The godly person is blessed because he enjoys God’s Word (2)
The Psalmist says that the godly person’s delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. As I said before, this isn’t about mastering God’s Word it’s about being mastered by God’s Word. The godly person has emotions and affections that delight in God’s Word. God’s Word captivates his mind. His heart is constantly chattering with God’s Word like a computer program running in the background. He doesn’t just open God’s Word for 15 minutes of morning devotion. He hears, reads, studies, memorizes and chews on God’s Word throughout the day because it brings him joy. The godly person is blessed because he enjoys God’s Word.
#3: The godly person is blessed because God plants him (3)
The Psalmist says that the godly person 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. This is a picture of a person’s life that is full of assurance, full of nourishment, full of healthy fruit and marked by steady growth. Most of my life feels like one step forward and two steps back. But as I survey my life, by God’s sovereign grace, it is more like two steps forward and one step back. This is the dance of a person’s life that is planted by God. What God plants he sustains. What God sustains he nourishes. What God nourishes he makes fruitful. What God makes fruitful he causes to grow.
The godly person is blessed because God plants him. And because God plants godly people, godly people enjoy God’s Word and they turn away from sin. The portrait is not so pretty for the wicked person.
The Psalmist Says That The Wicked Person Is Miserable (4 – 6)
This person’s life is marked by inconsistency and corruption. It’s the picture of a person who showers in filth and consumes poison. This person’s life has the stench of the grave and the look of a zombie. They are not anchored to godly principles. They are always being carried about by every wind and wave of ungodly demonic teaching. They don’t stand for anything godly so they fall for everything that is ungodly. They aren’t known to be a luscious spiritual garden. They are known to be a spiritual wasteland. They aren’t known for spiritual health. They are known for their spiritual disease. This is the portrait of a wicked person who is miserable. But why is he miserable?
#1: The wicked person is miserable because he’s being carried away (4)
A wicked person is not like the godly person whose life is marked by resistance to sin and a love for God’s Word and the fruitfulness of the deep roots of a godly life. In verse 4 the Psalmist says: The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. What a miserable place to be. To be driven away from God by the winds and waves of everything unholy and ungodly. To be carried away from the goodness and the loving kindness and the protective presence of God like dust in the wind is a most miserable place to be. To think that sin is more desirable than being in our Heavenly Father’s presence; to think untrue thoughts about God; to turn our backs on God and to hate his Word. This is the portrait of a wicked person who is miserable because he’s being carried away.
#2: The wicked person is miserable because he’s falling away (5)
The Psalmist says that the wicked person will not stand in the judgment, nor the sinners in the congregation of the righteous. This person cannot stand for anything godly because they’ve fallen for everything that is ungodly. They paint pictures of God with filthy paintbrushes. They cast him as a judgmental and condemning God while they walk and stand and sit in judgment of him. They judge him as unloving, unfaithful, unkind and unfair because they love their sin more then they love him. They are falling away and will fall completely away at the judgment seat of Christ because sinners will not be counted among the family of the righteous. The wicked person is miserable because he’s falling away.
#3: The wicked person is miserable because he’s rotting away (6)
The Psalmist says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The reason that the way of the wicked will perish is because God does not know the way of the wicked. God does not have intimate relationship with wickedness. He has an intimate relationship with righteousness because all that is good and righteous flows out of him since he is the embodiment of goodness and righteousness. To perish is to rot away unto death. Charles Spurgeon said that sooner could a fish live on a tree than a wicked person could live in the Paradise of Heaven. The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is an eternally blessed life. This blessed life is not the life of the wicked therefore the wicked person is miserable because he’s rotting away.
Conclusion…
The godly person is blessed and the wicked person is miserable. The godly person is blessed because he turns away from sin, he enjoys God’s Word and God has planted him securely. The wicked person is miserable because he’s being carried away, he’s falling away and he’s rotting away unto death.
Are you living the blessed life or the miserable life? Who do you want to be in ten seconds to ten years? What kind of a person do you want to be in the next few moments? What kind of character traits do you want to be known for from this point forward? What do you need to do right now to set the ship of your life sailing in that direction? This kind of vision driven assessment of your life should create some holy tension.
The reality is that all of us have experienced the miserable life of wickedness. We’ve all walked in the counsel of the wicked and stood in the way of sinners and sat down in the seat of scoffers. We all know what it’s like to be carried away and falling away and rotting away because of our sinfulness and our rebellion. We know what it’s like to run towards sin rather than to turn away from sin. We know what it’s like to despise and grow bored with God’s Word instead of consistently enjoying God’s Word. We know what it’s like to be a weak sapling instead of a strong oak tree.
We’ve all experienced the miserable life of our own wickedness. Every person who has ever lived has experienced the miserable life of his or her own wickedness. Every person has experienced this wickedness. All except for one that is. Jesus Christ never experienced the miserable life of his own wickedness. He is the perfect embodiment of the godly person who experienced the perfectly blessed life of Psalm 1.
And yet he willingly came down from his seat of righteousness. He walked among the wicked without becoming wicked. He sat in the seat of silence while the scoffers laughed at him. He took his stand against wickedness and sin on the cross in an act of selfless sacrifice that leveled the playing field of life. Wickedness deserves perfect justice. Someone has to pay the price for the crime of wickedness and sin. The only thing that could erase all of the wickedness of your life is the blessing of Christ’s sacrificial life.
A dirty paintbrush won’t clean up a filthy painting but a spotless paintbrush will. Jesus is that spotless paintbrush. Jesus is the blessed man of Psalm 1. He gave his spotless blessed life so that your wickedness could be washed clean. He endured the death penalty so that you could go free. He was raised again on the third day so that you could have the assurance of salvation. He returned to Heaven to the right hand of the Father so that you could trust him as your Lord and Savior. He promised to return one day so that you can have the hope of Heaven.
The scriptures teach us that we can have the blessed life now. By grace through faith you can be saved. To be saved by God is to be truly blessed. We can be godly people who are planted by God, who enjoy God’s Word and who turn away from sin. And the way we can have this kind of blessed life is to trust in the finished work of Jesus at the cross of Calvary.
The thing that stops us from trusting in Christ is our own love for our own wickedness. It’s only our love for our sin that would cause us to reject the free gift of eternal life. It’s only our own wickedness that would cause us to look upon Christ’s loving face as he dies a sinner’s death on a tree in our place and then turn and be carried away and fall away and rot away unto eternal death.
The question is are you a fish on a tree or are you a tree planted by streams of living water? Because the person that God plants he sustains. The person that God sustains he nourishes. The person that God nourishes he makes fruitful. The person that God makes fruitful he causes to grow. Will you trust in Jesus Christ, the Blessed Man of Psalm 1, today? Or will you continue in your wickedness, which leads to misery? Are you a fish or a tree? Are you blessed or miserable?