This Way to Blessing

0:59God promised to continue Abraham's lineage through Isaac and Rebekah, and she soon gave birth to two twin boys, Jacob and Esau. We call them Jacob and Esau, but really it's Esau and Jacob. Esau came out first. He was the older of the two twins. And Esau is what we would call a man's man. He was an outdoorsman. He was a hunter. He was a tough, rugged guy. Isaac, his father, loved him, preferred him. And it showed.

1:33Jacob, by contrast, is what we would call a mama's boy. He loved to be indoors. He loved to cook. And he wanted his dad's favor, his dad's blessing, but he never received it. And so Jacob plotted and schemed, and he duped Esau, his older brother, out of his birthright. And then he duped his father Isaac into blessing him instead of Esau. And years later, God met Jacob. At this point, Jacob is a grown man. He's married with children of his own. He's a very wealthy man.

2:09And God comes to him in the form of a man. And they wrestle with one another all night. And this man that Jacob is wrestling with doesn't prevail against him. And so he touches the socket of his hip and dislocates it. Now, I dislocated my shoulder senior year, and I can tell you that is awful. I dragged my arm like a rope on fire back to the bench. And yet he continues to wrestle with this man because he so desperately wants to be blessed.

2:42The man even says to him, Let me go. And he says, I won't let you go until you bless me. And so God does indeed finally bless him. Because you see, Jacob was yearning for that. He wanted this blessing that he never. Received from his Father. And that's where all of us find ourselves. Every one of us yearns for blessing. And so when the Psalms were arranged, it should come as no surprise to us that the Psalm we know as Psalm 1 was placed first in the scriptures because it tells us how to be blessed, not just by a human being that we love and respect, but by God Himself.

3:32Friends, this summer we have the great privilege of studying a number of different psalms or songs, which are essentially Hebrew poetry that was written to be sung. The Psalms have blessed God's people for thousands of years because in the Psalms you find the full range of human emotion expressed. There are psalms of lament, psalms of praise, psalms of thanksgiving, psalms even where the righteous ask God to judge their enemies. Today in Psalm 1, we're going to see what is known as a wisdom psalm.

4:13And in this wisdom psalm, there is this contrast between two different people: the wicked person who will perish and the righteous person who will be blessed. So, friends, do you want to be blessed? Of course, you do. All of us do. And thankfully, God has revealed to us in his word exactly how we can experience his blessing. So let's look now at the text together, starting in verse 1. The psalmist begins, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

5:06The author begins by describing how the blessed person doesn't live. Because sometimes it's helpful for us to understand what something isn't before we define what something is. And that's the tactic that he employs here. So the first thing that we learn is that the blessed person does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. Well, in the New Testament, when Paul is writing his first letter to the Corinthians, he says this in chapter 2, verse 14. Look on the screen.

5:34This is why believers must not walk in the counsel of the wicked. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Now, what's important to note is that neither the psalmist nor Paul is saying that an unbelieving person can't ever give Good advice, or that we should disregard all counsel from non-Christians. Neither the psalmist nor Paul, I think, is intending to communicate that because that would be simply untrue.

6:13But what the psalmist and Paul are communicating is that the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. He thinks that the Word of God, the Christian worldview, is foolishness. He cannot understand why someone would live their life according to those principles. And so many times the Word of God and the counsel of unbelievers are going to be at odds because the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.

6:45So they're going to try to dissuade you from believing and obeying God's Word, and they're going to try to persuade you instead to accept the wisdom of the world. But if we want to be blessed, we can't walk in the counsel of the wicked. We have to submit to the wisdom of God, which is going to look like foolishness to the world. So that's the first thing we see. Second, the blessed person doesn't stand in the way of sinners.

7:20Now, when you first read that phrase in English, it might sound like stay out of their way, like don't get in their way, let them do whatever it is that they're going to do. That might be good counsel at some point. But that's not what the psalmist is saying. When the word, the Hebrew word here that's translated way, is used, it means a road or a path that is leading to a particular destination. A way is a road or path leading to a particular destination. And as we'll see, the way of sinners is leading to what we would call an undesirable destination.

7:56So, what the author is communicating to us is that it's one thing to receive the counsel of the wicked. It's one thing to listen to it. It's one thing to mull it over. It might be even one thing to occasionally put that into practice. But it's a different thing entirely to stand in the way or in the path of sinners. It's another thing to cast your lot in with them and to be headed to the same destination, to be going to the same place.

8:28And if we want to be blessed, we can't stand in the way of sinners. We can't adopt the same path. We can't start heading down that same road, or we're going to end up in the same place. And so, if we want to be blessed, we can't stand in the way of sinners. And then, third and finally, what we see in verse 1 is that the blessed person doesn't sit in the seat of scoffers. Now, what is a scoffer?

8:55We can understand the term wicked, we can understand the term sinners to some degree. Those terms are more readily defined in the Bible, but the term scoffer is not something that we find as often. So, what does this word mean? Well, a scoffer is a particular kind of ungodly person. A scoffer is not one who has stumbled into sin. A scoffer is not even one who willingly chose to sin against God, but then feels either guilt or conviction about that choice later on.

9:29No, a scoffer is a proud rebel, one who is boldly defying God and His Word, daring him to do something about it. So, in the New Testament, places like 2 Peter chapter 3, you have the Apostle Peter referring to scoffers as those who are talking about the return of Christ, saying it's never going to happen. The scoffers in 2 Peter 3 are saying, Where is this promised return? Decades have passed. There's been all of this time in the first century where you keep saying that he's going to come back and he hasn't yet come back. How much more do the scoffers say today, 2,000 years later, where is this promised return? Supposedly, he's coming back, but he hasn't come back yet. Everything goes on just as it always has.

10:19That's how Peter refers to the scoffer. The scoffer is a rebel defiantly shaking his or her fist at God, maybe outwardly, maybe just inwardly, in his Her heart. But that is what the scoffer is. And friends, no one becomes a scoffer overnight. You don't go from believing person or church-going religious person or whatever else to scoffer overnight. No, there is a path, a slope to becoming a scoffer. You begin by walking in the council of the wicked. You then stand in the way of sinners, and it's only after you've been doing those things for some time that you sit in the seat of scoffers. It's a decided place that you end up. Look at how Derek Kidner describes this slide into scoffing.

11:15He says, Certainly, the three complete phrases show three aspects, indeed, three degrees of departure from God by portraying conformity to this world at three different levels: accepting its advice, being party to its ways, and adopting the most fatal of its attitudes. For the scoffers, if not the most scandalous of sinners, are the farthest from repentance. So, this is how the Psalms and Psalm 1 begins. It begins by giving us this picture of the person who is on a particular path, the wicked person who stands in contrast to the blessed or the righteous person.

12:01And so we go into verse 2 now, and we see that the blessed person is entirely different. It says, but his delight, the blessed man or the blessed woman, their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Well, friends, in order to delight in the law of the Lord, you first have to know what it is. And the law of the Lord is a phrase that specifically, particularly at this time period, would have been referring to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But that phrase, as it's used throughout biblical history and God's progressive revelation, is also used to describe the entire counsel of God, the word of God as a whole. You see, the authors of Scripture claim to be recording the very words and acts of God.

13:00And Jesus himself affirmed the divine authority of the Old Testament and then said that the Holy Spirit was going to empower and inspire the later authors of what became the New Testament. And so the Apostle Paul then can write this in 2 Timothy 3, near the end of his life. All scripture, all scripture referring to the old and what had been written of the new, all scripture is breathed out by God and prophets. For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

13:44Friends, if we believe that the Bible is the written record of God's words and acts, the revelation of Himself and His will to us, then we will delight in it. Think about what that means, or think about what that means if this is the first time you're encountering that kind of an idea. That this book and its authors are claiming to be recording the very words and acts of God. Friends, what that means is that we no longer have to stumble through this world, wondering if God exists, wondering what we are here for, wondering what He wants from us. We can delight in the Word of God if we believe that it is truly His revelation to us, of Himself and His will. And if we delight on it, we will also meditate on it. We're going to pour over the words and the phrases to understand its content, its meaning, and its application for our lives. You see, the blessed man is blessed precisely because He delights in God's Word and meditates on it all the time. He is equipped for every good work because He understands. The truth about God and the world, and even about himself.

15:06Churches, Christians living in the 21st century, we are bombarded with thoughts and ideas and opinions on cable news networks and in social media, in newspapers, and magazines and books. We are bombarded with all of those things which often and usually reflect the wisdom of the world, and yet at all times we have at our fingertips access to what claims to be the very Word of God, the very revelation of Himself and His character and His will.

15:44And so, if we desire to be blessed, if we want that, then we will delight in His Word, we will meditate on it, which leads to what the psalmist describes as a rooted and fruitful life. Let's pick up now in verse 3. What is the person who delights in God's law like? 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. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Way in verse 3, we are given this beautiful image, a poetic picture of the blessed person in the form of a simile. He is like a tree planted by streams of water.

16:47Now, we have some good friends who have a home on the Guadalupe River down in New Bronfels. And if you've ever been to that part of Texas or been on that river before, you know that on either side of the river are these massive trees. So if you sit out on their patio, there are these trees in front of you and on the other side of the river that are 60, 80, 100 feet high. And if you look at these enormous trees and then you follow them down to the bottom, what you see shooting down the banks into the river are innumerable roots, big roots, lots of roots. They're all intertangled and intertwined. It's all you can see up and down the banks of that river are roots.

17:33And what that means is that these trees have been able to grow so large and live so long and be so healthy precisely because they are rooted next to the stream of water. So whether the river is full or whether the river is very low, the trees continue to be healthy because they are rooted. They are planted next to. That stream of water. And when a tree is planted by a stream of water, two things are true about it. The psalmist says it yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

18:18See, healthy trees bear fruit. If a fruit-bearing tree is healthy, then it's going to bear fruit. If it's not bearing fruit, something is wrong. It might be overwatered or underwatered. It might be diseased. It might be getting too much sun or not enough sun, but something is wrong if a tree is not bearing fruit. And Jesus says the very same thing about his followers. Look at what he said in John 15. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

19:02If we are Christians, if we are followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, we will bear fruit. There is no such thing as a Christian, a follower of Jesus, who does not and is not bearing fruit. But I want you to remember, I want you to observe carefully a couple of truths from this first psalm about the fruit that believers are going to bear. The first is this, we will each bear our own fruit. Not someone else's fruit. Did you catch that? It yields its fruit. An orange tree does not bear apples. An apple tree does not bear watermelons.

19:45Each tree bears its own fruit, and the same thing is true in the Christian life. We will each bear our own fruit. And so, friends, it's not right for us to compare ourselves to one another and be jealous or envious of someone else and their fruit when God has designed you and created you differently and called you to bear a different kind of fruit in your life. Each tree should bear its own fruit. The second truth that I want you to see is that we will each bear our own fruit in season.

20:22Did you see that there? That yields its fruit in its season. If you know anything about fruit-bearing trees, you know that they don't bear fruit all year long. There's a time for growing, there's a time for the fruit first emerging, and then there is a time for harvesting that fruit. But there are times every year when fruit-bearing trees don't have anything on them at all. It doesn't mean that nothing is happening. Lots of things are happening. They're just happening invisibly inside of the tree. And the same is true for you and me. As Christians, there are going to be seasons where we just don't see any fruit. Fruit. That doesn't mean that God is not doing anything in your life. That doesn't mean that God is not using you in any way. It just may mean that for that time and that period, no fruit is visible yet. And I think we have clear teaching from Jesus that there is some fruit we're not even going to know about or see until we get to heaven.

21:21There are certain things that we are not going to know or see until we get there. And so we have to be content with seasons that are more fruitful and less fruitful. We have to be content with seasons that there is no fruit and then seasons that there is an abundance of fruit because we are all going to bear fruit in season. But every believer will bear fruit because every believer is planted and rooted in the living water that is Jesus Christ. Look at Colossians 2 on the screen.

21:57Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. What a picture. And what a contrast we have in the very next verse in verse 4. The wicked aren't like this at all. They aren't like healthy trees with deep roots planted next to streams of water. No, they're compared to chaff that is burning. Blown away by the wind.

22:34Well, if you're like me and you didn't grow up on a farm, you may not really know what this is talking about. Well, chaff is the husk that surrounds the grain, and it has to be removed by this process called threshing and winnowing. It's talked about a lot in the scriptures because this was largely an agricultural society. So when they would cut down the grain, they would bring it in and then they would thresh it. So they would crush it all up to make sure that the grain was separated from the chaff. But now, after you've threshed it, you've just got this huge pile of grain mixed with chaff. But you only want the grain. That's what you're going for. That's what you're going to sell or eat. And so you have to separate them. So then they bring in this thing called a winnowing fork. That's in all those scary movies. You know, it's the big fork with the huge tines on it. That's a winnowing fork. So they take that and they scoop it and they throw it up in the air. And what happens is the heavier grain, it all falls right back down to the same pile. But the chaff, in the slightest breeze, it blows away. So they just walk over there into the field, they gather it all up, and they burn it.

23:42See, chaff grew up right along with the grain. But in the end, only the grain is kept and harvested into the barn. Look at what John the Baptist said in Matthew 3. He says this of the coming Christ. His winnowing. Fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Here in Psalm 1, the wicked are compared to chaff that is blown away by the wind. Their lives are not rooted in God and his word. They aren't at all like this tree that's planted by streams of water.

24:29And so, what does that mean? Here we've explored this truth that the unrighteous walk in the counsel of the wicked and they stand in the way of sinners and they sit in the seat of scoffers, but the blessed man delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. What does it all mean? One is like a tree, one is like chaff. Well, the climax and the conclusion of the psalm is found in verses five and six. Let's look there.

25:03Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. In these concluding verses, we are invited to stop and consider the outcome of these two. Two lives, the life of the blessed righteous person and the life of the wicked. And the outcome is determined by the path that each person took, because a path leads to a particular destination.

25:48The blessed or righteous person took the path that was defined and marked by the law of the Lord. The wicked person, by contrast, took the path of rebellion. And therefore, as verse 5 states, therefore, they ended up in two completely different places because they took two completely different paths. Friends, nothing is sillier than the notion that is so popular in the world that all paths lead to God. The path of no religion is very different than the path of any religion at all.

26:37And the path of any particular religion is often completely different, usually diametrically opposed to the path of any other religion. So simple logic tells us that all paths cannot lead to God. God may exist. Or he may not. But if he does not, there is no path to him. If God exists, then he must reveal to us the path to him. We cannot, like a small child, draw a treasure map and put an X somewhere and expect that when we dig up the X, we're going to find treasure underneath it. God has to reveal the path to Himself, and that is what He has done through the Scriptures, and then particularly through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 7: Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide, and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

27:59For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Friends, Psalm 1 reveals that there is indeed one path that leads to blessing and life, called in verse 6, the way of the righteous. The way of the righteous, as we saw back in verse 2, is delighting in and meditating on the word of God, applying it to our lives. Lives. And I think so often in life, it looks like the wicked are actually the ones who are experiencing blessing, doesn't it? And that's why, all throughout Scripture, and particularly in the Psalms, you have believing men and women crying out to God, saying, Oh God, why does the wicked person prosper? What is the point of following you, of sacrificing, of suffering, of any of these things, if the wicked person is the one who seems blessed in this life? Why should we even do this?

29:06And so, Psalm 1 reminds us that no matter how things look in this world, God knows or He watches over, as some translations have it, the way of the righteous. But the way of the wicked will perish. No matter what it looks like, that is the truth. That is the reality. And so, after reading Psalm 1, a question may pop into some of your minds, and that is this. If one path leads to blessing and one path leads to death, why wouldn't everybody choose the path that leads to blessing?

29:58Well, it's a good and fair question. And it's one that is answered very clearly in the scriptures. You see, the question presupposes that people are born morally neutral, or even that we are born bent towards choosing what is good and right, not just for us, but for others as well. But in God's Word, what we learn is that people are not born morally neutral. We are not bent toward doing what is good and right. We are actually bent towards sin and rebellion.

30:37See, when God created the first people, Adam and Eve, he created them to worship him and enjoy him forever, to enjoy that flawless world that he created for them. His one command was that they never eat from this particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Satan came in and tempted them, and he told them that they should take a different path, and that that different path would lead to knowledge and freedom.

31:08But if you've ever read Genesis, you know that that different path did not lead to knowledge and freedom, it led to disaster, it led to disorientation and death. Their rebellion put them on a path leading to destruction. And along with them, every one of their descendants who is now born with that same Sinful and rebellious heart, not morally neutral, certainly not bent toward doing what is good and right. And so, what they needed, and what every person since them has needed was a Savior. A Savior who could not only show them the path to blessing, but a Savior who could become the path to blessing.

31:52That man was Jesus of Nazareth. The truly wise man who not only meditated on God's law day and night, but who was actually literally the Word made flesh. See, when Jesus began his public ministry, one of the first things that happened was that the Spirit led him out into the wilderness. And Satan came there to tempt him. Jesus is called the second Adam. And so Satan comes to tempt him, the second Adam, just as Satan so many years before had come into the garden to tempt the first Adam.

32:35But unlike the first Adam, Jesus did not give in to Satan's temptations. He didn't believe the lies and depart from the path that God had set out before him. And unlike the first Adam, Jesus remembered and believed the word of the Lord every time Satan tempted him. He answered him with the word of the Lord that he had meditated on and delighted in. And because of that, he is uniquely qualified to stand in our place and represent us, to take the judgment that we deserved. And through faith in his life, death, and resurrection, we are credited with the righteousness that he earned by never straying from the path of blessing. That is credited to us through faith in him. All who repent and believe are graciously credited with that gift and forgiven for all of the times that we have walked in the council of the wicked, stood in the way of sinners, or sat in the seat of scoffers.

33:42Friends, we're all yearning for blessing, whether we know it or not. And the blessing that we need most of all doesn't come from a parent as badly as we want that, or from a coach, or a teacher, or a boss. The blessing that we need most comes from God Himself, our Creator and Sustainer, our holy and righteous lawgiver and judge, before whom we will give an account. Thankfully, we don't have to wonder how we could ever experience His blessing because He has told us in His Word that His blessing comes from delighting in it, delighting. In not only his word, but delighting in the word made flesh, who came and obeyed perfectly on our behalf.

34:39Jesus Christ, our great Savior, the truly wise man. Praise be to God. Let's pray. Father, we are all yearning for blessing. I think about how many of us are just like Jacob, growing up maybe in a home with a mother or a father or both, who never blessed, who never said, I love you, I'm proud of you. How many of us are looking for that blessing from a coach, a teacher, a boss, really anyone that we look up to, because we just so badly want to hear, well done, I delight in you, I'm proud of you.

35:54And as much as we want those things, God, it is infinitely more important. That we have your blessing. That we can hear one day, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master. We want that so badly, God, and we are thankful that we don't have to scrounge looking for that, for how to be blessed. You have told us how to be blessed, to delight in your word, to meditate on it day and night, to understand and apply it to our lives. And so, God, we pray that we would not be people who have access to your holy word, your revelation of yourself and your will to us, that we would not merely have good theology, right theology about the Bible, but that we would love it, we would delight in it, we would feast on it and meditate on it all the time.

37:03So that what came out of us first, our thoughts, our words, our reactions to situations, was from your word. Not from movies or television, magazines, or newspapers, but from your word. God, I pray that as we increasingly delight in your word and meditate on it, That you would bless us and that our lives would be increasingly fruitful. We hope and pray now on this side of eternity. But even if we never see the fruit that we had hoped and prayed to see in this life, we pray that we would be fruitful in eternity and that one day we could see how you used us.

37:57Thank you, God, for Psalm 1 and for the wisdom that you shared with us through it. In Christ's name, Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.