Transcript
There was an older man who lived by a forest of beautiful trees. As he grew older, he started losing his hair, until one day, on his deathbed, he was completely bald. That day, he called his children to a family meeting.
He told them, “Look at my hair. It used to be so magnificent, but it’s completely gone now. My hair can’t be saved. But look outside at the forest.
“It’s such a lovely forest with so many trees, but sooner or later, they’ll all be cut down, and this forest will look as bald as my head.”
The man continued, “What I want you to do is, every time a tree is cut down or dies, plant a new one in my memory. Re-seed the forest. Tell your descendants, my heirs, to do the same. It shall be our family’s duty and legacy to keep this forest strong.”
So they did. Each time the forest lost a tree, the children replanted one, and so did their children, and their children after them.
And for centuries, the forest remained as lush and beautiful as it once was, all because of one man and his re-seeding heir line.
That’s a joke I can relate to! Speaking of planting trees, Psalm 1 refers to those who follow a godly path in life as being “like a tree planted by the rivers of water.”
We’ll look at Psalm 1 in this episode and the two ways of living that it presents.
Psalm 1:1: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”
In this chapter, verses 1 through 3 tell us about the way of the godly, and verses 4 through 6 detail the way of the ungodly. It describes two kinds of people living two kinds of lives with two different kinds of outcomes.
The Psalm points the way to blessing and warns about divine judgment, and the Psalmist makes it clear that only 1 of these 2 ways will bring true blessing and fullness to one’s life.
The book of Psalms was written to the nation of Israel. And God’s covenant of the law with Israel made it clear that He would bless their obedience in following Him, and would judge their disobedience if they turned from Him.
Israel had to choose between two paths: the way of blessing or the way of judgment.
Israel was told in Deuteronomy 30:15,17, “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil…I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
This passage is an encouragement for Israel to make the right choice and follow the godly path of blessing and life in their service to God under the law.
For us, the Body of Christ under grace, there are many principles for us to glean here.
The Hebrew word translated as “blessed” in verse 1 means, happy and happiness, and it is translated that way in other places in the Old Testament. Such as Proverbs 3:13: “HAPPY is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.”
All of us are involved in the pursuit of happiness, and this passage provides wise counsel on how and where to find it. Most, however, don’t believe that it’s found by living for God and by His Word. Yet this passage makes it very clear that if you take God out of the picture, we will never have true and lasting happiness.
The unnamed writer of the Psalm describes the godly man both negatively in verse 1, and positively in verses 2 and 3.
The psalmist begins by describing what the blessed and happy person does NOT do. And there are three things: first, he does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, second, he does not stand in the way of sinners, and third, he does not sit in the seat of the scornful.
They build to a high point, doing so through a backward progression, as he first mentions a person’s walk, then his stand, and finally his sitting down.
In this one verse, there are three sets of three: walk, stand, and sit; counsel, way, and seat; the ungodly, sinners, and the scornful.
These three sets describe the progressive downward pull of the wrong way in life. It begins with a subtle adoption of principles, followed by a persisting practice of offenses, and it ends with a deliberate scorn and mocking of God.
The Psalmist does not write, “Blessed is the king, blessed is the scholar, or blessed is the rich, famous and powerful,” but, “Blessed is the man.” This blessedness and happiness are attainable and can be discovered by any person.
And first, the writer says, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.”
When the Bible talks about our walk, it refers to our behavior, lifestyle, and how we live our lives day to day. Our Apostle Paul has much instruction for our walk, and in keeping with this Psalm, he taught the Church to “See then that ye walk circumspectly [or carefully], not as fools, but as wise” (Eph. 5:15).
When verse 1 tells about the blessed man not walking the counsel of the ungodly, the word “counsel” can and does refer to specific advice, but also in a larger, broader sense, it refers to an overall counsel and plan.
The word translated “counsel” comes from the Hebrew term meaning “hard, firm.” Here, it means a definite, firm, planned direction.
In other words, this counsel is speaking of a person’s viewpoint or way of thinking about life; it is the principles that determine and guide one’s actions and direction in life.
And the ungodly have different values, goals, standards, and concerns than the believer does. They have a different worldview, a humanistic one, which excludes God.
And so verse one teaches that the blessed man does not walk according to the world and its principles or follow their example. They do not live by the worldly counsel and viewpoints by which the ungodly live.
It’s like what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:2: “Wherein in time past ye WALKED according to the course of this world.” And also Ephesians 4:17, “that ye henceforth WALK NOT as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.”
In the next step, the psalmist wrote, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners…”
One step leads to the other in this set of three. Having listened to and heeded the counsel of the ungodly leads one to take a stand in the path with other sinners.
In the first instance our attention is drawn to the principles by which ungodly men live; in the second, we find the practices which stem from those worldly principles.
Sinners have a path where they stand, and the blessed, happy man in the Lord knows he does not belong on that path. The word “way,” speaks of a marked-out path, a road, a direction, and the blessed, godly man is not traveling in the same direction as sinners.
A man who is influenced in his thinking by the counsel of the world begins walking away from God and then ends up standing alongside the ungodly, in unison with them. If you follow the wrong counsel, it can lead to associating and standing with the wrong people.
The word “standeth,” here of one who stands in this path with sinners, means you’re making a commitment, you’re taking a firm stand on that path and with the people on it and not apologizing for it. Thus, adhering to the counsel of the ungodly leads one to take a stand with the ungodly.
But the blessed, happy man does not do this. By remaining devoted to God and choosing His path, he avoids the dangers and pitfalls of ungodly, worldly counsel and buying into it, which in turn leads to standing with other sinners and practicing that counsel with them.
Things go from bad to worse in this explanation of those on the ungodly path. Having heeded the counsel of the ungodly leads one to take a stand in the path with other sinners, and that in turn, leads one to even sit in the seat of the scornful.
The scornful are those who sit and criticize the things of God and the people of God. The scornful mock and make light of God’s truth and ridicule that which is sacred. They are those who are rebellious and hardhearted against God.
The idea of sitting in this seat with the scornful is that now you’re settled. You’ve sat down in the midst of this anti-God, anti-Bible philosophy. You’re seated in that seat, and you are comfortable with it and you’re not leaving.
They then become one who themselves offers the counsel of the ungodly to those who have neglected God and rejected His Word.
So what can happen is the world and its counsel can influence and cause one to slip, to the point that they take a stand with it and with others who follow it, and that stand can lead one to cement that decision and settle into it as a permanent way of life and thinking.
Lot is an example in Scripture of this kind of man who did not heed the teaching of verse 1. In Genesis 13 and 14, we learn how first, Lot LOOKED toward the ungodly city of Sodom, then he PITCHED HIS TENT toward Sodom, and finally he MOVED INTO Sodom.
And Lot ended up losing all he had when the Lord destroyed the cities of the plain.
The Psalmist tells us that a blessed man is one who consciously resists the subtle inroads of compromise with the world and avoids the path in life that exemplifies sin’s sequential downward pull.
He portrays a person who remains wary of anything that might erode commitment to a godly life. And that person avoids the things that are poisonous and destructive, which make it impossible for true happiness to flourish through his relationship with God.
Psalm 1:2-3: “But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
Moving from the negative in verse 1, we come to the positive in verses 2-3. After describing what the blessed man does not do, now the psalmist describes what the happy man does do.
Verse 1 of Psalm 1 gives us a promise of happiness; verse 2 provides the means for experiencing it. And the writer tells us that the one who is blessed delights in the law of the Lord. The blessed take pleasure in and find delight in God’s Word.
Verse 2 begins with a word of contrast, “but,” and the contrast is strong.
Instead of being entangled with and conformed to the world and being pulled away from God by it, the happy man finds his deep delight by giving himself wholly to the Word of God and to the things of God and drawing close to Him.
The word “law” is the Hebrew word, torah. It refers specifically to the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Old Testament.
A blessed man living during the times of this Psalm lived under the law. And it was good and appropriate for one living under the law to delight himself and find joy and pleasure in the law of the Lord from His Word. That was their program and dispensation.
Out of that delight, a godly man meditated “day and night” on God’s law. To meditate is not some sort of new age hocus-pocus. It doesn’t require one to go to the top of some mountain, sit down, cross our legs, hold up our hands in a strange position and make funny sounds.
Meditation is about the reflection on the Word of God in the course of daily activities.
When verse 2 says the blessed man meditates on God’s Word it means he focuses his mind on it, and he rehearses it in his thoughts, thinking about it over and over, from all different directions, pondering its implications, connections, truth, and meaning for his life.
Meditation is done even while you’re doing other things, such as washing dishes, cutting the grass, driving down the road, or laying awake at night. You just think about the Word.
Joshua 1:8 challenged those under the law this way, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”
We should follow this example of delight and passion for God’s current program. Today, we are not under the law, but under grace, so our zeal should be directed toward God’s grace.
That’s our program and dispensation, and we should delight in and meditate and focus our minds on the grace of God that He is showing toward us, the Church, and the nations today. That grace is revealed in Paul’s 13 epistles.
Having the completed revelation of God, we can also delight in and think on all of God’s dealings with mankind and the glory and wisdom of His eternal purposes for the both the earth through Israel and the heavens through us, the Body of Christ.
The godly, blessed man knows where to find counsel. It’s not from the world or in the counsel of the ungodly. He has infinitely wiser counsel. Psalm 119:24 says of God’s Word, “Thy testimonies also are my delight and my COUNSELORS.”
God’s Word is always the best counselor. The blessed man walks in the truth and light of the Lord through His Word. His footsteps on the godly path are guided and ordered by it. The perfect wisdom of God’s Word gives us true direction in life.
And instead of allowing the counsel and example of the ungodly to shape their conduct, the godly allow the Word of God to shape and direct it.
Happiness and joy abide upon the person who lives a life that is centered on God and is led by His Word.
The person who does so, the Psalmist says, “shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither.”
This a beautiful, poetic description of the spiritual blessings which the godly will experience who walk God’s path of righteousness in life.
Jeremiah 17:7-8 put it similarly, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
The godly man who loves and lives God’s Word and trusts the Lord is likened to a deep-rooted tree growing along a natural watercourse, whose leaves never wither because of drought, and whose fruit is produced regularly and abundantly.
The planted tree in this picture is strong, fortified, rooted, healthy, growing, and stable. It always gets what it needs from the constant supply of water from the river.
Just like this tree, the godly man who delights in the Word receives from his connection to that Word spiritual strength, health, growth, and stability.
We always get what we need from the Word. Like a continually flowing river, there is this constant supply of wisdom, counsel, and nourishment from the Word that never runs out.
Thus, like this tree planted by the river, the godly person through the Word is alive, fruitful, useful, and enduring. Fruit comes from life, and fruit on this tree and in the lives of the godly comes from the life of God flowing in and through us.
But the most important part of a tree is its hidden root system that draws up water and nourishment, and the most important of the believer’s life is our spiritual root system, which draws on the life, resources, and nourishment from God’s Word and from Christ.
Like what this passage is teaching, Proverbs 12:3 states that “A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the ROOT of the righteous shall not be moved.”
And our roots are deepened and the strength of a godly man is maintained today by the supplies of grace that are drawn from the Word of God, rightly divided.
In Colossians 2:7, Paul taught us to be “Rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”Warren Wiersbe put it well regarding these verses, “The godly person described in verses 1-3 is surely a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to John 14:6 is the way (verse 1), the truth (verse 2), and the life (verse 3).”
Psalm 1:4-6: “The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
Everything that is true about the godly, happy man in verses 1-3, the Psalmist wrote in verse 4 that “The ungodly are not so.” Thus, the blessed man is blessed and happy, but the ungodly are not so.
The blessed man delights in and meditates in the Word, but the ungodly are not so. The blessed man is like a stable tree firmly planted by a river, but the ungodly are not so. The blessed man is spiritually alive and fruitful, but the ungodly are not so.
Instead, the psalmist uses a single term that portrays the life of the ungodly: “chaff.” And chaff is the paper-like skin, husk, and light shell around a kernel of grain. It must be stripped away before the kernel of grain can be ground into flour.
Chaff is light enough that it could be separated from the grain by throwing a scoopful into the wind and letting the wind drive away the chaff. This is how unstable, how lacking in substance, the ungodly are according to the Scriptures.
And the comparison of the ungodly to chaff that is easily carried away is made in contrast to the godly, who are like firmly rooted, stable, fruiting-bearing trees by a river.
Trees and chaff differ in their nature. Trees have life, and water benefits trees because trees are alive. You can water chaff day and night, and it will never grow. It cannot grow because it has no life. It’s the same with the saved and the unsaved: the saved have spiritual life, and the unsaved are dead in their sins.
The ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away, verse 4 says, and so is the counsel of the ungodly. All their ungodly, worldly, humanistic wisdom, philosophies, and theories one day will blow away like chaff in the wind, never to be found again.
But regarding God’s true wisdom and counsel, as Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the Word of our God shall stand for ever.”
After comparing the two ways of living between the godly and the ungodly, the psalmist considers the fate of those who reject the Lord: “Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous” (v. 5).
The Hebrew word translated “stand” is not the same as the previous term rendered “stand” in verse 1. This term means “to stand erect, to arise.” The idea is the inability to stand upright and stand their ground before God’s judgment.
They have nothing to stand on, no arguments to make, no adequate defense. They have nothing to plead on their behalf that would change the outcome.
They will not be able to hold up, stand, or defend themselves before the perfect, all-wise, and just judgment of the Lord Almighty, and they will be condemned.
And being condemned, they will not stand “in the congregation of the righteous.”
Based on the picture of the chaff as contrasted with the planted tree, the judgment of the ungodly involves removal and being driven away from God’s sight.
At the future judgment, Christ will say to the ungodly, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.”
The wind blows the chaff away (v. 4). And the last statement in verse 5 describes this removal as the exclusion of the ungodly from the “assembly of the righteous.”
The ungodly cannot and will not be found in the assembly of the righteous. They will be forever excluded from the company of those who are saved in the eternal state. They will not share in the same glorious future as the believing, righteous people of God.
Finally, in verse 6, the psalmist wrote, “For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
This psalm is a solemn warning that the reader should live his or her life in view of ultimate judgment by God.
You find two ways of living in this chapter, and this verse says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the other way of living, the way of the ungodly will perish.
The two phrases “the way of” refers to the course and path of one’s life. These two ways and paths have their final destinations at the places of life and death.
The word “knoweth” speaks of a knowledge of care, affection, and involvement within a relationship with the Lord. He knows and carefully watches over the righteous believing.
But as for the ungodly, they are on their own path, walking toward the pits of destruction. The way of the ungodly leads to perishing, to destruction. As Matthew 7:13 says, “and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
The ungodly are on this broad path which may seem comfortable now, and on that path they have lots of company with like-minded people, but in the end, they shall perish.
Speaking of chaff, John the Baptist said of Christ in Matthew 3:12: “Whose fan [or winnowing fork] is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner [or barn]; but He will burn up the CHAFF with unquenchable fire.”
The ungodly are called chaff in verse 4. The chaff will one day be burned with unquenchable fire. And that unquenchable fire is the lake of fire. There is no good ending for the ungodly unbelieving.
But Romans 5:6 reminds us that “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” We are all ungodly outside of Christ. We are all without strength and unable to save ourselves.
But Christ died for the ungodly; He died for all. Anyone can be saved from the everlasting condemnation of the lake of fire.
Just by faith alone, trusting that Christ died for your sins and rose again, you are saved from hell, forgiven of all your sins, and you have eternal life.