[0:00] We're going to study the first psalm tonight. It speaks about blessing. It speaks about the blessing of God and the type of person that God blesses.
[0:12] And so we just celebrated Thanksgiving and all that we're thankful for, the blessings of God in our lives. We see here in the book of Psalms how we can be blessed of God. What type of people God blesses.
[0:24] I think that everybody here in this room would say, I would like to be blessed, right? I would like for God to bless my life. I would like to see God's blessing in my life, in the life of my family, in the life of my children.
[0:35] And so we're going to see tonight the types of people that God blesses. All of us want to receive the blessing of God in our lives, but sometimes we don't know how to see that happen, right? It's kind of a mystery.
[0:46] It's kind of an unknown thing. And so we're going to look here in the book of Psalms, on Psalm 1, and it's going to explain to us how we can receive the blessing of God in our lives. What type of people God blesses.
[0:56] Look here in verse number 1. It says, So really what we see at the beginning here is that God wants His children to be blessed.
[1:14] God desires for us to be blessed. He wants us to be blessed. He desires that for us. He doesn't want you to live a miserable life. He doesn't want you to live a so-so life.
[1:26] He wants us to have an abundant life. But many times we misinterpret what that means. We think that the blessing of God is finances, or it's the car that Instagram's algorithm knows that you really want, right?
[1:40] Because you see 47 videos of it, and people shutting the door, opening the door, and all these different things, right? And it's not the house that you wanted. You couldn't afford it five years ago, and today is just, I mean, impossible, right?
[1:54] You just can't do it. It's not necessarily the things that we have. God wants us to find our blessing in Him. He doesn't want us to find blessing in the things that we own and the things that we possess.
[2:05] He wants to possess us, and in that we find blessing. God wants you to be happy. He wants you to be blessed. But it's a little bit different sometimes than we like to think. God wants to bless you and give you happiness by teaching you to discover true and lasting delight in Him.
[2:23] All the things that I just mentioned, the finances, the job, the car, the house, all those things come and go. They're here one day, they're gone the next, and we can't grasp onto those things.
[2:34] It's really, it's out of our control. But one thing that we can trust is our Lord. One thing that we can trust is our finding our delight in Him.
[2:45] And so verse 1 says, 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. And so he lays out here, in this poetry, he lays out a set of negatives, and he's going to follow with some positives.
[3:01] So let's look at the negatives first. The things that the blessed person, the people that we want to be, the things that we don't do, the things that we're not going to do if we want to find blessing. He says that they walk not in the counsel of the ungodly.
[3:17] Right? They're not taking bad advice. If you've ever been in any kind of situation in your life where you don't know what to do, and you ask other people, typically everybody has an opinion.
[3:29] Right? Everybody has something to say. Everybody has their advice that they'd like to give you. But not everybody is worth listening to. Right? Not everybody is going to give you good advice. The advice that we should be looking for is the advice that comes from God's Word.
[3:44] Right? And so the people that we look for advice from, we're going to see here, it says that, nor standeth in the way of the sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. And so we're looking for advice.
[3:55] We're looking for counsel from godly people. From people whose lives look like what God's Word says that our lives should look like. And so if we want to live a blessed life, if we want to live a life that God blesses, we ought to be seeking counsel from people who are living that kind of a life.
[4:13] Right? When we see their life, we see God's blessing in their life, we see that they're living a fruitful Christian life, walking in the fruit of the Spirit. Those are the people that we ought to look for. That we ought to say, I want to receive counsel from that person.
[4:25] I want to receive counsel from the person who's being blessed by God. The world is full of these people. The people that are giving bad advice and that are walking in the way of the sinners and sitting in the seat of the scornful.
[4:39] This world is full of those kind of people. And so we ought to, as Christians, be looking for people who are following God's Word and living an example that we want to follow. That are living an example of the way that God wants us to live our lives.
[4:53] And so we ought to be looking for people. Who can we surround ourselves with? The Bible says that there's wisdom, there's safety in a multitude of counselors. So we shouldn't try and do everything on our own. We should be looking to surround ourselves with people who can give us advice, who can help us.
[5:09] But we ought to surround ourselves with people who look like Jesus. People who are following God's Word. And so we're not just looking to surround ourselves and look for counsel from just anyone.
[5:21] Because trust me, everybody's got their own advice. When we started, we did a building project at Love Baptist Church. And when we were getting started, everybody had an opinion.
[5:32] And when we would talk about what we were doing, man, you wouldn't believe how many people pulled me aside and said, listen, okay, I know that they're going to tell you how to do it, but really you should do it this way. Make sure you use these materials.
[5:43] Make sure that you do it in this way. But specifically, make sure that the columns go in such a way that they're just like this and not like that guy said. Everybody had an opinion. And so we had to sift through that and figure out, you know, and every person on a construction site, they come and they're just appalled by the work that the last guy did.
[6:03] Right? Oh, I just can't believe that he would have done it that way. There's no way I would have done it that way. Everybody's got a different manner. Everybody's got a different opinion. And so we ought to be very careful about who we're listening to, who we're surrounding ourselves with.
[6:16] Because the people that we surround ourselves with are the people that we're going to be like. So we ought to surround ourselves with people that look like Jesus. People that act like Jesus. That don't just talk the talk.
[6:26] That don't just say the right things. But they actually live it out. And that's a whole lot harder to find. People who actually live what they preach. People that actually live the Word of God.
[6:39] James tells us, and James 3, that a source, a fountain cannot produce bitter and sweet waters. Not out of the same source. And so we can see the character and the manner of a person's life.
[6:50] And we ought to know that's probably not where I'm going to get my advice from. Probably not where I'm going to receive my counsel from. Because I don't expect to get sweet waters from a bitter source. I don't expect to get good advice from someone who's living a life that I don't want to emulate.
[7:06] And so we ought to be very careful about where we find our advice. Where we seek counsel. I want to follow Jesus and I want to seek to follow people who look like Jesus as well. Right?
[7:16] We all ought to be encouraging others to do that as well. Look at verse number 2. So that's what the blessed man does not do. Right? We see the negative. That's what the blessed man doesn't do.
[7:27] Let's look at what the blessed man does do. Right? Let's look at some positives. Right? Look at this. Verse number 2. He says, So the blessed man, the man that finds God's blessing in his life, is someone who finds his delight, his pleasure, in God's Word.
[7:49] And if you think about it, we're reading this from a psalmist who in his time would have had a very limited scripture. Right? He would have had a very limited look of what that was in that time.
[8:01] And us, when we read the first five books of the Bible, it's typically not something that we would say, Oh, I just find delight in that. Right? When we're reading through Leviticus or Numbers or Deuteronomy, many times we read that and we're not like, Oh, man, this is the good stuff.
[8:15] We overlook so much. But the psalmist is telling us, I find my delight. The blessed man finds his delight in the law of the Lord. How much more should we, having so much more of God's Word, how much more should we find our delight in his Word?
[8:33] There's so much that we have before us that we take for granted. And it seems really basic for the Christian, right? We think of, Well, of course I read my Bible. I read my Bible this morning.
[8:43] I did my devotions. I wrote in my journal. But how many times do we really find our delight in God's Word? Where is it that we actually find our delight?
[8:55] We need to think about those things. We need to think, If I want to be blessed of God, I need to find my delight in his Word. And so am I really delighting in the Word of God? Do I really find pleasure in the Word of God?
[9:07] Is it a chore? Is it just something on my to-do list that I have to check off? Or is it a pleasure and a delight in my life? Think about it. The psalmist is speaking about, right, this early portion of the Bible that he had, and he found delight in that.
[9:22] So consider with me, Where do I find delight? Where do I find delight in my life? Just in general, Where do I find delight? Where do I pass hours and I just don't even think about what I'm doing?
[9:37] Where do I spend time and what gives me pleasure that I just don't even look at the clock while I'm doing it? It's not a chore. It's not something I have to do. I look forward to it. What is it in my life that I find pleasure doing?
[9:52] What brings me delight? The blessed man, it says here, that his delight is in the law of the Lord. But where's my delight? Where's your delight tonight? Where do you find your delight?
[10:04] What do you think about when you're laying in bed at night and you can't sleep? What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you get up in the morning? What is it that drives you? What is it that you find delight and pleasure in?
[10:17] Is it God's word? I fear that for many of us, most of the time it's not. We find our delight in so many different things, but many times we don't in the word of God.
[10:31] We think about and we pursue that which gives us pleasure. So where am I spending my time? What am I thinking about throughout the day? It says, in his law, does he meditate day and night?
[10:44] What consumes my thoughts? What am I thinking about all day and all night? It doesn't have to be bad things. It could be that we're distracted with thinking about our family and thinking about relationships and thinking about all these different things.
[10:58] But where do I spend my time? Where do I find my delight? He says, blessed is the man, his delight is in the law of the Lord. Many times we find this and we see this in social media.
[11:13] We can spend hours scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and I'm passing by the time and I'm not thinking about the time and I'm sharing things with other people.
[11:24] Look at this funny video. Look at this quote that I found. All these different things. But how many times do we find that same delight, that same joy in the word of God? That we would say, I'm sharing this, what I found in the word of God with somebody else because I think it can be an encouragement to them or I think it can help them.
[11:41] So many times we find our delight, we find our pleasure, we find our enjoyment outside of the word of God. But tonight, if we want to be blessed of God, if we want to be the blessed man, not only do we need to avoid these things, but we also need to find our delight in God's word.
[12:00] And notice, it's not a thing that we can just work up. It's not, blessed is the man who doesn't do these things but goes out and does this thing. I mean, it's an inner desire that we want to have that walk with the Lord.
[12:14] We want to find our delight in Him. It's not something that we can conjure up. It's something that God does in us through our walk with Him. And so we ought to take note of that. His delight is in the law of the Lord.
[12:26] In His law doth He meditate day and night. So what's this blessing even look like? Look at Psalm 1, verse 3. He says, And He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.
[12:38] That bringeth forth His fruit in His season. His leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever He doeth shall prosper. Right? So this is the image that we see of the blessed man. Right?
[12:48] It's the image of a tree. Right? It's planted next to the waters. He's got everything that He needs. He's strong. He has all of His needs met. He's thriving. He's living the life that He was intended to live.
[13:00] Right? Just like any good tree would do. Right? He's sitting there next to the waters. He's got plenty of water. He's bearing fruit. He sees all of this. This would be like my sister. She has...
[13:11] You know those people that have... Just to have a green thumb? Right? They have all these plants in their house. And when you walk into my sister's house, she lives in Florida, it's like a tropical rainforest. Right?
[13:21] Everything is green and lush. And she's got a routine for everything. Right? She waters this plant today and then the other plant she has to turn it a quarter turn so it gets all the sun. Right?
[13:32] She's got this whole routine for all her different plants and all these different things and everything looks beautiful. That's like this blessed man. Right? He's thriving. He's living the life that he's supposed to be living.
[13:43] He's doing what God intended him to do. He's fulfilling his purpose. He's meditating on God's word and controlled by God's spirit so his endeavors are God honoring and blessed by God.
[13:57] Right? How do we have that? We have... It says here, Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Right? He's just... Everything's going for him. Everything seems to be going his way because he's not focused on himself.
[14:09] Right? He's focused on doing what he was created to do. But in contrast, we see in verse number 4, we see the ungodly. Verse number 4 says, The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
[14:24] So those whom we saw in verse number 1, right? The ungodly, it says are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. These would be like the plants in my house. Right?
[14:35] That... It has no reflection on my wife at all. We share equal watering responsibilities. But man, sometimes, it's very sunny in Atikipa.
[14:45] Right? That sun just burns everything. And so sometimes, we just have to say, You know what? That plant is gone. Right? We're just going to throw it away. We're going to replace it. We're going to do a different one. And we'll see how long it lasts.
[14:57] But you know, you empty it out and it's just... Right? It just goes in the trash can like a pile of dust. That's what we see here. It's almost like this tumbleweed. Right? The idea of chaff.
[15:09] Something that the wind could easily blow away. Something that's dead. Something that's lifeless. And that's what we see. The ungodly are not... So they're like the chaff which the wind driveth away. They don't have a root system.
[15:20] They don't have what this tree has that's planted by the water. They just are blown away with whatever life circumstances or whatever comes their way. They have no root. They have no grounding.
[15:32] And that's what we see as the ungodly. As a warning to us. They're not grounded, planted, or rooted in anything. Each new challenge, each new passing day is something else that can blow them away.
[15:43] Whereas this tree can withstand the winds and the storms and all these different things. Not because the tree's so great. Right? Because it's rooted. Because it's grounded. Because it's living as it was intended to live.
[15:57] But the chaff is not like that. It's just blown away each day, each challenge, each problem has the power to just take it completely off course. Do you know anybody like that?
[16:09] It seems like each thing that comes up in their life is the end of the world. Right? They just have no perspective on longevity, on the long term, on maybe God's plan for their life. It seems like every day is just the new circumstances is able to just blow them off course.
[16:25] And this is the ones who are not living in God's will. The people that are not living, that are not submitting their lives to God. Right? The unbelievers, the wicked here.
[16:36] They're like the chaff that the wind drives away. And verse number five says, Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
[16:47] Right? Before the righteous judgment of God, this chaff cannot stand. Only these, the tree, right, that's planted by the waters, that has the roots that are growing, that's bearing fruit, that's all these different things, that's the one that's going to stand.
[17:02] That's the tree that's approved by God and His judgment. In verse number six, it says, For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
[17:14] The man who knows God, the man who walks with God, is blessed. And God knows that man. He knows his way. He knows his life and the way that he's living.
[17:25] The ungodly will not last. And so really, set before us every day is a choice. Ever since the beginning, right, ever since Genesis, there's been choices for mankind to make.
[17:37] And so we have a choice before us. If we want to live in God's blessing, if we want to be a blessed man, if we want to do that, then we have a decision to make.
[17:49] We have a decision to make each day. Will we seek happiness and blessing God's way or will we seek to try and do it our own? God has a very specific way and a specific pattern for how He wants us to live and how His blessing will be brought about in our lives when we're seeking counsel from godly people and from God's Word, when we're avoiding the counsel of this world and what everybody else would seek to teach us.
[18:16] Listen, if we're going to live a godly life in this world, there's going to be a whole lot of people that are against us. This whole world and the world system is against us as Christians. If we want to live a life that's according to God's Word, we better just mark it down that there's going to be a lot of people against us.
[18:32] We're going to face a lot of opposition. And so we as believers need to decide, are we willing to take God at His Word and decide, if I want to live a blessed life, I'm going to live my life according to God's Word.
[18:44] I'm going to live my life according to what God has laid out for us. So we've got a decision to make. Our actions and our decisions have consequences. Right? And the way that that works out, when we read this passage and we read about the chaff that's blown away with the wind that doesn't stand, that doesn't have the nourishment and the nutrient and all these things that the tree that's rooted and grounded, we ought to read that and think about the world around us.
[19:10] We ought to think about the billions of people around us that don't know Christ, that are exactly in this situation where they don't know Christ and they're just blown around with everything that's in their situations day to day and they don't have a grounding, they don't have a rooting, they don't have a fruitful life that's blessed by God because they don't know Christ.
[19:29] It ought to give us a burden to share the gospel with them, to say that that person could have an abounding, abundant, fruitful life in Christ and it should burden our hearts that they are just blown away each day with whatever comes by because we serve a God that can take nothing, can take chaff, can take these things that are just blown about and turn them into a fruitful, life-giving tree, a fruitful tree that's planted by rivers of water that God's supplying everything that it needs, all these people around us that we see all of these circumstances in their life and they're just blown away by these things, God has the power to change them to be a fruitful tree planted by rivers of water and we can be a testimony of that.
[20:15] We can show others through our life how they can have new life in Christ. So if the Lord answers prayers that are made in Jesus' name and He wants the gospel to go forth, He prospers the work of the godly man that we see here in verse number 2, why do we hesitate to move forward in our endeavors to share the gospel in our homes, in our schools, in our communities and all around the world?
[20:43] If we know that God wants to bless those things, why do we hesitate? Why do we hold back? God wants to bless our endeavors to build into our families and into our communities and into the rest of the world.
[20:56] So why do we hesitate? We know that God will bless it. He wants to see His word carried out to the rest of the world. If you're living and you're enjoying the blessing of God in your life, there's a reason for that.
[21:09] You were blessed so that you could be a blessing to others. We're not blessed just for our sake, for us. We receive this blessing, we have this blessing so that we can be a blessing to others.
[21:21] And so we ought to use that. We've been given what we've been given for a purpose. Perhaps tonight you find yourself more like the chaff, right? You don't know Christ, you feel like everything is weighing down on you, you feel like with every turn and every situation it feels like it just can uproot you in just a moment's notice.
[21:42] God, our God, has the power to change your life from that to being a fruitful tree grounded and rooted next to rivers of waters that can nourish and supply all that you need in Him.
[21:58] Tonight, we have a choice to make. Whether we're going to choose to receive God's blessing in the way that He's designated for us or if we're going to try and do it our own way. We've kind of seen the history of that throughout the Bible that it's not really a good idea to try and go about your own way.
[22:16] We ought to follow God in the prescription that He's given us in His Word. God blesses the man that finds his delight in God's Word. Tonight, we need to make a decision.
[22:27] God, I want to honor You. I want to find my delight in Your Word. There's so many distractions. There's so many things that we get distracted and we find pleasure in different things. It's not about our force, our ability to do this.
[22:42] We need to ask God to change our lives. It's not about trying harder and just giving it a better go at it because we can go and we can, you all know that, you start the year with your Bible reading plan and we go for a couple weeks and then it all just kind of falls off the wayside.
[22:59] It's not about our efforts and how much we can do. It's about understanding that we are dependent on God, that we can do nothing without Him and we need Him to work in our lives.
[23:11] And so tonight, ask God to work in your life. Ask God to give you a delight and a pleasure from His Word. Let's pray. God, thank you for this evening. Thank you for Your Word.
[23:23] Thank you for how you work through Your Word. God, thank you for the opportunity that we have to read Your Word, that we have Your Word in our language. We have so many resources, so many things that can help us to understand Your Word and yet so many times we neglect it.
[23:41] God, I pray that You'd help us to reflect on ourselves. I pray that You'd help us to reflect on our own lives and our own personal walk with You and that tonight that You would help us to understand that we are helpless without You and we are desperately in need of Your change in our lives.
[23:58] God, would You help us? Would You help us to understand our need for You and would You give us the strength that we need to follow You daily? It's in Your name we pray. Amen.