Never trust a dog to watch your food. - Patrick, age 10 Never tell your mom her diet's not working. - Michael, 14 Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts. - Kellie, 11 When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair. - Taylia, 11 When your dad is mad and asks you, "Do I look stupid?" don't answer him. - Michael, 14 Leaning wisdom is an important part of our life. It helps us in our decision making in our everyday activities. But often the advice given is advice that may help or harm. So where should we turn? The Psalms point out our need for wise counsel, warns us against foolishly ignoring God’s wisdom. During these summer months we will be examining several Psalms to see the wisdom that God gave His servants. For centuries people have turned to the Psalms for comfort and help. Their advice is given in poetic form. This poetry formed the basis of the church’s worship. Martin Luther called the Psalms the church’s hymn book. For centuries these were the songs sung every Lord’s Day morning. The Psalms are a collection of individual songs written by a variety of people. While David’s name is ascribed to many, others were written by the sons of Korah, Aspah, Moses, and Solomon. While many were written during Israel’s heyday of the Davidic monarchy, some were written as laments during the period of exile. They are a tremendous place to find comfort when times are rough, encouragement to trust God when your situation is desperate, forgiveness and repentance when sin seems to gain the upper hand. This morning we will begin with Psalm 1. The first Psalm probably was a cover letter to the whole of the collection. It sums up the importance of finding wisdom in the right places.
The Psalm begins with a proclamation of God’s satisfaction. Just as Jesus began His teaching on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 with His declaration of where real happiness is found, so here. The word "blessed" is one of those terms used only by Christians, unless, of course, you sneeze. The word "blessed" can be translated "happy," "content," or "satisfied," but it includes much more than just a peaceful, easy feeling. The word is written in the plural form, describing not a situation in which we find happiness, not a single emotional response, but rather the multitudinous advantages which the Father pours out on us, if we are wise. Where do we find wisdom? - (verses 1-2) Wisdom comes in the rejection of rebellion We begin with the negative - where is wisdom never found? Wisdom must be able to distinguish between what is true and false. If one goes after the latter, there is a deadly downward spiral. We begin this descent first by: Accepting Advice The term "wicked" may make us think we can easily spot such a person. The wicked, we think, are those with a lengthy police record, whose notoriety precedes them. But "wicked" refers to one who has ruled God out of his life, lives without reference to God. We must understand wickedness theocentrically, not anthropocentrically. Certainly one may attempt to be good without God; millions do it every day, if by good you mean nice to other people. But their advice is deadly. Once advice ceases to be God-centered, it must out of necessity become self-centered; it is then wicked. Where do you go for advice? When it comes to raising kids do you go with the latest recommendations from your neighbor? Do you try the hottest technique on the market? Does Cosmo counsel you on how to enrich your marriage or do you uncritically adopt whatever your parents did to make their marriage work? The "counsel of the wicked" simply refers to the prevailing value system promoted by a world which lives without reference to God. It’s what we see and hear every day. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, listen to the radio, surf the net, listen to conversations throughout the week, and what do you hear? Adopting Lifestyle This is the next stage. The person moves from listening to the advice given by those who do not reference their lives to God to those whose lives fall short of God’s standards in a much more visible way. The sinner is the one who misses the mark of God’s objective standards. The intensive form of the Hebrew is used here to indicate that their straying from what is right is a habit, not just an accidental error. The downward direction is certain whenever we chase after lifestyles advocated by those who miss God’s mark because they are shooting after the wrong target. Their goals and values do not take into account God’s standards; their lifestyles are devoid of what God commands. To "stand in the way" does not mean to oppose. Rather, the term "stood" descriptively represents their obstinacy and stubbornness. Once the advice of those who live without reference to God is adopted, it is a quick trip to fall in line with those who are pursuing the wrong goals in life. To stand in the path of sinners means that one has progressed from merely listening to godless counsel to adopting it as their own position This is an easy transition for us to make; whenever we uncritically and emotionally adhere to bad advice, we soon rationalize what we do by whatever means will ease our conscience. At this point it is not too far until we ourselves are: Articulating Scorn The person moves from walking, to standing, now to sitting. The word "seat" here indicates that one teaches or instructs what one has accepted and believed. This idea is related to the ancient practice of teachers sitting in the synagogue. In more modern times we talk of financing a chair for instruction, that is, paying the salary for a professor in college. But the wisdom and instruction given here is by mockers, scoffers. The "mockers" are those who make open scoff and blaspheme. Self-sufficiency is at its zenith as not only is their advice without reference to God and contrary to His commands, it ridicules what God has said. We not only are having our thinking shaped by the world around us, and drifting into its way of living but now we are just sitting down and identifying ourselves with those who mock the very things they ought to be humbly pursuing -- who mock the Bible as irrelevant, who mock the Gospel as being too narrow and unsophisticated for the modern mind, who mock obedience to God’s law, faithfulness and integrity in our relationships, and so on. We end up sitting down and making ourselves at home among them. God and His ways are no longer even on our screen as we go through life. We laugh at those who are living life as God designed it to be lived. The psalmist begins with this negative spiral because, let’s face it, this is our default mode. When I flip on my computer MS Word makes certain assumptions: the font is Arial, the font size is 10 and the zoom command is 105%. I don’t have to reset it or think about it. For computers default saves time, but in our lives it is deadly. We live by default when we allow our thoughts, attitudes, values and behavior to be shaped and molded by the world around us. Our fallen sinful natures work on the default mode. We so easily walk in the counsel of the wicked, we uncritically stand in the way of sinners, we characteristically sit in the seat of the mockers. And without much fanfare, the psalmist says: That way of doing life, the default mode, is a certain path to disaster: a life without significance, like the chaff that gets blown away in the wind without any evidence that it was ever even there. And the interesting thing is: No one plans for it to happen, it’s just the result of drift! We get there by default. And so, the psalmist says: Blessed is the person who chooses not to just drift through life! Blessed is the person who lives by design! Wisdom comes in the reception of revelation With a decisive "but" the focus shifts from the warning against bad advice to the place where we can find good advice. In opposition to the counsel of the wicked is the law of the Lord. But wisdom comes not just in knowing God’s Word, not just in being aware of its precepts. Biblical scholar and philosopher Gordon Clark once noted that the great watershed in the Christian faith involves our attitude towards the Word of God. How we perceive that word determines our end. Notice the attitude of the one who will be blessed: delight. There is to be a concern, a preoccupation with the law of the Lord. It's not the time spent in reading the Word that's important, but it's the time spent in enjoying the presence of God that strengthens you. Delight is evidenced by meditation. The verb "meditate" is a word which means to mull over, to reconsider, to look at again and again. This is not study of God’s Word out of duty, but a desire due to delight. They do not pigeonhole their consideration of the law to a short, daily quiet time; but they "meditate" on it "day and night." It is the subject to which their thoughts naturally turn; it is the favorite resting place for their wandering minds. Wisdom comes not from inherent intelligence. It is not devised as the mind is allowed to frame any world view that best suits the times. It is built on what God has already laid down. Biblical mediation is not about emptying our minds and repeating our mantra. It’s about filling our minds up with God’s truth. Meditation, as the Bible talks about it, is simply the practice of giving sustained attention to the words of Scripture so that it begins to influence the way we think. Meditation on Scripture involves this principle: What the mind repeats it retains! The truth is that you and I have meditated a lot in our life. Let me give you an example: You finish this line for me out loud: "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip, that started from this tropic port on board this __________" How did our minds retain that? Some of us repeated it over and over. We regularly exposed ourselves to it. The truth is we meditate over all kinds of things. Some of us meditate on the sports page, others meditate on our personal finances, the stock market and corporate earnings reports, some meditate on trade journals, their favorite magazine, movie or TV show. The question is not "are we going to meditate," but "Upon what will we meditate?" Are we going to drift and let the world around us set the agenda? We can do that, and in the end we may know the words to "Gilligan’s Island" and lots of other jingles, but is that what we want to be shaping our minds and molding our attitudes? The psalmist says that is the way to disaster! So don’t let that happen! Choose another way, choose to focus your mind and heart on the word of God! Chances are, we won’t just drift into it, we have to choose it. (from "Overcoming Default Mode Living" Psalm 1: 1-6, Menlo Park Presbyterian, January 17-18, 1998) What does wisdom produce? - (verses 3-5) Biblical wisdom produces fruitful stability This image has new meaning for me after the other week when John, my father and I went out to Arizona. After coming down from the higher elevation of Flagstaff and driving into the more arid area of Sedona, the trees became more scarce and less substantial. As we continued to lower elevations south of Sedona toward Cottonwood, we were surrounded by sage and juniper. But ahead in Cottonwood we could see an extensive line of bright green which stood out against the sandstone. Through Cottonwood meandered a river which gave enough water for more abundant vegetation. The wise person who spends time delighting himself in God’s Word is like such a tree. This tree doesn’t just happen to find itself there, for it is planted, or more exactly the word means: transplanted. This tree was intentionally placed by the water to be nourished and fed. We are planted and nourished by the Father. All this is done with a goal in mind: fruitfulness. The fruit a tree produces is the evidence of what its roots soaked up. Fruitfulness was not a reward for the tree, but was its natural function. There is a wonderful promise here. As God places us in Christ, as He gives us living waters which should nourish and refresh us, as His Word strengthens us, whatever God desires for us to produce will come to maturity. In light of this we should appreciate the sovereignty of God completely. As we find our delight in God’s Word, as we are fed by the Father, fruitfulness will come, sustaining our vitality as Christians will continue. Worldly wisdom is insubstantial Those who do not consider God’s wisdom, who find their delight in anything other than His revealed Word - they are compared to something that is weightless and useless: chaff. Chaff is the
husks, the shell, within which is the kernel of grain. During the time of the psalmist,
farmers would break the shells around the grain, then toss all this into the air on a hill
top while a light breeze was blowing. The heavy kernels of grain would fall down, but the
light chaff would be blown away. Chaff is worthless stuff. Chaff has no root below, no
fruit or foliage above. It is dead. It has no vigor or freshness of life. After the
harvest the chaff is burned in a fire. In contrast to the carefully chosen placement of the tree, the chaff is blown by the wind. So, while the righteous man (depicted by the tree) has a well-planned, fruitful and prosperous existence, the wicked man's existence (depicted by the chaff) is useless, purposeless and haphazard. They are worthless and are of no account. Why? Because, before God only one thing counts: a living relationship with Christ. Without that relationship you are but worthless chaff. Thus are the wicked, of no eternal use. They will not be able to stand in the judgment. These are the ones who will be addressed by our Lord on the last day. "Depart from me I never knew you! " They are treated in the same way that they treated our God. They are ignored. Because of this, they can not stand up to the rigorous scrutiny of judgment. The perfection which God demands is lacking. There is nothing solid in the men; there is nothing good in their ways. They are not of God’s planting; they are not good grain; they are only chaff, and a chaff that shall be separated from the good grain when the fan or shovel of God’s power throws them up to the wind of His judgments. How do we get this wisdom? - (verse 6) If we take seriously the destruction of the wicked and take a long look at our own hearts we have reason for concern. Who here hasn’t taken bad counsel, no less given it to someone else? Who hasn’t adopted the lifestyle of the world? Which one of us wants to stand up and say that God’s Word is our constant delight? I won’t. For those who struggle with meditating on God’s Word, who find their lives dry and lifeless at times this Psalm could be depressing. But there is hope. The key to this Psalm is found in the conclusion. "For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous." The word "watch" is the simple word "know." It is much more than a casual knowledge. "Watch" is not a bad translation. It means that our Father knows those that are His; He knows what they are like, what they endure, how they live. Our faithlessness is no surprise to Him. But God’s knowledge of us is not just the observation of facts, but is intimate and creative, too. As God "knows" us, we can have confidence that He works in us, changes us, guides us. How then can we be certain that God is watching over us and that we will not perish? Simply by believing that we are blessed because another was blessed for us. As I was reading the ancient interpreters of this passage such as Augustine, as I read Martin Luther’s comments, too, there was a simple yet profound assumption - "the man" of verse one, the only one who never walked in the counsel of the wicked, who never stood in the way of the sinners or sat in the seat of the mockers, the only one who ever delighted in God’s Law, who lived not by bread alone but every word which proceeded from the mouth of God, and who made it His constant meditation, the only one who is truly blessed is Jesus Christ. Our blessedness, our hope, our certainty that God watches over us is found only in so far as we are in Christ. We can be confident that God will watch over us not based on our righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ. Without that hope you and I will perish no matter how hard we try to follow godly counsel, no matter what we do to try to produce good works. Without God’s stamp of approval on us we will perish. There is plenty of sage advice to be found in our lives. The wisdom of the kids may ring true Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time. - Kyoyo, 9 You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. - Armir, 9 Don't pick on your sister when she's holding a baseball bat. - Joel, 10 If you want a kitten, start out by asking for a horse. - Naomi, 15 Better than a kitten or a horse, better than having to negotiate with God, here is the best piece of advice we can ever learn, from James 1:5: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." In the final analysis, the one path to being blessed by our heavenly Father is to look in faith to the One whose blessing can be ours. It is then we can confident that we, declare righteous by the Father, will stand in the Judgment Day, that even now He watches over us. |
