The Blessing of God's Word

Psalm 1, and that's the passage Troy's preaching from this morning. The way of the righteous and the wicked. 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 in His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields his fruit in its season, and his leaves do not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore, 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. Psalm 1 takes a very, has a very special place in my heart. It's one of the first songs we sang when I first became reformed, and it's something that I've sung to my children to put them to sleep late at night when they were crying. Often I get one of two reactions: either they'd fall immediately to sleep or they'll be up screaming at me for the next few hours.

And I'm hoping that we don't have either of those reactions this morning. But, yes, we're looking at Psalm 1. Now if you come hoping to plumb the depths of theology and learn some really sophisticated new truths, then I'm sorry to disappoint you again. We're really looking at some very simple truths this morning. But for that reason, I hope you'll be challenged by it.

Because how long have we been Christians, attempting to live our lives as Christians day by day, year by year, and our lives have failed to show that. So I hope that's a challenge to you this morning. But before we go into it, I just want to introduce the background of this sermon, and then we'll pray together for the Lord to open it up to us. So let's just think about what the world thinks of us as Christians. What do they think of us as they walk the dog or they go for a jog in the morning and they see us here in church or they see us pulling out of our driveways heading off to church early Sunday morning?

Well, in 2017, the Macrindle report noted that in Australia, Generation Z is the most open age group to discussing and actively engaging in religious activity compared to other age groups. That's interesting. This may have seemed like good news, but there is a shift in openness toward the gospel of our Lord. But things aren't as simple as they seem. The most significant stumbling block at that time, seven years ago now, was that Christianity's teaching that homosexual acts are sinful.

And after that, the next teaching that they had issues with was the teaching on punishment and hell. A picture of Jesus was an understanding of someone who just happened to be a really friendly and nice fellow, just someone who loves everyone. What kind of Christianity Generation Z, the currently youngest adult generation, is open to seems to be less Christian the more we look under the surface. And this is consistent with what sociologists have observed.

Now in Australia, whether for ill or for good, we continue to be affected by the culture in the United States. And sociologists in the United States have observed this phenomenon of American youths who attend church: what they actually believe is distinct from historical Christianity altogether, regardless what church they happen to attend. In fact, they have to give this real religion of young people a different name, namely moralistic therapeutic deism. What does that mean? Well, what young people really believe, what their real religion is, what they call Christianity, is that God is someone who gives us sense and meaning for our lives.

He's someone who we can lean upon in the struggles of life. Christianity is something that teaches us how to be a good person. Doesn't that all sound very good and true? But if you take a step back, you notice how me-centred it is. The purpose of Christianity is to change me.

The purpose of Christianity is to make me feel like I have purpose and meaning in life rather than how we can honour and serve God. And our understanding of how we should live our lives isn't directed from God, but from the world. What good news means then, and what determines our purpose in life and obligations to God, are a different thing altogether, and often repackaged by the church in order to be seeker sensitive. We want to let as many people in as possible, but what are we letting them into? Very clearly, another sociologist, Kenda Creasy, noted that the problem isn't so much that people aren't going to church.

They are going to church. And they're going to Bible-believing churches, including Reformed churches. But they're coming up with these beliefs. They have this way of understanding things. Why is that?

Often because what they're hearing at home or among their friends or on TV or social media is just a Christianese version of what they could just as easily hear from a non-believer. Outside of the church, we are bombarded with teachings that are contrary to what we believe, whether that's Play School or Sesame Street singing songs about how love is love. It's a very shocking sort of experience for me as someone who grew up as a young child watching Play School, and some of you may be familiar with that. And it's very shocking too when you hear, if you're familiar with this TV show, the host say, let's look through the round window now, and you see John have two dads. That's something you wouldn't have experienced ten or twenty years ago.

No. And today we're hearing all these different types of ideas floating around, ideas of racial reconciliation, of gender. I mean, what is a man and what is a woman? Whether public schools are an appropriate place to learn about God alongside all the other things, including environmentalism and that sort of thing. And the issue for us now is with all these things on the table for us to learn and think about, where is the place of God's word?

Where is the time for us to think about what God has said if we give the Bible any time at all? Between the most exciting Netflix and Stan episodes and the trending TikTok or YouTube videos, how much of the Bible do we really read? Let alone study deeply and pore over prayerfully. I'm talking about us Christians. Our culture is hardly becoming more welcoming of Christianity.

Now, from personal experience of that, say, fifteen years ago, if I was talking to a sceptic, I'd more often than not hear that Christianity is just factually wrong. It's incorrect. They have the wrong beliefs. But more and more, what I'm hearing from them isn't just that Christianity is wrong, but that Christianity is immoral. To be a Christian, to be a Bible-believing Christian is in some sense to be a bad person.

It is in this fog of confusion that I want to shine the light of God's word upon us this morning, whether the issue is something far reaching and culturally significant or just the day-to-day decisions that we have to make. So I'm trusting that you have your Bibles open to Psalm 1, and I'll give you a moment to do that. And I'll lead us in a prayer of illumination. So let's pray together. Heavenly Father, as we contemplate and open up Your word, we give You thanks for it.

We give You thanks that in this world where there are many voices, that You have given Your voice to us. Help us to have open ears to it. And then this morning, Heavenly Father, by Your Holy Spirit, may we be changed by it and to live by it confidently in the face of all the noise of this world. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Now this Psalm, Psalm 1, it serves as an introduction to the whole book of the Psalms, the biggest book in the Bible. So let's fly over it for a broad view before we land and walk through it verse by verse. Now I want us to see very clearly that it paints a picture of two different people. I'll read verses 1 and 2 for us. 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 in His law he meditates day and night.

Throughout this psalm, you'll see that there are two groups of people, the righteous and the wicked. There is no in-between person. There is no grey area. And how these two groups, the righteous and the unrighteous, are distinguished hinges on their relation to the law of God. Now the general meaning of that in the Hebrew is just what God has said, God's instruction.

As a consequence, these two groups, the righteous and the unrighteous, they have their own result. On one hand, the righteous have prosperity and blessing, whereas the unrighteous find destruction. Now there's a lot that we can look at here, but I want to make clear that the word blessing here, it actually means real sort of benefit in our lives. The sort of thing that we are thinking of when we give this morning, that we want to bless people. There are three aspects here in this psalm that we will look at.

First, it speaks of blessing. Yes. Second, the righteous one in contrast to the group or many sinners. And third, the importance of God's instruction for us. After looking at these three aspects of Psalm 1, we'll see how it connects to Jesus.

Now Psalm 1. Psalm 1 begins with the word blessing and it's important for us because throughout the scriptures, including Proverbs, for example, we see blessing means something like happiness or prosperity, a life with enjoyment, has the idea of being satisfied. So too, this psalm has that real benefit in mind. God's instructions for us are not just some things that God has made up and said, okay, you have to do this now.

They're for our benefit. They actually help us. They make life better for us. And it's not hard to understand this. Being a good worker, being a hard worker, is better than being a lazy worker.

Being a forgiving and loving husband or wife turns out you have a better marriage than if you're a selfish or a self-serving husband or wife. So, Saint Paul in Romans chapter 6, for example, when he responds to the question, why should we be good if God's already saved us? Part of his answer is that, well, think about the fruit that you bore when you were sinning. They're already brought into your life. Think of all those things that have all those negative consequences of your sin.

Isn't turning away from those things a good thing? Why wouldn't we want to live a life of blessing by God's instruction as He loves us and has given us, given for us? Now see first in the first verse, there is a progression from walking, standing, and sitting. Now I'll just repeat that for us in verse 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.

Walks, stands, and sits. Now the significance seems to me that as we open our ears to the advice of the world, we sort of see how far it can take us. Okay. So that sounded like a good idea. If I do the wrong thing there, you know, it's not too bad.

I'll just go along with it, it seems like it's going to help me out. So I'll just try it for a while. Next, what happens is you sort of become comfortable with it. You stand with it. You become a sinner yourself daily.

And then eventually, you pull up a chair. You hang your hat up. And you become a scoffer. You laugh at people who are doing the righteous thing. To be a mocker then is where we eventually end up.

In verse 3, we see describing the blessing of the righteous as how it's like being a tree planted by streams of water, which yields fruit and prospers. Verse 3: He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither and all that he does, he prospers. This imagery of a tree and streams of water is one we find throughout the Bible, isn't it? The Garden of Eden and the tree of life to which the rivers flow. In Revelation, the kingdom of God has within it this tree which crosses a river of life.

And in the New Testament, Jesus refers to Himself as the water of life. He is the life-giving vine from whom we receive blessing and bear fruit. Keeping these commandments of Jesus, and so continuing in His love, Jesus says our joy may be complete. John chapter 15. Friends, if we would have joy in our lives, joy that lasts, why do we listen to the world instead of Jesus and His word?

Rather than being attached to the thinking and manner of living of this world, let's seek to be salt and light, speaking the word of God to a dark world, because this world is in need of blessing which comes from God. Note, however, that this is not a promise that we won't experience suffering or hardship. John the Baptist, he was beheaded. Stephen, he was stoned to death. And what about Jesus?

Well, we all know that Jesus was crucified, don't we? But what God does for us is He transforms even death, even death itself. For us who believe and know God, death is the way which we pass through this world and enter into glory. For the unbeliever though, death is where you pass through this world and enter hell. So, no, which one would you rather?

God, in any situation, in every context, is the means by which we are blessed. And ultimately, God does promise that the fruitfulness of the righteous will be rewarded, and that the way of the wicked, which leads to judgment. Blessedness, joy, satisfaction are not just secondary aspects of Christian living. They are an essential and an integral part of our relationship with Jesus. Just like a relationship with your husband or wife, the joy that you have with them isn't just something that, oh, okay.

That's just an extra bit. That's why you're with them, you love them because they give you joy. They make life in a sense worth living, don't they? But in God, God is the one in whom we find our greatest and deepest joy and the one from whom we experience all joy. It is in His light, in His joy, that we experience the greatest joy we can ever have.

It's not just an extra bit on top of all the other benefits of Christianity. So let's get away from the idea that Christianity and holiness have more in common with misery and boredom. I like how the Presbyterian's Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it. What is the chief end of man? What is the goal of life?

What is the purpose of our existence? The answer it gives: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The climax of our blessedness then is in our being able to stand firm in the judgment and fellowship with our God, rather than receiving the punishment, the misery that awaits the unrighteous. And we know as believers that difficulties will come, don't we? We receive them.

We experience them often ourselves. But God gives us hope for a joy that knows no end. What is the next point? The one versus the many. Notice in verse 1 how alone the blessed one is.

From our Christian experience, this looks familiar. We think of the uni student holding on to her faith as her lecturer habitually mocks Christian teaching, although in a way subtle way so they don't get in trouble, you know? Or the pressure to join in the sex and substance-fuelled parties. The Christian on the worksite, hearing the crude jokes and knowing that if he doesn't force a laugh, he's probably going to stand out. And so he does laugh.

And he justifies it in the name of hospitality. I don't want to make them feel bad, so I'll laugh at their joke. Now we Christians are outnumbered, aren't we? And very often we feel as though that it's just us all alone, standing against the whole world. And the world, having departed from the wisdom of God, God's teaching, is suffering.

Think of the rate of depression that's rising, despite the fact that we have more and more in our lives, the rising rate of mental illness. It is confused. The world is confused and hardly knows up from down, left from right, good from evil. And as a church, let us not, in trying to share the love of Jesus to a lost world, lose ourselves in that world. Ministers of the gospel have just a little pot, a portion of time on Sunday mornings to open up God's word to us.

What about the rest of the week? What are we doing? What are we listening to? Who is teaching us the rest of the time? And I hope you thank God for the faithfulness of biblical teaching that we receive in places like this.

Because many churches are a desert, where they hear nothing but platitudes and a pat on the back, no different than what they would hear at a self-help conference. The rest of the week, we will be surrounded by wolves and a window to a world of sin we carry in our pockets and handbags, don't we? Parents with young children, teenagers, grandparents, if you would have them blessed by God, teach them not to consider the counsel of wickedness, but to lean on God's wisdom. It doesn't really matter how many people say it or how vigorously or sincerely they tell you it's true. If God says otherwise, then let God be true and every man a liar.

Though we may feel all alone like we are against an army, we are promised the victory, aren't we? We will stand at the day of judgment, and they will be blown away like chaff in the wind. If God is for us, who can be against us? So we looked at how God's teaching is a blessing for our lives. We've seen that the righteous person may seem to stand alone against the world of sin and mocking voices.

But how is the righteous one able to stand the allure of sin? He doesn't go along with it, does he? Verse 2, but he meditates on God's law day and night. Let's focus in on that. Delights and meditates on God's law day and night.

Do we do that? Do we meditate on God's law day and night? God's teachings are a delight. This word delight is the same one used in the context of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the Queen of Sheba exchanging gifts like gold and precious stones. What's used in Proverbs 8, for something more desirable than rubies, it says.

The righteous person is blessed and does not suffer the same disaster as the unrighteous in our lives today because he delights in what God has taught. Do you delight in the word of God? When we think of a time of joy, a moment of satisfaction or pleasure, something to look forward to, when we're busy in the week and we look forward to the end of the day when we get all our tasks done or the weekend, do we ever say, oh, I look forward to that time now I can read God's word? When we've finished tidying up the house and have a moment, do we sit down and say, oh, thank goodness. Now I can open up the word of God?

The Lord has given us many things for our enjoyment, hasn't He? In the Bible, God gives land, wealth, food, drink, vineyards and olive groves, gold and silver. But God's instructions, He says, are more precious than all of these. And more than just to delight in God's word, we have to meditate upon it day and night. It's interesting what the word meditate means.

It means something audible, something you hear. Because the Psalms, as you might be aware, the Psalms were the songbook of Israel. They're intended to be sung. And the nature of songs is that they stick in your head, don't they? If you want to memorise something, a good way to do it is to turn it into a song.

You have to get the Bible in your head, in your life, the way you think, the way you live. But it's more than just sounds. It involves a growing in understanding. To meditate upon it is to think about it. What does it mean?

What does it mean in that situation? What does it mean in the other situation? It means becoming wiser after than we were before. Let's meditate on the following words of scripture together. I'll turn our attention to Psalm 119, which is relevant this morning.

So if you have a Bible with you, we'll briefly just look there and see what it says there. In Psalm 119, verses 97 to 104. 97 to 104. This is the attitude which we are supposed to have. Psalm 119, verses 97 to 104.

Oh, how I love Your law. It is my meditation all day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep Your precepts.

I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep Your word. I do not turn aside from Your rules, for You have taught me. How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through Your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way.

Is that our attitude to God's word? Is that our practice day and night? Does that reflect our heart? We live in a busy world. We always seem to be doing something, and yet we never have time to do anything.

Doesn't that seem to be true? And much of the time that we're busy, we're thinking about other things that we need to be doing, about the cares of this world. From the moment that we open our eyes in the morning, trying to build enough fortitude to face another day, to the time we're back in bed struggling to sleep because there's that bill to pay, there's that thing I was supposed to do, but I forgot to do it. Our thoughts are about this world.

We're simply just too busy to even think about contemplating the idea of imagining a scenario where we can read the Bible. There are just too many things in our lives going on that don't have anything to do with God or what God has done for us, or what He has to teach us. But brothers and sisters, that is exactly why we are the ones who need the Bible the most. It is the one who doesn't have time for God's word who can't hope to live one day without it. To put it paradoxically, we meditate upon the word of God, not because we have the luxury to do so, but because we don't, and all the more for that day and night.

We need God's word as food nourishes the body. Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Matthew 4:4. And I don't doubt that we are busy people with little time to stop. But how many of us would say, I'm too busy to eat today?

Or, I had something to eat last week. That'll do. Of course not. Because then we wouldn't have any strength or vitality, would we? We would be too easily blown away by the winds of this world, too easily fallen prey and swayed and led down the path of destruction. We would never do that, would we?

Friends, Psalm 1 is about the blessing that comes from having our lives directed by the one who loves us so much that He sent His Son to die for us. Though we may know all of these things to be true, yes, every Christian has this idea. And we also know that we have no power within ourselves to apply it in our lives. But how much are we really seeking to make it real in our lives? Only because we abide in Jesus, because we receive our spiritual lives from Him as branches from the vine, are we able to bear fruit.

John chapter 15, verse 5. As like trees planted by streams of water, our text says, we bear fruit and our leaves do not wither because we drink the water that Christ gives, which in us becomes a wellspring of eternal life. Now, if you follow the text carefully, notice it doesn't mention anything about good deeds that the blessed person performs. The blessedness of the righteous person does not find its source in the fruit itself. It's not the fruit that makes us blessed.

The fruit is the consequence of something else, something more foundational. Now there are a lot of people in this world, non-believers, who do good things, don't they? How do they understand that though? How do they understand giving to charity? Why does the philosopher Kierkegaard note that there are people who give their lives to doing good and serving others, and then they are empty?

Perhaps it's because they come to see that this world is not something that we can fix of our own power, that no matter how much we give to the world, we're not going to take away all those pain and suffering. In fact, what we can do as individuals is nothing compared to the overwhelming amount of pain and suffering in this world. No, it is a result of being planted by the water, not the fruit itself. In Jeremiah, toward the beginning of chapter 17, it says that God calls Himself the living water. And in chapter 17, He says, and notice how this reminds us of Psalm 1.

Jeremiah chapter 17: blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. Verse 8: he is like a tree planted by the waters that sends out its root toward the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes, and its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year of drought.

In a year of drought. Let's pause there. In a year of drought, it does not worry. In a year of drought. There are times in our life where there will be drought, where it won't be very clear to us what our blessing is.

Nor does it cease continuing to produce fruit. And verse 13 of Jeremiah chapter 17: a glorious throne exalted from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who abandon You will be put to shame. All who turn away will be written in the dust, for they have abandoned their Lord, the fountain of living water. The Lord is the fountain of living water.

And the living water, that is Jesus, is the source of our spiritual nourishment and sustenance. It is knowing Jesus which gives us joy and which cannot be taken away no matter what happens in our life. You may be like Corrie ten Boom in the concentration camp, but if you know Jesus, there is a joy that no one can take away from you. God promises us to pour out His Spirit on His people in Isaiah 44:3, Joel 2:28. This promise of God to pour out His Spirit on us, it is this background with which we are supposed to read Jesus' words from John chapter 7.

Jesus says, on the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them." By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Jesus and the New Testament writers, they tie this in other images found in the Old Testament and see the source of our spiritual life, of nourishment, of joy in the person and work of Jesus. Abiding in Jesus through His word, we are given life which yields fruit.

And only by the power of Christ in our lives, living in us and through us, can we hope to have the blessing promised. To be able to stand at the last judgment and not be destroyed with the unrighteous, because the blessing is not merely about earthly joy, is it, as we live our lives? No, that is true and often unsaid. Only by His strength through the blessedness He has by His faithfulness, only because Jesus' righteousness are we blessed. Jesus is the Son in whom the Father is well pleased, and in Him we can face the world of sin and death.

Only because He had the faith to resist all the powers of the evil one. Because Jesus wasn't like Adam, who reached out and grasped the forbidden fruit. He was the one who was faithful to do God's will, to march up the hill and die for us on a wooden cross, and in breaching death's doors, rise from the grave in victory. Do we really believe then that Jesus is a sure guide for us in our lives? By trusting in what God has said in His word?

As Psalm 1:6 says, the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, both now and finally at the judgment. Do we trust God's word when it tells us who Jesus is? What He's done for us? But more than that, what He is doing in us, so that we ourselves may bear fruit through abiding in Him. Now, my brothers and sisters, there are many voices inside and out of the church.

And they're not all bad. They don't all say the wrong thing. But we've seen too many times, haven't we? People who were once with us singing the same songs, hearing the same kind of sermons. But what happens?

They get swept up in the world. Many of you have seen this happen more than I have. Children, siblings, maybe even parents, grandchildren, those who were once Christian friends who used to sit with us here. The threat of the world is real, isn't it? But with that experience and knowledge, let's do better than we've been previously.

We cannot watch the world chase us down with an armada of opposition, of sin, of confusion, and general hostility to God and nearly every aspect of life, and expect our children or grandchildren to walk away unscathed, unchanged. Now we see the world and churches change over the years, and they're not always for the worse, but they're not always for the better either. In that mix of ideas, where are we to look for guidance? Who else but the one who knows all things and has known everything from everlasting to everlasting?

Who can fathom the spirit of the Lord or instruct the Lord as His counsellor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten Him? And who taught Him the right way? Who was it that taught Him knowledge or showed Him the path of understanding? Friends, this world is dark and it will drag us down to the pit if we hitch ourselves to it.

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings as eagles. Believe that, my brothers and sisters, because everything in this world, everything else is a mist. It's here in the morning. By the time the afternoon comes, it's long gone.

And when we feel like Peter, who in John 6 was confused, didn't have the answers to everything, he didn't know in himself how to understand God's ways. Perhaps he was disheartened by the crowds who left Jesus. They thought they couldn't trust Jesus anymore. He was saying things that didn't make sense, at least to them. When Jesus asked Peter, you don't want to leave too, do you?

Let us reply with Peter, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Jesus has the words of eternal life, and there is nowhere else in this world where we can go. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, plant a deep love for Your word within our hearts. May we cling to it as life itself, and we praise You for Your loving care over our lives, knowing that in Your Son, who is the very Word incarnate, the power and wisdom of God, we have already overcome the world, and we have eternal life. That we won't come under judgment, but have passed from death to life. In the ebb and flow of our lives, set our feet upon the solid rock, which is Christ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.