Two Ways to Live

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

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. Just a quick note before I get started on the translation, and that is that since we are reading out of the ESV, the translation starts in verse one with "Blessed is the man," but it is very clear that this passage, man is a representative example of a godly person, so man and woman. I'm sure you all probably already knew that, but just worth mentioning it as well since I'll be talking about the man a lot. Please don't switch off, woman.

This is for you as well. And so, yeah, good morning. It is truly a pleasure for me to be here with you this morning. It's such a beautiful and well-known passage that we get to unpack this morning, and it has enriched my life over the years, as I'm sure it's enriched many of your lives over the years.

It's a mere six verses, but it covers some important themes and ideas. There's this blessed man who delights in the word of the Lord. There's this majestic, big, strong, rooted tree by streams of water. There's this weightless chaff just drifting along with the wind. And then there's these two pathways, the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked.

And that's because of those two pathways that my title for this sermon is "Two Ways to Live." It really comes to centre and focus on that last verse with those two roads. And though this passage is millennia old, these words are still very relevant to us this morning. It asks the very important question: are you walking on the right pathway? Have you jumped into your car and put on maps knowing where you're going?

Or are you trusting your friend who's driving in front of you, hoping that they know where they're going? Are you driving with the flow of traffic, or did you make a wrong turn and you're going straight into oncoming traffic? Are you driving closer and closer and closer to your end destination, or are you, without your knowledge, going further and further and further away from your end destination? It's important questions to ask when you're going somewhere. You see, a couple of years ago, we had a combined youth event.

Kyla will remember this. I had a car full of youth kids. We jumped in. We needed to go, so we drove an hour all the way to West Westside Christian Reform Church out in Ipswich. We got there ten minutes early.

Everything was good except the car park was abandoned. I quickly called and realised we were at the wrong church. We were meant to be here at Open House. And so we jumped in the car, and we drove here. Thankfully, they were kind.

They waited for us, and we had a great combined youth event. But we ended up driving an hour out to Ipswich, an hour down here to the Gold Coast, and then at the end, an hour back to the Redlands. And so the youth kids who were in my car still don't let me forget it to this very day. And I'm sure I'm not the only person in this room who's experienced going on the wrong path, going in the wrong direction, going on a path that you thought were right with your studies, your career, your car, and all of a sudden, you realise that wasn't actually the path you were meant to be on. We all know that the wrong path does not lead to the right destination.

We all know that. And so let's, this morning, delve into Psalm 1 and what it has to say to us about being on the right path. And for any of you who are note takers, I don't have slides. Here are the three points for the sermon this morning, and there are three questions. The first question we are going to ask is: what does the way of the righteous look like? Verses 1 to 3.

The second question we're going to ask is: what does the way of the wicked look like? Verses 4 to 6. And then our third and final point is going to be: how can we be righteous? So starting with the first point: what does the way of the righteous look like? Please look at verse 1 with me again.

It says, 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. This is a list of things that the righteous do not do. If you love God, you will flee from sin and evil and not participate in it. But there's this clear kind of build in this passage. First, we see that there's you know, you're kind of walking and talking together, just brushing shoulders, someone on the road you meet, you have a conversation.

It's a very low-level commitment to that conversation. But as the conversation intensifies, and maybe you have to keep going, but they're turning off and they stop, you stop with them, and you keep talking. You're standing now talking in one spot, not continuing on your journey. That's a bigger commitment to that conversation. But then if you pull up a chair and you sit down, you are fully invested in this conversation.

And the psalmist is warning us that sin is a slippery slope. You might start on the outskirts, but before you know it, you're sitting in the middle of the muck and the mire. What a mess you can end in so quickly. And so this passage is clear. It says, don't do these things.

Run away from sin, not towards it. And then as we keep reading in verse 2, it says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, he meditates day and night. He doesn't run towards sin. He runs towards God and his word. To borrow some New Testament language, these two verses are saying: put off the old and put on the new.

If we love God, we will love his word, and we will delight in his presence. We, as Christians, should be known as people of God's word. And I want to be clear. I don't mean we should be great at Bible trivia when we're getting together at our Bible studies, or that we should be able to list the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, and all of the Bible books forwards and back. I don't mean that we should know scripture so well that as soon as a brother or sister just takes that little step off the course, legalism, no.

Stop. You're bad. I don't mean that we need to know scripture so well that we can point to those verses where it says, "Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more," giving us licence to sin. None of these are good ways for us to be known as people of the word. That's not what we need to be known for.

We need to be known as people who are saturated in God's word, so saturated in God's word that when we have a brother or sister who is struggling with sin, they think to themselves, I can go talk to John because he's a man of God's word, and he will tell me what to do, how I can wrestle with this sin and beat this sin. We need to be so saturated in God's word that we have a friend who needs life advice. That friend says, I should go talk to Susie. She's a godly woman.

She will give me good advice. We need to be so saturated in God's word that when we're at work, our colleagues think, wow, Jack and Jill truly believe in Jesus. They are real Christians. Their lives look different than the rest of us. Brothers and sisters, as we delight in God's word, as we delight in Him, as we meditate on His law, as we continue to draw near to Him, as we swim in His grace, as we revel in His truth, as we become more and more saturated with God's word,

we should become so saturated that when the world pushes down on us and squeezes us, it is His word that comes out of us, testifying to all around that He is my all in all. If we do this, if we flee from sin, if we run towards God, if we meditate on His word, and if we delight in Him, then verse 3 will be true of our lives. Then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaves do not wither. In all that we do, we will prosper. That is what will happen.

Now I need to be clear when it's talking about prospering. I'm in a reformed church. I'm sure you guys know where I'm going with this. It is not talking about earthly and worldly prosperity that will have health, wealth, and all those other good things. No.

A beautiful example of what this actually might look like: I saw a dear elderly gentleman in our church who was diagnosed with cancer and has been going through chemo. And unless the Lord intervenes in a miraculous way, he doesn't have long left here on earth. But yet, if you stop and you look at his life, this is what you see. You see that he is a man who is at peace.

As you listen to his conversations with the nurses and the doctors, you realise that he is a man with great joy. As you listen to his conversations with his wife and his kids, you can see that there's still deep love and enjoyment for life. As you observe him, you can see he's continuing in fellowship with the rest of us in his church. If you look at this man's life, it becomes abundantly clear that even though his outer body is shrivelling away, and no one would call him a prosperous man, yet when you look at him, you can actually see in the way that he lives that he is this majestic, strong tree that points back to God, and he's truly become an inspiration for me. I want to be like that when I go through hard times.

I want to follow him as he follows Christ. Brothers and sisters, the prosperity that this passage is talking about, it's talking about the most important prosperity there is: prospering in your relationship with God, prospering in the kingdom that is coming, that God has called you to be a part of. It's not prospering in wealth or in your business. It's prospering in your relationship with God and His kingdom. A final thing that I'd like to point out from these first three verses is that we see both man's responsibility and God's sovereignty in these verses.

Just look at verse 1. Verse 1 has: don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. Verse 2 says: you should do this,

you should do this. And so as Christians who love God, we need to faithfully and proactively obey God, take responsibility for our actions. That being said, when you look at verse 3, it says, blessed is the man planted by God. God is the one who takes us and plants us next to streams of water. God is the one who decided what year you would be born, what country you would be born in, what family you will be born to.

He is the one who ultimately provides us with the nourishment and the growth that we need. We, despite our obedience, can't grow. We need God to supply the growth in our lives. And so we need to be fully dependent on God who is sovereign over our lives and our circumstances. This is the way of righteousness that we are called to, brothers and sisters.

Flee from sin, delight in God and His law, and live as examples of grace-filled lives. The next point and second question is: what does the way of the wicked look like in verses 4 to 6? And please open your Bibles. We'll read those verses together. It says, the wicked are not so.

They're not like this majestic tree planted by waters. No. They 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. The wicked here in these verses are described as weightless pieces of shells being blown away in the wind.

People without any true weightiness, people with no true substance. And the psalmist is purposely contrasting these two images. We have this image of the righteous man who is blessed and the wicked man who will perish. This image of the righteous man who is grounded and anchored—come what may, this tree will stand. Its roots go deep.

The wicked man is like a wave tossed to and fro in the ocean as the winds come by. The righteous man is fruitful and prospers and has a weighty life. He will be able to stand on the day of judgment when all is said and done. The wicked man, though it looks like he prospers in this life, will have no weight to him. He will not be able to stand on the day of judgment when all is said and done.

The reality is this: that those who do not delight in God and His word now will not enjoy God's company in the life hereafter. And so finally, that's what we read in verse 6. It says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The wicked will be destroyed. It makes it bountifully clear to us this Psalm this morning that there are these two ways to live.

There is a way of righteousness that leads into the presence of God, and there is a way of wickedness that will lead to destruction and away from God. And it should, when we read the Psalm, bring us to that question every single time: which road am I on? Am I walking on the path of righteousness or the path of wickedness? Am I the man described in this Psalm, in this passage, the blessed man?

Am I someone who loves and delights in God's word every morning and every night? Am I someone who flees from sin and wickedness and delights in the Lord every day, every temptation, every moment? Am I pure and righteous in my thoughts, in my words, and in my actions? I hope that you're starting to realise that we are not as righteous as we usually hope or would like to be. Our delight in the Lord is sometimes cold.

Our willingness to flee from sin and evil is sometimes a little bit slow, maybe even nonexistent. Our meditation on God's word is at times distracted, not at all befitting of the King that we worship. We do not embody and practice what this blessed man does as faithfully as we like. We fall short of what is required to walk this beautiful, beautiful road of righteousness. And I think many of you would say, like me, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

I want to. But this is our human condition, friends—our brokenness. We like to idealise and, you know, read this passage and think, ah, I will be that blessed man, but we can't. We just need to scratch a little bit beneath the surface to expose our prideful hearts, our own arrogance, our sometimes misled and misguided intentions that serve ourselves and not others. And the Psalms know this.

Just a couple of Psalms later in Psalm 14, read the following: the Lord looks down from the heavens on the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together, they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one.

It's clear even in the Psalms that as humans, we don't fit the description that we would so desire to fit. And so that leads us to our third and final question this morning: how can we be righteous? How can we get onto this road of righteousness? Can we become this blessed man of Psalm 1?

Can we be like this majestic tree that is healthy, strong, and with deep roots? How can we follow the path of righteousness when in reality, we're destined to walk on the road of wickedness? And this is where it's so good that we've got the New Testament and can turn to it. One Peter 2:24 says this, and I'm gonna read it slowly. Christ Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

I'm gonna read that again. Christ Himself bore our sin in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. You see, it's only Christ who is the truly blessed man, only Christ who fled from sin every time and delighted in God's word every second of every day. It's only Christ who was truly rooted in the presence of God, a beautiful majestic tree in the garden. And yet, what we see is that Christ gave Himself hanging on a dead tree.

His own life was sapped out of Him so that we could become righteous. His beautiful tree shrivelled and died so that we could be planted next to the streams of living water. He was the one forsaken by His Father so that we might be some of those righteous standing there at judgment day in the presence of our God. Christ has become the door, the gateway, the entry point by which we are able to access the road of righteousness. Through Him, we are able to walk this road because Christ is the one who paved it brick by brick, allowing us to walk back into the presence of our Father.

Two Corinthians 5:17, 19, and 21 also help capture this. It says: therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone. The new is here. God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Through Christ's life, death, and resurrection, we have been imputed, we have been given the righteousness of Christ. We have been given His word and the Holy Spirit so that our lives may slowly but surely be sanctified, so that slowly but surely, we could obey Him more fully.

And even when we fall, when we stumble, when our righteousness isn't good enough, we fall back onto the road that Christ has paved for us. His righteousness is what we take step by step as we draw nearer and nearer to the day that is approaching, not our own. And so, brothers and sisters, as we come to the conclusion of this sermon, we are left with the question that we started with: which path are you on? Are you on the path of righteousness, living in Christ?

Good. Keep going. Run with perseverance. It's so good that we are able to enter through Christ, that He sustains us as we run this race, that we are sanctified as we go, and that even when we fall, His grace, His righteousness is there to catch us. But remember, as you go, every day, we have decisions to choose obedience or disobedience,

to choose God's kingdom or our kingdom, to choose light and truth or darkness. Let us continue to delight and meditate on God's word, leaning on Christ every step of the way. But some of you here might think and actually say, I think I'm on the path of wickedness. And this morning, God is providing you with an opportunity to respond to this passage. Scripture clearly states that if we confess our sins and if we submit our lives to God, that He is willing to forgive us, that He is willing to take us as sinners and make us saints, that He is willing to wash away our sin and take us and plant us by the streams of living water.

He has made a way for you to be reconciled with God. You can become like this blessed man in Psalm 1. You are not too far removed from God's grace. And then a final word of warning because I do realise there may be people here who believe that they are on the path of righteousness because they are good, and they try to obey God's law, and they're ultimately trying to do it by themselves apart from Christ. But if you have not submitted yourself to Christ, who is the gateway to the path of righteousness, then all that you are truly doing is that you are paving the road of the wicked with beautiful stones that will ultimately still lead you to destruction.

I want to plead with you this morning that you can't do it in your own righteousness. You need the righteousness of Christ to follow the righteous path. And so for all of us this morning, we are invited again by this beautiful Psalm to find life, meaning, purpose, and the blessings of God in Him alone. Let's pray. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for how rich your word is to us.

Thank you, Lord, that your word speaks life and gives us an understanding of how amazing God, our beautiful Father, our Saviour, and our King, is. Lord, without your word, we'd be lost. Yet you've provided for us all we need, not only to know you, but also to be in relationship with you. Lord, thank you for Christ and for His death on the cross. Lord, that He would pour out His life so that we may find life in you.

We pray that this morning our hearts would be encouraged, that we would be spurred on, Lord, to flee from sin, to obey your law, to love you, to delight in you. Lord, help us as we go about in our lives to be beautiful, strong trees rooted, Lord, in you, in your word. Lord, help us to rely on you and your sovereignty in all that you do. Lord, strengthen us for this world, and thank you, Lord, that we are citizens of heaven. Father, we pray for the week ahead.

Help us to revel and enjoy and be saturated in your word. We pray. Amen.