Prayer: The wisdom of hard work (Proverbs)

Heavenly Father,

We are really thankful for work. You are a god who works: who has created all things; who sustains everything; who works hard at relating to people and reaching out to them; who sent Jesus to do the work of closing the gap between people and God by defeating our sin, nailing it to the cross.

You provide all good things for people, and you also have given us a say in how we go about getting those things. You provide us with so many good things to do, and there is so much good that comes from it! We can give people things they need. We can bring joy into people's lives. We can be creative and inventive. We can make a difference in this world. We work in jobs that pay us wages that we use to meet our physical needs, or in our families where children or the sick need care and sustenance and shelter, or in study in order to learn and grow and create future opportunities, or we simply work on cultivating godliness and joy in ourselves and others. You have given us a part to play in our own lives, and the lives of others, so that we can make a difference, and we are thankful.

But we live in a broken world, where it doesn't always work out the way we'd like. You have told us that you have a plan for people and for the world, but we so often see things going against your plan. We want to pray for and commit to you, Lord, people who are unemployed because they cannot get work, or who are too sick to work. We pray for people who don't want to work. We pray for families where the young or the old are neglected and not looked after. We pray for people whose jobs are sometimes boring, or unnecessary, or whose work does not help meet people's good needs, or who are trapped in a job and cannot leave. We pray for those whose work is valuable, but who are underappreciated or forgotten; or who are exploited by their employers or by society. And we pray for those who don't have anything worth doing, or who waste their time and money on things that are pointless, that don't bring joy, or that bring trouble and harm. We pray for those who work for work's sake, and who miss out on the rest that you provide.

None of these things are in your plan, and yet we live in a world where they are so common. We ask you, please Lord, to help us to follow your guidance for work. Help us to help others who are trapped in these problems and troubles of work. And help us not to turn work into an idol, or to trust in our work to solve our problems, but instead to trust you to have everything in hand.  And help us to rest in you; to place things into your hands, look to you for our provision; and to spent quality time with you. Give us the values of your own heart: let us work for your glory, your righteousness, for truth, and for love.

We pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Sermon: Psalm 1 - Live Righteously

Once again, I include here not only the sermon itself but also the scribbles of thoughts that I had as I was working it up (you'll find that a little further down) . I hope that is of help!

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"Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates on his law day and night." Over two and a half thousand years ago, well before Jesus walked the earth, these words greeted the person who opened the Book of Psalms. Psalm 1 stands at the front of the Book of Psalms as an introduction to the whole book; a message to anyone who would open this book of prayers and songs belonging to the people of God. It encourages the hearer of this psalm, and then of every psalm following, to treat these psalms as God's law, his instruction to his people.

Psalm 1's message is simple: live righteously. This psalm expresses in a few short ideas what it means to live righteously in a world with a righteous God.

Psalm 1 is all about how great it is to live righteously, and what it looks like to live righteously. But interestingly, it has nothing to say about why we should live righteously.

Now you've just heard the psalm read, and you might think, well, hang on, it sounds like the psalm does answer this question - it says the righteous will be blessed. It says everything they do prospers. It says that God watches over their way. Aren't they good reasons to be righteous?

Well, not really. See, living righteously for the sake of personal benefit and gain is like boasting about how humble you are: it's a contradiction. The moment you boast about your humility, you're no longer humble. The moment you start living righteously for personal gain, you're no longer righteous.

So why live righteously? Psalm 1 doesn't really seek to answer this question at all, because in the mind of its author, and in the mind of its readers, the answer is absolutely obvious: you should live righteously because it is the right way to live! That's why it's called being righteous - because its right.

Think about this anti-smoking commercial. Smoking kills. Ads like this have been around for decades. In fact, they have been around for so long that people sometimes ask, Why do we still need these ads? Surely everyone knows by now that smoking kills.

And yet even this ad, stating the obvious, still assumes something - that killing people is bad. This ad doesn't need to explain why something killing you is bad. Everyone knows killing is bad. Psalm 1's message is the same: live righteously, it says. It doesn't need to explain why righteousness is good. Everyone knows that doing the right thing is right - that's why it's called the right thing.

And so maybe we might ask instead the same question that people ask about anti-smoking ads - if the message is so obvious, why say it at all?

And the answer is simple: people still smoke. People still live wickedly - that is, the opposite of righteously. It turns out that knowing something is right is not enough to make someone do it. Pretty much every smoker these days knows that smoking kills, yet they keep smoking. It's human nature that knowing something by itself is often not enough to change our behaviour.

There are other anti-smoking ads that come at it from a different angle. We're told, Every cigarette you don't smoke is doing you good.  Give up smoking for a week, and your sense of taste and smell improves. Now that alone isn't the reason to give up smoking - the reason to give up is because smoking kills. But the other health benefits are an encouragement to quit, and a testament that quitting is truthfully good for you. Again, the ad doesn't need to explain why getting better is a good thing. Being healthier is just good, everyone knows that.

Psalm 1 is like one of these commercials. But instead of being anti-killing and pro-healthy, it is anti-wickedness and pro-righteousness. It is an important and powerful message to us, and so that's what we're going to be looking at today.  That message is, "Live righteously because it is right; and be encouraged that living righteously is good for you, which is helps us know that it is right."

What, then does it mean to live righteously? Psalm 1 says three things: Living Righteously means not living wickedly; Living Righteously means savouring God's instruction; and Living Righteously means living a life that lasts.

Let's start at the beginning, verse 1: "Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers." You might notice that the new NIV that I just quoted is a bit different from the old one, "Blessed is he who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers." I like the new translation, because it makes it a bit clearer - this verse is not about someone becoming an obstacle for sinners by blocking their way from sitting in their chair. It's about a person who does not follow the ways of wicked people.

Now, it might seem obvious to say, but it's an important place to start: living righteously means not living wickedly! But the emphasis is on the "living". Look at this verse again: "Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers." The simple fact is that everyone lives a life that is made up of both right things and wrong things. You can be faithful to your spouse whilst cheating on taxes. You can work hard to provide for your family, but also be greedy. You can selflessly work to cure blindness in rural Australia and the third world whilst publicly stating that there is no God. Righteousness and wickedness are two parts of every human being's life. We all do things that are against what God's will is.

The question is not "Have you ever done anything wicked?" Perfection is God's standard for salvation - which is precisely why we need Jesus, because we aren't perfect and can't meet that standard. We need to remember that we can't do anything to earn our salvation. God and Jesus have that under control, and thank God for that. Psalm 1 is not calling people to put their faith in God to save them. It is calling people who have already put their trust in God as mighty, majestic and merciful to now change the direction of their life to one that is righteous. Living righteously isn't about living perfectly. Living righteously is about responding to God by striving meet his standard, shaping our lives around doing the right thing for God, for other people, and for ourselves.

Take a moment to reflect on that. Think about your life's compass. A proper compass always points north, no matter what you do. Sometimes there's a mountain in the way though, and you need to go around it, and you might get lost or take a wrong turn, but your compass continues to point north. What determines which way your life points? What determines how you make your decisions? Do you plan your life based on what God wants, on what is right? Or do you just do what everyone else does, or what feels good, or what draws less attention, or what makes you secure?  Well, a proper life's compass points your life towards righteousness. You might take some twists and turns, but if you are living righteously, it means that compass keeps pointing towards righteousness, towards God. If your life's compass is pointing towards anything other than righteousness, then your compass is broken, and you shouldn't follow it.

Verse 2 says this: "But whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates on his law day and night."  Living righteously means savouring God's instruction.  The word translated 'law' in this verse is 'Torah'. When we think of 'Torah', we usually think of the first five books of the Bible - that is, the Old Testament Laws. But the word more correctly means 'instruction' - not so much like instructions for putting something together, but more like the teaching a student receives from a teacher. And God's teaching to us is more than just following laws. As I said, one of the reasons this psalm is first in the book of psalms is because it encourages people to treat these psalms as God's instruction. Of course, nowadays we are blessed to have not just the first five books, not just the psalms, not just the Old Testament, but the whole New Testament as well. And from this collection of books we can discover God's instruction to us.

And it stands to reason that living righteously requires a relationship with God's instruction. After all, where else does righteousness come from, if not God, the righteous one? This is of huge importance: the message of what is righteous and what isn't is contained in God's instruction to us.

So what then do we do with God's instruction? We must savour it. Listen to the words that the psalm uses: "whose delight in the law", "meditates on it day and night." This does not describe simply reading the Bible. There are scholars out there who have read the Bible many times, who know its contents back to front, and who treat it simply as a historical document that has no impact on their lives.

We must savour God's instruction like a tree savours water. Verse 3 says "Such a person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. 4 Not so the wicked; they are like chaff that the wind blows away." Savouring God's instruction includes producing good fruit that comes from his instruction. It includes thriving on his instruction. And it means that what we do will prosper - our actions, based on God's instruction, will achieve God's purposes.

Think about the tastiest thing you've ever had to eat or drink. Not necessarily the most expensive thing, but the most delicious thing.  I love chocolate ice cream. And my favourite chocolate ice cream was Cape Byron Supreme Chocolate Mud Cake ice cream. It was superb. Creamy. Chocolatey. Swirls of mud cake. full of rich flavour, and with a thick body. You don't just eat that kind of ice cream. You savour it. When you're eating it, you dwell on it; it's the most important thing you're doing at that moment; you enjoy the taste, and the texture, and the whole experience. It brings you bliss. And when you aren't eating it, you still think about it. You remember it. You wonder when you'll get to have it again. And when you have something else, you are still thinking about it! You're comparing the quality, the flavour, the creaminess, the price.

And it's not even about how often you have it. I haven't had Cape Byron ice cream in years - they don't make it any more - but I still think about it even now. That's what it means to savour something. And that's what our relationship with God's instruction should be like.

It's about seeking God's instruction from the Bible, but also from books that discuss the Bible, from sermons that explain the Bible, from songs that rephrase the Bible, from seeing people's lives that are shaped by the Bible. God's message, his instruction, exists in all those things. It's about enjoying the fact that when you read it, or hear it, or sing it, or remember it, it is God's very own teaching for your life. It's about recognising its value. It's about thinking about it all the time - not necessarily in a scholarly way, but in a real world practical way, thinking, "How does what God's told me fit into this bit of my life right now?" And it means when you hear other people say different things about how you should live, holding up God's instruction against it and comparing the message, the meaning, the rightness and the impact on how you live righteously.

It's not about how much Bible you read, or how often. Reading it more will help, certainly. But there are very, very few people who get to spend all day every day reading the Bible. Most of us have to work, or go to school, or look after our families. It's about savouring God's teaching when you can - from the Bible, from sermons, from songs, from a book, from talking with other Christians and seeing their life - and valuing that instruction, letting it sink in, mulling it over, deliberating on it, and holding it up as the truth against which other teachings get compared.

Think about a school classroom. Imagine if the teacher simply stood up the front and read out the textbook in a monotone regardless of whether the children were paying attention, misbehaving, asleep, bored, out at lunch - would you send your kids to that school? What about a teacher who used poetry, and music, and games, and stories and activities, who worked as much at keeping the children's attention and enjoyment as providing their instruction - would they be the better teacher?

Think about your relationship to God's instruction.  Does the thought of seeking out God's teaching fill you with joy? Do you delight in reading it, or hearing it? Do you meditate on it and say to yourself, "What does that mean in this situation?" Do you hold it up during your day and say, "How does this compare with what the government is telling me, what my boss is telling me, what the television is telling me?" Because if you're not savouring God's instruction like a tree savours water, then everything you do will eventually dry up and blow away like dry husks left behind after a harvest.

Now we move on to the last two verses: verse 5, "Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For God watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will be destroyed." This psalm transitions beautifully from looking at what it means to live righteously, (blessed are those who don't live wickedly but who savour God's instruction) to what it looks like to live righteously (they savour God's instruction like a tree savours water so they prosper, but those who don't dry up) and now, finally, to what the results of living righteously are (those who don't dry up and blow away, they are not God's people, the follow a path that disappears).

The last big point of psalm 1 is that Living Righteously means living a life that lasts. And that's something we need to hear, because so often we see situations and hear stories where people who are not living righteously seem to be doing really well, while those who are living righteously suffer for doing it! Big companies profit at the expense of child labour while paying no tax, and their shareholders cheer; governments lock up innocent people for months and years in offshore prisons, and their votes increase; people campaign for God to be removed from schools and public discourse, and their voices spread across the airwaves. Meanwhile those who release evidence of corruption and blow the whistle on wrongdoing get forced into exile; those who pray for the release of prisoners are arrested; those who spend their lives healing the poor are kidnapped by terrorists. Where is the blessing? Where is the prosperity?

Psalm 1 lets us look further forward, to see the end result of a righteous life and a wicked life. We're told that the life of the person who lives righteously, the life we should be living, is a life that God watches over. The word for "watches over" has a very personal connotation to it. God knows this way of life, he is familiar with it. He keeps it close to himself, because this is God's way of life - the life we see lived by God on earth as Jesus Christ. It is a life that lasts forever - not because by being righteous we earn our place in eternity with God, but because a righteous life is the life we will be living in that eternity. A righteous life is the life of the eternal God.

But the wicked way of life? It will be destroyed. There is no room in God's eternal kingdom for wickedness. And thank God for that! Greed, lust, murder, theft, corruption, violence, rebellion against God - all of these things are temporary! They don't last! God doesn't just punish those who live that way; he destroys that way of life entirely! And as for those who choose to live wickedly and reject God, they will not stand when judgment comes! They will not fit in with the assembly of the righteous. God has no place for them in his kingdom. And we are reminded of these truths every time we see the wicked get brought down, every time their schemes blow up in their faces, every time they are exposed; we're reminded every time we do the right thing and we see God's plans furthered in people's lives. That's the way it's meant to be, and that's the way it's going to stay.

We started off this morning with the question "why be righteous?" and I said that psalm 1 assumes we know why - because it's right. But the book of psalms actually words the question a different way, which we see following directly after psalm 1. It's no accident that the first words of psalm 2 are this: "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? Etc" 

We want to ask the question," Why should we be righteous?" But God puts the question to us, "In the face of a righteous and loving God, why would you be wicked?"

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Big idea: Righteousness is great
Big question: what does it mean to live righteously?

Main points:
1) Living Righteously means not living wickedly
2) Living Righteously means being steeped in God's word
3) Living Righteously brings lasting prosperity
4) Living Righteously is the way of God

Not about why to live righteously - that's kind of meant to be obvious. You can't live righteously because it pays off - that's not righteous! You're meant to live righteously because it is RIGHT. Hence the name.

Psalms are part of the lord's instruction for us. God doesn't just demand rational thought worship, nor just pragmatic hands worship. He expects emotional heart worship.

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We are bombarded by advertising. Everyone wants to tell us why we should do something or not do it, buy something and not something else, what you should eat, what you should wear. They make all kinds of promises. Some of them seem reasonable: come to our dentist and we'll fix your teeth. Others are outlandish: drink Coke, and you will have fun. Some are outright comically ridiculous: wear Lynx body spray, and crowds of women will chase after you.

But you don't often see advertisements like this: Eat food. Stay hydrated. Breathe air. For the vast, vast, vast majority of people, these things don't need to be said. There are some basic things in life that we do because they are a self-evident good. You could make an advert for eating food just like any other ad - eating food will keep you alive. Eating food leads to fun and excitement. One of the key habits of successful people is to eat food. But the truth is we don't really need to tell people to eat food. We eat because it is part of being alive. If someone isn't eating at all, we know something is wrong.

Instead, we might have public service announcements about things that people need to know but otherwise don't - eat healthy food, don't just eat bad food all the time. Drink water, but because there is currently an e coli crisis, make sure you boil it before you drink it from the tap. Don't inhale glue fumes, because they are dangerous.  Or we might use advertising to encourage people to do something they already know but find difficult - smoking is bad, you should quit.

Psalm 1 is a psalm like this. It's talking about a self-evident good - being righteous, or living righteously. It's a short psalm, only six verses, and it stands at the front of the Book of Psalms as an introduction, a message to anyone who would open this book: live righteously. It doesn't say why, because asking why you should live righteously is like asking why you should eat food - the answer is obvious! You eat food because it is food. You live righteously because righteousness is right. A poster that says "Smoking kills" doesn't need to explain why dying is bad. And the first psalm doesn't have to explain why righteousness is right.

Instead, it describes what it means to live righteously.

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