Psalm 1: Prison Graduation Speech

Opening remarks and formalities

“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, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. 3 That 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. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”

Over two and a half thousand years ago, before Jesus came to earth, these words greeted the people of God when they 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 to delight in God’s law, that is, in God’s word as revealed in scripture. Today, graduates, as you graduate with your Certificate in Christian Ministry, this psalm belongs to you. I would like to use its message to encourage you about your future, now that you have completed this program.

First of all, know that you are blessed! Psalm 1 tells us that God does not bless the wicked, the sinner, or the mocker. Who does he bless? The one whose delight is in God’s word, who meditates on it day and night. As graduates of the Certificate in Christian Ministry, you have meditated on God’s word. That means you have read the word. You have reflected on the word. You have wrestled with the word. You have taken the word and applied it in your minds to areas of personal life, spiritual life, and church life.

And so as graduates of the Certificate in Christian Ministry, as those who have been blessed by God, let me encourage you: continue to delight in the law of the Lord! There is a difference between reading the word and delighting in the word. It is the same difference between eating food and enjoying food. We all must eat, but we do not always enjoy. Let the Bible be your favourite food for your minds and your hearts, so that you want to come back to it and have it again, so that you choose it over any other spiritual food, because it will bring you joy that you don’t find anywhere else. Continue to meditate on God’s word day and night.

You have finished your Certificate in Christian Ministry, but you have not finished with the Bible. Continue to seek God's instruction from the Bible. Search for books that discuss the Bible. Listen to sermons that explain the Bible, sing songs that rephrase the Bible. Watch people whose lives are shaped by the Bible. God's message, his instruction, exists in all those things. When you read scripture, or hear scripture, or sing scripture, or talk about scripture, or even remember scripture, enjoy the fact that it is God's very own teaching for your life. Recognise its value. Think about it all the time - not just in a studying way, but in a real world practical way, thinking, "How does what God has told me fit into this bit of my life right now?" When you hear other people say different things about how you should live, hold up God's instruction and measure their message against God’s message.

It's not how much of Bible you read, or how often that matters. Reading the Bible more will certainly help more. But there are very, very few people who get to spend all day and night reading the Bible. We have to work, to look after our families, to eat and to sleep. What matters is delighting in God's teaching whatever you are doing. Value God’s instruction, let it sink in, think it over, deliberate on it, and hold it up as the truth against which all other teachings get compared.

If you do this, Psalm 1 says not only will you be blessed; you will also be fruitful! Like a tree planted by a stream of water, you will yield God’s fruit in season, and you leaves will not wither – whatever you do will prosper. This is the picture Psalm 1 paints of the person who delights in the law of the Lord. I have no doubt that many of you have already seen the fruit of God’s word growing in your own lives, and in the lives of others studying this course. That is the power of our God through the Lord Jesus Christ and by his Holy Spirit – he changes us for the better! He saves us, and he changes us into the people he wants us to be: people who are not wicked, but who delight in his word. That is the fruit that God loves to grow.

So my encouragement to you is this: value the fruit that God grows. Don’t go chasing after the prosperity of this world – phones, cars, houses, children and cattle. To quote our Lord Jesus, “[T]he pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” Psalm 1 tells us that the wicked, who seek these things, are like chaff that the wind blows away. They cannot stand in the judgment! They cannot stand before the assembly of the righteous! Instead, as members of the assembly of the righteous, stand like a strong tree planted beside water whose fruit is the prosperity of God; the fruit that he grows through his spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – and the fruit that he grows through his word – a family for God 30, 60, 100 times what he has sown.

Let these fruits be what you seek, because Psalm 1 says that way of the righteous is the way of life that God watches over. As you have studied God’s word and let its power change who you are, God has watched over your path like a father watching his child’s first steps, because the path of the righteous is the same path that Jesus walked in his life – and because Jesus is God, that means the path of the righteous is God’s path! You have been walking along God’s path, in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

And so my final encouragement to you today is to keep walking on that path; keep living God’s way of life. So often we see situations and hear stories of people who are not living righteously but seem to be doing really well, while those who are living righteously suffer for doing it! Big companies profit from child labour while paying no tax, and their shareholders cheer; people in positions of power become corrupt and take money away from the needy, yet their power increases; people campaign for God to be removed from schools and public speech, and their voices spread across the media. 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. God watches over the way of the righteous. It is a way of 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 live in that eternity. The righteous life is the way of life of the eternal God, and that eternal way of life starts now.

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! We are reminded of these truths every time we see the wicked get brought down, every time their schemes go wrong, 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.

My prayer for all of you graduating today is this: that in the blessing of your graduation you will keep on meditating on God’s word; that in the fruit of salvation and change God has worked in your life, you will pursue God’s prosperity; and that as you stand up as members of the assembly of the righteous, you will remain on the path of the righteous watched over by God, that remains forever. Let me finish with the prayer of Paul for the Ephesians: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

Psalm 1: Meditating on God's Law

 
"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, 2but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and 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; it’s a message to anyone who would open this book of prayers and songs belonging to the people of God. Psalm 1 encourages the hearer to treat every psalm as God's law, God’s teaching to his people. And it does this by telling us what we should do with God’s teaching: we should delight in it, and we should meditate on it day and night.
 
This semester, our devotions begin with a four week series on spiritual disciplines – that is, habits we should form to keep our spiritual lives strong. And I start this series by looking at delighting in God’s teaching and meditating on God’s teaching. We are all here at NETS because of God’s teaching. And so today, I have chosen Psalm 1 to stand at the front of our devotions for the semester, just as it stands at the front of the book of psalms. I want us to be encouraged to delight in God’s teaching, and to meditate on it day and night.
 
What are we delighting in and meditating on? The word translated 'law' in this psalm 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 torah means 'instruction' or ‘teaching’ – less 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 at the beginning of the book of psalms is because it encourages people to treat these songs as God's teaching too. Today, we Christians 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 different kinds of writings we discover God's teaching to us, God’s message for us. So when Psalm 1 talks about the law of the Lord, about God’s teaching, we are talking about the whole Bible.
 
Now, I hope you have Psalm 1 open in front of you so that you can follow with me. Psalm 1 opens with the first benefit of delighting in and meditating on God’s teaching: "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, 2but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night." God does not bless the wicked; he does not bless the sinner; he does not bless the mocker. Who does God bless? The one whose delight is in God’s teaching, and who meditates on God’s teaching! If you delight in God’s teaching, you are blessed! If you have come to NETS to meditate on God’s teaching, then you are blessed! Ask the lecturers if spending their lives meditating on God’s teaching has been a blessing to them; they would agree. The fourth year students can testify that the time they have spent meditating on the Bible has been a blessing to them. I would hope that all the students, even the first years who have been here only a few months, can testify to that blessing. So you know it is true! Time spent meditating on God’s teaching is a blessing.
 
But delighting in and meditating on God’s teaching is not just something to do at seminary! Does Psalm 1 say “Blessed is the one who delights in the law of the Lord, and meditates on it when they go to seminary”? No! It says “Blessed is the one who delights in God’s word and meditates on it day and night”. This is a discipline you can grow here at NETS, but it should be something that you do “day and night” – something you should do always. It is a discipline that all Christians can learn and grow.
 
At this point some might be asking themselves, “What does it mean to delight in and meditate on God’s teaching?” So let me address this now. You see, the simple answer we often give is that to meditate on God’s word is the same as reading it. But I think that is too simple. It is like saying that when you play football, you kick the ball with your foot! Of course you should kick the ball with your foot; it’s football! But you aren’t going to win the World Cup with these simple instructions – you can’t even play a game of football like that! It’s the same with the Bible: of course you should read the Bible; it’s a book! Books are for reading. But you aren’t delighting in God’s teaching and meditating on God’s teaching simply by reading the Bible.
 
As a matter of fact, you could play in a whole game of football without ever kicking the ball with your foot – but it would be a difficult game. In the same way, you can meditate on God’s teaching without ever reading the Bible yourself, but it is hard.
 
As preachers, as leaders, as Christians seeking to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must recognise the fact that some people find reading the Bible difficult. Sometimes it is because of a lack of education; sometimes it is because there is no good translation in their heart language; sometimes it is because they have a problem like dyslexia or blindness that makes reading difficult; sometimes it is because they don’t have a Bible to read; and sometimes they just don’t like reading! We should remember that in ancient Israel, not every family could afford a Torah scroll, and not every person could read. But Israel had priests who read the Torah regularly at special gatherings; the Israelites remembered the stories of their people and their God and told them to their children orally; they had psalms that they would sing together. Even these people, who could not read the Bible by themselves, could still delight in God’s teaching, and meditate on it day and night, and they would sing Psalm 1 to each other telling one another to do so!
 
What does Psalm 1 say about delighting in and meditating on God’s teaching? Look with me at verse 3, “Such a person” – that is, the person who delights in God’s word and meditates on it day and night – “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.” A tree planted by streams of water is never missing out on water. There is always water there to sustain it. What a healthy tree that must be! Covered in fruit when harvest season comes. Leaves that are always green and plump. That’s a great tree. Delighting in and meditating on God’s word is how we make sure that we are always sustained by God’s words, so that we are sustained even when we are not reading.
 
Meditating on God’s teaching is seeking to hear what God says in the Bible to us now. Here at NETS we do that by reading the Bible, but also by reading books that discuss the Bible, by listening to sermons and lectures that explain the Bible, by singing songs that rephrase the Bible, by talking to each other about the Bible, by watching people's lives that are shaped by the Bible. God's message, his teaching, exists in all those things. It's about applying God’s teaching all the time - not only in a scholarly way like in a NETS classroom, but in an everyday practical way too, thinking, "How does God’s teaching fit into this part of my life right now?" And meditating on God’s teaching means when you hear other people say different things about how you should live, you hold up God's teaching against what they say and compare the message, the meaning, the rightness of it against the truth of God’s words.
 
Delighting in God’s teaching is about realising the fact that when you read it, or hear it, or sing it, or talk about it, or even remember it, you enjoy that it is God teaching you for your specific life now, and you value it more than anything else you hear. We always do this with everything we read and hear: we have a little hierarchy in our heads about whose opinion is more valuable and whose is less. Sometimes we base it on expertise, and it’s like a list: so we have well-educated specialist expert on the subject at the top, general expert about the area next, person currently studying the subject who knows a few things, kid who just finished their first lesson on it at school today, random person on the street who shouts at passing cars is last. Sometimes we base it on how well we know someone, and it’s like ripples out from us: so it goes family closest; more distant family and close friends next; friends of friends, workmates, fellow church members; strangers last. Sometimes we base it on age: so older people are more trustworthy on a topic than younger people. Sometimes we base it on how much people agree with us: so we believe people with the same political or cultural or religious views as us, and distrust those with opposing views. Usually it’s a big mix of all of these things, to the point that often we might think we know why we trust someone, but really it’s a mix of conscious and subconscious beliefs we have.
 
The point is that regardless of how we rank people or their opinions, we absolutely must make a conscious decision to have God and his teaching at the top of all of our lists. And it should delight us to do that, knowing that God is the most powerful, most knowledgeable, most loving, most trustworthy person in the universe; and he is the closest person to us at all times, because he lives in our hearts and made us in his image. And yet it can be so easy to choose a different opinion over God’s teaching because it means less work for us, or it fits with our views better, or it’s less controversial, or it doesn’t upset our parents. If we truly delight in God’s teaching, we will always be putting him at the top of our list, because no matter how much pain or trouble it causes, knowing that it comes from our God will give us a greater delight.
 
Meditating on God’s teaching is not about how much Bible you read, or how often. Reading the Bible more will certainly make meditating on God’s teaching easier – as I said, a Christian life without reading the Bible is like a football game without kicking the ball – it’s possible, but very hard. Kicking the ball makes winning the game much easier! So read the Bible, and read it lots. But the truth is there are very, very few people who get to spend all day every day reading the Bible. Most of us have to work, go to school, look after our families. Even NETS lecturers do not get to spend as much time reading the Bible as they would like, I will wager. But Psalm 1 does not say “Blessed is the one who reads the Bible day and night” but “Blessed is the one who delights in the Bible and meditates on it day and night”. It’s about absorbing God's teaching - from the Bible, from sermons, from songs, from books, from talking with other Christians and seeing how they live their lives - and valuing that instruction, letting it sink in, mulling it over, deliberating on it, and holding it up as the truth against which all other teachings get compared.
 
Delighting in God’s teaching is an attitude that values what God is teaching you; and meditating on God’s teaching is taking that teaching and working hard to apply it in your life. You can’t have one without the other.
 
Now we come to the second benefit of delighting in and meditating on God’s teaching: Psalm 1 says that those do so will be fruitful and will prosper. Verse 3 again: “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.” I have no doubt that many of you have already seen the fruit of God’s teaching in your own lives, and in the lives of others who you study with. That is the power of God through the Lord Jesus Christ by his Holy Spirit – he changes us for the better when we delight in his teaching and meditate on it day and night! He saves us, he changes us into the people he wants us to be: people who are not wicked, but who delight in his word. That means even if we are struggling to delight in God’s teaching, we can pray to God and ask him to give us that delight for the teachings he has given us; to give us the strength to meditate on his word and apply it in life.
 
As people who delight in God’s teaching and meditate on it, we will value the fruit that God grows. We won’t go chasing after the prosperity of this world – phones, cars, houses, children and cattle. To quote our Lord Jesus, “[T]he pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” Psalm 1 tells us that the wicked, who seek these things instead of God’s things, are like chaff that the wind blows away. They cannot stand in the judgment! They cannot stand before the assembly of the righteous! Instead, as members of the assembly of the righteous, we should stand like strong trees planted beside water, whose fruit is the prosperity of God; the fruit that he grows through his spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control; and the fruit that he grows through his word – a family for God 30, 60, 100 times what he has sown.
 
Now whenever we talk about prosperity in the life of the Christian, so often we remember situations and stories of people who are not living righteously but seem to be doing really well, while those who are living righteously suffer for doing it! Big companies profit from child labour while paying no tax, and their shareholders cheer; people in positions of power become corrupt and take money away from the needy, yet their power increases; people campaign for God to be removed from schools and public speech, and their voices spread across the media. 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 themselves 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. God watches over the way of the righteous. Read from verse 5 with me, “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6For God watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”
 
When you delight in and meditate on God’s words, these fruits will be what you seek, and it will shape the way you walk in your life. Psalm 1 says that God watches over the way of the righteous. As you study God’s word and let its power change who you are, God watches over your path like a father watching his child’s first steps, because the path of the righteous you will be following is the same path that Jesus walked in his life – and because Jesus is God, that means the path of the righteous is God’s path! You are walking along God’s path, in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
 
It is a way of 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 live in that eternity. The righteous life is the way of life of the eternal God, and that eternal way of life starts now.
 
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! We are reminded of these truths every time we see the wicked get brought down, every time their schemes go wrong, 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.
 
It’s a strong message, because if you're not delighting in God's teaching and meditating on God’s teaching, then you are not like a tree planted by streams of water. In fact, Psalm 1 has quite a few powerful descriptions of the people who are not delighting in and meditating on God’s word. Verse 1 – they are the wicked, the sinners, the mockers, and God does not bless them. Verse 4, “Not so the wicked; they are like chaff that the wind blows away.” Everything they do will eventually dry up and blow away like dry husks left behind after a harvest. Their lives will end up being worthless. Ultimately, there is no future for those who do not delight in God’s teaching and meditate on it day and night.
 
So let us encourage one another as fellow students of God’s teaching to delight in that teaching, and to meditate on it day and night. Read the Bible often; but also enjoy the fact that God uses it to speak to you and teach you; make it the most valuable teaching in your life, ahead of all other things; read it often, but also read about it often, think about it often, speak about it often with each other, sing about it often together; and whenever you do these things, consider how you can put God’s teachings into practice in your life. And of course, as in all things in the Christian life, pray: pray that God will give you the delight in his teaching that it deserves; and pray that he will equip you to meditate on it powerfully and practically. Let’s do that together now.