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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