Guarded and Grounded By God's Word

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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” Psalm 1:1

Main Readings: Colossians 2, Matthew 4:1-11 & Psalm 1

Supporting Readings: Jeremiah 17:1-18, 2 Timothy 3

In light of recent events, I thought it fitting to let the Word of God minister to us with its blessing this morning.

Of course, it always does that, does it not? But Psalm 1 does promise blessing right up front. In fact, it’s more than a blessing. It’s more like the promise of a blessed state that’s being made.

Receiving a gift from a friend on your birthday is not comparable with the life-time favour of a family member.

And it’s that kind of enduring state of favour that God is promising here. He means a settled state of happiness and contentment that extends through this life and even beyond it. He means a God-given satisfaction that surpasses all other kinds of satisfaction.

Now it’s clear that it’s the ‘blessed one’ who is the focus of the Psalm of course. And because that’s true, it’s easy to miss who it is who gives the blessedness.

And so, I want to point up the one from whom ‘all blessings flow’ right at the start of this message. So that we don’t lose sight of him.

Right there in verse 6, it’s the ‘Lord’ who watches over the way of the righteous. And you get the sense, don’t you, that there can be no blessedness for a person except that God has his eye on them to bless them?

It is precisely because he watches over the righteous that they are blessed.

If I decide to give a gift to my friend, I only do so because they are on my mind – they are within the watchful gaze of my heart, so to speak.

And so it is with God. The blessed person falls under the gaze of God’s favour.

The reason that is so, is because God is for that person. I don’t think so much of a person I don’t know or care for. But I do think of the ones most, who I know best.

And so, God watches over the righteous because he likes the righteous. And therefore, he gives abundant blessings to the righteous.

The people we tend to care for are those who have positive qualities about them, aren’t they? Those who, in our view, are good company.

I would suggest that our bar is quite low though really. And that’s because we recognise that others will be making the same judgments about us. So that, if we set our standards for judging others unreasonably high, then in all likelihood others will do the same with us – and then we’ll have no friends whatsoever!

When it comes to God, then, since he is perfectly desirable, he has no reason to worry about how others will judge him. Neither, therefore, will he drop his standards with respect to others.

In other words, he will not care for anybody who is not as he is. And what is he? He is righteous.

And that leads us right to the great problem we all find ourselves in. According to God in Romans 3, ‘there is none who are righteous, no not one’.

So, if God watches over the way of the righteous - like verse 6 says - and reserves a blessedness for the righteous person, and yet there are none who are righteous according to God, then that leaves us rather up the creek without a paddle, wouldn’t you say?

But clearly God does regard some as righteous. We know that to be true because he ‘watches over their way’, verse 6 says. What that means then is that God, if he wants to, can make a person righteous.

That is the good news of God to people like us. That the righteousness of God has been made known, and it’s given to us through faith in Jesus to all who believe in him.

That’s how Romans explains how unrighteous people, like us, become righteous like God. It’s not something we deserve; it’s something God chooses to give us through faith in Jesus.

The only way we can grasp all the rest of the Psalm is if we grasp that God is the first cause of everything good that this blessed person is.

If the blessed one is the righteous one, it is because God has made them righteous. And then having made them righteous, he cares for them, and watches over them, and bestows on them the blessedness of verse 1.

That’s so important for us to get from the beginning here. If we fail to keep this in our mind, then all we’ll hear this morning is the rest of the Psalm telling the righteous person how to walk, how to stand, how to sit, and so on.

The Psalm is telling the righteous person what it will look like when they walk, stand and sit in certain ways. It holds out blessing, but it also shows what happens to a person who does not walk, and stand, and sit as a righteous person should.

But all that would be like saying to a thirsty person ‘take your cup to that well over there and drink’, when everyone knows that the well over there has been dry for a hundred years.

And you’d say, ‘don’t talk nonsense! With or without the cup I’m not getting any water from that well’. And you’d be right of course.

Neither is anybody getting any blessedness from God who has not been given a righteousness from God through faith in Jesus Christ. There is no water to drink here, if the well that is God has not made his home in our hearts already.

The righteous person – made so by God – on the other hand can choose to walk in or out of step with the wicked. They can choose to stand in or out of the way that sinners take. Can choose to sit or not to sit in the company of mockers.

The Psalm would have little meaning if that were not the case. The whole drive of this psalm is to lead with a special promise to all righteous people who choose righteousness over wickedness.

I don’t know if it was like this for you, but one of the most boring lessons in English at school was the ‘compare and contrast’ lesson because it seemed to me like that’s all we ever did.

The thing was, it never seemed to me that the things we were meant to be comparing and contrasting were of any real consequence.

But here the consequence is just about as meaningful as it gets, and the Psalm is full of compare and contrast. So, if you shared my dislike of that particular English class, at least remember that the comparing and contrasting here is to massively superior ends.

Here's an example of what I’m talking about. The psalm says, if you’re a righteous person walk like a righteous person and not like a wicked person, because a wicked person is quite frankly doomed. But a righteous person will belong to God’s assembly it promises.

Verse 4 says ‘the wind blows wicked away’. And verse 5 says they can’t ‘stand in God’s judgment’. Which obviously means they have no standing. When God brings them to the bar of his judgment, they have no defence before him.

In that case God’s righteous judgement will fall on the wicked. But it will never fall on the righteous.

How then should a righteous person journey in this world where they live amongst those who are not righteous? That’s the real question that this Psalm is looking to address.

You know, life is characterised by all kinds of creep, isn’t it? It’s by the slow creep of time that things change most invisibly.

Like the other day when the children and I were comparing the colour of our arms to see which was the most tanned.

I came away, not thinking so much about my tan, as thinking ‘when did my skin get that leathery, and moley, and crusty’.

I didn’t notice it until all their beautiful, youthful, plucky skin was put there right next to my old rusty stuff.

I hadn’t noticed because aging happens by creep. It’s only when you put a youthful benchmark next to yourself that you realise just how far gone you really are.

It’s that kind of thing that the Psalmist is reminding himself and his readers of here. It’s not just that verse 2 stands in contrast to verse 1; not just that God’s law is right and wicked ways are wrong – that’s true – but rather it is that by God’s law we are enabled to spot wicked ways.

If you don’t have God’s word you won’t spot the creep of wickedness.

You see, in the absence of God’s beautiful benchmark we can’t see the progressively wicked ways of the world. We can’t see that wickedness has a tempo; it has rhythm. Before we know it, our own spiritual rhythm taps right into the beat of the world around us.

Once upon a time we thought that it might be good to avoid talking like that, but now it seems more acceptable. Once we would have been shocked by that idea, but now it seems to have some virtue.

And the Psalmist gets that it starts with a rhythm and progresses quickly. It moves from being in step with the wicked, to standing in the same stream as sinners. Can you see that?

Before it was a subtle influence on the mind, but now it’s become something much more of the heart. A place where we find our identity connected with the kind of person the psalmist calls a ‘sinner’.

We’re all sinners of course, but to have been made a righteous person and then to re-identify as a sinner - characterised by sin - is a terrible denial of what we claim God has really done in our lives.

In this state we start to love the things God hates and hate the things God loves. And slowly, day by day, our hearts are growing invisibly colder to God and gradually warmer to the world around about us.

Until finally, we’re ‘sitting’. We’re so comfortable with this company, that we’re sitting. We’re sharing, we’re eating and drinking, all the things you do whilst sitting, with mockers - people who despise God and despise his Son.

But oh, how we’re feeling the warmth of belonging with the kind of people we once were - the kind we are meant to be no longer.

And so, the creep is complete from stepping, to standing, to sitting. From rubbing shoulders, to mainstream, to comfortable. From head, to heart, to belonging.

It’s a sad and sneaky creep. But moreover, it’s one that leaves us lacking assurance of salvation. All of a sudden, we’re at home with the very people verse 4 says get blown clean away at God’s judgment and we have no idea whatsoever whether we are what we once professed to be.

So, the question is what’s the antidote to this kind of creep? How can we spot that we’re about to start keeping step with the wicked? How could we spot that we’re already in the stream of sinners, or even sitting with the mockers?

And the answer is God’s word, verse 2 says. The word ‘law’ in verse 2 means God’s word. And if you think about it, that makes complete sense. Whatever God says to do, is law - that is to say, it is the framework by which he wants us to order our lives.

If his word tells us what he is like, it tells us what is good because God is good. If his word tells us what he loves, then it tells us what he approves of. If his word tells us what he hates, then it tells us what he condemns. And if it tells us what wicked people are like and what the righteous should be like, then it instructs us how to spot the differences.

In short God’s word is law because against it there is no appeal. It is the standard; it is the rule against which all of life can be compared and measured.

Take the passage we’re in right now. It is the God behind these words that gives the words their weight.

The blessedness promised holds worth and value because the God behind the promise is true and steadfast and supreme. And we know that to be the case chiefly from his word.

It is in the word of God that we discover all that pleases him; the rebellion of our souls; the rescue of his Son; the work of the Holy Spirit; our ongoing struggle with sin; union with Jesus; the hope of heaven; resurrection life; and a thousand other beautiful and necessary realities.

And so, the one who is blessed is the one who, having recognised the value God has spoken to us in his word, firstly delights in it and secondly meditates on it, verse 2 says. Can you see that?

Knowing what I know about my own heart, I think it’s unlikely the Psalmist chose the order of the verbs here haphazardly. He does not put meditation before delight but rather delight before meditation.

That recognises the fact that, though meditation can be accomplished by duty, delight is a much more powerful motivator.

Many-a-person has undertaken to read the bible daily but has not meditated so well as when delight for God - as he is revealed in his word - has moved them to take up his word and deep-dive in it.

I know that’s going to sound like I don’t support bible reading plans. And you know I read my bible by a plan.

I do that precisely because I know how my heart often does not delight in the law of the Lord the way the Psalmist instructs here. And precisely because, if I didn’t make a plan to read every day, I know I would not hear from him every day.

We cannot delight in someone we do not hear from. So, some intentionality – like a plan – for the purposes of hearing from God is vital for the more meaningful things to happen.

But a bible reading plan is the never the goal, it is only a means. A plan is, in actual fact, a sad reflection of how my hearts so easily wanders away from God.

The goal is not duty; it’s delighting that then leads to meditation. As we encounter God in his word, by God’s grace, we are moved by some kind of wonder at who he is; and what he has done; and is doing; and will do.

It’s a delight that encourages our souls to go deeper in his word – which is what he means by the word ‘meditation’. As we go deeper, we find there is a bottomless wealth of goodness and truth that will feed our souls all the days of our lives.

So, there is blessedness here because, as we delight in his word, we are moved to delight in what we discover about him. Bible reading is never an end in itself, but a glorious discovery of God. And that informs and trains the attitudes of our hearts.

Suddenly, with hearts that are shaped by God, we see the world around us for what it is. And now we can spot where our own souls might be tempted to drift into step with the wicked.

In other words, the law of the Lord delighted in and meditated on, catches us right where the creep might begin. What a gift of God to wanderers like me his Word is.

Now, as much as the word of the Lord guards our hearts from taking the way of verse 2, it also grounds our hearts in verse 3.

And the way the psalmist describes the grounding of our hearts is with this poetic picture of the tree planted by streams of water.

We all know that a tree without water is a dead tree. Trees need water to live and to flourish. And this blessed person is like a tree that is planted next to streams of water.

Just as a tree is nourished with roots sunk deep down into moist soil next to the clear running river. So, the blessed person is nourished when their roots are sunk deep into the soil of God’s word. And there they drink up more and more of God – because the soil of the word is soaked with the waters of God.

Every tree so planted produces green leaves and fresh fruit every season - showing the tree to have longevity and resilience.

There is nothing quite like a tree for endurance. If it is well situated at a water source, it will outlive all of us and will never fail to produce signs of abundant life. Even if strong winds blow against it, it stands firm.

And the precious promise here is that when our roots are in God’s word, our lives will be spiritually healthy and spiritually fruitful. No matter what winds of challenge blow against us, we will have spiritual resilience.

So, having seen how God’s word guards the life of the righteous from straying into wicked ways. And having seen how God’s word grounds the life of the righteous to produce the fruit of righteousness and resilience. Let’s finish by seeing the blessedness of the one God calls ‘righteous’.

Verse 3 finishes up saying ‘whatever the righteous do prospers’. Prospering is what we all like to do. It means we’re doing well.

Health that prospers is good health. Wealth that prospers is a full bank account. Watching George and Isla marry yesterday was the culmination of a friendship that has prospered into marriage.

The gospel of Jesus, though, never thinks of prospering in those terms. It thinks of prospering in terms of spiritual advancement. And that might make us feel a tad disappointed.

Do you remember, Jesus encountered a man who felt disappointed when he told him ‘It’s not about your money friend; it’s about your soul’.

The reason he said that is because he also said this, ‘what can anybody give in exchange for their soul’.

The answer of course is nothing. The soul lives on forever whilst the body and all its material prosperity pass away.

So, for God to instruct us this morning how we can take steps to prosper our souls, we should know that he is giving us a gift with eternal value. If he were promising health and wealth as the blessing, then there wouldn’t be much to shout about here.

Like the well-planted tree, our souls have longevity. And therefore, the prosperous blessing must also have longevity. In other words, it must be a spiritual blessing.

Verse 5 gives us a glimpse of this kind of longevity. It says that the sinners of verse 2 will not stand in the ‘assembly of the righteous’.

There is an assembly of righteous people coming down the line. That is to say, there is a place where the righteous endure. It’s a place that comes after the judgment according to the first half of verse 5.

Here then is the ultimate goal of the psalm. When all is said and done, the righteous people are blessed because, by God’s word, they are kept from drifting away with the wicked, and because they are nurtured by God’s word to produce the fruit of righteousness which God wants.

Their spiritual prosperity will endure through, and past death. It will go on into the eternal assembly of those on whom God’s blessing rests.

They’re not like the dead trees whose leaf withers, who are chaff that the wind blows away.

They’re not like the sinners who can’t stand upright in God’s judgement and who are not found in the assembly of the righteous.

Even though the wicked may have prospered the way the world thinks of prospering, that prospering will not serve them when the winds of death blow through.

Better to be a blessed one who delights in the law of the Lord and who meditates on it day and night than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin, the Psalmist says.

Ultimately, it’s God who watches over the way of the righteous because it’s God who guards us with his word from taking the way of sinners, and it’s God who grounds us with his word causing us to flourish with fruits of righteous.

So, let’s encourage each other to be delighters in God’s word.

I know there are young people in the church right now helping each other to put their roots deep down in the soil of God’s word – that’sreally good. May God prosper that kind of commitment to encountering him more and more.

The Psalm opens with a promise, and it closes with a contrast. The way of the righteous is watched over; the way of the wicked comes to nothing.

What’s the difference? The Word of God—delighted in, meditated on, and lived out. So then, let’s not dabble with the mockers or drift with the wicked. Let’s plant our roots deep by the stream.

And may it be said of us—not that we were impressive or successful—but simply that we were blessed. Blessed, because we stayed close to the Word and in it, nearer still to the God it reveals.