Our scripture reading this morning is Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. Some of us here, I think, may be somewhat acquainted with Psalm 1 or Psalm 2, but I'd like to suggest that we can see something of value if we consider them together. So I want to read together Psalm 1 and then Psalm 2. Let us hear God's own word. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. 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, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers, not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 2. Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, You are my son. Today I have become your father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter. You will dash them to pieces like pottery. Therefore, you kings, be wise. Be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you be destroyed in your way, for His wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. So far the reading of God's Word. I want to speak to you this morning about piety. I don't know what you think when you hear the word piety. It's not an everyday word. It's one of those words you only hear in church, so sometimes we can have not perhaps a crystal clear notion of what we're thinking about when we hear the word piety. The scholars among you will know that the English word piety comes from the Latin word pietas, which means loyalty. And I think that's helpful to know that the root of the idea of piety is loyalty. And that when we think about a growing piety, what we should be thinking about is how do we cultivate our loyalty, our faithfulness, our commitment to the Lord? How can we be growing in grace, growing in devotion? And you may notice that I titled this sermon, Reformed Piety, because there are a variety of approaches to piety. Some people approach piety, we might say, in a ritual way. For them, their devotion to the Lord seems to be primarily fed by ceremonies, by beautiful architecture, by stained glass windows, by the beauty of what surrounds them. They believe that helps them grow in grace. Others might have what we might call a piety of technique. Ten steps to this, 40 days of that, a variety of techniques. Often something kind of new and claiming to be exciting, a new discovery of effectiveness that will somehow increase our devotion and loyalty to the Lord. Still others have a, you might almost call it a musical piety. They find that they feel closest to the Lord with the right kind of music. Now, I'm not out to say that all of these things are necessarily wrong, but they're not really expressive of what we have historically known as a reformed piety. We don't usually have stained glass windows, but that's probably a matter of economics as much as anything. We're in favor of good music. But our approach to piety has not focused primarily on these things. What has been our approach to piety? And perhaps one of the ways to think about that is to think historically. But then again, that's probably just the way I think about things. If we went back a hundred years and asked a member of a Dutch Reformed church, what is piety? I think they'd be able to tell you very quickly. Piety is going to church twice, at least, on the Sabbath day. Piety is keeping the Sabbath day holy. Piety is reading the Bible and praying before and after every meal. Piety is taking part in the societies of the church. And as you think about those elements of piety, what unites them, what inspires them, where do they come from? Well, it's a piety that's very much focused on the Word of God. If you were to talk briefly about reformed piety, it would be the piety of the Word. A piety that focuses around the Word when we come to church. Our service focuses on the Word. We sing the Word. We read the Word. We hear the Word preached. At least in the old days, when we thought about keeping the Sabbath day holy, I remember when I was in high school asking an elder, what can you do on Sunday afternoon? And the answer was, read the Bible or the catechism. That was Sabbath keeping. we have societies to some extent. We have Sunday school. And usually when Christians gather in our churches, we gather especially around the Word. We still try to cultivate devotions in our families around the Word. We're usually better at that just before the elders call. But there is an effort to have the word prominent in our families and prominent in the life of our church. Our piety, our reformed piety, has been a word piety. And it's not something we just invented on our own, but we're inspired by texts like Psalm 1 at verse 2. But his delight is in the law of God, and on his law he meditates day and night. This is the blessed man. And this is the man of piety. This is the man growing in his loyalty and devotion to the Lord. And so I want to think with you a little bit about what these two psalms teach us about reformed piety. They don't teach us everything, but they do teach us some very important things. And they really belong together, I believe, because they together are an introduction to the whole Psalter. Psalm 1 speaks about the individual godly person. And Psalm 2 speaks about the whole community together in its service of God. We need both these things together. We need individually to be Christians, and we need together to be Christians. And these two psalms help us. And from these two psalms, I would say we come with three points about piety. Again, I want to underscore this isn't everything about piety, but these psalms focus us, I think, on a piety of the word in three particular points, that we as people seeking to grow in our devotion to the Lord ought to be people who meditate, people who celebrate, and people who separate. So if you're note-takers, I hope that's clear. My wife always complains the outline isn't clear enough. So it's meditate, celebrate, separate. Meditate, that's clear, isn't it, from verse 2. But his delight is in the law of God, and on his law he meditates day and night. A meditation is not just reading the Word. Meditating is reflecting on the word, going over it and over it, letting it be present in our minds and our hearts. The word doesn't do us any good if we just rattle through it. It doesn't do us any good if we read it after every meal and don't think about it. The virtue, the power, the blessing of the Word of God is in its meaning that it conveys to us. And that meaning is something we have to think about, we have to reflect on. And that's what we're being called here in this text, to meditate on the Word of God, to focus on it. Now, verse 2 says, His delight is in the law of God, and on his law he meditates, and I keep referring to the word of God. The word law here in Hebrew is Torah, which is rightly translated law, but has a broader meaning than just focusing on statutes or regulations or commandments or rules. It's not that the Lord here is calling us just to meditate on his rules. It might almost be better to translate this here as to meditate on his covenant. To meditate on the fullness of his revelation. I went through and did a quick survey of the first five books of Moses, which are often called the Torah. And it's interesting, about 60%, a little more, of those five books are history, and only about 40% are regulations. To meditate on the Torah is to meditate to be sure on what God wants us to do, but to meditate even more on what God has done, on who God is, on who God is for us in Jesus Christ. And I think sometimes when we read the Bible, the first question in our mind is, what does God want me to do? That's a good thing to ask. But maybe the first question ought to be, what is God telling me about himself in this passage of Scripture? If I'm going to be loyal to God, I need to know who he is. What is he telling me about himself? What is he telling me about his son? What is he telling me about the great salvation that he has accomplished for me? And then ask, and what would he have me do? How would he have me live in response to that? That's why I want us to think about Psalm 2 as well as Psalm 1. Psalm 2 encourages us to meditate on a God who has a plan of salvation. Who has a plan of salvation in his own son, who he has sent to be the king of his people and the king of this world. He wants us to meditate on that son whom we're told today is king of kings and lord of lords. That son who today is the ruler of the kings of the earth. That son who today is building a kingdom of salvation for his people. He wants us to meditate on that. He wants us to reflect on it. It's absolutely crucial if we're to live for God, if we're to grow in piety, if we're to be a more loyal people, that we really understand who this God is and what he's done for us in Jesus Christ. When we're called upon to meditate on the law of God, it's not so that we can become God's children, but it's so that we can live as God's children. We have to know that plan of salvation by which we are God's children as the foundation for all Christian living, for all Christian piety, for all Christian growth and devotion. And we learn that by meditating on the Word of God. One of the things I learned about John Calvin in some recent study is that in his whole ministry, on Sunday, he only preached from the New Testament. With one exception. He did preach through the book of Psalms. Of course, Psalms are almost just like the New Testament. He did that because he wanted, he was so desperate that people would know. what Jesus Christ has done. He was preaching to people, of course, who had grown up, many of them, not knowing the Bible, not knowing the plan of salvation, not knowing the work of Jesus Christ. And that's important for us. We need to meditate on the scriptures that bring us to Jesus Christ. They all bring us to Christ, but some more immediately, some more easily, some more quickly, so that we know the Son. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed on your way. Kiss the Son here is not have a romance with the Son. This is an act of fealty. We read in 1 Samuel chapter 10 that Samuel anointed Saul to be king and kissed him. You see, it was homage. It was devotion. It was commitment. It was a recognition of sovereignty. That's what's being said here. Honor the Son. Acknowledge the Son as Lord and Savior and God. And meditate on that. Let that control your life. And that's important because there are two ways of life. That's what's said over and over again in Psalm 1 and in Psalm 2. There are two ways of life. there's the way of blessedness that leads to eternal life, and there's the way of wickedness that leads to judgment. It's striking how the theme of judgment is so prominent in these two psalms. We're told that the godly prosper, and then rather powerfully in verse 4 of Psalm 1 we're told, not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment. Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Same theme, of course, in Psalm 2, where the Lord scoffs at the wicked and speaks of the judgment that he has in store for them. You will dash them to pieces like pottery. Why do we need to think about that? That's kind of depressing. It's not happy. It's not encouraging. It's because we live in a world where the voices are constantly in our ear calling upon us to walk in a way contrary to the Lord. And these psalms say there is great value in meditating where the path of the wicked will ultimately lead. Those who promote the way of wickedness never tell you where it will lead. Never tell you of the misery. You notice the, I'll use one small example, the advertisements for casinos. Never talk about the lives ruined by money lost. Never talk about gambling as an addiction. Never talk about the crime and corruption that surrounds casinos. They don't talk about that in those happy ads, do they? They don't really show you the pictures of the people sitting in the casinos who are unhappy. I walked through a casino once. I never saw such a group of unhappy people. One author described it as a place where nothing was alive but the hands. That's the way of the wicked. It leads to death, not to life. But the advertisements don't tell you that. That's the path of wickedness. We need to be meditating on the path of righteousness and its beauty, its glory, its life-giving character. That's what we're called to here. John Calvin used to say, God's people ought to meditate on eternal life. because it helps put everything else in perspective. Helps put everything else in perspective. This life doesn't last for long, but there's an eternal weight of glory being preserved for those who belong to the Lord. We have to think about that as we think about two ways of living, living for God, living for wickedness. And so God wants us to meditate. And meditation takes time. You notice what it says here. His delight is in the law of God, and on his law he meditates day and night. Day and night. Oh, I get it. I'm to meditate once in the morning and once in the evening. Now, that's not what day and night means here. What it really means is, I'm to meditate all the time on the law of God. Now again, he probably doesn't mean that in the most literal sense for every one of us. But he's making the point that meditation on the law of God is to be an important part of our lives. An important part of our living. Letting that law of God be present with us. You noticed when I read the law, he said to Israel, impress these laws on your children. Talk about them when you sit down at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands. Bind them on your foreheads. Let them be on the door frames of your homes and on your gates. And very Orthodox Jews to this day will wear a little leather box on their forehead with the law of God in there. I don't think that's what God was really encouraging us to do. I don't think this is a fashion statement. This is a statement of letting that law of God permeate our lives, the moments of our lives, the character of our lives. And there has to be time for that. One of the things I suspect that has taken the hardest hit in the last hundred years in terms of Reformed piety is reading the Bible after every meal. And part of the reason it's taken that hit is a lot of us aren't home for a lot of meals at home. A hundred years ago, think about it, there was no television, there was no radio, there were no movies, there were no cars. It was a lot easier to keep the Sabbath day holy. No place to go, nothing to do. A hundred years ago, probably most people were home at lunch, went home for lunch. They lived close to their work. We have to recognize we live in a different world. A lot more stress, a lot more pressure, a lot more difficulty with time. And so God isn't saying it's an absolute rule that you have to read the Bible after every meal, even if you're not there for the meal. What he's saying is we have to find a way that the Word will be present in our lives. We have to find time for that meditation on God's Word. Think about the character of your day, of your family. Where is there time for the Word to be present? That's why it's so critical that we maintain the Sabbath as an institution among us. Sabbath is God's day, His time, time for Him, time with Him. And so, if we're going to promote a reformed piety, we need to meditate on the Word, and we need to celebrate through the Word. Now, maybe celebration hasn't been the most obvious dimension of our reformed piety. We're better at being serious than celebrating. We're better at reverence than rejoicing. But we're called to keep these things together, and particularly I think we should meditate on Psalm 1 verse 2, his delight is in the law of God. And I think that's a great moment for us to pause and ask, is our delight in the word of God? Or is the Word of God more often among us just a duty? I read the Word of God because I really have to. I go to church because I really have to. I know I ought to. Now, duty is a good thing. I don't want to attack duty. Getting your life well organized around duty is not a bad thing. But God wants us to delight in His Word. To take pleasure in it. And why should we not be taking pleasure in God's Word when it is the Word of our Heavenly Father who loves us and has given us the greatest gifts of all, life and health and strength and eternal life? Why should it not be a pleasure to read the Word of our God, to meditate on it, to grow in it, to delight in it? It doesn't always come easy, especially if you've decided to do your devotions out of Leviticus. So instead, read Mark. I think it's a good test. Do you delight in reading the Word of God? If you don't, there's something wrong. Maybe there's something wrong with you, or maybe there's just something wrong with the way you're doing it. So if you're trying to read the Word of God and you're not delighting in it, you're not figuring out why you're not delighting in it, go talk to one of your ministers, not me. But Pastor Voss or Pastor Donovan. This is the kind of thing we need help with. Because we ought to delight when we look into the Word of God, when we find out who our Father is, who our Savior is, how we should be living for Him. Because, you know, our religion is more a religion of personal relationship with God than it is a religion of morals. It is more a religion of fealty, of loyalty, than it is a religion of ethics. And we're so good at turning it in to a religion of ethics, a religion of morals. delighting in the law of God means to delight in God. To desire Him, to draw closer to Him. To delight in Him. To rejoice in Him. That remarkable statement in Psalm 2, verse 11, rejoice with trembling. You see, that's where joy and reverence meet. They're not at odds with each other. But deep in our hearts, there ought to be a joy in the Lord at the same time that we reverence the Lord, that we honor the Lord. So we need to meditate. We need to celebrate. And these psalms call us also to separate. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of mockers. And who are the mockers? Well, amongst others, they are the nations who conspire and the people who plot in vain, the kings of the earth who take their stand, and the rulers who gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one. We have to separate from that worldly way of thinking and living that derides the Lord, that rejects his word. We have to be very clear, it's not just the world that is that way. In the Old Testament, the words wicked and sinners and mockers are sometimes used to describe people in Israel. And so when I say separate, it's not really a geographical notion. We're not called to be Amish and just live amongst ourselves and have no contact with the world. We're to recognize the world can come in here, amongst us, with its attitudes and its actions. And the separation is a separation that we're called to from sin. Whether it's sin being done by the world or sin being done by Christians. We have to pursue a holiness of thought and of life. And therefore we have to know something about the world and its values. To know, is it seeping in amongst us? Is it changing us? One of the motives for Christian schools was that it might be a place where our kids were taught to think more carefully about the world on the one hand and the way of God on the other. That has to continue to be a goal that we would all be trained in that kind of recognition so that we can separate ourselves not so much from persons, but from the attitudes and the way of living of this world that so easily, easily, easily creeps in. Why was it that 60, 70 years ago so many preachers preached against movies and television and radio? Because they saw it as a way of the world was getting into our homes and into our thought and into our lives. But the problem, of course, is not with the radio or the television or maybe even with the movie. The problem is with us, if we let those values in, if we have not sufficiently meditated on the Word of God, so that the Word of God will fill us and protect us and surround us. I think in our day, maybe in every day, I think it's particularly the seed of the mockers we have to worry about. The scorters and the scoffers. Does God know? Does God care? Is there a God? Ha, the whole thing is silly. Or the mockery that we read in Psalm 3, the first Psalm of David in the Psalter, where David records in verse 2, Many are saying of me, God will not deliver him. Oh, every time a Christian faces a difficulty, I bet there's someone who one way or another communicates, So where's God? Why isn't God doing better by you? And of course, that can be hard, can't it? Since I've already taken too long, I'll not go on and on. But I was very tempted to preach on Psalm 1 and 2 and 3. Because Psalm 1 says of the righteous, whatever he does prospers. Psalm 2 verse 9 says, you will rule them with iron and you will dash them to pieces like pottery. And then Psalm 3 says, O Lord, how many are my foes? David isn't prospering in Psalm 3. David isn't ruling from Zion as holy seal in Psalm 3. In Psalm 3, he's fleeing from Absalom. It's the lowest moment of his life. And David, who did meditate on the Word of God, might have wondered as he fled out of Jerusalem from Absalom, his son, I thought I was supposed to prosper in all I did. I thought I was supposed to rule with a rod of iron from Zion. Ha! The promises of God are not reliable. That's what the scoffers say. The life of a Christian is ultimately vain. That's what the scoffers say. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That's what the scoffers say is the meaning of life. We're surrounded by that. We're bombarded by that. but then we do ask not everyone here is prospering not everyone here this morning is healthy not everyone here this morning is happy where are those promises how do we understand that and the Psalter gives voice to our frustrations It gives expression to our struggles. And David says, as he's fleeing out of Jerusalem, I, to the Lord, verse 4 of Psalm 3, to the Lord I cry aloud, he answers me from his holy hill. David's had to run away from the holy hill, but he still has confidence that God hears and answers him. And the psalm closes, Psalm 3, with, the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people. The mockers had said God will not deliver him. They said that to David. They said it to Jesus. If you are the son of God, come down from the cross. God will not deliver him. But God delivered David and brought him back to his city. Much more importantly, he delivered Jesus Christ and brought him up from the dead to establish him as his king on his holy hill forever and ever. And he's building that kingdom. It's building slowly. We don't yet see that prosperity that is promised us that will be ours ultimately only in the new heaven and the new earth, but we're promised blessedness from our God. And we'll know that, we'll experience that, we'll delight in that as we grow in piety, as we grow in loyalty, as we grow in devotion, as we meditate on that word, as we celebrate, as the word calls us to celebrate, and as we separate as the Word warns us to separate. May God grant that we all together might be a people of piety, the piety of the Word that will draw us closer to our God. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, you know how weak we are and how prone we are to listen to the voices of the world and to walk in ways that we ought not. And you know how weak we are when we think about how we should cultivate a knowledge of your word so that that word might live in our hearts, so that word might be a lamp to our feet. Oh Lord, help us to be a people who hides your word in our hearts that we might not sin against you. Help us, above all, to be a people who delight in your word, who see its light and its life, its blessing and its treasures. And help us, above all, in that word, to see Jesus Christ, our Savior. The one who lived that perfect life for us. The one who suffered in our place on the cross. And that one who continues to bless us and build his church through us. Oh, how great are the benefits that we have in Christ. May we rejoice evermore in them. Hear us and help us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.