I had debated a long time on what series to do and what to do, and so I decided that I wanted to be fresh and I wanted to do a series through the Psalms. So we may not do all 150, but we will look through many of them. And the blessing of that is that it inspires in us a love for the Lord's house. It inspires in us a real devotional approach to the Lord. It's been rightly said that the Lord meets us in the Psalms unlike anywhere else in His Word. It's a beautiful, beautiful, inspired section of Scripture that show the beautiful relationship that the Lord has with His people as they worship Him, as they adore Him, as they love Him. And so we're going to turn to Psalm 1 this morning. And I just also want to say, as I'm getting to know many of you, also there's an adjustment to how we do things here and you're getting used to me, I'm getting used to you, so do be patient with that. And I also want to say I hand out outlines. Many of you have asked for outlines. I hand them out not so that you can time each point and figure out when the sermon is going to end. That happened in Linden and I had to tell them I'm going to stop passing them out if they did that. Some sermons' points will be longer than others and I hope your mint intake is small. Psalm 1 this morning, Psalm 1, we're going to consider together. Let us give our attention to the word of the Lord. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. 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 that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that He does, He prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. May the Lord bless this morning the hearing of His Word. I will never forget as I was training and preparing for ministry that I had many pastors who were great encouragements to me along the way and one that I really respected. I came to me one time and said, Chris, your greatest challenge in the ministry will be to communicate the truth of God's Word and His Gospel in a clear and meaningful and helpful way to God's people. Your old Pastor Kaminga used to say to me, Chris, this preaching is tough business, tough business. As I have done this now for eight years, I realize that it seems to only be getting harder. Nothing easy about preaching and what we do. And it goes to show that we as pastors need your prayers that you would ask the Lord to bless us so that we in turn would be a blessing to you. That's the goal here. And that's tonight's sermon, so don't miss it. But I think the heart of this struggle of properly preaching the Word, properly preaching the Gospel is really illustrated for us in Psalm 1. A psalm that is called the gateway of the whole Psalter. And that's a really important thing to observe. It just goes without saying that if you mess this psalm up, you're going to mess the whole psalter up. It's a very important psalm to understand. What do I mean? Psalm 1 begins with pronouncing and describing blessings on the man who doesn't walk in sin. And then, of course, if you were to go through the whole course of the psalter and then you come to the last psalm and the very last sentence of the last psalm, Psalm 150, you end with it saying let everything that has breath praise the Lord, praise the Lord. So Psalm 1 begins with a man who does not walk in sin. Instead, he keeps God's law and then it climbs and it climbs and it climbs and it says praise the Lord. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. What would be my temptation as a preacher beginning then with Psalm 1? Think about it. pretty easy. We all know Psalm 1. It's probably a favorite of many of you. But how do you read Psalm 1? I could level you today as a pastor. My natural approach, your natural approach of reading Psalm 1 would be something like this, wouldn't it? You would put a big conditional clause at the front of this thing. If. You would put a big if right in front of it and say, if I meditate on God's law day and night, if I don't walk in sin, then I will be the blessed man of this psalm. That's our natural way of reading it, isn't it? That's how we approach this. That's how I've heard it in my whole life. That's how I've heard this psalm preached. There's truth to that in a general way. We'll come back to that. But is that what this psalm is saying to us? That's what I want to ask the question this morning. What is this psalm saying to us? How is this psalm being presented to us? If you are struggling with sin, and this is how I preach it, if you're struggling with sin, you're getting beat with sin, you're not reading God's Word enough, then you're probably not going to be blessed. Is that how I should read this? Is that how you should read this? I would be really effective this morning at preaching it that way. I would be really effective at preaching it that way and I would make all of you wonder, you would all leave with a great question mark, you would all wonder if you're not blessed because who am I? Where do I stand? No doubt, the question of the psalm is, which man are you? Did you notice there's two men presented in this psalm? There is a good man and there is an evil man. And by the time this is done, I want you to think about really clearly which one I identify with and how I become this blessed man. I mean, that's obviously got to be where this psalm is taking us. Look at verse 1 with me for a minute. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers. Now the first thing that you'll notice here if you read through the course of the psalm is that a great contrast is taking place in this psalm. It's an amazing contrast between two men, two paths, one that ends in life and the other that ends in eternal death. And this is not an uncommon sort of contrast to us. The Bible is absolutely full of passages that tell us that everyone in this life, no matter who they are, are heading down one path or another. And by the end of this psalm, these two paths are completely separated from one another. One ends in the bliss of heaven. The other ends in the peril of torment. So here it is. From the beginning, two ways outlined. Proverbs will even go on to say there is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, gave all sorts of these contrasts, saying at one point, enter through the narrow gate, because wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through that, but narrow is the way, and small is the way that leads to life and there are a few who find that. In one sermon, you ever think about how prevalent this contrast is? In one sermon, on the mount, you have two gates, two roads, two trees, a good and a bad one, each bearing two very different kinds of fruit. One who ends up building their house on the rock and the other who ends up building their house on sand, both which have final consequences to each. The Lord would say this often to Israel, Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. Blessing and cursing, therefore choose life. All over the Bible. One path this way, another path that way. So we come to the question of the psalm and I suppose that a really good question at this point is which path am I on? Which path are you on? Or better, which man are we? Which man are we? Now I said a minute ago, my first response to this, my first way of preaching this is to ask the question here, have I loved God's law? Because isn't that the emphasis? Have I loved God's law? Has God's law really been something that I meditate on day and night? And my natural response to this is, well, you know, I'm going to do better. I'm going to go home after this sermon, and we should. And I'm going to really work on getting into God's law more, and I'm going to meditate on it day and night. And I go a little further with this psalm, and then I see, wow, he meditates on God's law, but there's a really powerful section here that this man does not sin. so i've got a now an additional challenge i i need to read god's law more and i need to stop sinning if i'm going to be the blessed man of this psalm and that goes on for a bit in my life right we all have these moments where we get challenged well i just feel guilty i need to be in god's word more and i need to fight against my sin more amen and then what happens discouragement. And you go for a little while and then lo and behold, not too long, you're back into mediocrity, aren't you? And you're sick of that. And I'm sick of that. I'm tired of how little I give to the Lord. I'm tired and I'm weary of how little my devotion is. I'm sick of fighting against the same old sins. And I'm really starting to struggle as I look at Psalm 1. I'm getting beat down a little bit. Because if I put a big if in front of this, I'm starting to see I'm in a little bit of trouble. But I'm still with this question, well, which man am I here? Because I'm seeing something about this psalm. The psalm begins with the word blessed. Blessed. It's an amazing word. It's a beautiful word. It could be translated, Oh, the blessedness of the man, that man. And it's interesting because where do you find the big if here? It's not there. What essentially you have here is a pronouncement. And it's not saying you will be blessed if, it's doing something that is very unique to understanding the whole Psalter and the way that even Jesus would give the Beatitudes, didn't He? The psalm goes like this. Let me introduce you to a man like you've never known. He's the ultimate man. Look at his life. Don't you envy it? Don't you want it? Meet the man who enters into God's presence. Meet the man. The man. And he has total assurance of entering into the bliss of heaven. He does not sin. It doesn't even start down the path. He doesn't stand in it. He doesn't fall into it. But instead, God's law, there is never a point, notice the all-inclusiveness of this, there is never a point that He does not meditate on it and do it day and night. let me introduce you to the man. Let me introduce you to the ultimate man, the paradigm man, the man whom... Wow! Now we're starting to get a sense of this psalm. Because when we look down at verse 4, and the contrast is set very starkly, very plainly, what do you read in verse 4? The wicked are not like this. Wicked is a good translation. It's a good word to use for that. But my tendency when I hear wicked is to think of all those bad guys out there collectively. And it is a collective sort of thing that's happening here. But we should probably retain the very plain meaning of this word, which means the guilty. Not so the guilty. They are not going to stand in God's judgment. Now I'm back to this question. You see, the problem has gotten a little worse at this. It's gotten worse at this point. Am I the blessed man or am I the guilty man of this psalm? And you see, how I answer that is going to affect how I preach it. Because if I'm going to stand up here and truly try to push you into being the blessed man, you're going to walk out of here and say, oh boy, I've got a big list of things to keep up with. Right? Who is this? Who is this? The other night I asked this question in devotions to my son. And I said, son, I read Psalm 1 and we talked about it. And I said, are you the good man or the bad man of this psalm? And he stands back and says, Dad, I think I'm both. I think we're a little bit in the middle. And I actually really appreciated that response because at least according to our experience as people, our perspective, it does seem that way, doesn't it? It seems that in general people have a mixture of both good and bad in them. I mean, I look at my pagan neighbor down the street who will mow the lawn of the next door neighbor and I think, wow, you know, there's some good there. That's my kind of approach at looking at people. And my son was picking up on the natural way we read people, Good and bad. What's the problem? There's no middle ground here in this song. It's good and it's bad. So I went on a little further with him and I pressed him. I said, well, do you really think we're both? No, Dad, we're bad. Boys and girls, this is why catechism is really important, by the way. What do we say in catechism? We say that we're all born in sin, corrupt from conception on. Where did this come from? Well, we confess, we say that in the first man, the first Adam, we all fell. And that in him we're the guilty, aren't we? And so the Bible tells us that everyone is represented in two ways in this life. there's really only two ways you can be represented. And the first is in that Adam. That first Adam, which we all are. And what does the Scripture say about the first Adam? The Scripture says about the first Adam, all died and are guilty. Now the psalm begins with a man I've never known. Like this. In other words, meet God's blessed man who has never sinned and who always meditates on the law of God and does it. And I say, boys and girls, who is this? Is it so hard? Sometimes we're so afraid to say what is so plainly put in front of us, aren't we? Commentators today are wimps. Augustine used to say very clearly who this was. The old church fathers would say very clearly who this was. One pastor was speaking to a bunch of Jews and Arabs and he read to them Psalm 1 and he asked the question, well, who is this man? And so they started going through their history and one of them says, well, is it Abraham? It can't be Abraham. He dumped off his wife and he wasn't a very good example. Was it Moses, the lawgiver? He said, no, Moses killed a guy. was it David? Oh, it couldn't be David. Well, you know what David did. And one of the Jewish men rose up and he said, you know, I've been reading the New Testament and if I believed it, I would have to say that the blessed man of Psalm 1 is Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible says that there are two men in history. The first Adam and the last Adam. And who is the last Adam? It's our Lord. And remember, Adam means man. So isn't it fitting that as we open up the beginning of this altar, the gateway to all the Psalms, in the very next Psalm, we have introduced the character of this man. And in the very next Psalm, we have introduced the man. Kiss the Son. This is the Son of God. Lest he be angry and you perish in the way. Meet my man, says the Lord. and now you're seeing the whole story. It would be really wrong for me today to begin with and stand up here and try to preach Psalm 1 and say, boy, are you the man? What's the answer? You're not. You're not. The fact is, I have not loved the Lord my God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And when I look over the course of the life of our Lord who took on human flesh and became a man, what do we say about Him? That He atoned for sin. That He reached death. And that upon rising, paying for our sins, what do we say? That He was buried. And what do we confess? We confess that He swallowed up death forever. That for the believer, there's no more death. And then what do we confess? Is that even though death through the first man spread to everyone, that when this man represents those who believe, what happens to them? Now we can begin to understand this psalm a little bit differently. If I've answered the question, which man am I? And I've listened to the Lord, and I confess I identify with the guilty man, it changes the question of the psalm for us this morning. What is the question of the psalm for us this morning? the question of the psalm is how do I identify with this blessed man of Psalm 1 I want to be on his coattails I want to be united to him I want to know him I've got this awful problem that I'm identified with the other man and that that path is taking me headlong right in on the fast track to hell but I need to be come and be a part of this man. I need the blessedness of this man. And you see, when we look at the whole of Scripture, we begin to see how wonderful the message of Christianity really is, isn't it? What does the Bible tell us? The Bible tells us that if we have been united, joined together in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be in the likeness of what? His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old Adam, our old man, was crucified with Him. Now what does it say? That the body of sin might be done away with. That we should no longer be slaves of sin, for he who has died has been freed from sin. So you know what that means. When I believe in this man, I'm united to him. I'm so united to him so that, as we looked at last time, when he died, I died. When he was buried, the old Adam was killed, I was buried. I'm so united to him by faith so that now as he has killed the old man of Psalm 1 for me, I am raised to become the blessed man of Psalm 1. It's a beautiful way of looking at the psalm and the right way to look at the psalm. And the Scriptures are always saying this to us when they say things like blessed be the man or blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that what? we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. And now the Lord calls us to consider that of ourselves, that we are the new man, dead to the old but alive to the new. And by His power, I am, as the Scriptures call me to do, to put on the new man which was created in true righteousness and holiness. So now we have a framework of looking at the psalm. Now we understand the psalm. That now, as I can understand, the New Testament Scriptures tell us my life is hidden with Christ in God, in that man. And the blessedness that we receive from Him is now restoring us. You know, the Christian life is a restoration in sanctification. Now read the psalm in that light, okay? Read the psalm now in that light. Pause and step back for a minute and say, okay, I'm going to look at it in being in the perfect man. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. You know what sin does to people? You know what sin does to people? Sin is never static. It's never frozen, meaning that people's sins are going somewhere. They're taking them somewhere. When I was young, I always thought, and this is good for the young people to think about, when I was young, I always thought that I was getting away with sin. And I always thought, wow, I can't believe I'm getting away with this. I wasn't getting away with anything. What I was slowly doing to myself was hardening my heart in a path that if I walked the whole course, I would perish. That if I ultimately ended up in it forever, hardened and totally numbed any sensitivity to it, I would be done. Sin is on that course. And notice how the psalm describes it. It starts in the counsel. It starts in the mind and then it works its way. As you entertain the thought, as you start to give yourself to the thought, what happens? it makes its way into the action and as it goes into action, that's the way it's described here, it finally ends up sitting in it so that sin has totally taken the person, totally carried him away, and he's given over to it. That's the path. This is what James said, that when sin is fully grown, it brings forth what? Death. Paul talked about the Gentiles who were so calloused in their sin, they were past feeling. They couldn't even feel it. that's what the scriptures are constantly are showing us about the path of sin when I used to preach in the Modesto Rescue Mission years ago I remember being there and seeing all these drug addicts and alcoholics just giving over to it and I would ask the question to them I would ask the question do you want to be freed? and every hand would go up But they couldn't. They couldn't. It had so overrun their lives, it would take the power of the Gospel to shatter the barrier. They couldn't break the power. And that's the hard thing that we see in people's lives. They follow the path and they go down the path. And you want to say millions of people have told you that have come before you, don't start walking in it. Are you prepared to know where it's going to take you? Now, I say all that. What does the Lord do for those in Christ? What does the Lord do for those who are in the blessed man? Not only does He justify them, not only does He cover them with His perfect righteousness so that when the Father looks upon them, that's what He sees. He sees them in the blessed man. But the life that He gives His people is this. what happens? You may start down a path of sin. But if you look over the course of your life, in fact, I look over the course of mine, the goodness of the Lord never let me get very far. He always held. And then He would make life miserable until I returned. And the blessedness of the man whom His blessing is upon is this. The Lord will never let you go. Isn't that wonderful? He'll never let you go. That's number one. He will not let this path take its course for those who are in Christ. Number two. What's happening? Verse 2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on His law, he meditates day and night. Christ fulfilled it. Christ meditated day and night. And you know what He does for His people now in Him? He is constantly working to fill in the hearts and the lives of His people a love for His law. because Christ loved the law. Christ fulfilled the law. What's always the perspective of somebody in darkness? They hate the law of God. What do they do with the law of God? Somebody who is in the darkness, they view the law of God, they view church, they view anything that has to do with the law of God as the greatest hindrance to doing and hindering them from the freedom of what they want to do. That's what Romans said, that the natural man, the sinful mind, think of the psalm, is hostile to God. It does not submit to the law of God. What does the Lord do for the blessed man? You know what's going to be the single greatest indicator of His blessing upon you? The love for this. He is growing a love for His Word in the hearts and lives of those whom He is blessed. And that's why the New Testament says that the great indicator, remember Jesus was constantly saying, He who hears My Word, who reads My Word, who understands My Word. Thessalonians will say, those who have a love for the truth of the Word. This is the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord is not imputing sin. This is what's happening. So notice the two things here. He is blessed with what? He's covered. And what's happening to him? The Lord is holding him. He's setting his hedge over him so that he's not falling headlong into sin. He's stopping it. And God will give you that power. And then, number two, He's giving you a love for the Word. And then, number three, what's the blessedness that comes? He is like, think of Christ, of course, because that's how we know this blessedness. He is like, verse 3, a tree planted by streams of living water. What happens to Him? It yields fruit in season. Its leaf does not wither. Whatever He does prospers. You know what that just said? Looking at the life of Christ, of course. God's grace and His help is so resting upon His people that they, because they're planted in the tree, that as, remember Jesus talked about the branches and the vine and this connection, God's grace is so resting that you become like a tree planted by streams of living water. In other words, notice that it yields its fruit in season. What's in season? we just had some hot days the past few days. You see how many leaves fell? Blowing around in the wind. They withered up. When the sun scorches, when life becomes hard, when we experience the trials and afflictions of life, in season and out of season, guess what the Lord's doing for you? You're still bearing fruit. You're still bearing fruit because of your connection to the branch. I'm so thankful for this description. What a life it describes of the man who is blessed. Have you ever thought about how blessed you are today? And how this inspires response because of the love of the man who is blessed. Psalm ends with one final thought, however. It's not for everyone. Sadly, there's a great antithesis to this man. Verse 4, Not so the guilty. They are like chaff which the wind drives away. There's another sad reality happening. The psalmist takes us into the threshing floor and at the time of the grain harvest and these floors would have strong winds and what they would do is that they would cast up the grain into the air and it would be thrusted up into the wind so that the chaff would just simply blow away and the good grain would fall back down. the chaff would be burned in the fire. Jesus talked a whole lot about this. And He says, in contrast to the blessed, the wicked, they don't care. They hate God's will. They're ever becoming harder in their sin. And the psalm says that in the end, because they're guilty, a great judgment day is coming and they will not stand in that judgment. And that's how the Lord ends the psalm. No sinners can be in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Now do you see how this all ends today? We don't just need improvement. You need a whole new identity. You need to come to the man who kills the old man. Because if I have no connection, if I have no identity to the blessed man of Psalm 1, I am the guilty man of Psalm 1 by nature. But we end this psalm by thinking about Psalm 2 that calls us to come to the Son. To believe the Son of God. To kiss the Son, which means trust Him. Believe in Him. Honor Him. Because He is the blessed man of this psalm. Remember what David said? Blessed is the man who is forgiven. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute iniquity. With a long life, He shall satisfy him and show him salvation. The Psalms are going to come and say all throughout, blessed is He, blessed is He, blessed is He. And in the heart of that, you'll find one little phrase throughout the Psalter that keeps coming over and over and over again. Blessed is the man who trusts in you. And you see, that's where this takes us this morning. It's calling us to look to the man. To trust the man. Because we as Christians are filled with the most blessed life ever. I want you to think about that today as you go home and you think about what God's done for you. You're blessed. You are blessed in Christ and all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places to what? He's keeping you. He's preserving you. He's holding you. He's growing you. And He's bearing fruit all throughout your life. That requires a response. And now you can understand why the end of the Psalter, as it travels up, it travels up, it travels up, it says what? Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord! We praise the Lord because of the blessed man of Psalm 1. Amen. O Lord our God, we are so grateful that we stand in that man. And that Lord Jesus, You became one of us bearing the curse, enduring the shame, that You would kill the old Adam, the old man, and raise us anew to be a fruitful tree, a good tree that bears much fruit. I pray for anyone here today who, Lord, is not hearing. Or anyone here today who is walking the path of the guilty. Yes, we're all guilty by nature. But may the great conviction be of how there is life and righteousness through the blessed man. May we all come to Him today and enjoy the abundant life, the fruitful life that You give to us because of the work of Your beloved Son. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.