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[0:00] Open up your copy of the Scriptures, if you have it with you, to the book of Psalms. We're going to be this morning in the first Psalm, Psalm 1, and we're going to cover this Psalm this week.

[0:10] I have a plan charted out in front of us just so that you know in terms of where we're headed in the Scriptures. In November, we're going to begin a series in the book of Genesis, and we're going to cover the first 11 chapters of Genesis over a period of about three to four months.

[0:25] So we're going to be in Genesis for the first third of Genesis for a pretty good while, and so we're headed that way. But between now and then, this week and next week, we're going to be in the Psalms, and then on October 27th, it's Reformation Day, and that's the day where we celebrate what the Lord did in preserving and promoting the gospel in the 16th century through men like Martin Luther and John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and other guys, names that you may be familiar with or maybe you've never heard at all.

[0:57] It's not important that you know the people. It's important that you know the doctrines that they preserved and passed on from the Scriptures. So we're going to celebrate that. In fact, I started last year what is going to amount to a five-year series that I preach one sermon each year on Reformation Day as we walk through the major doctrines that were preserved and promoted by the Reformers.

[1:15] So last year, we looked at the doctrine of Scripture alone, and we talked about how we believe that the Bible alone is the infallible, inerrant Word of God for us.

[1:27] And so this year, we're going to turn our attention to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and we'll spend Reformation Day this year talking about salvation. So we've got that coming up. But this week and next week, we're going to be in the Psalms because I've decided that any time we're in between sermon series, just to give us a break from longer sermon series, we'll cover a few Psalms.

[1:48] I figure if I cover five Psalms a year, it'll only take me 30 years to get through the whole book. Okay? I'm 36. It's doable. Okay? As long as the Lord doesn't take me first or come back first, it's doable.

[2:00] So we'll see. We're going to start with two this month and see how it goes. Right now, though, Psalm 1. So you guys stand as we read together. The psalmist writes, 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.

[2:20] But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

[2:36] 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.

[2:51] For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Father, send your Spirit now to open our eyes to see wondrous things.

[3:06] In your word. We ask in Christ's name. Amen. You guys take a seat. I love how the book of Psalms begins. I love how Psalm 1 begins, where the psalmist starts by just telling us about the blessing of God.

[3:23] He says, Blessed is the man. And that word blessed, as you may know, indicates joyfulness and happiness. So it could just as easily be translated, happy is the man.

[3:35] So this psalm is going to tell us what it means and what it is to be truly blessed and to be truly happy. Now I'm throwing the word truly in there for a reason.

[3:45] Because I don't think the psalmist here is talking about a temporary, fleeting, passing kind of happiness that we often experience in the world. I think that he's talking about a lasting, enduring joy that even endures with us through the trials that we have seen as we've walked through 1 Peter.

[4:03] We've seen over and over Peter bring up the idea of trials. And yet, we ought to believe and know that in the midst of those trials, there is great joy to be had.

[4:13] Great joy to be had. And that's the joy, that's the happiness, that's the blessedness that the psalmist is here talking about. So he's going to tell us how we can go about becoming truly, deeply happy, blessed people in the Lord.

[4:30] So this is a very, very important psalm for us to hear this morning. Because the truth of the matter is, no matter what we do, no matter where we go in life or what we involve ourselves in, all people do the things that make them the most happy at the moment.

[4:49] Now that may sound like a strange statement to you. You may think, no, I know this one person, they just love to live in misery, so that can't possibly be true. But it is true. In every detail of our lives, we're constantly choosing between options.

[5:03] And we always choose the option that will bring us the most amount of happiness. Sometimes the option that we choose in terms of the most amount of happiness equates to the least amount of misery. But nevertheless, in that choice, we're still choosing the thing that we feel like we can squeeze the most amount of pleasure out of.

[5:19] So that in everything that we do, we're seeking and driving for happiness, or what the Bible calls blessedness. And the problem is that we often choose the things that we think will make us the most happy, but in reality, they don't.

[5:33] We neglect the things that have the power and the ability to really satisfy our souls. And so we turn this morning to look in the Word of God to see what is it that will satisfy our souls?

[5:44] What is it that will turn us into the people who can say, we are the blessed of the Lord, we are the happy ones? Well, we begin by seeing what those who are truly happy do not do.

[5:55] So here's what the happy person does not do. We read, it says, Blessed is the man, three things, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

[6:10] Now, in one sense, all three of these statements are telling us one basic thing, and that is that the blessed person and the happy person does not live a sinful lifestyle.

[6:22] But if you begin to examine the text in a little bit more detail, you can see that there's a progression in these three statements. So you begin, it's easy to see initially you're only walking in the counsel of the wicked, which means, I think, that you are listening to and beginning to heed the advice and the way of life of those who do not know the Lord.

[6:48] You begin to hear those voices and respond to those voices and even perhaps believe what those voices are saying, and you begin to at times act out on what their advice is.

[7:00] And it may not be in the form of actual advice, it may just be in the form of this is sort of the spirit of the age. This is what people that live around us think and feel, and we are so influenced by them that we begin to, in a sense, walk in that counsel, walk according to those beliefs and those standards.

[7:19] They impact our minds, which begins to impact our actions. It's not a deep level of participation in sin, yet it is a level of participation in sin.

[7:31] And we've all experienced that. We've found ourselves thinking in ways that are contrary to the scriptures. Maybe you heard a sermon, maybe you read a book, or maybe another believer came alongside of you and said to you, that thing that you're leaning towards, or that lifestyle that you're beginning to pursue, it's not right.

[7:54] And there's a part of you that recognizes that, but there's also a part of you that thinks, why not? Because everyone else around you embraces that kind of approach to life.

[8:05] Everybody else around you is walking in that lifestyle, and so you've just sort of naturally adopted it. And until someone or something comes from the Lord to confront you on that, or open your eyes to that, you may not even be fully aware that you're walking in the counsel of the wicked.

[8:24] We see these things happening all the time in various areas of our lives. It may be something simple, like at work, and you may find yourself cutting corners that require you to not be honest when you're filling out paperwork, saying that you did this amount of work when you didn't really do this amount of work, or reporting to your boss that you did something that you didn't actually do, and you cut corners.

[8:44] But the reality is that when you were hired on there, that's the way things worked. Everybody did that, and so you just began to do what everybody else in the office or in the plant did, and you didn't think about it, and then all of a sudden someone or something from God's Word strikes you, and you realize that's a level of dishonesty that you ought not to be participating in.

[9:02] You didn't even realize it before. You were just kind of walking according to the counsel, the way you're just doing what everybody else around you did. Or it may be that you've been in a relationship before that was not a godly relationship, but everybody else that you knew had the same kinds of relationships.

[9:18] And so it didn't even occur to you that you needed to change that relationship until somebody came alongside of you and sat you down and said, hey, let me show you what the Bible has to say about this.

[9:30] And sometimes it can hit us like a ton of bricks. Because at this point, at this level of participation in sin, you're not so far gone that you're completely insensitive to what the Word might say.

[9:42] You're not completely dismissive of another view. But if you don't correct course, if you don't get off of that path, you'll find yourself further entrenched in sin.

[9:59] Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners. So that you move from merely walking and participating and agreeing with on a very just superficial level with the ways of the people around you who do not know the Lord, to now you are standing your ground in the ways in which they live their lives.

[10:25] This is now a part of your life in a much bigger way. You're standing now. You're securely set in this place in life. And a lot of times it's the same kinds of things that you were walking in, just heeding the advice of others, but now you've moved to a point to where that's just who you are and you don't recognize it, you don't know it.

[10:47] And when a word of correction comes, you sometimes can't even hear that word of correction anymore. You outright reject it. See, there is a danger when our hearts have some sensitivity to correction, when our hearts are able to on some level receive a rebuke that comes from the Lord and we resist that and we turn away from that.

[11:10] The danger is that we will no longer be walking in the counsel of the wicked. The danger now is that now we've become among those who are, that's just who we are. We're standing in it. That's who we are now. And from there, it's very easy to move to the third level where he speaks of those who sit in the seat of scoffers.

[11:30] No longer walking, no longer kind of just experiencing these things, no longer simply standing your ground. Now this is sort of your permanent dwelling place. In fact, you can translate that word there, sits, as dwells, to live.

[11:42] This is now, this is who you are. And it's not just a matter of sinful behavior. Now you've become one of the scoffers, one of those who doesn't simply live differently from what the Bible prescribes for us, but one of those who now mocks that way of living, one of those who now derides the Christian approach to life.

[12:02] And oftentimes we think, I would never go that far. I may not always agree, or I may not always respond when someone corrects me, but I would never go to the point of becoming the person who mocks the Christian approach to life.

[12:20] And yet, how many times have we seen people caught up in conversations with non-Christians, and they not only hear the mocking, but they begin to participate in it.

[12:33] To laugh about the standards upheld by a relative or a friend. And to laugh about it. To begin to look at it and perceive it as backwards and ridiculous.

[12:49] Don't think that you are automatically immune from that. If you've not responded when you've heard a word of correction, if you've begun to stand and hold your ground in a place, it's deadly.

[13:03] You may come to the place where you find yourself living in a world in which, and having a heart such that you not only reject the truth, you're openly hostile towards it.

[13:20] And the writer of this psalm says, the happy person, the blessed person, the person who has real joy, he doesn't pursue any of those paths. He doesn't go that way. He doesn't walk down that road.

[13:31] And if he ever takes a couple of steps that way, he hears the rebuke and he quickly gets off of that path. He doesn't go that direction. And so you ask yourself, how do we avoid that direction?

[13:44] Instead of just saying, don't do this, what ought we to be doing if I really want lasting joy and deep happiness to be a part of who I am and to well up from within me?

[13:54] What exactly positively do I have to do? And that's the next thing that the psalmist is going to teach us. So here's what the blessed person, the happy person does not do. Here's what the truly happy person does.

[14:07] And it's not complicated. Verse 2, But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

[14:20] His delight, his joy, the source of his happiness is the law of the Lord. Now don't be thrown off, don't be taken off guard by the word law because we tend to think, well, that just means the commandments.

[14:32] So I'm supposed to be happy about the Ten Commandments. Is that what the writer is telling me here? Well, no, I don't think so because the word law can be translated in a number of ways. It's a word you probably know. It's the word Torah, which is what we call the first five books of the Old Testament.

[14:48] They're known as the Torah. And of course there are a lot of commands in there. But it also has an even broader, even more general sense than that. It simply means oftentimes instruction. So it means any instruction, any word that comes from the Lord.

[15:01] And so it would include the words of this psalm. It would include the words of all of the psalms to follow. I think that Psalm 1 is in a lot of ways preparing us for how to read and receive the rest of this book of Psalms.

[15:13] If you want to benefit from this prayer book, then you need to receive it as the Word, and you need to delight in it as the Word. In fact, we might say today, if we were writing this psalm today, we would probably say that our delight is in the Scriptures, or our delight is in the Bible itself.

[15:32] I don't think that it's far from the mark of what the psalmist means. Whatever God has revealed, whatever instruction He has given to us, that is to be our joy and delight.

[15:44] Which means that the Bible cannot be for you simply a source of information. It is information. It's instruction, after all, but it can't be merely instruction. We can't approach the Bible as if it's just a book to learn information from.

[15:57] Important information, spiritual information, theological information, but then leave it at that. We can't approach the Bible in that sort of dry, scholastic, academic way.

[16:09] Yeah, there are truths in here that are deep and beyond our comprehension. You can spend your entire life studying this one book, doing nothing else, devoting your time to it, and come to the end of your life, and not have even come close to exhausting all that is contained in this book.

[16:32] Not because it's the greatest work of literature ever. Not because it stands above all other books in literary form and eloquence, but because in this book, in the Bible, God reveals Himself to us.

[16:51] There's a lot to learn here. There are depths to be plumbed, but the Bible is to be approached as far more than a book to glean important information from.

[17:04] The Bible is a book to be delighted in, to take joy in, because it does, in fact, reveal the Lord to us.

[17:16] God has shown us in His Word everything that He wants us to know about Himself in this life, in every way that He wants us to respond to that revelation about Himself. He has shown us those things in this book.

[17:28] This is a guide for life. This is the way, this shows us the way to eternal life. This shows us how to navigate in a difficult world, and it shows us how to do that all the while warming our hearts and giving us a kind of joy that is incomprehensible.

[17:48] This book ought to be for you a delight. That doesn't come naturally to us all the time. You think, well, I mean, I've sat down to read my Bible a lot of times, and to be really honest, sometimes I get bored.

[18:03] Sometimes I have no idea what they're talking about. Sometimes it just seems kind of simple information that I learned in Sunday school when I was eight. I've read the Bible, and I've experienced all of these things. The reality is that joy and delight in the Word of God is not always something that is automatic every time we pick up the book, which is why David, in the book of Psalms, in Psalm 119, where he spends verse after verse, sentence after sentence, it's the longest single chapter in the entire Bible, and the entire thing is devoted to his reading and delighting in the Word, and yet he begins that psalm by praying and asking God to help him to have joy in the Word, to help him to delight in the Word, so that when we approach this book, if the Bible is to be for us a source of joy, we approach this book as prayerful people, asking God to show us wonderful things about himself, asking God to help our hearts be warmed by what we read.

[19:07] We don't pick up the Bible like a textbook. We don't pick up the Bible like our favorite fictional novel that we're just trying to finish reading before the year's out. We pick up the Bible coming before God on our knees and on our face, asking him to show us wondrous things, asking him to open our eyes to see the beauty of who he is, and when we approach it with that kind of attitude and that kind of earnestness before him, he begins to do a supernatural work within us.

[19:36] He begins to make the Bible a delight to our souls. You never approach it as dry. You never approach it as information.

[19:48] It is to delight your soul. So come to the Bible on your knees. Come to the Bible on your face. And God will indeed do a work in your heart.

[19:58] He will. It does require more than simply prayer, though, because the psalmist says not only that the law of the Lord is his delight, but that he meditates upon the law day and night.

[20:13] What exactly does he mean by that? He meditates upon the law day and night. Does that mean you never put your Bible down? Well, no, that's impractical. That doesn't make sense at all.

[20:24] Does he mean that you are every single moment that you have where you're not busy doing something else? At every single moment, you get your Bible and you read it. I don't think that's exactly what the psalmist means either.

[20:37] In fact, if you'll turn over in your Bibles, I think this is helpful for me in thinking about exactly what he means. Turn over to Deuteronomy 6. And I just want to show you something that the Lord speaks to Israel through Moses about the law, the instruction of the Lord that I think can be helpful for us in thinking about this idea of day and night, day and night.

[20:58] What does that mean? Deuteronomy 6, just after he's given the Ten Commandments in chapter 5, he tells his people in verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

[21:14] You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words, so there's a connection between these words, that is the instruction of the Lord, and the love that he's just commanded.

[21:27] The same as there's a connection between delight and the instruction of God in Psalm 1. There's a connection between feeling and information, instruction. Here's how this works.

[21:38] And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. I think that's another way of saying delight in these, love these. They're on your heart. How does that happen? You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

[22:00] You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. They shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates. Notice all the areas of life in which the Word, the instruction of the Lord, begins to work itself into our daily lives.

[22:16] Now, we'll start with the strange-sounding things first. Writing them on your doorpost. What does that indicate? What does that mean? Well, we do know that the Jews, at one point in time, did literally put little scrolls, and they put them on their doorposts.

[22:31] They put them in a little box, and they would stick them to their doorposts to sort of legalistically obey the command here. But the point of this is that you are to be continually reminded, every time you go in and out of your home, you're not leaving the Word behind.

[22:45] It's ever with you. It rules your home, and it rules your life as you go out of your home. It's constant. You're constantly being reminded of it. And as if to emphasize that more, he has this other strange statement about binding them as a sign on your hand, and he says frontlets between your eyes are on your forehead.

[23:03] And, of course, again, we find people, you know, actually binding them on little scrolls on their wrists or tying them up in boxes on their forehead. I don't think that's what Moses meant for us to literally obey that and do that.

[23:15] I think what he meant was that in all that we do, we ought to be influenced by the Word. So what we do with our hands, the work that we do with our hands, is guided by the Word of the Lord. The way that we think, our thoughts and emotions are guided by the instruction of the Lord.

[23:30] That's what's meant there. And he tells us that we are to teach these things, pass them on to our children, and while we're walking down the road, we're supposed to talk about them. When we lie down and stand up, we're supposed to be thinking about them and talking about them.

[23:43] So when the psalmist says in Psalm 1 that we are to meditate upon the law of the Lord day and night, or the happy man does that, when he says that, I think that what he means is that the Word of God ought to accompany you in your heart and in your mind wherever you go.

[24:00] Of course, there is an element of that where you are going to spend some time actually sitting down reading the Word. That's necessary because you can't get the Word into your head and into your heart unless you actually know what it says.

[24:11] So there is an element of just simple reading and we ought to devote a good portion of our time in our regular lives to just reading the Word. But the point of day and night is to say that if you have read and if it has penetrated into your mind, then in everything that you do, you're going to be reflecting upon the instruction of the Lord.

[24:32] You're going to be talking about it with others, whether it's your children or someone else that you walk down the side of the road with. It's going to become for you the language of your heart. It's going to become for you the way in which you think about the world around you.

[24:47] To meditate on the Word, to think about the Word day and night means that it sits easily on the front of your mind at all times so you can evaluate everything by it and when you have conversations, the Word just naturally flows from your lips.

[25:02] we're doing a study on evangelism in the Bible study hour at 930. We've been doing it for several weeks now. We've got a couple of more weeks left in that.

[25:13] And one of the things, one of the helpful things in the back of our workbook, if you're in the class, you turn to the back and you can read, and one of the things that that booklet talks about is the importance of not losing a biblical way of talking in our everyday life.

[25:31] And so, as an example, a biblical way of talking about good weather is to talk about how, well, I'm so grateful that the Lord blessed us with some rain when we really needed it.

[25:42] So that in your everyday conversation, rather than just saying to your neighbor, oh, well, it's a good thing we've got some rain, it's okay. You don't have to feel embarrassed and have to hide away your Christianity by talking about, it's great that the Lord blessed us with some rain.

[25:56] And we don't do that and we hide those things away, we sort of tap those things down because we think we're going to look odd. We think we're going to look like the strange people who are constantly talking about Jesus. But I don't know any other way to understand what it means to meditate on the law of the Lord day and night if we're not people who are continually talking about Jesus.

[26:15] If He is the center of our thought, then in our everyday speech, phrases and ways in thinking about the world that come from the Word ought to just kind of naturally spill forth out of us.

[26:31] That's a part, I think, of what it means to meditate on the Word day and night. That just in the way that you talk, it's reflected that the Word of God sits and rests easily upon your mind at all times.

[26:44] So yeah, you're going to have to read the Bible if you're going to meditate on it. Yeah. If you want the Word to be a delight to you, you're going to have to do that. But it's not just reading. It's letting the Word take up residence in your heart and your mind so that it just naturally flows out of you.

[27:02] And when that happens, you can think about it anytime you want. When you're driving down the road, you can think about the Scriptures. You can share the Scriptures anytime you think about it. And you can have a conversation with your child or your grandchild and you can bring it back to the Scriptures anytime that you want to if the Word is filling your mind.

[27:24] So the happy person, the blessed person, is not living a sinful life but living a life that is dictated by and filled with the Word at all times.

[27:35] And then as a consequence of that, something actually happens to us. We actually experience something in our lives. The happy person has an experience of God's mercy and grace as a result of his time spent in the Word that just flows out from him.

[27:51] Take a look at how it's described in verse 3. He, that is the blessed man, He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.

[28:05] In all that He does He prospers. So there are two things we are told here that are experienced by the person whose joy and delight is in God and in His Word.

[28:16] There is fruitfulness first of all and then secondly there is a kind of prosperity that is experienced in their lives. Think about the fruitfulness first of all. What does He mean when He says they're like a tree planted by springs of water and they yield their fruit in its season?

[28:33] What does that mean? Well first of all you've got to try to think of an Israelite living in the land of Palestine reading those words in an arid region in which there's not a lot of rainfall.

[28:47] I mean my goodness here grass and weeds can sprout up anywhere. I mean they grow on the concrete around here because we get rain. We're in East Texas we get rain so that happens but in Palestine it's much more arid and the ground is not as conducive to retaining the moisture that actually does come down in rainfall.

[29:09] And so there's a marked difference between the tree that grows next to a stream or a river and the tree that grows just sort of out in the middle of a field. The tree that grows by the spring has a constant source of nourishment a constant source by which it can become healthy and begin to produce fruit so that the tree that has plenty of water that's located in the right spot it will every year produce fruit at the right time of season.

[29:42] When the season comes it will produce the fruit when it's supposed to at the right time. The tree out in the arid field well if it's a good year for rainfall it may produce some fruit but there are going to be a lot of years when it doesn't produce much fruit or it doesn't produce any edible fruit but this tree you can count on it every year as long as the stream doesn't dry up every year it's going to produce its fruit.

[30:06] And that's the happy person that's the blessed person that the word of God is so nourishing to our lives and our souls that at the right time for the right fruit it will produce it so that the word through the power of the spirit will begin to produce things like patience kindness gentleness faithfulness self-control things that sound familiar to you as fruit produced by the spirit through the power of the word.

[30:42] The word will water our souls and nourish our lives so that when we need certain fruit you may think that you're the least patient person in the world you may not have a good track record with patience and yet when the time comes if you've been in God's word when you really desperately need patience in a moment if you've been in the word the word will produce that fruit in your life when you find yourself pressed down by temptation or pressed down by trials and you've never been the kind of person who persevered through things you've always given up easily but if you're in the word and the word is nourishing your heart the fruit of perseverance the fruit of self control will begin to grow in that moment at the time when you need it it will be produced by the word do not do not doubt the power of the word of God to produce things in you that do not come from you naturally that's why it's called supernatural it can do it so there's fruit that comes when it's needed and then there's also a prosperity mention in whatever he does he prospers well that's a tricky phrase to preach in today's world isn't it

[31:58] I mean even me just saying well there's two things there's fruit and there's prosperity it just it kind of grabs your attention what's he going to say on that because you know that I don't believe in the so called prosperity gospel that says that well as long as you're faithful to God he'll give you health all the time and he'll solve all of your problems and he'll keep difficult days out of your lives we don't believe in that kind of health and wealth so called prosperity gospel I say so called because it's not a gospel it's not good news it cuts you off from the true grace of God and leads you to destruction it's not gospel at all so what are we to think though if we know that that's not true how are we to understand the prosperity that the psalmist here talks about well I think it's something that we at this point in our church life ought to be familiar with because we've just finished 1 Peter where we are told and we are informed that we are not to be surprised at the fiery trial that's going to come upon you which reminds us of the words of

[33:05] Jesus where he says if you would follow me you must deny yourself and take up your cross you take up an instrument of death you lay down your life you might die if you follow me you might be in prison you might lose your friends you might be alienated by your family members if you follow me the new testament tells us that all those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted so how does this prosperity come to us in the light of that reality remember the context we've talked about the blessed man or the happy man the one whose delight whose joy whose rejoicing is in the instruction of the Lord and consider the words of Jesus himself Matthew chapter five the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word translated blessed is used here verse 10 blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven what is the prosperity of those who are obedient to the word and who delight in the word in this life it is the delight itself it is the blessedness of verse one it is the joy that endures through all of that it's a kind of prosperity that is that is leaps and bounds beyond the health and wealth false gospel it's real it's deep it's enduring it's lasting it matters which is why in

[34:57] James chapter one verse two he's able to command us to rejoice in our trials consider it or count it all joy he says when you endure various kinds of trials count it a joy because no matter what comes your way follower of Christ deeply rooted in the word joy will come to you despite those things fruit will come at the time when it's needed the word will produce the fruit and real genuine spiritual prosperity will come when it's needed in the midst of painful difficult days so the blessed man is a man consumed with the word delighting in the word meditating on the word day and night who sees the fruit produced who experiences the spiritual prosperity of the Lord in their lives and then he contrasts that with the wicked the wicked in verse four he says are not so but they are like the chaff that the wind drives away now the picture here is of a farmer who's grown his crop probably wheat something along those lines a grain of some sword and he's out on the threshing floor and he's threshing which means he's using his pitchfork or something like that to toss up the grain into the air and the chaff the part that you don't want in there on your grain that you need to fall away as he tosses it in the air in a windy region like

[36:36] Palestine wind's just going to carry it off just going to knock it off the grain it's just going to go away and the psalmist says that's what the wicked are like those who are blessed those who are happy in the Lord delighting in his word their tree planted secure by streams of water but the wicked not so when trouble comes for them when things get hard like the wind just blown away just just blown away and the writer of this psalm would have us know that that those who pursue the Lord those who are firmly rooted in his word have a destiny that is different from the wicked we're not like the chaff we're not blown away by the winds we're planted firmly but he he comes near the end of this psalm and he wants to emphasize in a greater way how vastly different the eternal destiny of these two are the destiny of the wicked on the one hand and the destiny of the truly happy and blessed on the other take a look verse 5 therefore these wicked who are like the chaff who cannot endure therefore the wicked they will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous there is a judgment coming it's certain and it's sure the new testament tells us that it is coming with certainty and the wicked will not stand in that and on that day they will not take their place among the righteous they will not take their place there they will not stand those who delight in the Lord and those who take their stand on his word they not only have things that they don't do things that they do and things that they experience but they have an eternal hope laid up for them and a part of that eternal hope is knowing that there is coming a day when the

[38:48] Lord is going to set things right because there are times before the wind has blown the chaff away there are times when we we look around us just sort of on the surface level and it appears as though the wicked prosper it appears as though those who love the Lord suffer and the wicked get all the goodness that was promised us that's what it looks like here and now and what we need to know for sure is that there is coming a day when God will set things right in fact I think that it's it's built into us it's a part of us as people made in the image of God to want and to long for things to be made right we get mad when there is injustice in the world when we see people hurting that we feel like ought not to be hurting and when we see people who do things that are wrong prospering at work or in their life we think that's not right and we want it set right we want the wrong things in our lives to be fixed when I was a teenager I used to watch this TV show any has anybody ever heard of the TV show quantum leap anybody ever heard of that okay it's an old sci-fi show and it's one of those time travel shows and but oh but when I was I don't know how old I'm 14 15 16 I loved that show and I I watched it I had a tiny little TV in my bedroom and it came on Wednesday nights nine o'clock I'm not even sure if my mom knew that I was always watching it it's one of the few channels I get

[40:14] NBC and I'd watch it on Wednesday nights there in my bedroom a lot of times love that show but the premise of that show was that this this scientist would name Sam is he created this time machine he got and he went back in time and he was just jumping around from place to place in history and everywhere that he went what the voiceover at the beginning of the show said was that he went there to set right what once went wrong so it was this fantasy land in which somebody could go back in time and fix things in people's lives that were unjust and wrong so that the the bad guy who got away he would go back in time and make sure that they got their just desserts or the or the innocent kid who suffered wrongly he would go back in time and by the end of the show he would have stopped that situation from happening and change history it was just this this pie in the sky dream like thing as if you could go back and set things right but the reality is things don't get set right by us going back to fix them things get set right when God in his own time comes to set all things right and he's going to do it and the person firmly planted and rooted in God's word knows that and trusts in that so that in verse six we find this word of encouragement that the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish he knows he knows that is he's he cares about he's concerned with the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked on that day will perish it'll be over now if you know your

[41:57] Bible if you've been meditating on your Bible at all never mind day and night then that verse ought to set you back a bit because the truth of the matter is there's not a person in this room who belongs on their own in the category of righteous the truth is that we we are not the blessed man the truth is that we are the sinner we are the wicked we are the chaff that blows away in the wind we are the ones who deserve to perish we deserve it the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 3 that there is no one righteous and that's a quotation from the book of Psalms in Psalm 50 53 so this book of Psalms tells us there are no righteous people the apostle Paul affirms that there are no righteous people and we look at our own lives and we look into our own hearts and our actions and we look and we say we're not righteous we harbor bitterness and resentment we're angry at times we have done things to other people we have disobeyed God's word I'm I'm the sinner I'm the wicked one I'm gonna blow away like the chaff when God comes on judgment day because I'm not the blessed man it's not who I am but there's another way to become the blessed man

[43:25] Romans chapter 4 the apostle Paul quoting from Psalm 32 says blessed are those same same word as we saw in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and in Hebrew in Psalm 32 it's the same word as in Psalm 1 blessed blessed are those who this time it's not who do not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way it's not what it says this time blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven whose sins are covered blessed is the man word for word here blessed is the man against him the Lord will not count his sin there's another way to blessedness there's another way to this deep abiding happiness than your own personal righteousness in fact we are told in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 that God made

[44:32] Jesus the sinless one the one who knew no sin he made him to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God 1st Peter 3 18 that Christ died the righteous for the unrighteous in our place so that yeah we're sinners yes we are the chaff yes we face judgment day on the wrong side and yet the scriptures tell us that if we will but trust in Christ if we will put our faith in him and turn away from our sin and our wickedness then his righteousness is counted as ours our sins are not counted against us and then we have a righteousness it's not our own and we can stand on judgment day by no merit of our own we can stand as the righteous whose way the Lord knows and the beauty of trusting in

[45:40]  Christ is that you not only get his his perfect righteousness credited to your account covering your sins you get his spirit who then begins to practically turn you into the blessed man someone you want you want real happiness you want real deep abiding joy that endures through trials then step one acknowledge that you are not the righteous one you're not the blessed man on your own turn from your sin trust in Jesus receive his righteousness for free as a gift and then his spirit will come within you and then and then you turn to this word you dive deeply in this word and he'll turn you away from the counsel of the wicked he'll pluck your feet from the way sinners and he'll rip you from the seat of the scoffers and put you on a new path clothed in the righteousness of his son and you're the happy man happy woman happy child let's pray most of us here father i would venture to guess have trusted in Jesus and so my prayer for those of us who have been covered with his righteousness already is that we would see more and more our hearts and our minds transformed so that we begin to look like who we are and that because of our time in your purifying word we begin to see the fruit of righteousness in our lives and we begin to trust that you know our way and for the few who are here who maybe have heard people talk about Christ many times they know and have been told read your bible but the truth of the matter is they don't and they don't get it because still in the wrong category i pray that you would do such a supernatural work in their hearts right now that they would turn away from sin their faith in Jesus and they would be clothed in his righteousness and they would become now for the first time really and truly blessed and happy in the Lord i pray this in Jesus name amen amen amen