Psalm 1 / Rick L. McNally / June 3, 2025

Blessed.  Highly favored.  Fortunate.  Happy.   This would be a good place to start.  

How do we become happy again after difficult times?  How do we feel “highly favored” after enduring difficult things?  Even more common, after the simple drain of life hits us for a few years, how do we feel at all?

There is a twofold message here in Psalm 1.  We sometimes skip over the first one too quickly, to land forcibly on the second.  But the first piece is just as important as the second.  The first is the avoidance of bad sources that will misguide or make a ruin of our life.

First we deny someone access and then we delight in someone else.

Blessed is the man who… Denies Certain Sources of Truth…

• walks not in the counsel of the wicked
• nor stands in the way of sinners
• nor sits in the seat of scoffers

On reading this afresh this morning, and after examining the Hebrew words a bit, I find that these people that the Psalmist wishes us to avoid are very common people; they are not world-shatterers, they are the kind of people we run into daily; they are in our homes, shops, churches, and in our mirrors.

They are the guilty, the ones who sin, the ones who mock others around them for disagreeing with them.  They are much like you, and much like me.  I think we’d rather point the finger and say these are special kinds of wicked people, but they are very ordinary and banal.  They have one thing in common, they are not a good source of advice.  They are mortal.  They are weak in their thinking.  I am weak in my thinking.

We should flee from their pronouncements.  We should not go their way.  We should not become so familiar as to become their philosophical friends.  We must guard our thinking, guard our hearts, and guard our minds. 

They are in our boardrooms, they are in our government buildings, they are all around us.  They are sometimes us.   Group-think is a new concept, but it is true, and it makes us worse when gathered together.  Groups of people conspiring together can be in the same moment so well-intentioned that they undermine completely the things or people that they proclaim they want to save.  We must avoid their messages at all costs. 

Why, because there is a better message.

As strong as we avoid the ideas of the men around us, we must learn to delight in God’s word. 

But his delight…

While the ideas, stances, and fellowship of sinful men give one kind of fun or perhaps enjoyment, the word of God gives “delight.”  It is not delightful because of the interest of the examiner, but because in and of itself it is delightful.  As one lexicon described this word delight, “the object solicits favor by its own intrinsic qualities.”  It is delightful.

The word of God is delightful.  While the counsel of the wicked breaks things down, the word of God is more like a stream of water.  It gives life.

Consider the results of a person who avoids bad advice and finds the good.  

They are like…

They are like a tree planted by streams of water / they have been transplanted from a dry and arid land to a fertile crescent.  While others are starving for moisture, they are fine.  Even in life’s droughts, they are relatively well.

They yield fruit in season / they “yield fruit” as they should, as they are designed.  We are made in God’s image and are supposed to be fruitful — people of love, joy, peace, etc.

The leaves do not wither / While the word used here does describe moisture being removed, it also means “to be insensitive to the consequences of its actions.”  Withered.  Dead.  We need to be more and more aware that it is our own actions and attitudes that are killing us, and God has the cure.

They are prosperous / This word means “to make steady favorable progress,” to be successful, to be an overcomer.  

There is and remains a promise of life, fruit, and success.  Now, please know that this does not mean that a believer who trusts the Lord will be rich in this life, but whether they find hardship or ease — they are well off.

The Wicked are not so…

By verse four, the author is telling us that the wicked (the guilty ones, the ones who do not focus on this word) will have more negative effects, and they won’t care because they are “insensitive to the consequences of their actions.”  Please wake up!

For some, life is hard because they are making it hard.  For others, life is doable because God makes it doable.  The word of God delighted in is changing sinners into saints.

Therefore…

In conclusion, the author makes two points: 

(1) God himself “knows the way” of the righteous, but 

(2) the way of the wicked will perish.  

Again, with the dichotomy of ways of life and ways of death.  This time, though, the positive aspect is wrapped up in the idea that God himself is knowledgeable of the right way, and is intimately involved in it.  We wish there were other options here, but there are but two.

Let us, therefore, avoid the ideas of the majority and run to the ideal of the One.  Let us not be conformists of people, but conform to what is good and right and true.

Lord, help us to delight in your delightful word.

And find life.