Psalm 1 - Muppets and Cow Stomachs

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome to Season 2 of Tabernacle Talk. Really excited for this next section of scripture that we're going to be going over. And I've held it in, I've not let anyone know, but we're actually going to be in Book 1 in the Book of Psalms.

Not many people know this, but there are actually five books within the Book of Psalms. And the Book of Psalms was kind of compiled at kind of near the end of the Children of Israel's kind of journey through exile and through returning to the land.

And you could even look at some of the prophets that are at the very tail end of that, where they're encouraging the people like, hey, now that God has brought us back, like, let's be faithful to him.

Like, let's make our identity God and his word and adherence to that. And as they did so, the Book of Psalms is kind of mirrored to be like a new covenant.

So the Torah from the Old Testament, that is the first five books, the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy was like a five-part thing that kind of showed, hey, this is who God's people is, this is where they came from,

this is what makes up their identity, here's the things that they follow and that they're after. And the Book of Psalms, they're kind of written near the end, or rather compiled at the end of all of Israel's time.

And after their captivity, after their return to the land, kind of mirrors that, that they viewed it as this is now God has brought us back into this place, He has restored us just as He promised that He would.

And so now let's kind of have a heart of devotion to Him that says we are God's people now and forever. And we're not turning our backs on Him again like we did the first time.

So this book is a compilation of many Psalms, many of which were written by King David, some of which were written anonymously, others kind of during the reign of David or Solomon.

There are some of the Psalms that were written during the time of the exile. And you can read some of those. And what we're going to be focusing on is Psalms 1 through 41.

And each of these are individually written songs that sometimes were for private devotion, sometimes were for public, like it was intended for everyone to sing out loud together.

There are some of them that the children of Israel would sing at specific times of year. So maybe if they had a particular time where they were going up to Jerusalem for celebrating a feast, they would sing the Psalms of Ascent.

And there are many other circumstances in which ones would be written. There are some of the Psalms that are written to frustrate the people around them.

There are some Psalms that there's words and phrases taken that would normally be used to describe the false gods of Baal and Asheroth and popular stories.

And where the Psalmist would take a song that everyone knew normally how the song goes and would turn it on its head that the hero of the song would no longer be Baal or it wouldn't be the great sea monsters. Instead, the hero would be God.

It would be Yahweh. And so there's a lot of wonderful things that we can learn from the Book of Psalms. We are not going through all 150 in the first go.

We're just going through Book 1, which is Psalms 1 through 41. And today we're going to be in Psalm 1. Psalms 1 and 2 to the entire Book of Psalms are kind of the starting off point.

It's kind of the, hey, here's what you need to think about everything that's going to follow. Here's the main thoughts that you want to go into the Book of Psalms with.

We're going to do one part today, one part tomorrow, and look at Psalm 1 and Psalm 2.

And it will kind of be our gateway into the entire Book of Psalms, and especially for the section that we'll be looking at first over the next, oh, if I counted it out correctly, something like seven or eight weeks that will be in Psalm, the Book 1

of Psalms. And then we'll go into another study, and that way we'll kind of keep it somewhat fresh as we go through. And won't get bogged down for 150 Psalms, which would be a lot of consecutive weeks. It would be wonderful and meaningful.

But since the book is already broken up into five separate books, thought we might as well take advantage of some of that. We can come back to it from some times. I know we've got some bigger studies that we're going to be doing this year.

I know we're going to be looking at Leviticus. We're going to be looking at Revelation. We're going to be looking at the Minor Prophets, or as it was known back in the Second Temple period around Jesus' time.

It was known as the Book of the Twelve. And we're going to be looking at some of those that maybe for your own personal time with the Lord, you might want to stay away from some of those books just on your own.

You'd go, oh man, I don't understand it. Or man, this seems really dry. And hopefully through studying some of those books together, we'll gain some insights.

But I wanted to start off with Psalms. And we're going to begin in Psalm 1 and verse number 1. Blessed is the person who does not walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

But his delight is in the law of Yahweh. And on his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

One thing that we need to always keep in mind when we look at Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and even some other sections of the Hebrew Old Testament, is that this specific literary genre is meditation literature, that

you are intended to grab hold of some specific lines of some specific things and mull them over in your head. And we'll even see some of that as we go through. So verse 1, blessed is the person.

Now, when we use the word blessed, we tend to think like God's favor on this person. So maybe we would, if we would say, you know, God bless you, may God bless you with favor. And there's an element to that here.

Elsewhere how the Old Testament and the New Testament speaks about blessing is it's like this person is a recipient of the good life, that they're living the dream.

And here this psalmist writes, blessed how happy, what a great life a person lives when they do not walk in the council of the wicked. Not everyone that gives you advice is giving you good advice.

We want to only follow advice that follows God and His truth. We don't want to follow our own wisdom or our own way. We want to follow godly counsel.

He says how blessed is the one that does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners. Who you are with, who you spend time with, the direction that you go.

Oftentimes we think, okay, I can do this much with this group of people and maybe I'll be fine. I just won't go any further than that.

Scripture would counsel us, hey, the direction that your life is going, standing in the path of sinners is something that would be not a source of blessing for you, not a place where the good life is found.

So not walking in the counsel of the wicked, not doing what they tell you to do, not being with them, not standing in their path, not going that general direction. It says, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

Sometimes there are people that maybe they're not doing bad things, but they're spending all of their time judging other people, that they are making a mockery of others. These are the perpetual people from the sidelines that just chip in.

I think of even with the Muppets, what is it, Statler and Waldorf, whatever those two grumpy guys in the top of the theater, whatever their name is, those are the people that I always picture when I see scoffers.

It's those that they're not involved, they're not helping, they're not doing anything. They're simply scoffing here in this passage.

It would be specifically talking about those that are scoffing against God and His Word, His commandments, and against His people that would want to follow them.

And here the psalmist says, you are blessed, you are happy, you're living the good life if you're not with those people.

If you're not walking with them, you're not doing what they say, you're not joining them in their judgment, in their mockery of God. It says, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh.

Think about it, during this time, as the psalmist is writing, he has much of the Old Testament that here when we think of the law, we think of legal codes.

When the Bible talks about the law, it's talking about the totality of the Torah, of the Pentateuch, of God's story of how he both made his people and then saved his people and walked with them.

To delight in the law of the Lord is to realize who you are, where you came from, what's your mission and what your purpose is, and to embrace that. He says, his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and on his law, he meditates day and night.

This word meditates comes from kind of a word that would talk about a cow chewing the cud, that a cow can't get all of the nutrients that it needs just from one time of chewing and swallowing its food.

It needs to do it four times in order to get all of the nutrients out of it.

So a cow would chew the food, swallow it down into stomach number one, burp it back up into the mouth and then chew it again, get some more nutrients, put it down into stomach number two, and then same process again for stomach three and then stomach

four. And this is the kind of thought that the psalmist is encouraging us to have when we interact with God's Word. That it would be something that we consistently think about over and over and over again.

Okay, I know Jesus says this about loving my neighbor or forgiving my enemy. Here the psalmist, God wrote that I need to not walk in the council of the wicked. All right, how might that look?

Who in my life am I taking council from? Okay, I know this person. Are they a wicked person?

What would it mean to walk in their council? What would it mean for me to stand in the path of sinners? What would it mean for me to sit in the seat of scoffers?

That we would think about it. We'd mull over all of the possible different meanings that it might have for our life.

And the Holy Spirit, we would know, works with the Word of God to bring specificity where we go, okay, God, what do you want me to learn from these verses that as we mull it over and over in our mind throughout the day, maybe as I think I've

mentioned on here before, screenshot a verse that you're thinking about throughout the day and then make it your home screen. So every time you look at your phone, you're seeing that verse and you're going, okay, God, I remember, I want to be

thinking about this. I want to be continually pondering it. It says, on his law, he meditates day and night. Don't just shove the Bible aside to maybe your mornings or just your evenings or just whatever amount of time that you spend with him.

Do it just consistently. Here it's day and night. It says, the whole day through, I'm just thinking about what God said.

I mentioned in our First Steps class, going over some spiritual disciplines a few weeks ago, one of the things we often overlook is that we didn't always have access to printing presses and not everyone was literate.

And so for many, many centuries, what thinking about God's Word, what Bible study looked like was you just remembered what you as a church maybe read or recited or what the pastor said on a given Sunday, and then you went home and all throughout the

rest of the week, you were thinking about that particular passage of Scripture, those thoughts, and you just had to think about that if you were going to remember what God said or maybe remember some previous week or some lesson that you learned or

some portion of Scripture perhaps that you had memorized as a church. So be grateful that today we are able to have physical copies of Scripture, but let's not allow a physical copy or a copy on our phone to take the place of the Bible. Let's not

allow that to take the place of actually thinking with our own mind volitionally about God and His actions, His character, His works, and His plans for us. Let's not allow that to take the place of actually thinking about God personally.

Verse 3, so there instead of the three kind of bad things, so walking in the Council of the Wicked, standing in the path of sinners, sitting in the seat of scoffers, so there's a bad three, now there's a good three.

It's a tree planted that yields fruit, that it does not have withering leaves, and in whatever he does, he prospers. Fruit takes a while to show up. It's never instantaneous.

If you are looking for a quick fix in your Christian life, I'm so sorry to tell you, it will probably not happen.

But as you continue to seek the Lord, and to follow him day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, you will find as you look back, you will be astonished at what God has done in your life, as you've chosen to follow him.

That God, what he has planted in your life, as you continue to water it there, tree planted by streams of water, that as you are around people, that would give you good godly counsel, as you are continually in God's Word, as you perhaps meet with

other believers for corporate worship, and hearing the Word preached, or in small groups, and being able to share testimonies with one another, and pray for one another. All of those things help to water your spiritual life, and to help that seed to

grow and mature, so that then you can have fruit in the proper season. It says, its leaf does not wither. For the child of God, in whatever situation that they're in, God does not allow us to fade away without his care, that he is there for us.

Even in our deaths, we are able to go forward in confidence, knowing that God is with us, that we are not alone, that even death itself is the doorway into everlasting life with him. It says, its leaf does not wither.

In whatever he does, he prospers. We can either live our life in constant anger and wanting to cheat people and not working hard, being lazy, being unloving towards people, only ever doing the bare minimum, not putting in a lot of effort.

And we can do all of those things. All of those things are against the character of God and how he instructs us to work and to live. If we are following what God says, there is a natural blessing that comes as a result of it.

Sometimes that blessing is in us that who we are is changed and is a blessing to others. Sometimes it is that perhaps we prosper in business.

I think of Truett Cathy and Chick-fil-A and what an incredible thing it is that through his desire to give to God, through his desire to have his people be able to worship with their churches on Sundays and be with their families and just his desire

to have a Christ-honoring business, that God has made a six-day-a-week restaurant chain just as great as any of the seven-days-a-week chains. And in whatever you do, pray that God would prosper you. I think of the prayer of Jabez.

I think it's in First Chronicles. He says, Oh, that you would bless me indeed, enlarge my coasts, that your hand would be with me. And that would be a great prayer for us to pray that would say, God, I want you to be with me.

I want you to bless my business. I want you to bless my family. And I think of Jeremiah 29 and 11.

God wants to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us hope and a future. Verse 4, he says, the wicked are not so. They're not like the unwhithering and fruitful and prospering.

He says, the wicked aren't like that. He says, they are like chaff, which the wind blows away. So here there's an agricultural reference.

You'd have, if you will, the corn, whatever is on the inside. The chaff would just be the stuff that you take off the outside. It just blows away in the wind.

As soon as you rub off the chaff from your wheat or whatever it would be, it would just fly away. It was nothingness. There wasn't anything substantial to it.

He says, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. There is a judgment day coming. And for all of us, the question is not, will you have done enough good works to curry God's favor?

The question is, have you turned to Christ alone for His righteousness, for God's righteousness? Have you turned to Him? Have you repented of your sin in your own way?

Have you turned to the Lord? And as we do that, as we turn to the Lord, He takes away all of our wickedness and He gives us His righteousness as a free gift. But that has to be a volitional choice on your part.

It's not going to happen by accident. You have to choose to repent and believe to turn to Jesus Christ alone, to choose to follow Him. This is the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

That there is an assembly day that's coming when all of God's people are together, that they are together forever.

And every Sunday is a picture of that eventual one day where we will gather together, where we will partake of the Lord's Supper with Him, that marriage supper of the Lamb, where we will hear from the living Word of God Himself, where we will sing to

Him and praise Him and worship Him, where we will enjoy His presence forever. There is an assembly that's coming. Verse number 6, For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

This word knows is, has connotations of, approves or has regard to that God not just knows about the way of the righteous, he is intimately aware of it.

I think it's one of the Psalms that we'll be going through later that says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way.

And if you are trying to pursue God, maybe you're failing, maybe you're not doing a very good job, but I want you to know that God sees, he knows, he approves of you searching after him, pursuing his righteousness, pursuing his way, not pursuing

wickedness, not pursuing your own way, but in pursuing him, God is glorified. He knows, he approves of what you're doing.

So today, the question for us is, will we be the person that meditates on the law of the Lord that we would think over and over again about it, that we would think about the different ways in which his word is true, maybe some of the different ways

in which the Holy Spirit could apply truths to our lives. Maybe you'd say, I've been listening to the Council of the Wicked. Maybe you'd say, I've been sitting in the seat of scoffers and I need to change that. Maybe God would talk to you about that.

Maybe God would remind you of the fact that just because you know him, you're not done in your growth yet, that he has streams of water he wants you to drink from, that you would bear spiritual fruit of your character and of leading others to know

Christ, and that you have unwhithering leaves that God is with you. There's not an off season where God lets you die. God is always with you. And pray that God would have in whatever you do, you prosper.

All of it stems from will you delight in God's law, in his way, in who he is, and who he has made you to be. Hope that would be an encouragement to you.

Tomorrow will be a little bit shorter episode because I don't have to introduce the Book of Psalms in total, but thank you for tuning in today, and hope that you enjoy season 2 going through Book 1 of Psalms on Tabernacle Talk. Thank you