“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. ”
Who is living the good life? Is it Jeff Bezos? He has $138.5 billion. He runs Amazon. He owns The Washington Post. That is a lot of wealth and influence. Is he living the good life? Is Marilyn Vos Savant living the good life? She has the highest recorded IQ. Wouldn’t you want to be known as the smartest person alive? Is Kevin Durant living the good life? He is 29 years old, an athletic powerhouse, and the standout player of these NBA finals.
A well-dressed woman in a Mercedes-Benz convertible passes you on the road. Is she living the good life? A man is able to be home every day by 4:30 to spend time with his kids before supper. Is he living the good life? A man in his thirties has enough money to pay someone else to make all the hard decisions for him. Is he living the good life? Who is living the good life?
Is it you? Are you living the good life? Tonight, God’s word tells us that you can live something even better than the good life. You can live better than Kevin Durant even if you are 88 and fragile rather than 29 and vigorous. You can live better than Jeff Bezos even if you have $138 in savings rather than $138 billion. You can live the blessed life.
The blessed life is better than the good life. It is better than what $138 billion could buy. It is better than winning the NBA championship. That doesn’t mean that winning the NBA championship is meaningless. That’s an exciting thing and you could enjoy a lot of life with $138 billion and find great fulfillment in helping others with that money. Wealth, intelligence, health, championships, these can be good things, but the blessed life is even better.
As we study the man who lives the blessed life in Psalm 1, I want you to ask yourself if you are living this life. Are you more content than the man with $138.5 billion? Are you more confident than the world’s smartest person? Do you have a joy that runs deeper and springs higher than the very real joy of a championship?
The blessed life is the better life. That’s the claim of this sermon: the blessed life is the better life.
We see this life in two points. First: the blessed man. Second: what the blessed man flees. We see the fact that there is such a thing as a blessed man at the beginning of verse 1. We see what such a man flees in the rest of verse 1.
First, let’s meet this blessed man. The book of Psalms begins by telling us that there is a man who is living the blessed life, “blessed is the man.”
It’s hard to do justice to this word, ‘blessed.’ Some translations try to help us by telling us that this man is happy, “How happy is the man who does not walk in the advice of the wicked.” That’s completely true, but our modern understanding of the ‘word’ happy isn’t substantial enough to fill in for ‘blessed.’ Our word ‘happy’ doesn’t do justice to what we will see about this man’s life. Our word ‘happy’ is very impoverished. You can be happy one minute and sad the next. Being blessed is something far more substantial. The man of Psalm 1 isn’t just happy. Although he is happy, he is also blessed.
Other translations try to help us by telling us that this man is fortunate. “Fortunate is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked.” That’s true. The man who avoids the advice of the wicked is a fortunate man, but the blessed man is more than just fortunate. He has soul-satisfaction that is far beyond what mere circumstances can supply. He is blessed.
The world is looking for happiness. The world is looking for the good life. The world is looking for what Jeff Bezos, Marilyn Vos Savant, and Kevin Durant are tasting. David begins this Psalm by saying, ‘why settle for just that? Don’t you want more? Here is substantial soul-satisfaction. Here is the blessed life.’
My hope is that you have this substantial soul-satisfaction. My hope is that you have this blessed life we will see in Psalm 1. My hope is that you can say with Paul, “if God is for us, who can be against us?” My hope is that you see being a Christian as the greatest identity imaginable. My hope is that when you give a moment’s thought to the fact that you belong body and soul to your faithful Savior Jesus Christ, you consider yourself very blessed, your soul satisfied, and know that you have hit the cosmic jackpot. “Blessed is the man.” Is that you?
There is such a thing as a blessed life. Maybe you need to hear that tonight. Maybe you have chased the world’s definitions of the good life and it has consistently come up hollow. You’ve gotten money and that hasn’t been enough. You’ve enjoyed romance. “You’re nobody until somebody loves you.” Well somebody loves you and it still isn’t enough to fill that void inside. You’ve been successful beyond what you ever hoped in your work and at night as you lay in bed, you wonder whether it matters. You wonder if there is something more. The Holy Spirit speaks to you tonight saying, ‘Let me tell you about the blessed life. Let me tell you how to enjoy it.’
This blessed life is a substantial life. It isn’t fragile. “Blessed is the man,” are the first words of the book of Psalms, one of the most emotional, tear-stained, joy-filled books of the Bible. The Psalms begin by telling us about the blessed man and then take us into the passions and emotions and troubles that are part of his life. The book of Psalms doesn’t show us the blessed man and then paper over his problems. The book of Psalms shows us the blessed man and then shows him in a tight space. “The righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” The Psalms show us the blessed man and then shows him in a political situation that looks just like ours, “The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’” The Psalms shows us the blessed man and then shows him looking around saying, “Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.”
And yet this man is blessed. In the midst of turmoil, in the midst of standing alone, in the midst of troubles that afflict us all, in the middle of the roller coaster of life, this man is blessed. He has substantial soul-satisfaction. This blessed life is durable.
Nobody cares about Kevin Durant when he loses. Nobody will envy Jeff Bezos if he goes bankrupt. The man living the blessed life is different. “From everlasting to everlasting, the Lord’s love,” is on this man. Goodness and mercy will follow this man all the days of his life. You can live this life.
You can become like this man of Psalm 1. You can become like Jesus. He is the man of Psalm 1. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” That’s Jesus.
Years ago, Synod was debating whether or not to adopt a translation of Scripture that was gender inclusive and would read, “blessed is the person.” One pastor stood up and said, “Please don’t take Jesus out of Psalm 1.” Psalm 1 is about the blessed life, that’s true that it’s certainly for men and women, but it is finally about one blessed man. It is about Jesus. He is the man of Psalm 1 “Blessed is the man.”
He is the only one who enjoys the uninterrupted blessed life. I don’t. I sometimes walk in the wisdom of the world. I am sometimes so spiritually cold that I find minimum delight in the word of the Lord. At times I devote myself to goals that God would never prosper. The most righteous saint among us tonight only lives this blessed life in a patchy, sporadic way. The Catechism gets it right, “in this life even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience.”
Jesus lives it all the time. Think about how joyful Jesus must be. Think about how satisfied Jesus must be. Think about how blessed Jesus must be. That’s the way he talks. “The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these.” “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you.” Never, even pity Jesus. He pursued even the cross for joy. He is the blessed man.
Do you want to be like him? If you had to pick anyone’s life to live, would it be Jesus’ life—to have his attitude, to have his assumptions, to have his temperament, to have his passions, to have what he has—do you want to be like Jesus? That’s what it means to be a Christian. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul wrote. “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Is that you? I hope you haven’t reduced the Christian life to less than that.
That’s the blessed man. Part of living the blessed life is avoiding something. To live the blessed life you must heed this warning. That’s our second point: what the blessed man flees. The righteous man runs. He runs from sin. There is something very righteous about running from sin. There is something very righteous about Joseph running from Potiphar’s wife. There is something very righteous in understanding how easily sin entangles and having a healthy fear of it.
I hope you have a healthy fear of sin. I hope you are afraid enough of fire to not play with it. I hope you are like Robert Murray M’Cheyne who wrote in his journal, “I am tempted to think that I am now an established Christian, that I have overcome this or that lust so long, that I have got into the habit of the opposite grace… [so I can] venture very near… temptation—nearer than other men. This is a lie of Satan. One might as well speak of gunpowder getting by habit of resisting fire, so as not to catch spark. As long as powder is wet, it resists the spark; but when it becomes dry, it is ready to explode at the first touch. As long as the Spirit dwells in my heart, He deadens me to sin, so that, if lawfully called through temptation, I may reckon upon God carrying me through. But when the Spirit leaves me, I am like dry gunpowder. Oh, for a sense of this!”
You aren’t holy enough to play with sin. No mere mortal is. You can’t dabble with the devil and come away intact. I dare say in an assembly this large there are a number of us who think we are only dabbling with sin when it already has its claws in us. We think we are mature enough to draw near to the flame of temptation. I fear some of us might be days or weeks away from an explosion.
Flee sin.
Fleeing requires work. Part of living the blessed life is fleeing even a hint of sin. If giving up certain television shows, if repenting of the way you are behaving in your dating relationship, if getting some accountability for your behavior online seems like too much of a sacrifice for you, don’t count on living the blessed life. If you want to take some wisdom from God’s word and some wisdom from the world, if you want to be accepted by Christ and embraced by the world, if you want peace with Christ and peace with your own flesh, if you want peace with God and peace with Satan, don’t count on living the blessed life.
Did you think the blessed life would require no effort? “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and to work.” “Remain in me,” said Jesus,” as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Bearing fruit requires effort. Remaining in Christ requires effort. Working out your salvation requires effort. The energy is supplied by the Holy Spirit, but you exert it. The blessed life, which is nothing less than the saved life, requires effort and you exert that effort by fleeing sin.
So, let’s look at how to flee sin. Verse 1, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.” The word ‘counsel’ here simply means advice. We see a similar usage of the word ‘counsel’ in Proverbs 15:22, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” David is speaking about worldly advice, worldly wisdom.
The world has plenty of advice, plenty of counsel, to give about dating, about understanding yourself, about what’s off limits, about the purpose of money, about how to raise children. The world is constantly giving wisdom. The world is constantly telling you how to live.
The world mocks the church because we tell people how to live, but so does the world. We simply give different wisdom. We simply give different counsel.
The world’s wisdom is disastrous. James tells us that worldly wisdom, “is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” If you listen to the wisdom of the world, the advice of this culture, you are setting yourself up for a life that’s as sad as what we see in America in 2018. David tells you to flee from that. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.”
The world wants to counsel your children. The world mocks the church saying that we indoctrinate our children. They say that because they want to indoctrinate your children. They want your children to think that love and judgment can’t coexist. They want your children to think specific ways about sexuality, about men and women, about work, about everything.
The world is giving advice on all of this all the time in the form of movies, in the form of public opinion polls, in what they laugh at, in what they celebrate. The Holy Spirit tells you that if you want to live a blessed life, you must flee that. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.”
You must also flee the way of sinners. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners.” Scholars see a progression here. A girl starts by listening to the wisdom of the world, the counsel of the wicked, and soon she is living a worldly life; she is standing in the way of sinners. As John Goldingay explains, “Listening to people formulating plans is one thing. Acting on them is another. Spending one’s life in the company of such schemers is to walk into a marsh from which one is unlikely to emerge.”
Perhaps you have gone past the point of just listening to the wisdom of the world. Perhaps you’ve gone past the point of being indoctrinated by the world. Perhaps you have come to the point of living like the world—walking in the way of sinners. Perhaps you are now regularly looking at pornography and your conscience is relatively untroubled about it. Perhaps you are spending your money in a selfish manner and like the rest of American culture, you are convinced that that’s nobody’s business but yours. Perhaps your life looks disturbingly similar to that of the culture around you—in terms of how you spend your time, in terms of how you arrange your home, in terms of your priorities. Perhaps you are walking in the way of sinners.
There are only two ways to live: the way of God and the way of sinners, the way of life and the way of death. These two ways, like most Biblical themes, begin with Moses. “See,” Moses told Israel on the plains of Moab, “today, I set before you life and prosperity and death and destruction.” That’s origin of the way of life and the way of death. Jeremiah continued it, “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.” “There is a way that seems right to a man,” Solomon wrote, “but in the end it leads to death.” There is a way of life and there is a way of death in Scripture and if you are not on the way of life, you are walking the way of death no matter how respectable you might seem.
This way of sinners isn’t necessarily scandalous. Psalms scholar Derek Kidner describes the way of sinners as not necessarily the most scandalous but, “the furthest from repentance.” Do you think the majority of respectable Americans are repentant? You can walk a very respectable path right into hell. A good number of Pharisees did it in the first century. A good number of upstanding Americans are walking it today.
If you are not walking the way of life, if you are not making it your life’s goal to walk in words of Christ, you are building your house on sand, as Jesus put it, and your life will collapse in a great, eternal crash. Are you walking in Jesus’ words? Are you building your life upon the rock?
If you want to live the blessed life, you must flee the way of sinners. You must walk the way of obedience. If you are happy about the cross, but have no interest in walking in the way of life, in obedience to God’s word, it is my responsibility to tell you that the cross will not help you. If you have no interest in obedience, you don’t love Jesus. If you loved him, you would keep his commandments. If you don’t keep his commandments, you are walking on the way of death. You aren’t blessed. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners.”
Tonight can be the night you begin walking a new way. “I am the way,” says Jesus, “I am the truth. I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Flee the way of death. Flee to Jesus.
You must also flee the seat of mockers. That’s the final stage of this progression of sin. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.”
The man who sits in the seat of mockers hasn’t simply taken the advice of the world, he isn’t simply living like the world, he is now promoting and enforcing it. As Psalms scholar John Goldingay explains, “this implies not merely living their way but also taking part in their deliberations as they gather in a dark parody of the gathering of the elders at the city gate.”
In Israel, the elders of the city would meet at the gate to do the business of the town. This was their city council meeting. They were setting the agenda for the city. To sit in the seat of scoffers is to work to advance the agenda of this world.
Rosaria Butterfield used to sit in the seat of scoffers. She was a professor specializing in what is known as queer theory, reading literature through the lens of the homosexual experience. She herself was a lesbian and was a leader in LGBTQ activism at Syracuse University. She not only believed what the culture said about sexuality and obeyed what the culture said about sexuality, she also promoted, and taught, and urged what the culture said about sexuality. She sat in the seat of scoffers.
If she was going to live the blessed life of Psalm 1, she would need to flee that seat. She did. She now lives the blessed life of Psalm 1. God showed her that sin would not satisfy. God showed her that what she was promoting could only lead to death. Jesus is clear, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Butterfield didn’t want that to happen to her.
Life is serious business. You want to be taken seriously, right? God takes you very seriously. God takes your life very seriously. He takes you and your life seriously enough to tell you that there is a blessed way to live and there is a way that leads to death.
He took you and your life seriously enough to send His Son to show you what real life looks like. He is merciful enough to take the guilt you deserve for listening to the advice of the world, for walking in the way of the world, and maybe even promoting the way of the world, He is merciful enough to forgive that guilt. Forgiving that guilt is no small matter. It cost the life of His Son.
Here’s what that means in the language of Psalm 1. The blessed man, the only truly blessed man, was willing to suffer what you deserve for walking in the counsel of the wicked. He was willing to suffer what you deserve for standing in the way of sinners. He was willing to suffer what you deserve for sitting in the seat of mockers. He was willing to suffer so that you might be blessed.
Are you living this blessed life? If not, why not? If so, thank Jesus and live his life. Live the blessed life. Amen.