The Blessed Man

Hi, Church.

Today's scripture reading is from the Psalms chapter one.

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.

This is God's word.

Please be seated.

All right.

So James is on vacation this week.

So we have a guest speaker today.

His name is Peter Scheit.

So Peter, if you want to come up.

Peter is a teaching elder within the PCA.

But this summer he's starting up uh the campus ministry RUF.

How many of you are familiar with it?

Okay, great.

Everybody is.

Wonderful.

It's Navigators, but it's the ministry from the Presbyterian Church in America for college campuses.

So Peter's going to be setting that up at uh Colorado School of Minds in Golden starting this summer.

Right now he's working as an aerospace engineer.

He builds airplanes by himself.

Not true.

But if we want to give uh Peter a hand and welcome, and he's going to be preaching today.

Thick sack.

Good morning.

Like he said, I'm Peter.

It's a pleasure to be here with you guys.

And I will be starting a new chapter of RUF, a Colorado School of Minds, this fall.

It's brand new.

We're starting it up.

RUF is the PCA, the denomination that this church and a dozen other churches or so in the Denver area are part of.

And uh I will be uh your missionary to the college campus to bring the gospel there, which is desperately needed.

So if you want to hear more about that, I would love to talk with you after the service.

Um I'm super excited to connect with you guys.

But more than that, I'm super excited to look with you at God's word this morning.

So please pray with me.

Heavenly Father, um, you are so gracious and merciful and loving to us.

And one of the ways that you are is you speak to us through your word.

So, Holy Spirit, we ask that you would speak to us through your word this morning.

Soften our hearts, open our eyes, give us ears to hear what you have to say for your glory and for our benefit.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So um the Psalms are probably one of the most famous books in all of the Bible.

And uh you can think of them as a song book, really.

It's 150 different songs, poems, that talk about what it is as a Christian, as a human, to experience reality.

And there's lots of different psalms.

This one is what we call a psalm of orientation.

That means it's a psalm that describes reality, right?

It says, this is the way things are.

And it invites us to sit in that and wrestle with that and see what God has to say about reality and compare our own experiences to it.

The psalms as a songbook are also intentionally ordered.

There's actually uh an intentional way that the people who put this together crafted the psalms in order.

So by placing this at the beginning, Psalm 1, it's saying this is really important.

If you want to understand life, if you want to understand reality, if you want to understand all the 149 Psalms that come after this, it's really helpful to get this.

And as we start to consider it, I want to ask all of you a question.

You don't have to answer, you know, think about it.

Do you think that people today are happier than people in the past?

Do you think generally, verbal answer?

Great.

Uh do you think generally people are happier today than the past?

We we know a lot more stuff, right?

We have a lot more knowledge, uh, we have more technology, we have better medicine, greater food availability, uh, lifespans are greater than they've ever been.

But are we more content?

Are we more joyful?

Are we happier?

Psychologists are going to distinguish between what is called hedonic happiness, which typically is what people will think of, you know, when they think of happiness, uh focus on desire fulfillment, pleasure seeking, uh, the presence of positive things and the absence of negative ones.

And uh eudaimonic happiness, which is welfare, thriving, flourishing, this deeper contentment and happiness.

And um, Philip Yancey, who's a Christian author thinking about this, points out if you read the journals and diaries of our ancestors, you don't tend to see as much pity or boredom, meaninglessness, or despair.

It's actually pretty easy to make the case that they were happier than we are.

You can see that in um self-help books.

So uh Circana is a very large market research company here in the United States.

They do market studies to tell companies, hey, this is what people are interested in, this is what people want to help companies bring products to the market.

And from 2013 to 2019, the sales of self-help books in general in the United States grew by about 11% over those six years.

But the number of self-help titles focusing on happiness in that same span tripled, far exceeding the growth of the market in general.

I would argue to you that our society is on a quest for happiness, and the fact that we're on a quest for it means we haven't found it.

This quest isn't new, it spans all times and cultures.

Let me give you some quotes.

Uh, happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

That's Aristotle.

I often ask myself what the purpose of life is.

I conclude that it is to be happy.

That's the Dalai Lama, the current one.

Our own declaration of independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And uh the great philosopher Kermit the Frog, I've got a dream too.

It's about singing, dancing, and making people happy.

And I think we can add Psalm 1 to the list.

The very first word of the Psalm in the Hebrew is oser, blessed.

Not in the sense of honored or praised, but in the sense of joyful, content, happy.

The very first word in the very first book of the Psalms is happy.

So I think that this Psalm is going to show us three things about happiness.

The first is that happiness is possible.

The second is that happiness is problematic.

And the third is what the life of happiness looks like.

So we'll start with the first, right?

Happiness is possible.

Look with me at verses one and two.

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 that law he meditates day and night.

This psalm starts with the concept that it is possible to be happy, right?

Blessed is the man who these things.

And um, I think our response to that statement reveals a lot about where we are in life.

The late uh Tim Keller, who's a pastor and author, uh, says, speaking of the psalm, almost all of us start out thinking that happiness is natural in life.

We all know there are unhappy people, but something went wrong with them.

If I'm good enough or smart enough or hardworking enough, then I'll be happy.

Uh, one place you see this all the time is graduation speeches, right?

Commencement speeches.

Here's an expert excerpt from one.

Uh, we may be leaving this environment, but we can use this attitude that we learned here through the rest of our lives.

Graduates, I hope you keep the spirit with you.

Climb with your coworkers to create amazing innovations that will make the world a better place.

Climb with your friends to build a network of support for yourselves and them.

And climb with your family to build a life that makes you happy.

That was from the most recent December 2024 commencement at the Colorado School of Minds, where I'm going to be doing RUF.

And you can hear that attitude in the speech, right?

The world is in front of you.

There's so many possibilities.

You can be happy, you just have to reach out and grab it.

It's there for you.

But of course, as we go through life and we experience difficulty and we experience suffering, our attitude changes a little bit, doesn't it?

Ecclesiastes says this vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

All things are full of weariness, and man cannot utter it.

What has been is what will be, what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

That sounds like a happy person, right?

But it can resonate with us.

It's no accident that many of the great works of literature are tragedies.

Crime and Punishment, Macbeth, A Tale of Two Cities, one of my favorites, Le Miz.

And that last one in the musical adaptation of Le Miz, of the young woman Fantine, who loses her job and becomes utterly destitute, sings this.

I dreamed a dream in times gone by when hope was high and life worth living.

I dreamed that love would never die.

I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

But there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather.

I had a dream that life would be so different from this hell I'm living, so different now from what it seemed.

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

It's very common for us to start out believing that happiness is inevitable and end up thinking that happiness is unachievable.

Which one are you more like?

What end of the scale do you find yourself on?

Do you more think that happiness is gonna come?

Or do you think that happiness is never going to come?

Because I know you want it, right?

I know you want to be happy.

We all do.

One of my favorite theologians, Blaise Pascal, who he's such an important scientist and physicist that he has a fundamental unit of measure named about him.

And he's a great theologian.

That's my kind of guy.

Math, Jesus, yes.

Yes, please.

Might not be you, that's why I'm doing an engineering school for RUF, right?

He says this all men seek happiness.

This is without exception.

The will never takes the least step to this object.

This is the motive of every action of every man.

I think that he's right.

I think that everything that we do is because we're seeking happiness in that deep sense, fulfillment, joy.

And the Bible, if you dive into it, it pulls no punches at all when discussing the difficulty and the pain and the sorrow of this world.

And yet, Psalm 1 starts with the idea that it is, in fact, possible to be happy.

That's not the only place in the Bible that this is promised.

Jesus promises it to his disciples as well.

This is from John.

Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled.

I will not leave you as orphans.

I will come to you.

Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full.

Jesus promises joy to his people.

So if this is true, right, Psalm of Orientation, reality, if this is what God says, happiness is possible, why are so many people unhappy?

Why are all these self-help books being published?

Why are so many Christians unhappy?

Because happiness isn't found where we instinctively, naturally think.

So happiness is possible.

The second thing that this psalm shows us is that happiness is problematic.

Look with me at verse 3.

He, the blessed man, is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does, he prospers.

So this psalm has this illustration.

This is what it looks like, this is what it means to be this blessed man.

It's like a tree.

And I don't know if you caught this, but not everything is always fun for the tree.

It's subject to seasons.

Sometimes it's flourishing, sometimes it's dry, sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's snowy.

Maybe there's a tornado, who knows?

But it's not always sunny and warm and idyllic.

Also, the tree doesn't always yield fruit, which is interesting, right?

Because of the New Testament, Jesus talks about his people will bear fruit.

This says that it's not always going to happen.

Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes the season is difficult enough that this tree just can't bear fruit.

It doesn't have the capacity or energy for it.

But no matter the season, the tree's leaf doesn't wither.

It's still there.

It persists.

It survives.

It can weather those storms, the drought, the winter.

Why?

Because it's where it's planted.

It's planted by streams of water.

And its roots go deep.

You see, we tend to think of happiness in the externals, in the, as we referenced earlier, that hedonic happiness, the presence of good things and the absence of bad ones.

This passage shows us that happiness is more properly found in what we're rooted in, what we're connected to.

Going back to Tim Keller again, he says that a Christian isn't just a religious person, a nice person doing good things.

A Christian is fundamentally a person who has been rooted in something outside himself.

Going back to the words of Jesus from John that we just read, right?

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

Abide in me, is what Jesus says.

That's how the tree is able to survive affliction, to handle the difficulties of life that we talked about earlier, that will wear us down.

It has something it's connected to, something it's rooted in to draw upon when the external seasons are hard.

This is why the Bible can say things like this In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you have been grieved by various trials.

And why it can say that God's people are sorrowful yet rejoicing.

Because both can be true.

It's normal for us to struggle.

It's normal to have trials, it's normal to have seasons where you don't seem to be bearing any fruit and you just feel like you're barely surviving, and it's all you can do to hold on.

It's normal to have seasons where you're so worn out by grief and by pain and by suffering that it's so hard to get out of bed.

It's normal for things like this to happen.

The Bible says that we should expect trials and sufferings.

And I would just want to say if any of you here this morning feel like that, Jesus sees you.

And he knows.

And I'm really, really glad that you're here because it's a really big deal if that's what you're going through right now, that you are able to get out of bed and get here this morning.

Sometimes the most significant thing is just showing up and coming into the presence of God with his people to be fed by him.

Right?

You and all of us are exactly where we need to be this morning because this passage says that the seasons of life, the difficulties are true, but there's something that's more true, and that's being connected to Jesus.

Jesus said, Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again.

The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

There is a source of water for the Christian that will never run dry.

Jesus welcomes us to do this.

He says, Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You see, this passage doesn't say, happy is the person who go who seeks after happiness.

That's not what this passage says.

This person says, happy this person.

This passage says that happiness is found as a byproduct of something else.

The Christian worldview says that the people who are happiest aren't the people seeking happiness.

It's those who are connected to Jesus.

Makes me think of one of my uh favorite movies, Star Wars, which is almost 25 years old now, which is, you know, terrifying.

Um but when Princess Leia says to Grand Moff Tarkin, he she says, the more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

This is true.

The more we go after happiness, the more we grasp after it, the more we lose it, the more we can't find it.

You see, the Bible shows us that happiness is deeply counterintuitive, right?

It can be found, but it's not where we tend and in the way that we tend to be looking for it.

So happiness is possible, happiness is problematic.

This Bible this Bible, this passage also shows us what it looks like, what it really means to live the truly happy life.

And that's what I want to look at for the rest of our time.

Right?

Um, okay, it's possible, it's problematic.

How do we do it?

Right?

You want to be happy?

This passage shows us how, and it shows us two things that on the surface of it look like they're different things.

But it's actually the same thing.

It's just two sides of the same coin.

Shows us it negatively and it shows us it positively.

Verse one Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of scoffers.

So this is the negative side, right?

And if you look at what this verse is doing, it pictures this person slowing down, right?

First they're walking, then they're standing, then they're sitting.

And the word sit can also very easily be translated dwell or live.

So the image of this verse one is this person who first is walking in the council of the wicked, and then they're standing in the way of sinners, and then they're sitting or living or dwelling in the seat of scoffers.

This person is slowing down and getting to the point where they live.

Live in and spending time in and marinating, if you will, in this way.

Contrast that with verse 2.

His, the blessed man's, delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law he meditates day and night.

Meditate has some very similar connotations to dwell.

Slow down.

Spend time in.

Contemplate.

Marinate.

Different words are being used, but the concept and the idea is the same, right?

And there's a contrast.

The blessed man sits and dwells and meditates in this way.

The wicked man, who is the opposite of the blessed man in this passage, sits and dwells and meditates in this way.

As humans, unfortunately, we're finite, right?

We have limited capacity, we have limited time, we have limited energy.

This passage wants to ask us, where are we putting that?

What are you choosing?

What are you meditating on?

Or, as it says in verses four through six, uh, sorry, sorry, as it says in verse two, what are you delighting in?

It's interesting that these two people, right, who are contrasted, the blessed man and the wicked man, and even more so as we look in the rest of the passage, right, verses four through six, which I'll just read real quick, the wicked are not so, but are like the 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.

The fundamental difference this Psalm says between the blessed man and the wicked man is the light.

It's the light.

What are you delighting in?

Is the question that this passage asks.

The blessed man here delights himself in the law of the Lord.

And the Hebrew word there, law, Torah, in this context doesn't mean rules, punishments, judgments, commandments.

It's a shorthand that's being used for all of the law of the Lord.

And all, which means, again, in this context, all of Scripture, all of God's word.

Okay, well, what is God's word?

What does it say?

What is this person is delighting in?

Well, I mean, the Bible, right?

It's big, it's a lot, but fundamentally, it's a story.

Fundamentally, it's the story of how God created his people and he placed them in a paradise beyond comprehension.

Yet his people didn't seek for him, but looked for happiness in other places.

And in so doing, they sinned and turned the world upside down.

And this is the source of misery and pain and death and suffering in the world, the Bible says.

This is what's wrong, is that God's people did not delight in him, but sought delight in other things.

But the Bible is also the story of how God would not abandon his people, and he promised that he would bring them back to him, and he promised that he would put new hearts on them.

And for thousands of years, God was always there, patient, steadfast in love and faithfulness, never leaving or forsaking them, though they kept turning away from him again and again and again.

And his promise is I will be with you, I will provide your needs, I will send a redeemer to save you from yourself.

And then Jesus, that Redeemer, the very Word of God, came.

He was God, and He God chose to bring his people back to Himself by becoming one of them.

And he came into this world to walk with them and to be tender with them and to save them, and he did this by dying for them on the cross.

And then he rose from the dead and he tells his people, My kingdom is here, I am making all things new, everything that is bad is going to come untrue.

And one day I am coming back to complete the work I've begun.

In the meantime, by the Holy Spirit, I am here with you, I am with you, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.

I love you with an undying love, not because you're worthy of it, you aren't, spoiler alert, but because I love you so, abide in my love.

That is what God's word says.

You see, the law of the Lord, Scripture is simply what we call the gospel, the good news of what Jesus has done for his people who he loves so much.

And man, you hear that, and all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit easier to delight yourself in that, right?

As we have our eyes open to Jesus, as we see him as he is, 2 Corinthians says that we are changed.

Our hearts are unlocked and loosened, and we love him more.

You see, Jesus said that all of the Bible points to him.

He is the focus, he is the end-all, the be-all of the Bible.

Actually, I think you can't read this passage without thinking of Jesus, right?

Who is the only human who never walked in the way of the wicked, or stood in the way of sinners, or sat in the seat of scoffers?

Who is the one who perfectly delighted himself in the law of the Lord, in the love of the Father?

Who is the one who, like a tree, experienced seasons and difficulty?

A man of sorrows, I'm familiar with suffering, as scripture says.

And who is the one that is truly righteous that the Lord knows the way of?

This passage, it is talking about humans.

But fundamentally, the blessed man is Jesus.

And as we see him for who he is, as we fall in love with him, our hearts will change to delight in him.

We can't help it, right?

We can't help it.

So if you are struggling, if you're wrestling, if you're not happy, I'd really encourage you to examine your life and your heart.

Where are you spending your time and your energy and your capacity?

What are you cultivating a love for?

What are you delighting in?

What are you meditating on?

Negatively, if you are harboring sin in your life, if you're allowing it to remain, it's only going to grow.

It's only growing to grow.

You will move from walking to standing to living.

As you cultivate and spend time and delight in that, it grows to become more and more and more of your life.

Friends, nothing, nothing will kill your love for Jesus more than sin that you are harboring in your heart.

Positively, are you delighting yourself in Jesus?

Not just believing in him, although the Bible definitely calls us to do that, not just following him, the Bible definitely calls us to do that.

But are you delighting yourself in him?

Because he's beautiful.

And he loves you, and he is worthy of it.

And God doesn't just want your obedience, God wants your heart.

So are you delighting yourself in him?

Are you, as we opened the scripture with, loving the scripture, the service with, loving the Lord your God.

With all your heart, your mind, your soul, and strength.

Press into that, friends.

Because what this passage says at the very end, right?

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, the way of the wicked will perish.

This passage says that whatever it is that you're delighting yourself in, ultimately, it's what you're gonna get.

It's what you're gonna get.

If you love Jesus, if you love God, not perfectly, you're not gonna do that, spoiler alert.

It's not possible, right?

But if you fundamentally deeply, truly love him, the Lord promises that ultimately when Jesus comes back, you're gonna get him.

You will get the one that you love in fellowship forever.

But this also says that if you are loving something else, if you are loving a thing other than God, and that is growing, and that is what you're cultivating in your life, ultimately that's what you're gonna get to.

That's what you're gonna get to.

So the call of the Bible is to light yourself in Jesus.

I know no better passage than Isaiah 55, which says this.

This is what God says to his people.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen to me, eat what is good, delight yourselves in rich food, incline your ear and come to me here that you may live.

Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Call upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

That's what God's calling all of us, me, you, all of us to do.

I want to end with a quote from George Mueller.

This is what he says According to my judgment, the most important point to be attended to is this.

Above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord.

Other things may press upon you, the Lord's work may even have urgent acclaims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself.

Day by day, seek to make this the most important business of your life.

Will you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we want this.

We want you.

Deep down, all of us want you, Jesus.

We need your help.

Our hearts are so often dull and cold and dark and unfeeling.

But you love us with an undying love.

And you say that you have sent your spirit to be among us, and He can unlock and open our hearts.

So thank you for making it so simple and so straightforward to love you.

It's just gazing upon you and loving you.

Open our eyes that we might see you, that we might love you more.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.