📖 The Book of Psalms — Unit 1: Psalm 1, The Two Ways

1. The Folk Songs of the Bible

Someone has called the Psalms the folk songs of the Bible — songs the common people carried in their hearts and sang along the road. Many were meant to be sung with a stringed instrument called the gittith, and in the New Testament the believers sang the Psalms as well. James 5:13 asks, "Is any merry? let him sing psalms."

The very first psalm stands like an introduction to all the rest. It summarizes the whole book, and for that reason it has been called the threshold psalm — the doorway you must pass through to enter the Psalter. In it, and throughout the book, there are two portraits set side by side: the way of the righteous man and the way of the wicked man. That is the whole of it. There are only two ways.

It is striking that when Jesus preached His inaugural sermon on the mountain, He took this same theme as His own. To His disciples He preached, in effect, an expository sermon on the outline of this ancient psalm: blessed are these, and not those. So let us walk through the two ways, beginning with the righteous man.

2. The Way of the Righteous Man

The psalm begins by calling the righteous man blessed. That word is often translated happy, and it does mean happy — but it means more. When a blessing comes from God, it carries with it a promise of His care and provision. In prison ministry, when you ask the inmates how they are doing, a believer will often answer, "I'm blessed." He means not merely that he feels cheerful, but that God is watching over him.

3. What the Righteous Man Does Not Do

The righteous man is blessed first because of what he does not do. There are three negatives in verse one. Many times God Himself says, "You shall not," and a great deal of our happiness depends on what we refuse to do. Here the righteous man avoids ungodly companions, stated three ways.

First, he does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. To walk in counsel is to take advice. The righteous man does not take his direction from unspiritual advisers. There are times to seek God's will through the counsel of others, but it must be someone who walks in the Spirit of God. You will not always find God's will to be what you wanted; and if you look around long enough, you can usually find someone who will tell you exactly what you want to hear. The counsel that matters is not the advice that flatters us, but the word of the few who are truly seeking the Lord.

Second, he does not stand in the path of sinners. A sinner is one who misses the mark, and we are not to stand around with those who practice ungodliness as a settled habit. When you become a Christian, you will either lose your old companions or win them to Christ. Light and darkness cannot share the same room, which is why God forbids the believer to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.

Third, he does not sit in the seat of the scornful. The scornful mock everything holy and sacred. This is an age of scoffers who make fun of God, of Christ, of the church, and of the Bible — some even inside the churches, criticizing everything that is done. Scripture says, "Cast out the scoffer, and contention will leave." (Proverbs 22:10)

Notice the downward progression — he walks, then stands, then sits. Sin invites us to slow down and settle in. So the message is plain: avoid ungodly companions. Do not walk with them, do not stand with them, do not sit with them. Someone once said of a young man, "He is a pretty good boy — if only his friends did not keep dragging him down."

4. Blessed Because He Knows God's Word

The righteous man is blessed, second, because he knows God's Word. The text says his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. The word meditate is a picture word. It pictures a cow chewing the cud. A cow has several compartments in her stomach. She grazes on the dewy grass in the cool of the morning, and then, when the day grows hot, she lies down in the shade and begins to chew — bringing the grass back up and working it over again.

That is what we are to do with the Word of God. We are often busy at church, and we cannot digest everything at once as we read and study the Bible. So we go back over it and chew it again and again, day and night. Psalm 119:165 says, "Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them." Those who feed on the book of God have great peace.

An old Scottish lady was a wonderful Christian, always happy and at peace. Someone asked her, "Sister, how do you keep from getting frustrated and confused, and how do you stay so happy in the Lord?" She answered, "Well, I take my hymn book and I sing a while. I take my Bible and I read a while. And then I just sit down and let the Lord love me a while."

5. Blessed Because He Works for God

The righteous man is blessed, third, because he works for God. Verse three tells us he is like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You are not placed somewhere by chance. God plants you where you can grow and develop, and He provides everything you need to become a strong Christian — a revival, a church home, the gift of prayer. And then, "in his season," the text says, you will bear fruit. Trees do not bear fruit all the time; they bear it in due season.

Our primary work is getting out God's Word to others. We are not the ones who convict; that is the work of the Holy Spirit. As we tell people about the Savior, some are saved and some are not. But I am a fruit-bearer whether they accept it or not: it is my job to tell, and the Holy Spirit's job to convict.

Dr. George W. Truett once had a lawyer visit him after a morning service. The man said, "George, you and I came to Dallas in the early days, in the horse-and-buggy days. I want to make a confession to you. As a young lawyer I used to come hear you preach, and you disturbed me. Many a time I went home after the Sunday night service and could not sleep. But George," he laughed, "today you have become the greatest preacher in America — and I can sit and listen to you, and you don't bother me at all." And he walked away. The lawyer had so long rejected the urging of the Spirit that he had finally gone numb to it. That is the danger for anyone who hears God's call to decide and keeps putting it off. We can reach the point of being too hardened to respond — for God has said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man."

But the righteous man bears fruit regardless of the response. His leaf shall not wither; he is an evergreen. Neither the heat of criticism nor the cold of rejection stops him from testifying about his Lord.

6. Who Is This Blessed Man?

Now we might ask: who is this blessed man? The Hebrew may be translated, "Blessed is the man that has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful." This is not merely a man who repented of these things. This is one who has always done the will of God. What man fits that description?

That is the answer. The only Man who perfectly fits Psalm 1 is the Lord Jesus Christ. Every other man, however great, has sinned and falls under the second portrait.

7. The Way of the Wicked Man

Now look at the contrast. It takes two verses to describe the godly life, but only two words to describe the wicked life: not so. Everything that is true of the righteous man is "not so" of the wicked. He is like chaff — the useless straw blown away by the wind. He shall not stand in the judgment. People say, "I'll take my chances at the judgment," but there will be no chance to take there. He will not be found in the congregation of the righteous; he is going to miss heaven. His name is not written in the Lamb's book of life, and Revelation 20:15 says, "whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Finally, the text says, he shall perish. Jesus spoke of hell as the place where the fire is not quenched, and the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.

8. The Two Ways and the One Door

So the psalm sets two ways before you, and there is no third. There is the way of the righteous, which the LORD knows, and the way of the ungodly, which shall perish. The whole Psalter opens with this choice because everything else depends on it.

And here is the heart of the matter. If you are not the righteous Man — and only Jesus ever was — then by nature you stand in the place of the wicked man. The only way to become righteous is to trust in the righteousness of Jesus. He is the blessed Man of the first psalm, and He offers His own righteousness to all who will receive Him. That is the door at the threshold of the Psalms, and at the threshold of your life. Which way will you walk?

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