Psalm 1 | Delighting in God's Instruction

Lars Coburn continues our Psalms series with a close look at the introduction to the whole book, Psalm 1. As a wisdom Psalm, this prayer presents two pathways of life. Those who delight in God's life-giving instruction experience fruitfulness and the watchful protection of God. Those who do not find themselves on a path that leads to destruction. 

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

Psalms Series

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Someone, blessed is the one who does not walk and step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither, but whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

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Psalm one is the beginning of the Psalter, and yet somehow, scheduling wise, it's ended at the end of your psalm series. I think this is it's in the middle. You're gonna continue doing psalms throughout. Okay, all right. Well, I I think it's great, though. Um, as I was thinking about the different psalms that I like, Jarrell was like, Yeah, but I've already got that one, I'm already doing that one. He's like, Which one do you want to do? And so I said, Well, Psalm one. I I'd love to do Psalm one. Um I don't have as much connection personally to Psalm 1. And so I thought that was beautiful and a little bit high, um, kind of high risk for me to like try and preach on your favorite passage of scripture. Uh, but hopefully, you know, Word of God speak. Like, let's let's go. Um it begins happy is the one who does not get in step or walking in step with the wicked, or stand in the way of the sinners, or sit in the company of mockers. Now, uh, typically when I think about a crowd or a group of people, um, I kind of think about it in motion, right? And so there's maybe you're at Disneyland and you're walking along through Main Street and you're getting there, and there's this big crowd, maybe it's lined up for uh the parade or the fireworks or something, and you're getting going and you're like, okay, uh, we found our place in line for the Matterhorn or whatever your favorite ride is, and then you have to stand there. Um, and if you're really having to stand and wait for Indiana Jones for like an hour, you might bring with yourself some little chair thing to sit on, or you might find a rail to sit on, or tonight we're sitting. Um and I I really do think that it's backwards in our typical thought process. He begins with this idea of motion, walking with the wicked, and then it's slower. It's you're standing, you're still upright, but then you're sitting. Um and I've been thinking a lot about a modern take on Psalm 1 as social media. So take for a moment this analogy of walking and step with the wicked, sitting or standing in the way of sinners, and then sitting in the seat of mockers. And if you will, um Psalm 1 could teach us a little bit about how we act in social media, in the age of social media. Not just if you have your own Instagram account or TikTok or anything like that, but just as people of God, as citizens, if you will, in the kingdom of God, yet in this culture that we live in. And so I wonder if uh a modern day take on someone might begin with citizens church. Blessed or happy are the people who do not get swept along with every conspiracy theory, uh, who do not like every seemingly fake news article, right? Um, or stand in the way of sinners who who reshare or repost said fake news or conspiracy theories. And I don't know about you, but I am just inundated with people in my news feed who are resharing. Um, Facebook is about to change all of its policies, and if you are my friend and you've got to read all the way through it, and I'm just like, did you not think before you clicked repost this? Like you had to actually do something. You didn't just click like or have that thing in your feed too long. You initiated something. But really, citizens, these are the people to stay away from, the people who sit in the company of mockers and they type their own post in rant. And they're the ones who are like not just sharing it in a message to you on private message, they're actually declaring to the world that there's some cabal running the whole thing and that the election was stolen and on and on and on it goes. I might be telling too much of my politics, but I'm not your pastor, so I guess I get to do that. This is supposed to be my church where I'm safe, right? So um, okay. Um I just did get to attend here. Somehow somebody gave me the mic. So I wonder if uh the invitation at the beginning of the psalm seems to be about this motion that sometimes we just get swept along with the crowd. We're just at Disneyland, we've just gone along with it. We don't, we're not intentionally going in the wrong direction. We've just gotten swept along with the wave. But then we find ourselves somewhere and we plant ourselves there, and we say, This is actually what I think. I think I agree with this group of people. And the psalmist is saying be careful about agreeing with sinners. But especially be careful when you take a seat down, and this is uh indicative of Hebrew teaching and then the ancient Near East teaching, is that their teachers wouldn't stand in front of the crowd. Instead, you would all be standing around, and the teacher would take a seat. And the one who is sitting would be the one with authority. And so here's this person who's adding to the noise. Another good uh 90s Christian music uh was switchfoot, and uh, you know, turn off this song. If we're adding to the noise, turn off this song. And I think there's a lot of noise in our life, and I wonder if Psalm 1 is inviting us to turn off the noise. So, what would we replace it with? He says, his delight, or the one who uh, blessed is the one whose delight is in the law or the instruction of the Lord. And on this instruction, he meditates day and night. Um, it seems to be that there's these two ways in Psalm 1, as we were instructed uh just a few moments ago, that are contrasted. And another person does this as well. In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus seems to describe two ways: a narrow way and a broad way. Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few find it. And I think Psalm 1, as this kind of hinge or doorway into the rest of the Psalter, is trying to invite us to pray the way of the Lord and to obsess about that way, not the way that leads to destruction. That the Lord, in fact, watches over the way of the people who delight and obsess on the way of the Lord, the law of the Lord. Um, and so this uh instruction of God is why the Psalm 1 is kind of part of a series of Psalms. There's not actually very many of them that are often called Torah Psalms or instruction psalms. They they read differently than the songs of lament or the prayers of supplication and kind of request that God would watch over them, or the songs of thanksgiving, uh, ones that we might be more familiar with. Instead, this one seems to be more akin to the book of Proverbs or some of these other kind of instruction things. And and so for you and me, I'm wondering if the invitation is to slow down a little bit, not to add to the noise of our life, but instead obsess about the law of the Lord, the instruction of God. And so they say he meditates on it day and night. And that word meditate is in Psalm 2 as well. And so these two introduction psalms seem to be trying to get us to kind of understand this idea of meditation. In Psalm 2, though, you wouldn't see the word meditate in English, but it's the same Hebrew word, and it is in verse 1, why do the nations conspire or uh plot in vain? Um and so this idea that um they're conspiring to plot, to make a plan, that seems to be in my mind a negative idea. Um and so when I read meditate, I think kind of lovely, quiet time in the morning. But when I think about the nations plotting, uh, or like I think of an evil character in a movie, and and I think these things are are uh similar but but different. And for you and I, maybe the better word would be obsession. Um, that I think when we read the word meditate, we either think of Eastern meditation and this kind of idea of enlightenment, and if we meditate on this good thing, we're gonna move up in our Christian life and like level up, like we're playing a video game. And I just don't think that's what Jesus or what the psalmist has in mind. And I also don't think that meditate is all about thinking about God's word in some quiet, calm way that mothers cannot do. Um, and so I empathize with you uh having a five and seven-year-old and understanding that they don't ask me all of the questions that they ask my wife. So I get this. Um I have a chance to go to work or to go to the coffee shop or get up early and do my quiet time separate from the children or go for a run. That's when I really like to kind of tune the world out and think. But I wonder if instead we might be freed and have a little freedom to say, there are things in my life that I obsess about. I obsess about my golf game. But I can tell you it's not a great meditation moment, but it is an obsession of mine. And you might have something in your life that you obsess about. And I wonder if you reflected on that, do you get swept along with the crowd? Do you do you get swept along with the other people doing that hobby or doing that thing? You might not be on social media all the time, doom scrolling, hopefully, but you might get swept along. You might take a stand with people who uh think that, you know, there's a particular way to do your hobby or your thing. And you might have an opinion about, you know, electric cars or gas cars. You know, I have an electric car, and there are the times where I just get onto my hobby horse where I'm talking to people about I've taken it to Idaho, and I'm obsessed with the idea of electric vehicles. And I am adding to the noise often. And I wonder if there are things in your life that you're obsessing about that are different than the instruction of God. There are 150 psalms that give you a chance to obsess about the instruction of the Lord. And Psalm 1 is saying, this is how you would do it. Uh, one of my professors at Bushnell used to say, uh, a psalm a day keeps the shrink at bay. And I'm not sure that he was um very keen on mental health. So let's just, you know, realize that that might not be the perfect thing. But um, but I do wonder if we have opportunity with the psalms uh to pray them regularly and over and over again, to obsess about them and find ourselves a little bit more focused on the instruction of God. And I'm not trying to say that the rest of the scriptures, the rest of the Bible aren't worth reading every day, but I don't know about you, but I don't like having a Bible reading plan. Like it just doesn't feel life-giving in this season of my faith. But I can get into the Psalms and I can use the Psalms at the beginning or at the ending of the evening, and I can be a little bit more like what they did in Deuteronomy where it says, uh, write these things on your doorpost, read them and say them, remember them, uh, you know, memorize the scriptures. I can't memorize pieces of Leviticus. I've got a couple things in there about loving your neighbor. Um, but I I don't really have a whole lot of Leviticus memorized, but I have a whole lot of the Psalms memorized. Um, we've already talked a little bit about the trees, so I won't spend a ton of time there. But I I do love the idea that this uh tree is planted by streams of water. And I don't know uh if you've experienced like sprinklers, putting sprinklers into house. We don't need sprinklers as much in Oregon, but when I lived in California, um they actually discovered that there was a set of old trees that all fell over uh in this beautiful space. Um it was near Pasadena. And somebody went and and just like studied this phenomenon that these older trees were all starting to fall over in these windstorms. And today we had a little bit of wind, it wasn't like a really bad wind, but as the wind comes through, I always think about the different trees uh nearby that we have a lot of fir trees on our property, and and they tend to withstand the wind really well, and their roots go really, really deep and long. And uh this person was was studying these trees, and they they reported back. Uh, this is when I was in seminary, and so I forget the study uh name, but uh they said it was actually in a place where they had put up sprinklers to keep the grass growing, and these trees got too used to the water being on the surface because every day the sprinklers would come out and and run. And so the roots started to grow up where the water was sitting. Um and then the winds would come and the trees wouldn't have the root systems that go really deep, and the weight would be out of balance and they would fall over. And typically in drought-heavy places like Pasadena, uh trees have to grow deep to get their roots down low enough to where there's water underneath. And so in the summertime or when there isn't rain regularly, they have to grow those roots down to find the water. And that it's actually cycles and seasons of drought and rain that help plants grow healthy in certain places. And I am obsessed with green grass and I want my so I've installed sprinklers and everything, but I'm probably not being healthy for some of the things growing in my garden. And I wonder if the same thing is true for you and me. If we are constantly wanting the mountaintop experience, if we want church every Sunday to be a time where we are fed with God's word, if we want every time we crack this book open to hear a word from the Lord, we actually will probably be malnourished and not ready when the storm comes. And we're gonna just be blown right over. It is the seasons of the dark night of the soul that St. John of the Cross writes about, it's the times of disorientation and deconstruction, if you will, that it's the times of that we have doubt that actually make us go deeper for God. To look for things that aren't just on the surface. And dare I say, I think our our Christian music is part of the biggest problem, is that we think we can have hope on 1079 every moment of every day. And it's not there. It's not there, it's not there every Sunday, it's not there every time I open the Bible. They will be like a tree that's planted by streams of water that yields fruit not every day, but in season. Um, I, as a pastor, was kind of a pastor of churches in uh retreat. So we weren't planting and trying to kind of claim new ground or do new things. We were always like looking back and going, well, we used to have Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Now we just have Sunday morning, kind of. And then uh we used to have a bunch of youth group in the kid in the stuff, and now I don't know, the youth pastor is doing all kinds of other things, you know, and I was that youth pastor trying to innovate. Um but I have found that we're obsessed with producing constantly. We go to the grocery store and there's fruit all year round. Right now, we should be enjoying the blueberries, but in December, I'm not so sure where these blueberries were, you know, like where are they being grown? Um in some laboratory or under some lights or shipped here from some other place. And yet we want to have all of those things all the time. The way of the Lord is narrow and few find it, but broad is the way that leads to destruction. And so that's why in this psalm um there's this the wicked are contrasted with the righteous. And so I um I've thought a lot about uh the courtroom of justice in this psalmist uh point of view. And in Psalm 2, you'll see it also uh where these nations are plotting and the kings of the earth take their stand, and there's this whole kind of cosmic uh judgment between the Son of God, the anointed one, that the New Testament writers will read is Jesus. Uh, blessed are all who take refuge in him is how uh Psalm 2 ends, but there's a lot of judgment on the rulers of the world in Psalm 2. And in Psalm 1, it seems that the wicked are blown away, they don't have standing in the judgment. And um, I've thought a little bit about how this idea of a courtroom in uh 2020 and in 21, again, politics getting into my sermon here, um there were a lot of court cases, and we learned about this new term that I hadn't really paid attention to, that's been around for a long time, is it if you don't have standing, you can't actually have your uh case heard. And so there were a lot of these court cases about the election that the question was will they have standing to even have what their the case heard? And a lot of them were thrown out, they didn't have standing, and especially the Supreme Court isn't gonna hear your thing unless you have good reason. And I've thought a little bit about how Psalm 1 is inviting me not to think so much about the judgment in the sense that when I get to heaven, God's gonna go down a laundry list of all the things I did wrong, but instead to be about setting the world right. And I want to have my court case heard. I want to get into the courtroom because I want God to set right the things that have gone wrong in my life, the things that have gone wrong in my world. I want to have my case heard. I want God to be obsessed about the things that I'm obsessed about too, and vice versa. But so much of my life uh betrays that I don't think God is Lord of my life. And so that's I think where Psalm 1 is trying to say what if you didn't get swept along with the crowd, take a stand with these sinners, or sit in the company of mockers, but instead you delighted in the instruction of God the Lord, the one who's in control and who's gonna set everything right, even if you don't have uh anything going your way. Even if you feel like your life is just on the way to destruction. Because it's not about whether you've figured out the right way or found the secret passage, it's about the Lord watching over your way. And this, I think, is where the psalm might be need to left, and we need to get to Jesus. And so that's how I'll kind of close. Um I think in our world uh we have kind of this obsession with finding the secret way. And um, and so Psalm 1 can even become a pattern for us if we just follow these four things, if we just don't add to the noise, if we just yield fruit in the right season, if we just kind of live this good Christian life. But the psalm ends with the idea that the Lord is the one who's watching over the way of the righteous. And that's the key thing for you and I. We want Jesus watching over our way. We want to be the ones that, like Psalm 91 say, take refuge in him. And so no matter what pestilence or sword comes, no matter what happens, we take refuge in Jesus. And if we have any hope to offer to the world, it's not hope that we muster from our own good life. It's from obsessing about that hope in Jesus. And that's why I think every Sunday when we get a chance to take of communion, we get to delight and obsess and meditate not about our quiet times in the Bible, not about our knowledge of Scripture, not about our really good prayer life. We get to delight and obsess in the hope that comes from Jesus watching over our way, from Jesus setting the world right. And we have standing in the courtroom, not because of our standing or because our case is so compelling, but because we have an advocate who's there. And we have an advocate in that courtroom who says, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Lars talks too long, and I know uh that he's not quite as hip as Jarrell, and I know that he uh he's a little spotty in his church attendance at Citizens. But boy, do I I love Lars. I died for Lars. And so I don't know about you, but I'm preaching this message for me as much because my quiet time is not. Great right now. I wouldn't say that I delight in opening my Bible every morning. But boy, do I obsess about this love of God that Paul says in Romans chapter 8, nothing can separate us from. I delight in the fact that I don't have to worry about what God is going to do in the judgment He's got it and He's watching over the way. And so I can live a little bit less like I have to produce fruit every moment. I don't have to do it all on my own. I can be a tree planted by the loving streams of God. I don't have to peddle some mockery and add to the noise of our world and try and convince everybody else to show up on a Sunday or to crack open a book or do something to earn God's love. I can simply obsess about that love myself. Rowan Williams says when we read the text or when we read the Bible, we're doing it with Christians who've been reading it for thousands of years. I don't know that delight is so much about the pleasure we might get when we, you know, taste something sweet. I think we've we've misunderstood that idea of happiness and pleasure. But I think delight is really about when we read it together as a church. We can delight more than when we pray and read it by ourselves. And so the invitation and the reason why I join a church like Citizens or why I continue to be part of kind of the church in our city is not because I think it's got everything right, but because I think we have something incredible to obsess about together. And when I try and do it on my own, it always goes astray. But man, when I get with you, my obsession becomes something beautiful, something I can delight in. And so I'm so glad that this psalm describes not just an individual person who is walking along or doing these things, but it's a church, it's a group of people who delight in God's law together. Um, and so if anything, my sermon tonight is just to say don't read Psalm 1 as an invitation to do just a quiet time by yourself. Figure out a way to obsess about God's love and law and instruction in your life with other people. And maybe the Psalms are an opportunity to do that. Would you pray with me? Thank you, Lord, for the chance to reflect on Psalm 1, to be invited in to your instruction once again. Thank you for the chance to delight in your word and your way. And thank you for watching over us. Thank you for Jesus, who is our advocate, who gives us a chance to have standing in your courtroom of justice. And may all the things that are not right in our lives, in our relationships, in our world be made right by you in your coming kingdom. And while we wait for that coming kingdom, plant us by the streams of your love. Give us people in our lives that can remind us not to add to the noise or take the wrong stand or get caught up with the crowd, but instead slow down and pay attention and obsess about your way. We thank you for this church. Thank you for Jarel and everyone who's a part of Citizens. Bless our summer as we close out these next few weeks and lead us on your way this fall. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.