Nick Parsons: The Psalm

In this message, we explore the book of Psalms as a God-given guide for prayer, worship, and spiritual formation. Looking closely at Psalm 1, we see how the Psalms are first someone’s honest words to God, then God’s words to us, and finally words we can pray back to Him. This teaching invites us to bring our full humanity before God, to long for justice, to recognize our need for grace, and ultimately to see Jesus as the righteous one who makes a way for us to flourish in Him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

That was amazing. Thank you. I really am so delighted to be back. I spoke here maybe uh almost a year ago, nine months ago, something like that. Um and yeah, thank you to Leva Me Tania. Uh I love local church. I've got to get to know some of you guys have dinner sometimes when I've been here, and it really is uh a true delight. Um New Zealand is a really special place. Maybe you already know that. You always live here. I live in a beautiful place. I live in California, and it's one of the best parts of America. Um but this place is better and more beautiful, and it makes me feel sad because I like to think I live in the most beautiful place, but you really do, and it's a true joy to be here. I'm grateful my wife can be here as well. Um When Levi asked if I'd speak again, I was sort of just prayerfully thinking what I might want to offer. And uh I feel like the Lord brought to me the book of Psalms. And I'm not uh I work for an organization, I've been a pastor, I work for an organization that helps pastors of new churches. Um, but I don't at all feel like I'm like really good at praying. Like I feel like I'm bad at praying, genuinely. Like I'm I'm a beginner at prayer all the time. And the book of Psalms has been something that's really, really helped me know how to pray. And so I want to talk a bit about the book of Psalms and and offer maybe something that I think could be helpful to you. Like if you are new to faith or you are like me and feel like this is always hard and it's I'm always a little bad at it. I'm amazed at the book of Psalms, how it can be a tool to help us. And so I want to talk a little bit about the book of Psalms in general, Psalm one in particular, and uh hopefully you walk out of here with something that you feel like is useful, useful in your walk with Christ. So uh let me pray and then I'm gonna read Psalm 1 for us. So God, I pray that your spirit would speak today as we open your word, as we study and look at the Psalms, that I believe is a gift that you've given us to learn how to sing, to learn how to pray, to learn how to talk to you. And so, God, I pray that you would do that even in this moment, as we sit here with open hearts, uh coming in with all the different things we come into this room with. I pray that if we're new in faith, if we're exploring faith, if we've been a believer our whole lives, or as far as we can remember, God, that you would have fresh word for us today. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I'm gonna read Psalm one over you guys and just listen to this. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is on 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 in fruit and season, and whose leaf does not wither, 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. There's a really interesting quote that I read once that I want to share with you. It says this Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws. Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws. That's by Andrew Fletcher. What's interesting about Andrew Fletcher is that he is not a poet. He wasn't a songwriter. You can imagine someone who's into songs and poems thinking those are important. He was a politician. And he lived in Scotland in the 1600s, early 1700s. He was a member of the Scottish Parliament, and he was very active in creating and promoting legislation and law. And so Andrew Fletcher, this career politician, someone committed to politics, to preserving, to protecting, to improving his country with law, sees the limits of politics, and he says that the songs that a nation sings are more important than the laws that people like him write. I think that what Fletcher is pointing us towards is that in many ways, more than our laws, it's our songs, the words we sing that shape us. They form us, they determine who we become. And I don't know if you realize this or not, but included in the Bible is a book of songs. The book of Psalms is actually a collection of 150 songs or poems or hymns. It's a book that is designed to be prayed. It is a book that is meant to be sung. A variety of Jewish leaders they wrote and contributed to the book of Psalms, and they were gathered then together into a collection. The book of Psalms is actually the largest book in the Bible. And then people would sing, like literally sing the Psalms together in a temple and in synagogues. It was like their hymn book, their like Spotify playlist, okay? It was like what the Jewish people got together when they went to church and were saying, Hey, what are we going to sing today? They would open the book of Psalms and would sing those psalms. And what's interesting is early Christians actually carried on this practice as well. Before they started writing kind of like custom new songs, they just sang the psalms. And for the last 2,000 years, there's been a regular practice in different aspects of the church, reciting and singing the psalms. And sometimes you hear people call the Psalter. It's been a primary way that Christians have worshipped and prayed for thousands of years. And it's really interesting to think about that because I think for most people, for modern people, I don't know about you, for but for myself, I don't think that I hold do that the same kind of thing with the Psalms. That's definitely not how I engage the book of Psalms normally. I think for most of us, even if we're followers of Jesus, we might be familiar with the Psalms. We might even like have some ones that we're like, yeah, I think I know that one. Psalm 23, something about the shepherd, and uh, you know, or we we know some psalms that we like, but I think when we treat the Psalms this way, we're actually missing out on a tool that God has given the church to help us engage Him, to learn how to pray and to see ourselves and our world transformed. Uh and the Psalms, they are really, really useful. They are a great place to start, to start to learn to pray, to start to learn to worship. They're a great place to start when we don't have words to pray or to sing. Uh I don't know if you ever get stuck, you like you're like, I should probably pray. You sit down and you start and you're like, I don't have very much, and you say the same thing, like, oh my the aunt's got a bad knee or whatever, let's pray for her, God help me. Um but the Psalms, they really, really are helpful as like a guideline for us to learn how to pray. So I want to share a series of quotes about the book of Psalms uh from leaders in church history, uh, just to show you, if you don't believe what I'm saying, about how important Christians in history have thought the Psalms to be. So Martin Luther, who was the kind of uh origin guy of the Protestant Reformation, uh he you know, he started that. He he loved the Psalms, and he called the Psalms a little Bible, and he said this about the Psalms. He said they set out in the briefest and most beautiful form all that is to be found in the Bible. The Psalter is the favorite book of all the saints. Each person, whatever his circumstances may be, find in Psalms words which are appropriate to the circumstances in which he finds himself, and meets his needs as adequately as if they were composed. Uh, John Calvin, famous theologian, French theologian, was devoted to the Psalms. He encouraged Christians and churches to sing the Psalms, to use them in personal and corporate worship. He said this of the Psalms I've been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, an anatomy for all parts of the soul. That there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious, conscious, that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to life all the griefs, the sorrows, the fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. I'll keep going. The fourth century theologian, a guy named Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, big deal in his day, he described the Psalms like this they are a gymnasium which is open for all souls to use, where the different psalms are like different exercises set out before him. In that gymnasium, in that stadium of virtue, he can choose the exercises that will train him best to win the victor's crown. And finally, one of my favorite theologians, he was an African theologi a black African theologian called Athanasius. He was born in Egypt in 296 AD, so way before kind of the white version of Christianity, he said this of the Psalms uh, you know, before the Europeans all of the books of Scripture, both Old Testament and New, are inspired by God and useful for instruction. But to those who really study it, the Psalter yields a special treasure. For besides the characteristics with which it shares with others, it has this particul peculiar marvel of its own, that within it are represented and portrayed in all their great variety the movements of the human soul. We are bidden elsewhere in the Bible also to bless the Lord, to acknowledge him. Here in the Psalms we are shown the way to do it, and with what sort of words his majesty may meetly be confessed. In fact, under all circumstances of life we find that these divine songs suit ourselves and meet our own soul's need at every turn. Friends, the book of Psalms, got with it, God has given us a powerful tool, a book of songs and prayers designed to shape us, to transform us, to inspire us. The psalms meet us wherever we are, wherever our hearts are, whatever we're feeling, and they teach us how to worship and to pray. Again, I've asked this question: do you ever feel like you don't know how to pray? Like you have complicated emotions, like you're angry at something, or you're disappointed with someone or with God, you know, you're like, I don't know how to pray through this. Should I even say this? I often feel like that, right? Like I often feel like, am I even allowed to pray this to God? But the Psalms give us this amazing toolkit and confidence to pray. They're designed to help us with just these moments when we don't have words to pray, when we can't, when we we can when we can't come up with something. We can read, we can sing the words of the Psalms. That's why they're in the Bible. They're there for us. They're not just meant to be like read passively, like reading someone else's prayer. They're a tool that we are to use for ourselves. And so wherever you find yourself in the season of life, the psalms are a great place to start. And so today I want to give a quick three-part framework for how we can understand and utilize the book of Psalms, and then go through Psalm 1 using that framework. So here's the framework. First thing uh three-part process for understanding and using the Psalms. First, the Psalms are someone's words to God. The Psalms are someone's words to God. That may seem obvious, right? Uh may seem self-evident, but it's good to remember that before we can understand a specific psalm's content, we kind of need to know something about the context. Before we apply the psalms to our own life, we need to understand that they're written by a particular person, in a particular place, in a particular time. And so, Psalm 1, what we read, you know, it's it's a bit of an introduction to the Psalms. It's a it often in the reading of the book of Psalms, even if you're open your Bible, you'd find a little preface, maybe a little example. A Psalm David prayed before he went out with Goliath. Uh, there's a little bit of context, and that's really helpful for us to remember that this is actually uh words that were composed by someone at a particular time. It's also helpful to remember that the psalms are like a particular kind of literature. Uh the Bible has all different kinds of different books, different kinds of like genre. They have uh laws, it has speeches, it has like historical narratives, and the psalms are a kind of poetry. And those different genres affect the way we read and understand the Bible, right? You read a text message from your friend, I can't even read my kids' text messages. Like I don't eat I they don't even know what they say. Um you read those differently than you'd read a legal contract, right? Where you're looking at every little bit of it. Um you'd have different expectations of that text. Uh, the the same idea is true with the Bible, that there's different kinds of literary forms, and our expectations of them change based on what we're reading. And when it comes to Psalms, we know they're poetic. They they have an emotional element, they're intended to be sung and prayed. They often have repetition. One really cool thing about Hebrew poetry, like in English poetry, I don't know if this is, you know, they often we use rhyme to say something. Uh, in Hebrew, they often use repetition. So that's when you read something like holy, holy, holy. You know, they would have like kind of a style that they would have in the psalms that would help uh emphasize something. And so again, this is just reminding us that first the psalms are someone's words to God. But second thing I want to say, the psalms are God's words to us. Number two, the psalms are God's words to us. After we've examined a psalm's particular historical background, after we've thought about the author and the audience and the structure, we can begin to then think about and look at not just how these words were at some point someone else's words to God, but how might these words be God's words, how might this text be God's words to us? Because again, the Psalms are not just God's words to others, they are God's words to us. They're written and they are inspired through human authors, and they're also intended for our eyes and for our ears. That's amazing, right? I mean, I always think it's amazing about the Bible that God has literally written that for each of us. For each of us here was in mind when God wrote the scriptures. And there's a couple good ways that you can begin to think of God, the Psalms, as God's words to us. Let me give you one. First, we can draw like a universal principle from a psalm that applies both to the situation that the Psalm was written in as well as to our own situation. We can look for those principles and apply them and apply those to our own life. Uh, let me give you an example from Psalm 23, probably the most famous psalm in the Bible. David writes this The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul, he guides me along the right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. This super well-known passage, anybody familiar with that? Have you guys heard Psalm 23 before? There's at least like one really universal principle in there, and it's that when we face difficulty or fear or anxiousness or death, we can remember that, like he was with the psalmist, God promises to be our shepherd, present with us to comfort us in times of trouble. And so we can read this psalm as God's message to us. God is saying in Psalm 23 that he too is our shepherd, just like he was the shepherd of the psalmist. This is how that kind of universal principle approach can be used to interpret and imply the Psalms. A second way we can understand the Psalms as God's words to us is that we can look for how a psalm points us to Jesus, who the later biblical writers teach that all of Scripture, all of Scripture points to. We can read the Psalms and we can look to find Jesus in them. Are you guys familiar with like where's Waldo? Do you guys have Waldo? Wally, where's Wally? Is it really called Wally? Same thing, yeah. I like to think of the Bible as like a where's Wally. Like, as we're reading it, like where do we find Jesus in this text? He's in there. Takes a bit of work sometimes, but we'll find Wally there. We can read the Psalms just like that, and we can find Jesus in them. In fact, Jesus understood the Psalms to be this way. It's really interesting. After Jesus died and he resurrected from the dead, he appeared to his disciples in this amazing time and he taught them about who he was, why he died, what his purpose was, and then what he's gonna send them out to do. This is the very end of Luke chapter 24, verses 44 through 47. He says, This, this is Jesus. This is what I told you while I was with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. He told them that this is what was written the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. Repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Jesus taught that all of the Bible, including the Psalms, points to him. Indeed, the Old Testament passage that's like most quoted in the entire New Testament is a Psalm. It's Psalm 110. Many of the Psalms are actually explicitly about this future Messiah, this king that will come someday to save his people. And so when we read the Psalms, it's a good and right thing to do to see how this psalm might point towards Christ, who offers to be our Savior, to be our Lord. And so again, we see the Psalms that they're someone's words to God, they are God's words to us, but third, the psalms are our words back to God, to one another, and to the world. The psalms can be our words back to God, to one another, and to the world. And this is where we get to where the Psalms are really, really unique part of the Bible. That they're intended not just to be someone else's words that we read, they're not only intended to be God's words to us that we hear, they're intended to be our words back to God and to the world. We're intended to make them our own. They're intended to be our words back to God, our words of encouragement to one another, our words sung to a watching world. And this part of the Bible is explicitly participatory. We're supposed to join in the singing and the praying of these words and to use them as our own. While all of the Bible is meant to be read, all of it's meant to be meditated on, to be understood and to be applied, the Psalms are uniquely written to be used aloud, to be to be sung, to be prayed. These are tools that God has given us to shape our prayers, to give us confidence when we pray. I think about this a lot. Maybe I'm the only one here, but do you ever like worry that what you're praying is okay? Like, does anyone ever worry about this? I worry about this. Um, and sometimes, you know, my kids worry about things like this. Sometimes when my kids pray, you know, they start with their I have five kids, I know it's a lot of kids, I'm sorry. Um bad environmental impact, I apologize. Um they you know they close their eyes and they pray, especially when they're little, you know, God, thank you for my Lego. Thank you for Steph Curry. No, I don't know if you guys know who Steph Curry is. Who knows who Steph Curry is? Okay, people know who Steph Curry is. If you don't know who Steph Curry is, he is the star of the greatest basketball team in the history of basketball. My personal favorite team, the Golden State Warriors. Okay, that's who Steph Curry is. And so my kids, they love Steph Curry. He's our local guy. And so my kids pray and they thank God for Steph Curry, and then they kind of like open one eye and look like, is that okay, God, to pray for Steph Curry? I think we all pray that. We all do that though, right? God, is it okay to pray for that? And just so you know, it's always okay to pray for Steph Curry. It's always okay to pray for Steph Curry. But seriously, right, we wonder, is it okay to pray this? Is it okay to feel this and say this to God? Is it okay to say something when we're upset to God, like I'm mad at my spouse, or I wish I had a job and I don't, or I wish this person that was bothering me got hit by a bus. Is that okay? And if you read the Psalms, you will be surprised what you find. You will be surprised at the things God's people pray to him. What should we pray for? What shouldn't we pray for? The psalms help us with that. They give us model prayers, examples to follow. And sometimes it really is surprising. Sometimes the psalmist prays for things we shouldn't expect, or we don't expect. In the psalm, we find these prayers they are totally human. They are like absolutely human and yet they are inspired by God, which is why they're such awesome model prayers. Because it's hard to mess things up when you're praying God's words back to him. You can know with full confidence that God is hearing your prayer and that it's right when you pray his words back to him. Uh, for many Christians, including myself, I try to pray through the Psalms on a regular basis. I pick a psalm, I read a little bit about it. Um, there's a number of good books about this. Tim and Kathy Keller have a great book called The Songs of Jesus, if you're just looking for one. And just walk through a little bit of a psalm and pray. Read a little, pray a little. And and and whatever's on my heart, I will just pray. In light of what that psalm said, I will work and walk my way through that, each verse, whatever's on my heart, whatever I'm thinking about until I'm finished. It doesn't take a ton of time, it could be a few minutes, but it helps keep my mind also from wandering off. Like I start thinking about something else, then I'm like, okay, back to the psalm, read that, pray. It's it's super helpful. And so if you don't know how to pray, if you feel like you're not good at praying, this is a great place to start, to come back, to restart. It's something you might experiment with over the coming weeks. Maybe you have someone in your life that is on your heart and you don't know how to pray for them, pick a psalm. Pray through it with their name. Text them and tell them, I I hey, I know, I know you're going through some hard things. I want you to know that today I prayed Psalm 16 for you. We can make the psalms our words of encouragement to one another. You might even want to just personally think about that. Hey, tomorrow I'm gonna pick a psalm based on the day it is, okay, whatever. Pick pick a psalm, read it and pray. And I and I think if you do that, you might find yourself being inspired with confidence, knowing that you are praying God's words. And even if you don't feel like you have the words coming out of your own heart, the psalms alone can be great prayers. Okay, so we have this three-stage process, right, for understanding and using the psalms. We think of them first as God's words, uh someone's words to God, as God's words to us, and then our words back to God and to one another and to the world. And now I just want to look at Psalm 1 through that lens. So kind of go through that process with Psalm 1. So if you have a Bible or a Bible app, you can open it, turn there, and we're gonna just go through Psalm 1 with those three lenses, and then we'll be done. So, first, the psalm is someone's words to God. We don't know the author of Psalm 1, Bible doesn't tell us. Very little indication of the context that this psalm was written in. But many scholars look at this psalm as an introduction to the book of Psalms, and it kind of lays out some themes that you're gonna be finding over and over in the book of Psalms. And we can observe this Psalm, Psalm 1, has a very simple composition. Uh the first half, verses 1 through 3, focuses on the righteous, second half focuses and as a contrast on the wicked, and kind of contrasts the righteous and the wicked. And the author is basically laying out two contrasting paths, two different kinds of people, whose lives lead in two very different directions. The way of the person who flourishes and prospers, and the way of the wicked, who ultimately doesn't endure and will perish. Verses three through four lay this contrast out clearly. It says this the righteous, that person is like a tree planted by streams of water. This is Psalm 1, 3 through 4, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prosper, not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Now I'm not sure how you hear those words. They feel a little intense, right? Like I don't know if you normally use the word like wicked or To describe someone. Other translations use evil. But while we don't use those words, especially a word like wicked, I think we all have similar categories in our own minds. Like we see a world and we come to people come to mind who are selfish, who are unjust, who are deceptive or abusive. People in your own life or your history or in your political world that you think of may come to mind. And I think of even some like popular stories. If you're struggling with thinking of wicked people in the world, remember war still exists in Ukraine, in Gaza, around the world, and now between the United States and Iran. We live in a world where the very concept of like me too is just like regular language somehow, and so many women's experience, right? Something to do with me too. And I was preparing for this message, I was reading about stories in New Zealand, and I read about this crazy story that I don't know if it's very popular here, but the suitcase murders, it was a woman, it was just a really terrible story about a mother who was just recently uh convicted here. Or you might remember the 2019 shootings in Christchurch or in Australia at Bondi Beach. There is definitively wickedness in the world. We pause, we read the news. It's not hard to see evil, even if we're not always comfortable with thinking about that. We may not use that term wicked, but we can look at it in our world and we can see the same categories that the author of the psalm lays out. There are people who commit evil actions, and whatever we call them, they are not righteous. They are not good. We see around us abuse, theft, corruption, violence. And in a very real sense, the people who commit them are not righteous. They're the opposite of righteous, whatever that is. The psalmist, full of real emotion, looks out at their own world, sees similar things, and calls these people wicked. And just like the psalmist, I think we too, we demand that people like this that they would face the consequences of their actions. We rightly celebrate, right, when the woman who did the Suke murders was convicted. We are elated when the guy, the police officer who killed George Floyd, was charged and convicted. We long for justice against people like Jeffrey Epstein and others who are involved in his activities. We see political figures who get away with things, men in power who abuse women, and we we long for justice and for retribution. We see governments oppress the vulnerable and we long for justice. And what's interesting in this psalm is that when you read it, it seems like really the author kind of lays out a very simple world, a kind of a black and white world where good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, where the righteous succeed and the wicked fail and perish. But is that what we see in our world? Is that the world the world looks like that you see? No, right? But if you read the whole book of Psalms, you see the righteous aren't always winning either. The wicked seem to be getting away with way too much. It's the same in our world today. And so I think something else is happening here. I think the author of this psalm is thinking on a different time horizon. I think if you think about the book of Ecclesiastes, the Bible lays out this kind of dynamic very clearly. This Ecclesiastes 8. It says there's something also meaningless that occurs on the earth. The righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. And so I think the author is pointing us towards is not some kind of simple karma, like good people, good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, that in this kind of 60 or 80 years that we're on the earth, I don't think that's it. I think Psalm 1 is instead about a grand scheme of eternity. It's about a longing for eternal justice. That while evil and wickedness may flourish in this world, while people may get away with all kinds of evil, that in the end God will not allow those who commit injustice and evil to go unpunished. And the author of this Psalm is writing from a place of longing for that, a place of hoping for a world in which the evil and the wicked will not reign. This is a psalm of hope, hoping for a world of justice. The psalm is hoping for a world, which we read about in verse five through six. Therefore the wicked will not stand in judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. What is the author saying? They are saying that the wicked won't get away with their evil forever, that there is a divine judge that sees all, that their schemes won't always work, that one day the righteous will win, that those who are virtuous will be acknowledged, that they will stand out from the wicked. And the author of this psalm is laying out an ideal, one in which God will know, honor, and reward the way of the righteous, they will flourish, but the wicked and the unjust will face justice. And let's pause there for just a second, and remember that this psalm reflects a longing for justice from the heart of the psalmist. And we can't skip past that. We just can't skip past that without distorting our understanding of the text. The psalmist longs to see the wicked face their crimes and the righteous rewarded for their virtue. And this is completely understandable. And each of us, regardless of our faith commitments, long for the same thing somewhere in our hearts. All of our hearts long for justice. And the words we read in the Psalm, they're intense but understandable. They are words from someone to God who lived in a real time, in a real place with real evil. But how are these words God's words to us? That second category. How is the psalm not just something that someone said and felt in a real way, but how is this God's word to us? I mentioned earlier there's a couple different ways you can apply a psalm like this and read it as God's words to us. First, we can draw that general principle from applies to both our world and the world of the psalmist. We've already nearly done this, recognizing that we both see just, we see evil, we see uh righteousness in our world and in that world. Psalm 1 is essentially saying this, right? It's saying this idea that righteousness leads to flourishing and wickedness leads to death. That's the big picture. This is what the psalmist longs for. And when when and when they see we see this as God's words to us, we read this as something that God promises. That righteousness needs the flourishing and wickedness leads to death, a world in which everyone will get their due, the wicked will be punished, and the righteous will be honored. The righteous will flourish and the live, and the wicked will perish and die. Which is good news, but it's also bad news, right? Because we, you and I, everyone in this room, are that same mixture of righteousness and unrighteousness. What we look at in the world and we see and we hate and we despise, some part of that is in each of us. We all have times in which we are virtuous and times in which we live up to our standards, where we're heroes, and then we have times when we don't, when we are immoral, when we fail at our own standards, or the standards that other people have put on us, or the Bible standards. And the Psalms understand this. They understand even that feeling, that feeling of not uh meeting the standard. Uh we have a feeling guilt about that. We read earlier from Psalm 23. Let me read from Psalm 51, one of the other most famous Psalms in the Bible. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you only, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. So you are right in your verdict, and justice justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful in the time my mother conceived me. Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that secret place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, blot out all my iniquity, create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. This is a psalm written by King David, someone who God said was a man after his own heart. And this psalm was written after David abused a woman who wasn't his wife, who would go on to murder her husband in an attempt to cover it up. Our wickedness might not be as bad as that, but we all have some kind of wickedness, some kind of evil, some kind of guilt, often some kind of shame that we feel, selfish desires in our hearts. And if we're honest, we we see that evil we hate and we rail against out in the world, and we see a mirror of that in ourselves. And we long to see change. We long to see to be forgiven. We long to be able to be our true selves before God and one another without that fear and that guilt and that shame. All of us do. If we read Romans 3, it says, as it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, and they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. So if we feel that, that feeling of guilt or shame, we are like every person. And when Paul wrote these words, he's quoting literally from Psalm 14 and from Psalm 53 None is righteous, none of us. So just like the writer of Psalm 1, we long for justice. We look out on the world and we think of people who need to get what they deserve. But we have a problem that we aren't righteous, that we also won't get what we deserve. And this is where the good news comes. Now remember when I said there's kind of two ways you can look at the Psalms and read them as God's words to us. The first is that general principle. The second is to see how a psalm points us towards Jesus. And that's what Psalm 1 is also doing. It points us towards the entirely righteous person who was never wicked, the one person, the sinless savor, who can make the wicked, even us, righteous. So when we read Psalm 1, we should see Jesus. Jesus is also the answer to David's prayer in Psalm 51, the one who can blot out transgressions, who can cleanse him from sin. Read properly, Jesus is who the Psalms inevitably point us towards, for he is God's ultimate word to us. Now I'm jumping all over the Bible, sharing lots of scripture, but I want us to see how the New Testament authors uh use the Psalms in this way. Uh 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter he quotes Psalm 34, and he says this, this is uh 1 Peter 3.12, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. Again, we see this dichotomy of righteousness and evil, this gap between how God interacts with the wicked and with the righteous. And Peter he goes on to explain who closes this gap. This is 1 Peter 3.18. For Christ also suffered once for his sins, for sins, for right the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive in the spirit. And so if we are to read and apply Psalm 1 well, we will read and see that principle. Righteousness and righteousness leads to flourishing and wickedness leads to death. And then we'll see this and we'll read it as God's words to us, and we'll grapple with our own wickedness, our own need for a savior, and then we will run to Jesus, the one who is able to make the unrighteous righteous, the one who is able to give us life. And when we do this, the psalm kind of becomes that third way of reading the Psalms. It becomes our words to God, right? It becomes a message that we share with others and proclaim to the world. And that's how I want to close this sermon. And so I'm gonna break Psalm 1 into a few sections in light of all that we have considered today. I'm gonna read it and pray. And just I'm gonna encourage you to feel free to pray with me. I'm gonna start with verses one through two, and just remember to look for Jesus in them. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is on the law of the Lord and who meditates on it day and night. God, thank you for Jesus, who is the one who did this when we couldn't, who gathered with regular people like us with all of our brokenness, and didn't seek power amongst the corrupt, but sought a place amongst the vulnerable, who delighted in your law, God make us like Him. Allow us to make your word our highest standard, to seek to understand and obey it, to let your law and your words be more important to us than the opinions of others. Verse three through four. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not wither, whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. God, we see that gap in ourselves between the wicked, between wicked and fickle and temporary, and we see that gap with Jesus, who is strong and stable and flourishing. We see how He came to give life, and that we too often we've turned astray. Thank you, Lord, that you love us. Thank you that you love us in spite of our wickedness, and that you like, you make a way for us to be righteous and to flourish. And the final words of Psalm 1, verses 5 through 6. 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. God, we long for a world in which the guilty and the wicked are held accountable. And we also grieve our own guilt and sin. We know that the only way that we can stand with you as righteous is through your Son Jesus Christ. And so we celebrate Him today. God, save us, save those around us. Let all of us become like Jesus in all aspects of our lives. God, save us the wicked, who deserve justice but long for grace. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.