Sermon Series
Week 1
Psalm 1 | God's Law (Free Preview)
AIM Commentary
Ancient lens
What’s the historical context?
Wisdom Song
It is not too far a stretch to imagine an eager young person sitting at the feet of a well-seasoned elder and receiving the words of this Psalm, “In life, there are two ways to walk. We can delight in God’s law or not. One way leads to life and the other leads to death. Do you wish to be happy and blessed or dead and depressed?”
The first song of the Psalter is reminiscent of a wisdom song, a proverb for a life well-lived and one not so well-lived. The Psalm takes the form of a beatitude.
A Beatitude
Beatitudes express the truth of a good life. Psalm 1 begins with the Hebrew word asher, blessed, happy. For the Psalmist, a blessed life is derived solely from one’s connection to God and his law. He expresses such sentiment by negation. The truly happy person does not walk, stand, or sit in places devoid of God’s presence. Rather, the blessed person is like a tree whose roots are nourished by the flowing stream next to which it is planted. And the flowing stream that produces the fruit of blessedness in one’s life tree is the law of God.
Torah
The law, the Torah (from the verb yrah meaning “to teach”) consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Delight in the Torah is the source of blessedness for the Psalmist. And contrary to popular perception, Torah piety does not consist of diligently guarding oneself from a slip in the law through rigid legalistic maneuvers. Instead, the Torah is a gift from God through which the Lord “reaches, touches, and shapes the human soul” [1]. It is like a “road map that guides and identifies landmarks toward a destination…The Torah is the open door to praise through which one has access to interior rooms” [2]. Within it there is freedom for life and not freedom from life as some might erroneously think.
Last Stroke of the Book’s Editors
This is most likely why the editors of the Psalter placed this song at the very beginning. To enter the interior rooms of the house, one has to pass through the Torah’s vestibule. To find contentment and connection to God in life’s heights of joy and depths of sorrow, as expressed in the Psalter’s hymns of praise, one must pass through a deep and thoughtful meditation on and delight in God’s Torah. It is the key to a purposeful life. Such an introductory Psalm reminds us that the remaining 149 will inevitably be seen through the lens of Torah, that the various life circumstances of each of the songs will be a reflection on God’s goodness through his law.
From A to Z
It is interesting to note that the first word of this Psalm begins with the Hebrew letter aleph and its last word with the Hebrew letter tav. The first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet are employed to contrast the two ways one can live. We can delight in God’s law and be asher (blessed) or we can kick it to the curb and toved (perish). “Opening or closing oneself to God’s will (Torah) results in a choice between happiness and death” [3].
Jesus lens
How do we point to Jesus?
An Image of a Life of Torah Delight
What would a life that delights in God’s law look like, a life which embodies the answer to the first question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever?” You know the answer, don’t you? Every Sunday School and Vacation Bible School kid does. It would look like the life of Jesus. Jesus famously said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17) [4].
Jesus and the Law
In his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus speaks to the blessed life. In his nine beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) he further defines what a life that delights in Torah looks like. It fully embraces the weakness of humanity in its struggle against external and internal forces that seek its destruction. It is absolutely dependent upon the strength of God’s blessing. Those who walk, stand, and sit in a position of vulnerability: the poor, the grieving, the meek, the spiritually hungry, the merciful, the pure-hearted, the peacemakers, and the persecuted and insulted will know the blessed state of a life within God’s Torah.
Beyond Mere Moralism
In his further description of a life of Torah, Jesus goes beyond keeping rules and regulations and into the heart. It is there that the Torah must take root. It is not merely enough to refrain from murder or adultery. There must be a transformation of heart. The source of growth and prosperity of a tree planted by streams of water comes from its internal health. In the same way, God cares more about the nourishment and nurture of our mind and heart than a mere outward expression of religiosity. Jesus moves delight in Torah to where it should be, to a life fully devoted to and transformed by God. This was a damning statement against his “righteous” critics whose outward actions looked like a delight in the Lord’s law, but were nothing more than mere moralism while their hearts remained calcified.
Hearing and Keeping
In Luke 11:28, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” We can hear something good, something helpful, something life-giving, and catalog it in our library of knowledge, but that doesn’t help us until we apply it to our lives. God has given us a gift in the Torah and the larger canon of scripture. It is not simply good teaching, beautiful poetry, and dramatic prose, it is life-giving when kept, when applied to our lives. Jesus’ life and teaching are a living witness to what it means not to sit, stand, or walk in the places devoid of God. His is the life which prospers in all that he does.
Modern lens
How does this impact us today?
Our Delight Invades Us
Konrad Schaefer says that, “What delights us invades us” [5]. I am sure many of you would agree. Just think about the hobbies that we have. My friend Karl got interested in playing the guitar a couple of decades ago. He bought his first classical guitar and started taking lessons. He eventually became intrigued with jazz and picked up an archtop guitar and began learning his modes. Today his home is filled with over a dozen guitars, an assortment of amplifiers, and a full trap set. I’ve selfishly encouraged him to add a Fender-Rhodes to his collection so I can jam with him! His weekly schedule includes at least two sessions of classical and jazz guitar instruction in addition to the practice hours he spends late at night after completing his day job. Karl’s little home guitar shop seems like a delightful invasion to me.
Delight Leads to Destination
The Psalmist says that the person who delights in the law of the Lord will prosper in whatever they do. We all delight in something. Maybe it is money, knowledge, technology, politics, or pickleball. The delight of our hearts will indeed invade us. And the delight of our hearts will set a trajectory for our final destination. If money is our delight, it will set us on a certain path towards a specific destination.
Many of those things in which we delight can be quite innocent. When we allow them to be framed by a larger delight in God’s law, they can often be redemptive.
My friend James is a natural entrepreneur. Over his working life, he has started several successful companies that have generated great wealth, but his greatest delight is his relationship with God and he has used the financial success in numerous ways to give glory to God.
Redefining Prosperity
My family lives in Southern California in a part of Orange County that has a particular definition of prosperity. Most of you are familiar with the definition: elite university graduate, a resume outlining significant leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies, a net worth of at least 20 million (the minimum number at which some donor advised foundations will pay attention to you as a potential donor), a home at the beach, one in the mountains, and the place you live when you aren’t at either of these.
I’m sure I am missing some of the auxiliary items of the OC’s prosperity list, but you get the picture. Even within Christian circles, we are aware of a teaching that often characterizes God’s blessing with material success. But prosperity for those who delight in God’s Torah is entirely different. It finds purpose in relationship to God and in nothing else. Identity, character, priorities, purpose, and prosperity are found in walking, standing, and sitting in God’s presence even when we suffer, lose a job, fall into economic hardship, or any other of life’s storms.
References
[1] James Mays, Psalms: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), 42.
[2] Konrad Schaefer, Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative & Poetry: Psalms (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 3.
[3] Schaefer, 3-4.
[4] Schaefer, 6.
Discussion Questions
What is the significance between the blessed person whose delight is in the law of the Lord and the wicked person who is like chaff driven away by the wind? Does this seem too stark a delineation or maybe overly simplified? Why do you think the Psalmist uses such a harshly descriptive contrast between persons, especially when we know allegiances in life are often more complicated?
How does the metaphor of the tree planted by streams of water resonate with your understanding of a life that produces fruit from delight in God’s law? Are there other metaphors that you might think of that would express the same idea?
The Psalmist implies a particular definition of prosperity for those who delight in God’s law. In what ways is that definition similar or different from our cultural definitions of prosperity? Does the person who delights in God’s law really prosper in all that they do? There are a fair share of Torah loving individuals who live in poverty and relative obscurity. How is that prosperity?
How does this Psalm set the tone for the rest of the Psalter?
What does meditation on God’s law look like for us as followers of Christ? What are some ways that we’ve merely heard God’s law without keeping it? How can we let it truly transform the movement and rhythm of our hearts and let it delight us so that it can invade us?
Sermon Resources
Key Quotes
- View
God created man for nothing else but happiness.
- View
The Hebrew word Torah does not signify order but orientation. It is not a law, it is the way, the road along which a common enterprise is possible.
Key Illustrations
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The Movement of the Psalms
Walter Brueggemann writes that the movement of the psalms is from orientation to disorientation and then to new orientation. The psalms give us a language for transformation in desert spaces: we move from a particular view of ourselves, God, and the cosmos until suddenly we are disoriented by a sudden illness, pregnancy loss, a busted-up economy, being passed over for a job, news of global inequality, racial violence, and even the numbness of our own souls.
- View
“The Psalms Found Expression in His
In 1977, at the height of the Cold War, Anatoly Shcharansky, a brilliant young mathematician and chess player, was arrested by the KGB for his repeated attempts to emigrate to Israel. He spent thirteen years inside the Soviet Gulag. From morning to evening Shcharansky read and studied all 150 psalms (in Hebrew). “What does this give me?” he asked in a letter:
“Gradually, my feeling of great loss and sorrow changes to one of bright hopes.” Shcharansky so cherished his book of Psalms, in fact, that when guards took it away from him, he lay in the snow, refusing to move, until they returned it. During those thirteen years, his wife traveled around the world campaigning for his release. Accepting an honorary degree on his behalf, she told the university audience, “In a lonely cell in Chistopol prison, locked alone with the Psalms of David, Anatoly found expression for his innermost feelings in the outpourings of the King of Israel thousands of years ago.”
- View
Biblical Meditation
Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (in On the Book of Psalms) points out that the mediation mentioned in Psalm 1 (The man who “meditates on [God’s] law day and night”) is “not engaged in meditation and contemplation, such as required in some mystical systems and traditions.” (38) Instead, the kind of individual study in question is, “reading aloud, rote learning, and constant oral repetition.” (38) Silent reading was uncommon in the ancient world and even the Hebrew word for “to read” also means “to proclaim.” This method of study was common between Egypt, Mesopotamia, and even China. Sarna adds,
Study of the sacred text—torah—was not just an intellectual pursuit or matter of professional training, but a spiritual and moral discipline. It was the authoritative guide to right behavior. Constant repetition and review “day and night,” functioned to incorporate its values within the self so that they became a part of one’s own being, consciously and subconsciously guiding one’s actions. (39)
Sarna concludes that this is why study of Torah was so important—a sacred duty—rather than an “elitist enterprise.” Studying aloud was not only intellectual, but an act of worship.
Liturgical Resources
Call to Worship
- Adapted from Psalm 1 (BOCP)View
Leader: Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of
the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners,
nor sat in the seats of the scornful!
People: Their delight is in the law of the LORD,
and they meditate on his law day and night.
Leader: They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither;
People: Everything they do shall prosper. So Lord we cry out for your help to obey all your ways.
Leader: Come, let us worship the Lord!Adapted for liturgical use.
Bible Translation: BOCP The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church of the USA Church Publishing IncorporatedScripture quotations marked (BOCP) are from The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church of the USA (1979). Public domain.
Prayer of Confession
- Inspired by Leviticus 26:14-46View
Pastor: Oh God, we have not listened to you, and we have not walked in all of your commandments. We have spurned your statutes, and our souls have abhorred your laws.
All: I have not followed you in your commandments, and I have broken your covenant. The sin in my heart and in my life has caused panic and heart ache—both in me an in those around me.
Pastor: Even after you have shown us grace and mercy, we have walked contrary to your commandments. We have not listened to you, and we have continued to walk contrary to your direction.
All: I confess that I have sinned; all the generations in my family have sinned. I humble my heart before you, O God. You have kept Your covenant even when I have broken it. Remember me with grace, O Father.
Personalizes ESV translation.
Bible Translation: ESV English Standard Version Crossway PublishingScripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
Assurance of Pardon
- Psalm 33:18-22View
Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.
We wait for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our hearts are glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
Amen.
Adapted for corporate liturgical use.
Bible Translation: ESV English Standard Version Crossway PublishingScripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
Benediction
- View
As you go forth from here, may you go forth with the heart of the Psalmist, in humility, seeking the will of the Lord in all you do, and in confidence, knowing that the Lord is our rock and redeemer.
And may the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you this day and forevermore. Amen.