Which Way Shall It Be #1

What God has done here at the beginning of the book of Psalms is He has graciously set forth before us the path that leads to life. The question is, will you listen? The question is, will you examine yourself in light of what this Psalm says so that you can position yourself for the blessing of God? When you come to a fork in the road, you must choose which way to go.

We are presented with just such a choice in this life to follow God or not. And the psalmist discusses the two available paths in Psalm 1, where we'll turn today on the truth pulpit. Hello again, I'm Bill Wright, and Pastor Don Green is beginning a three-part message titled Which Way Shall It Be?

Don, what can we expect from this study? Well, Bill, this Psalm, Psalm 1, gives us a preview, you might say, of the very outcome of our entire lives. It's really remarkable to say that, but Psalm 1 tells us what to expect based on our fundamental response to God's Word.

And it boils down to this, and it's very simple and yet very profound and far-reaching. The man who receives God's Word in a trusting, obedient spirit will be blessed. The man who rejects it in defiance will be judged by God, and things will not go well for him in the end. Two paths that Scripture lays forth before us.

My friend, which one are you on? Stay with us as we study this important passage in God's Word today on the truth pulpit. Thanks, Don.

And friend, open your Bible as we join our teacher now in the truth pulpit. I want you to consider a very silly scenario. Suppose a man said, and he meant it, I have no further interest in the stifling restrictions from the Department of Transportation. From now on, I will drive on the wrong side of the road.

I must be free. Now, if a man said that to you, you might laugh at his foolishness. You might try to warn him of the danger. You might fear for those that he will certainly harm. One thing would not happen. When the inevitable disaster occurred, it would not surprise you.

It could be no other way. Some realities cannot be avoided. A man who is on the wrong side of the road will die. A man who is on the wrong side of the highway will meet with disaster. This is simply woven into the nature of life and the universe.

It cannot be avoided, and the outcome is certain. Psalm 1 teaches us an even greater certainty about life, and I invite you to turn there to that passage that we read earlier. We're teaching out of Psalm 1 today because Psalm 1 is really the preface psalm to the entire Psalter.

It is the opening upon which the other 149 expand. Every principle of every psalm is somehow embedded in the great, concise glorious majesty of Psalm 1, and so as we introduce Psalm 1 today, we're really introducing the entire book of Psalms. And yet, beloved, I want you to understand that the issues of Psalm 1 are more than about a new study. The issue of Psalm 1, the content of what we're going to see today, is of incalculable eternal consequence. What we have in Psalm 1 is your future laid out for you. For good or for ill, Psalm 1 lays out to you the future of life and the future of eternity to you.

It is a way by which you can diagnose your life and know what the outcome is. Just like the man driving on the wrong side of the road, if you are on the wrong side of Psalm 1, God's Word guarantees to you that disaster lies ahead. By contrast, Psalm 1 promises you that whatever else may happen in the meantime, for those of us that are on the right side of Psalm 1, blessing from God lies ahead.

It is a certain outcome that cannot be avoided. One path leads to blessing from God. One path, the other path, leads to judgment from God. And brothers and sisters, friends, boys and girls, there is no third path. As we gather together in this room, as this message is heard later on, everyone who hears this message is on one path or the other. Psalm 1 allows no third path.

And there could be no third path. And what God has done here at the beginning of the book of Psalms is He has graciously set forth before us the path that leads to life. The question is, will you listen? The question is, will you respond?

The question is, will you examine yourself in light of what this Psalm says so that you can position yourself for the blessing of God? And here's the thing. Think about it this way.

You have to opt into it. If you don't opt into this blessing, you're left with the path that leads to destruction. If you want to continue and just go on as you are, know that you're choosing the path that leads to destruction.

Even just by saying, I don't want to think about it right now, you've made your decision. You're taking another step toward your own destruction. And so we must approach this Psalm with a sense of holy reverence, of anticipation, of a great sense of urgency, because not only is it its content of great consequence, it is the head Psalm of the largest book in the Bible. It must be important.

It must call for our attention. What we have before us is a division in the road, and one path goes one way and another goes another way. I think about these kinds of things when I'm driving on the interstate system all the time. There's a particular place in California that we drove through many, many, many times as you're driving east from California, moving into the normal part of the United States.

There is a place where as you're driving on Interstate 15 going north, the road divides, and you can either take I-40 to the right or you continue on on I-15. And I-15, at that one moment, that decision, takes you on a path that leads you north into Utah, the other path takes you to North Carolina. But there's this moment where you are choosing the fork in the road and the consequences, the trajectories that those take you on, are vastly different.

Well, Psalm 1 is like that. It is laying forth paths, two paths that have completely different outcomes, and you must choose. You must be conscious of what lies ahead, that there are consequences. There are consequences. There are consequences to the way that you respond to the Word of God. There are consequences to the way that you respond to what you will hear today. And I realize that most of evangelical churches in the past 50 years have conditioned us to treat the moment of preaching with indifference.

When people joke and smile at you, they condition you to think, this isn't too serious. I'll take it or leave it. I'll have a good time and I'll go on with my life.

Look, this is not it. Psalm 1 is not like that. Psalm 1 confronts us and says, you must pay heed because the consequences are so vast. And so, I invite you, I ask you, I beg you to pay heed for your own sake, for the sake of what the Lord has set before you today. And you should approach this text, you should approach Psalm 1 as God once again extending a merciful hand to you, that says, here is the path of blessing. And God is warning and saying, if you don't take the path of blessing, the consequences are severe.

There's so much at stake. And so the Lord invites us to blessing as we read Psalm 1. And yet, the Lord is not one to be trifled with. His Word will be heeded sooner or later.

Well, who will listen? Which way will it be for you is really the question. And there are two ways that are set forth in the Psalms. The way of the righteous and the way of the wicked.

That's the outline of today's message. And point number one here, let's take a look at the way of the righteous, the way of the blessed. And who wouldn't want to be blessed? Who wouldn't want to be supremely, truly happy?

Why would anyone walk away from that? Well, this is what is being laid out for us in the first half of this Psalm. It is the path of blessing. Look at Psalm 1 verses 1 through 3. We'll read this stanza to start us off. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and its season, and its leaf does not wither, and in whatever he does he prospers. Just take a little overview look at this Psalm.

Get acquainted with the wonder of it. It says, How blessed is this man. It's a word of intensity. It's a word that speaks of intense multiplied happiness, of the goodness of God is going to rest on this man.

It's not from good circumstances. It's not promising an uncluttered path in life. It is saying that it is supremely good to be in this position.

And then he goes on to describe what this position is. And so, right from the start, Psalm 1 arrests our attention and says, Here is a man who is supremely blessed. And there should be, even at the most base level of self-interest, you should say, I want to be blessed.

I want to be supremely happy. Why don't I pay attention and pay heed here? It draws you in. It invites you.

Psalm 1 is an invitation to the blessing of God in its truest and deepest sense. Now, here's the thing. You don't just fall into this. You don't just happen to experience the blessing of God as if you received an unexpected inheritance from a distant rich uncle. And somebody calls you and says, Hey, this uncle you didn't even know? He just left you 10 million dollars. Wow, I wasn't expecting that.

That's great. It's not like that. You see, look, beloved, Psalm 1 promises blessing to those who will actually think about life, who will actually contemplate their soul, who will actually look at the world about them and think and judge and make discerning evaluations about the path of life that they're going to take. That's the kind of invitation that is given. How can you be the man who is under the blessing of this Psalm? Well, it requires you to think.

It requires you to make decisions. And you can see this as you move along. You can recognize the righteous man by three aspects of his life. These are sub-points to the way of the righteous. How do you recognize the righteous man? What is it that the blessed man is marked by? What is it that you must do if you want to know the blessing of God? Well, there's a positive and there's a negative and there's an illustration.

Let's put it this way. The righteous man can be recognized, first of all, by what he rejects. By what he rejects.

The man, the woman, who simply wants to please everyone that's around them, that never wants to cause any waves, that doesn't want to have to struggle in life with difficult questions, is a person who's never going to be blessed. Because the blessing of the righteous man – watch this – who looks at the world around him, who understands it is an ungodly environment, that there is ungodly thought and philosophies that drive the actions and the thinking of the world, and says, I will not be a part of that. I will separate myself from it. I reject that. I disown it.

I do not belong to this world. That is what is required to enter into the blessing of this world. There is a negative and a positive dimension to the godly life. Look at Psalm 1 with me again. Look at verse 1. How blessed is the man who – watch the negative characteristics that are laid out in verse 1 now – how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. Notice the negatives.

There's no way around this. He does not walk in this counsel. He does not stand in the path of sinners. He does not sit in the seat of scoffers.

This is profound. In one simple verse, you're seeing a man who looks at the world and rejects it. He does not turn to the world for advice. He does not participate in their sinful activities. He does not accept their definitions of truth. He rejects their standards of morality. He says, I will stand alone before I will stand with them. You see, beloved, there is a conscious, deliberate, knowing, intentional separation from the wicked world around that the blessed man engages in.

This doesn't just happen. You don't just go through life in a superficial way and just happen to be this way. There is a recognition in the righteous man. There is a conscious understanding that I am in the midst of a fallen world. I see the world pushing away Scripture. I see the world mocking the God of the Bible. I see the world embracing behavior and attitudes that God explicitly condemns in His Word. And he understands that there are powerful forces behind it. He understands that this is driven by, at one level, powerful media interests, that this is promoted in all of the marketing that he sees around him. He gets all of that, and yet he says, I am in a river current that is going downstream that's going to go over a waterfall before long.

I'm getting out. I reject this. It's not right for the creation to rebel against its creator this way. I will have no part of it. He rejects the world in which he lives.

This is the mark of the blessed man. He wants no part, not only of just the activities of sinful people around him. He doesn't want to have their mindset either. His affections are not on what this world brings.

It's his affections, her affections are not on what this world gives. He says, this is not mine. This is not what I love. He rejects the world.

The blessed man, the righteous man is described here as one who has rejected the world. Now, this doesn't just happen. That's what I want you to see.

This doesn't just happen. And you young people that are listening, and you're on the front end of life, and things are fun and that's good and that's the way young life should be in your preteen, early teen years. But the sooner that you come to recognize this, the better. You must come to understand that you have to make a choice. You are making a decision about one way or the other which you will follow.

And better to decide that early on than to get sucked further into the current, sucked further into the vortex where it's harder and harder to get out. Call upon God saying, deliver me from this world now, even in my youth, that I might be set aside to be one who follows you. Will you be that young person? I ask, will you be that young person? Will you respond to the call of God on your life that way? Young man, young woman, what's being laid before you is a path that leads to blessing. But to take that path, you have to say no to the other fork in the road.

Say, I'm not going there. Because the blessed man, the righteous man, is known by what he rejects. As you go deeper into the Psalms, Psalms 2 through 150, it fleshes out all that is being rejected.

Here it's just stating the general principle, and that's what I want you to see. I want you to see the general principle that there is a principle in the godly life that involves a rejection. There is a negative assessment on the environment in which we live and says, that's not me. And one of the aspects of preaching the gospel, when we call people to saving faith in Christ, and we call them to repentance, we're not only calling them out of their own sin to come to a savior, we're doing that for sure, but we are also calling people to leave the world behind, to come out of the world and to reject it, to separate themselves from it. This is a profound message that we preach. It is a profound statement that I don't belong in the very environment in which I actually live. It is that serious, it is that deep in what is laid before us. There's a rejection of the world.

Now, it's more than just a negative rejection though. The righteous man is known by what he rejects, that's true, but he is also known in a positive way by what he receives. What he rejects, what he receives, and we see what he receives in verse 2. At his core, this man loves the word of God. It is that simple, plain, and evident. Look at verse 2.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. Notice a couple of things about this. First of all, that there is a contrast, right?

You see that. There is this path of the world, and yet there's this contrast in verse 2. I've left behind the world as I go into verse 2. I've rejected that, and now as I move into verse 2, I'm moving into a different realm. I'm moving into a different realm of desire, a different realm of what I esteem, of what my priorities are. In verse 1, he's left behind what the world thinks and what the world does and what the world says.

He's left behind the scoffing and the mocking of the world toward the things of God. And now in verse 2, as if he's walked into a beautiful ballroom, he's stepped off the street, out of the gutters of the street, and he's walked into a five-star hotel room, and he's walked into this gorgeous ballroom with a completely different decor, a completely different setup. It says, ah, this is where I will set.

This is where I will plant my life. Verse 2, look at it with me again. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. Notice that it's stated there twice, in the law of the Lord and in his law. That's the focus of this verse. Now the word for law here, it can refer to the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, the Torah is the word that's used here.

It can refer just to that, but more broadly this word refers to God's instruction, to God's written revelation in the Bible, and that's the way that we should take this. The totality of what God has revealed in Scripture, that's what this man loves. He loves a book.

He loves God's Word. He studies it. He reads it. He thinks about it. Brothers and sisters, he goes further.

He obeys it. This man, this woman, this young person, has his mind on the Word of God day and night. We'll pause there for today, but Pastor Don Green will have more of his message, Which Way Shall It Be, next time here on The Truth Pulpit, as he takes us further into Psalm 1.

We hope you'll join us then. Right now though, Don's back here in studio with more exciting ministry news. Well you know my friend, one of the exciting things about ministry is to see the doors that the Lord opens to you that you never could have planned for yourself.

I'm about to describe that here. What's happened in Truth Community Church is this, is that somehow the Lord has opened a door for us to send sermon transcripts to prisoners throughout our region who are reading these matters, coming to Christ, growing in Christ, and sharing the material with others. We'd like you to be a part of that. Maybe you have a friend or a loved one who is in prison.

Do this for us if you would. Go to our website, give us the contact information for your loved one, and we'll be glad to add them to the list in case they want to have access to God's Word as you've enjoyed it here on The Truth Pulpit. Friend, just visit us at thetruthpulpit.com for further information. That's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.