Well, as you remain standing, would you please turn in your Bibles to the very beginning of the book of Psalms, Psalm 1. I'll ask a question of us this morning as we prepare to read God's Word. And that question is, what is it that we want most in this life? What is it that we are pursuing, that we're chasing after, that we are dreaming of? What is it that you want most in life. I'm sure we could all answer in our own particular ways, but I'm willing to bet that if we get past the particulars and we get down to the bottom line, we all want the same thing. I'll bet that we all want the same thing and that that thing is happiness. I'll bet that we all want happiness when it comes right down to it. Or as the Bible often calls it, we all want blessedness. It's the same word. in the Bible. And so as we read this psalm, let's keep that question in mind. What is it that we really want? And why is it what this psalm has to offer? Psalm 1 then. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on His law, He meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that He does, He prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, The wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish." Thus far, the reading of God's Word. May He add His blessing to it. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we ask that this Word would sink deep into our hearts. We ask that as we study it now in the coming minutes, you would teach us your way, that we would die more to sin, live unto Christ, and look more unto the blessed hope which is ours in Him. We pray it in His name. Amen. You may be seated. The great reformer John Calvin famously once called the book of Psalms an anatomy of the soul. And if you know the book of Psalms, you understand why he called it that. The Psalms have a special way of speaking to us as humans. At one point or another across the 150 songs contained in the book of Psalms, it seems to speak to every emotion, to every condition, to every joy, to every sorrow, to every up, every down, of the human experience. The Psalms speak to us, first of all, like only poetry can. And they understand us as people, as humans. They understand us as only divinely inspired poetry can. There really is no other book like the book of Psalms. And if you're anything like me, you find yourself turning to the book of Psalms in your Bible reading probably more often than just about any other book in the Bible. The Psalms speak to us on a personal level and thus they make for terrific devotional reading. But the book of Psalms is also more, more than just a really, really good devotional. The book of Psalms was compiled, of course, to be the hymn book of ancient Israel. This was a carefully curated collection of songs which reflected Israel's history and which pointed them to their future And it's also a book of instruction. The Psalms contain much wisdom and guidance about how to live well according to God's word. And on top of that, the Psalms is also what we might call a covenant document. That is to say that because these songs are inspired by God, they are God's own words, they are a part of his covenant with his people. The Psalms, in other words, reveal His plan for the salvation of His people. And they confirm His promises to them. And they even reflect and give voice to the maturing faith of His people as they see God come through on those promises. And so this is a book which really can only be rightly read in the context of God's covenant of grace with His people. And just like any other book, the key to understanding the book of Psalms is the introduction. Just like any other book, you can't skip the beginning and expect to understand what's going on in the rest of the story. That's where you find out who the main characters are, what the setting is, what the story is about in the first place. And in the book of Psalms, the introduction is two chapters long. Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, they're the introduction to the book of Psalms, if you will. They are where we learn what the rest of this book is going to be about. In fact, they've been referred to as the two poetic pillars on which the rest of the Psalter is built. These two Psalms are like support beams which support the weight of the rest of the collection and which set the trajectory right from the outset. These are the poetic pillars of the whole book of Psalms. And as such, these two Psalms, Psalm 1, Psalm 2, they tell us a lot not only about the book of Psalms, but about everything that the book of Psalms tells us about. These two Psalms tell us a lot about our story as God's people and about our future hope. They tell us a lot about how to live well according to God's Word. They tell us a lot about God's covenant of grace, about His plan for the salvation of His people and about His promises and about how to mature in our faith in those promises. These two Psalms are an anatomy, we might say, not just of the soul, but of the Christian life and of the Christian gospel as a whole. And so this morning and next Sunday morning, Lord willing, I want to walk through these two psalms with you and mine their riches together, not only so that we can come to a better understanding of Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, but so that we might even come to a better understanding of what the Christian life is all about in the first place. And what I hope we'll see particularly today beginning in Psalm 1 is that Christianity is all about living the blessed life. For everything else that we might say about what it means to be a Christian, that's what this psalm highlights and emphasizes for us. Christianity is about living the life of blessing. And we'll see that truth developed in this psalm on three fronts today. First, we'll see that this psalm, just like all the psalms which follow it, this psalm is theological. It revolves around the theme of God's law or His Word, and so it's very much theological. But we'll also see that it is eschatological. That simply means that it is forward-looking. It's concerned with the unfolding of things not yet seen, as is the book of Psalms as a whole. And then finally, we'll see that this psalm, like the rest of the book it introduces, this psalm is Christological. It's about Jesus ultimately. And so that's where we'll wind up in our considerations today. Psalm 1 is theological. It is eschatological. And it is Christological. That'll be our outline this morning as we consider what it means to live the blessed life. And so let's turn to the first of those points then. Psalm 1 is theological. Now, it's theological in the sense that it both contains God's Word and it points us to other places in God's revelation of His self to us and of His will for us. That's what I mean when I say that this psalm and all the psalms are theological. They both contain God's revelation and they point us to God's revelation in other places. And that revelation is found, generally speaking, in two places. It's found in His works and the things that He does. Creation, for instance. And it's found in His Word. His works and His Word are where we find God's revelation. And we know that the Psalms will often point us to behold the works of God, won't they? To reflect on what they tell us about Him. But they also point us to His Word. And we see that right here at the outset of the Psalter. Now, we have at our disposal much more of God's Word than the authors of the Psalms did in their day. We've got 66 books, right? And they only had five. But those first five books of the Bible, they were the Bible for them. And what we call by various names, we call them the Pentateuch, the Law, the Books of Moses, and so on, they had another name for them. They simply called them Torah. And Torah means something like law, but perhaps a better translation than that even would be instruction or teaching. And who is it that the psalmist says in this Psalm is blessed. Well, is it not the one whose delight is in the law, the Torah, the instruction, the teaching of the Lord? And on that Torah, he meditates day and night. And so right from the outset here in Psalm 1, we know that this book is going to be theological, isn't it? It's going to not only reveal to us new things about who God is what He desires of us, but it's going to point us back to other places where God has spoken. And it's going to help us to cherish them better. It's going to help us to understand them better. And it's going to help us live according to them better. That's what I mean when I say that the Psalms are theological. There is a depth and a richness to them which is far more than just poetic artistry and symbolism. There's a theological depth and usefulness to the Psalms. And here in Psalm 1, we see that that theology is rooted in the Garden of Eden. It's rooted in the Garden of Eden. This psalm takes us all the way back to the very, very beginning of God's Word in the Garden of Eden. Look at how this psalm describes what blessedness is in v. 3. The blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that He does, He prospers." We might summarize this description by simply saying that the blessed person is like a tree of life. The blessed person is like one who enjoys that perfect bliss and happiness of the Garden of Eden. This is strong, intentional symbolism. It's not a coincidence that a tree shows up here at the beginning of the Psalms just like it showed up there at the beginning of Genesis. The psalmist is doing some heavy-duty theology here. He's pointing us back to the beginning of God's revelation to man there at the dawn of creation. And he's pointing us to three things there, I would say. Three things. He's pointing us, first of all, to that original state of blessedness in which we were created. Dr. Ligon Duncan in his sermon on this psalm, he makes a very astute observation. He points out that the first words that mankind ever heard were God's blessing being pronounced on them. If you were to flip back to Genesis 1, the very beginning, verses 27 and 28, you would read, So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them. And what's the first thing He does? And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So the psalmist is calling to mind here that original state of blessedness for which we were created. That condition of happiness and fruitfulness and dominion in which God made us. That's what we're meant for. And of course, God gave us very, very clear instructions for how to maintain that state of blessedness, didn't He? God gave Adam and Eve His law, His Torah. Do this and live, but do that and you will surely die. Now notice the order in which this comes. This is important. Blessing first. Law second. Blessing first, law second. That's important because it tells us something about what true blessedness and true righteousness actually are. See, true righteousness is not self-righteousness. It's not trying to earn God's blessing. It's not relying on yourself to please God. Again, blessing comes first, and then law and obedience and righteousness come second. That's the pattern. of God's revelation to man in Genesis 1. And thus, to borrow from Ligon Duncan again, he says the way of righteousness is not the way into blessing. It is the way to live in blessing. Having already received that blessing from God. Again, the way of righteousness, obedience, is not the way into God's blessing. The blessing comes first. Rather, the way of righteousness is the way to live in God's blessing. having received that blessing from Him by His grace already. And so the psalmist points us first to God's blessing and then to God's law. But then thirdly, this psalm points us to consider the alternative. What was the alternative there in the garden? Well, the alternative to blessing, of course, was cursing. The alternative to God's instruction was the serpent's counsel. And those two, you understand, they are at irreconcilable odds with one another. God's law was good because God Himself is good. His desire is to bless His creatures. And He gives them a very plain and simple path to walk. But then how is the serpent described? The serpent is crafty. More than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made, the serpent is deceptive. He is conniving and his counsel is at bitter odds with God's instruction. God said, eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you shall surely die. The serpent says the exact opposite. You shall not surely die. God said, eat from that tree and you'll regret it. The serpent says, don't eat from that tree and you'll be missing out. Trust Me. God said, you are created in My image. He said, I am blessing you. He said, I am placing you over everything that I've created." And then what does the serpent say? God doesn't want you to be like Him. Preposterous. God created them in His image. The serpent says, God is withholding something from you. Preposterous. God just gave them everything. The serpent said, God is lying to you. Preposterous. God just blessed them. You see, the two could not be more at odds with one another. And thus, in Psalm 1, we see that the blessed man is the one who utterly rejects that wicked serpentine counsel and does not stand in the way of sinners, does not sit in the seat of scoffers. This is deeply, deeply theological, you understand. It's about more than just what crowd we run with. It's about what we do with God's Word. It's about whether we take God at His Word or we take matters into our own hands. It's about whether we delight in the instruction of our Lord or we stop and hear Satan out when he has a tempting proposition to make. It's about what we do with God's Word. And ultimately, it is about what side of redemptive history we end up on. It's about whether we are numbered among the blessed the cursed. And this brings us to our second point this morning. Psalm 1, like all the psalms, it is also eschatological. It's theological and it's also eschatological. Now, as I mentioned earlier, the word eschatological, it's a big word, but it simply means that this psalm has to do with the unfolding of last or ultimate or final things. Things which, though they be unseen, are nonetheless very, very real. And the eschatological reality to which this psalm points us is the great contrast between the blessed on the one hand and the cursed on the other, between the righteous on the one hand and the wicked on the other. There's a stark contrast between the two, something which theologians will call not just an antithesis, but the antithesis. This is the dividing line between the two types of people in this world, whether you are numbered among the righteous or among the wicked. Or if we put it in Genesis 3 terms, whether you belong to the seed of the woman, the good guys, or to the seed of the serpent, the bad guys. And so that's what I mean when I say that this is about what side of redemptive history we're on. Redemptive history is the story of God's saving a people for Himself despite their sin, despite the curse, despite the reality of death and disease and difficulty. Redemptive history is just the story of salvation, my friends. And it has two main sets of characters as they're presented to us in Psalm 1. The righteous and the wicked. The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The whole Bible is the story of these two at odds. Of these two wrapped in a deadly struggle with one another. And in that sense, the whole Bible is eschatological. We might think that books like Revelation or Daniel, books that speak in cryptic or symbolic language which talk about the end of time and the return of Christ, those are the eschatological books, right? Well, in reality, every book in the Bible, Psalms included, every book in the Bible is eschatological because every book in the Bible is about this history-long, conflict-ridden drama of redemption. Every book in the Bible is a part of this gradually unfolding story of how God not only gets mankind back into its original blessedness, but gets mankind into an even better blessedness than before. And we see this story, my friends, woven throughout the Psalms. When we consider Psalm 2 next week, Lord willing, we'll see an excellent example of the eschatology of the Psalms. But even here in Psalm 1, we see that the end of all things is at the front of the psalmist's mind. In Psalm 1, there is this great antithesis, this great contrast between the righteous and the wicked. And while the righteous end up in blessing, what happens to the wicked? Verses 4 and 5, the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. You see, this is about the judgment. This is about the congregation of the righteous when all God's people are gathered, congregated in His presence. And so this is about the end of all things. This is about the culmination of redemptive history when God fully and finally blesses the seed of the woman and curses the seed of the serpent. We are struck perhaps by the language used to describe that judgment. They are like chaff. that the wind drives away. What's that all about? Well, here in Ohio, I've learned you folks love you some corn on the cob. You get excited about corn like no other folks that I have ever known here in Ohio. And yet, even you, my friends, even you don't get excited about corn husks. And that's what chaff is. It's the part of the produce that you throw away. When the time comes, the harvest time comes, you separate the chaff from the grain, and you let whatever happens to the chaff happen. Nobody cries over spilt chaff. It gets tossed. The wind carries it away. And that's what this psalm tells us is the eschatological fate of the wicked. The wind of God's fury drives them out of His presence. It knocks them down as they stand before Him in the day of judgment. That's their eschatological fate. That's their ultimate yet unseen fate according to Psalm 1. But we need to be careful to remember that the Psalms do not teach that that will be their fate in the here and now. In other words, I don't want us to read this Psalm and to say, alright, I've been good this year. Where's my present? Or to look around and say, you know, so-and-so is about the worst person I know. Where is their lump of coal? God doesn't operate like Santa Claus. The Christian life is not like Christmas morning. In fact, the Psalms are quite clear at a number of points that the lives of the righteous and the wicked, they might not at all seem to reflect the blessing and the cursing that we're expecting in the here and now. Think of Psalm 73. The psalmist says, but as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. Why? Well, because I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no pangs until death. Their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are. They're not stricken like the rest of mankind. The psalmist is doing something that I and probably you have done before. He's looking around at how his life is going. Not so great if he's honest. He's looking about how other people's lives are going. Not so bad it seems. And he's thinking, hey, wait a minute. What's going on here? I've been faithful. I've been obedient. I've been careful to keep God's instructions. And look at where it's gotten me. Absolutely nowhere. When meanwhile, they've been doing whatever they want, and they don't look like chaff to me. So where's my Ferrari? Where's my promotion? Where's my happy home? Where are my children rising up to call me blessed? Where's my life of comfort and ease? Where are God's promises played out in my life? See, beloved, this is what happens when we confuse the eschatological with the here and now. And that's a dangerous path to start walking down, my friends, because that is the path of did God really say? Yes, God absolutely promises blessing to the righteous and cursing to the wicked, but He does not promise His people lives of luxury or creature comforts or good health or even total happiness in the here and now. This is an eschatological promise, you see. It points us forward to the coming blessedness. And it does that by pointing us backward to the great antithesis between us and them. It points us forward by pointing us back to that promise of God that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent, even if the serpent does bruise his heel in the process. And in doing so, of course, my friends, it points us to Christ Jesus our Lord This psalm, like all the psalms, it is theological and it is eschatological, but it is also oh so Christological. This psalm is about Jesus when we get down to it. And so our third point, Psalm 1, is Christological. It's all about Jesus. Now, as we've seen already this morning, the blessing which this psalm promises, it is a blessing which is not a result of our righteousness per se. Rather, it's actually a blessedness which forms the context for our righteousness. The way of the blessed is righteousness. It is the way of obedience to God and of His instruction. And so the question which this psalm raises for us is not so much how do I become righteous, but more so, how do I become blessed? If blessedness comes first and righteousness is not how we enter into it, How do we enter into that blessedness? And the answer, of course, is that we become blessed, my friends, by belonging to the true, singular, ultimate seed of the woman who is Christ. Christ is the one who fulfills this psalm. Now, surely neither you nor I could fulfill this psalm, could we? Just a few pages over in Psalm 14, what do we read? We read, there is no one who does good Not even one. And the Apostle Paul picks up on that in Romans 3 v. 10 when he says, there is none righteous, no, not one. And so if this psalm were indeed saying that we could obtain God's blessing by just being good enough, well, then there would be no hope, would there? If this psalm were indeed saying that the way into blessedness is by our being righteous, well, then we would have No hope. If this psalm were indeed saying that following God's law is the condition for living a happy life in the here and now, or a happy life in the yet to come, then we would be without a hope in the world of ever knowing any kind of true happiness. But praise God, that's not what it's saying, is it? It's saying instead that the blessed person is the one who rejects the counsel of the wicked and instead listens to the Word of His Lord who is righteousness incarnate. It's saying that the blessed Person is the One who sits not in the seat of scoffers, but who instead is united to the One who as this hymn says, bore our shame and scoffing rude in our place condemned He stood. Friends, I cannot emphasize this enough. For us, blessing comes first and then Righteousness. Our obedience is but a response to God's blessing. But for Jesus, the righteousness had to come first. For Jesus, that humble obedience had to come before His marvelous exaltation. Why? Well, in plain and simple terms, because He had committed Himself to winning that blessedness for us. Because Jesus had committed Himself to keeping that law which neither Adam nor Eve, nor you, nor I, nor any mere creature could keep. Because Jesus alone as the eternally righteous Son of God could say that it was His very food to do the will of the Father and to accomplish His work. That is what perfect devotion to the law of God looks like, you understand. That is what perfect commitment to the revealed will of the Father looks like. It looks like Jesus living a life of suffering and then laying down that life such as it was for His sheep, that they may be righteous in the sight of God, and that they might be blessed forevermore. It still grieves me every time that I'm reminded of an old friend of mine, someone I grew up with, knew very well, This friend has actually been extremely successful in life even though he's only a few years older than me. He managed to get out of our little country town and he now works in the high fashion industry where he's evidently done quite well for himself. All the trappings of success, the bohemian apartment in the New York City sky rise, a model for a girlfriend, fashion shows in Milan. I'm still surprised whenever once in a while I see his face show up in in ad somewhere. But a few years ago, my friend who sadly does not seem to be walking with the Lord in any way, shape, or form, my friend was interviewed and the interviewer asked him something to the effect of, what is it that you're looking for as a concluding question? What is it that you want out of life? And my old friend, to his credit, he answered very honestly, very frankly, He said, well, I suppose it's the same as everyone else. I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. You see why this breaks my heart. Friends, the way of happiness is the way of righteousness. The way of blessedness is the way of the redeemed. And that's why this psalm does call us to walk in obedience before the Lord, not as the root of our blessedness, but as the fruit of our blessedness. It calls us to love the Word of God, not so that we might be blessed because we obeyed, but because that Word, my friends, is where we find the good news of God's blessing. That Word is where we find not only the law, but the Gospel and where we learn of the only true source of real happiness and hope in the midst of our distress. This Word which you hold in your hands, my friends, it is where our minds and our hearts are reoriented. and retrained and fixed upon the glorious promise of the life to come so that this Word becomes our passion and our love and our delight. So that faithfulness will be not a burden, but in and of itself a blessing. Think of Job. Flip just one page back from Psalm 1 and you'll find the story of this man. Not someone the world would call particularly happy, was he? Not someone the world would look at and say, now there's a blessed individual. And yet he was. In the depths of his trial and suffering, what does Job declare in chapter 19? What is his only comfort in life and death? He says, for I know that my Redeemer lives and He shall stand at the last upon the earth. Job's is a redemptive hope and it's an eschatological hope. I think of Jesus' own words in His introduction to the Sermon on the Mount which we read earlier. Who is it that is blessed? Who is it that is really going to be happy? The successful? The strong? The pretty? The powerful? No. No, it's the persecuted. It's the peacemakers. It's the pure in heart. It's the poor in spirit. It is the meek. It is the mourning. It is those who, like Christ Himself, hunger and thirst after righteousness, for whom it is their food to do the will of the Father. Those who have set heaven before them and who are thus more than willing to endure whatever this life throws at them. Those are the people whom Christ calls blessed. J.W. Alexander, the 19th century professor and pastor I'll conclude with this. He once said that each instant of present labor will be repaid with a million ages in glory. I love that line. What a fantastic statement. Every day, every little moment that you spend following the Lord will be repaid with age upon age of blessedness. You see, right now, my friends, we are righteous because we are blessed, but one day, The faith shall be sight and we will be blessed because we are numbered among the righteous. We will stand in the congregation of the righteous. We will be as trees planted by streams of water which do not wither for all eternity. We will prosper in all that we do. Not because we've been such good people, but because we've been united to the one good person who ever lived. even Jesus Christ our Lord. And what God has promised in this psalm, beloved, He will do. You can build your life on the promise made in this psalm and not be worried that it will come toppling down when the winds blow. This psalm is not just a poetic pillar. It is a pillar for your Christian life. You can build your life on this psalm and not be worried when you see the wicked prospering. You can build your life on the promise of this psalm. And then, my friends, you can leave the rest in God's hands. And so I urge you to meditate on the promise of this psalm day and night, my friends. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish. Let's pray. Our Lord God in Heaven, we ask that You would pour out Your blessings on us And Lord, we ask that one day soon the faith will be sight. Lord, hasten the day when Your Son returns. Bring in the full number of Your people that they might be blessed forevermore. And until then, O God, keep us faithful, we pray. Help us to walk in righteousness before You. Make Your law our delight that we might enjoy eternity in Your presence. We pray it in Christ's name, Amen.