I would invite you to take your Bibles to the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms. The New Testament is not silent as to the value of the Old Testament. Consider, for instance, what Paul said in Romans 15, for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." Paul wrote those words through the Holy Spirit, chapter 15 of Romans and verse 4. As we study the book of Psalms and have a Wednesday night series on the book of Psalms, consider what first corinthians have to say about the value of the old testament when paul wrote now all these things happened onto them for example and they are written for our admonition upon whom the and of the world are calm paul you up told young timothy a young pastor the city of ephesus and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures." Those Scriptures that he would be referring to would have been the Old Testament Scriptures. And it says, "...which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." All Scripture, that's Old Testament as well, is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Of all of the books of the Old Testament, these statements are certainly true in regard to the favorite of many, the book of Psalms. The value of the Psalms to the Christian is so great that every Christian should do whatever they can to become more familiar with them. Why should we study the book of Psalms? Why should we look at the Psalms and study them? Well, in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 19, do we not have the admonition that we ought to speak to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs? an acquaintance of the Psalms, and a realization that these Psalms were originally written and were composed and set to music, ought to certainly encourage us to be familiar with the book of Psalms. I think of that passage that we preached on recently, calling for the elders. And in James 5, verse 13, we have the words of James, the half-brother of Jesus, when he says, is anyone cheerful let him thing so you see it to our benefit to be acquainted with the psalms secondly the psalms are not only ought to be used for singing and for teaching as we've seen in the fusions and also in james but the psalms are useful for confirming that jesus is the christ think of the many psalms in the Old Testament that are Psalms that are prefigurements of the person and work and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Didn't Jesus begin in the Psalms and in the Prophets and in the Old Testament and He spoke concerning those things that regarded Him? Peter likewise quoted the Psalms in his first sermon on the day of Pentecost. He was acquainted with the centrality of the Psalms. It would do us well to study the Christ-centeredness of the Psalms. When one reads through the Psalms, he finds expressed the eager yearning and longing for God's presence on the part of the writers. How you sense a hungering and thirsting for the Lord's presence. Is that your hunger? Is that your thirst? Could it be that you are very often driven to the Psalms because you hunger and thirst, even as David did, for the Lord? You have, as you read through the Psalms, prayers and songs of joyous trust and praise. How oftentimes I turn to the book of Psalms and find strength and encouragement in time of need. In the book of Psalms, you find every emotion known to man expressed in beautiful and inspired terms. You have joy openly manifested. You have the honesty of David in anger expressing himself towards God. You have praise, repentance, statements of trust, and even doubt. Every feeling. admitted or hidden, are found in the book of Psalms for us to empathize with. So therefore, the Psalms are capable of being the Christian's hymnal, the Christian's prayer book, the Christian's book for apologetics and Christian evidence, and also a training guide for living justly and righteously before God. I want us to consider the book of psalm and we're going to be looking at some introductory material as we prepare to look at psalm chapter one which appropriately one of the church fathers called the doorkeeper to the psalms psalm chapter one we're going to be looking at the steps of a blessed man you know the book of psalms is interesting because it's been a blessing to so many believers throughout church history ambrose said this regarding the book of the psalm the psalms are the voices of the church augustine wrote the epitome of the whole scripture the book of psalms martin luther said they are a little book for all of the saints john calvin said The book of Psalms is the anatomy of all of the parts of the soul. Here's what some preachers had to say in the 17th century. Richard Hooker said, they are the choice and flower of all things profitable in all books. John Donne said, the Psalms foretell what I, what any, shall do, suffer, and say. Heard said, it's a hymn book. for all time. Isaac Watts made this statement, and I like it. They are the thousand-voiced choir of the church. You know, the title that we have in our King James Version, you'll notice, is The Book of Psalms. That's what the King James translators translated this book. Luther, in his German Bibles, called it the Psalter. A psalter is a worship booklet with psalms that are put to music. The Hebrew Bible translates the Hebrew phrase Sefer Tehillim as Book of Praises. That's what this is called, the Book of Praises. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, it's the word psalmoi, which are poems sung to the accompaniment of music. You know, it's not just one writer that wrote the Book of Psalms, as many, many Sunday school children have the impression. Now, how many authors were there for the Book of Psalms? Ah, one author. But several writers. For instance, King David wrote 73 of the Psalms. Moses wrote one. That would be Psalm 90. King Solomon wrote two of the Psalms. The sons of Korah who were active in the service of the temple, they wrote eleven of the Psalms through the Holy Spirit. Asaph wrote twelve. He was David's chief choir director. Then you had Haman who wrote one, Psalm 88. He was the grandson of Samuel, a leader also in temple music. Ethan wrote one, that's Psalm 89. He was a renowned singer and musician. He's called Ethan the Ezranite. Then you have 49 Psalms that are called the Orphanic Psalms, from the word orphan, simply because, frankly, we don't know who wrote them, save we know certainly it was the Holy Spirit by inspiration of God. So they're unknown to us, but known to God. More than likely, most Bible teachers feel they were written by David. Now, there's been some discussion on the titles of the Psalms. These titles were not part of the inspired text, the sub-inscriptions that you'll find, but they are very ancient and they reflect tradition as to who wrote the Psalms. and the titles are quietly so ancient that uh... virtually are oldest manuscripts have them but i want you to notice how christ centered the psalms are as we proceed with our study of the book of psalm we're going to emphasize the the uh... that christological doctrine that is so centered here in the book of psalm there are a hundred and fifty psalms aren't there uh... did you know for instance that in the new testament the book of psalms is quoted two hundred and eighty three so it's a good book to study in the old testament uh... jesus was fond of the psalms he often quoted from them even in his dying agonies on the cross did not he quote from psalm twenty-two what quotation would have been from psalm one twenty-two can anyone think of which one it would have been? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And certainly he preached from the Psalms and even his message that caused the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Remember, their hearts burned within them as Christ preached from the law and from the prophets and from the Psalms. Dr. J. Vernon McGee said the following regarding Psalms. The Psalms are full of Christ. There is a more complete picture of Him in the Psalms than in the Gospels. The Gospels tell us that He went to the mountain to pray, but the Psalms give us His prayer. The Gospels tell us that He was crucified, but the Psalms tell us what went on in His own heart during the crucifixion. The Gospels tell us He went back to heaven, but the Psalms begin where the Gospels leave off to show us Christ seated in heaven. Now let's take a look at Psalm chapter 1, shall we? And let's read it together. Psalm chapter 1. We're going to be reading 1 through 6, the Psalm in its entirety. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so. but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." I'd like to give you a little flight plan as we look at Psalm chapter 1. We're going to see the path that we're going to be looking at for the next 15 minutes. We won't be able to go all the way through it, I'm sure, but we'll be able to go well into our passage on the book of Psalm. In verses 1 and 2, we're going to look at the practice of the blessed man. The practice of the blessed man. Then in verse 3, we're going to look at the power of the blessed man. Then finally, in verses 4 through 6, the permanency of the blessed man. Now, I've indicated that Psalm chapter 1 is the doorkeeper for the whole book of Psalms, because it stands as an opening testimony that we have two paths to choose from. We are going to live in this earth either as godly men and women, or we're going to walk on this earth as wicked, wicked men and women that will face judgment. And it prepares us for what follows in the rest of the 150 chapters. Now, the Word of God begins in verse 1 with the word blessed. Is it inappropriate to say that we have here the Old Testament beatitude? I don't think it's wrong to say that. The word blessed is actually in the Hebrew in the plural. And it's an accentuation. It's almost a megaphone way of yelling it out that there are mega blessings when you want to be a godly man. The plural has the idea of, oh, how very happy. It's an accentuation. And who doesn't want to be happy? Everybody wants to be happy. The sad part about it is that we're trying to be happy, in all the wrong ways, aren't we? But the word blessed means happy. And it carries the idea of a happiness that is not based upon happenstance, but it's based upon an inner reality of a walk and relationship with God. You know, in the Anglo-Saxon, our concept of happy comes from happenstance. and the world says that if everything lines up for you just right then you can maybe qualify to say today I am happy and for the world happiness is based on happenstance and happenstance is based on chance and chance is based upon really a neglect and an oversight and just a total removal of the direction of god that life is subject to chance and if it should happen to go your way like the throwing of the dice but i want you to notice the practice of the blessed man we probably won't get past the first point this morning because we we have a lot of many many serious request that we want to share and have a good time of prayer together so we're gonna look at the practice of the blessed man in verses 1 and 2 now oftentimes one of the styles of the psalms is to describe something negatively and then describe something positively both sides of the coin to examine it sometimes we'll find in the book of psalms we're told what something isn't so that we might then be able to look at what it is and oftentimes we do that in our teaching don't we well negatively stated the practice of the blessed man negatively stated three things are said about a blessed man that he stays away from three negatives that are blessed godly man and you might be a teenager you can be a young boy four five three four five years old whatever your age all the way up to you know, we don't have any octogenarians, but way up there, and it's the same thing. There are three things that are negatively stated that we need to stay away from if we're going to be blessed or happy. The first one, wrong advice. Wrong advice. By the way, have any of you heard any wrong advice sometime this week? you don't have to go very far do you where some places that we can get some wrong advice let's hear some some suggestions here the media all yeah you get the perverts from the west coast excuse me uh... there may be some people on uh... our tape and internet ministry that may be from the west coast but i'm talking about the hollywood media crowd they're the ones that are determining uh... uh... the media okay where's another uh... way that we can get some wrong advice. Of course, the media is a very general thing, isn't it? You have television. You have the printed page. Where else can we get some twisted advice? Well, you know, you'd be surprised how many people depend upon Oprah. Now, sometimes Oprah may be entertaining. And do you know something? Some of you are going to be shocked. Sometimes Oprah is right. But I've got a clock. Oh, here it is over here. I have a clock over there that's right two times in the day, even when it's not plugged in. Even a broken clock can be right twice in the day. So the unsaved world will be right from time to time, but we need to stay away from the wrong type of advice. Notice what it says. Blessed is the man that walketh not You know, a lot of Christians say, you know, we don't like negative preaching. Have you ever heard that? I have a confession. I've heard it a couple of times in my ministry. Well, we want a pastor that just preaches positive things, because we're living in a negative world already. We don't want to hear negative things. We want to hear positive things. What they ought to say is, as in the days of the apostasy, preach unto us smooth things. But you know, here's some negative preaching. And by the way, the negative precedes the positive. Because sometimes you'll never experience God's best until you turn away from those things that will lead you from walking God's way. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. Now the word counsel, the concept of the Hebrew word means the advice, the philosophy of the ungodly. How many times do we see Christian young people rushing to universities and to schools where the counsel of the ungodly is like an unbridled cesspool, spewing out the trash defiling young people's minds in the things of the world today? The public school system, sad to say, giving the wrong type of advice in so many areas. You know, Colossians chapter 2 and verse 8 says, Beware lest any man spoil you. The word spoil means to carry away one's goods. It was a term that would describe being plundered in warfare, where they just clean your tent. Totally. Through violence or through your being asleep, one way or another, you got ripped off. And the idea, don't let anyone spoil you. Through philosophy, vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. And today, we see in classrooms across our country, renegade doctrines and professors who are carrying away the precious vessels of truth that have been placed in the holy minds and temples of many Christian men and women that have gone and now they're being carried away and plundered sad to say going to the wrong places for advice And you know, it results in not blessedness or happiness, but frustration and defeat. Then you've got people that will run for the advice of their analysts. Or Madame Catherine. You ever notice why those birds are up late at night, Channel 18, 3.30 in the morning? Jim, when you have your butter pecan ice cream, avoid Channel 18 and Channel 35. But you ever wonder why those goonie birds are up that late at night? Because it's the people that are tossing and turning, that want to know about the future, and they can't sleep. They're like King Saul. They're looking in the wrong places because the glory of the Lord has departed, and they're away from God, and they're seeking truth and leadership in the wrong places. You've got the Dear Abby crowd and the editorial columns And people running to unsaved lawyers. How about 1 Corinthians 6? People are running today in the church to the wrong advice, going to law, brother against brother, violating the Word of God. You know, I probably could stay right here for the remaining time that we have, but we need to avoid, just summarily stated, wrong advice. If we're going to be blessed and happy, we need to go to the right place. We need to go to the Word of God. And you know, sad to say, Christians will talk to the beautician. They'll talk to their barber. My dad was a barber for 45 years. Praise the Lord, after he got saved, he gave the right kind of advice. But my dad had the scandal on everybody in town he knew everything that was going on and people would come and sit in his chair and they'd start unloading and my dad had it in on everybody luckily he did not luckily he he knew how to zip his mouth he knew it was good for business but how many times is wrong advice and you have a lady who is at work and she's having problems at home and here's ladies at the water cooler at the coffee pop that have been divorced five or six times and there's trouble in the home and what are the ladies going to say, dump the guy! He's no good! But there's no concept of biblical counseling. That might be a Christian lady that's listening to that. and there's all there's there's no lack for the wrong type of counsel we have to be careful now not only is wrong advice not only is wrong advice to be fled from but wrong associations wrong associations you know if there's one thing that'll dragged down elementary junior high high school and college students down the tubes it's wrong associations not being willing to take a stand but i want to be accepted i want to be like i want to be part of the crowd i want to be weird i don't want to be some kind of a uh... you know weirdo but you know the word of god says nor stands in the way the word way has the idea of associations. You're not running with them. Nor stands in the way of sinners. 1 Corinthians 15, 33, you know it well. Be not deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. I think of the example of Jesus in Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 26. He reached out to the unsaved, went to them, shared the truth with them, but they always, listen to me now, they always knew where He stood. And He never violated the truth of God's Word, nor compromised the truth of God's Word to reach anyone. People knew where He stood, but with loving compassion, He reached out and loved and met people at their point of need. And the Scriptures were able to say that He was the very expressed image of God, and yet He was holy, harmless, undefiled. But you know, He reached out to people and touched them and reached them. Wrong advice, number one. Walks not in the council. of the ungodly. Wrong associations nor stands in the way of sinners. And thirdly, in closing, wrong attitudes. Wrong attitudes. Talk about the scornful. It doesn't sit in the seat of the scornful. You know, want to know who the scornful are? And I tell you what, Christian schools are full of scorners and the scornful. You don't have to go to the public school to find them. You'll find them everywhere. I'm not against Christian education. You know that. But you know there are many scornful. Scornful people are mockers of God. They make fun of people that want to do right. They make fun of rules and regulations, often calling them legalistic. Let me say something very quickly. The presence of rules and standards and expectations and regulations are not legalism. If the presence of rules were legalism then God would be the biggest legalism because he gave us the Ten Commandments. Legalism is a wrong attitude expressed towards God's laws. Legalism is the idea that by doing you can somehow gain favor with God without being. Legalism is the pressing of externals when your heart is far from God. Legalism is not the presence of laws or rules. The Bible says in Proverbs 14 and verse 9, fools make a mock of sin. Oh, we have to be careful about wrong attitudes. And oftentimes it will start like this. Students will say, what do you think about such and such a teacher? students will say, well, what do you think about this regulation here? What they're looking for is compatibility of rebellion. And they're looking for somewhere or someone that they can begin to find that is like them. Misery always loves company. And birds of a feather will flock together. The Bible tells us in that eschatological book that we studied in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 3, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and they basically make fun of Bible doctrine. Where is the promise of His coming? Verse 5, it says, they are willingly ignorant. I want us to just make note of one last concept before we close our moment in the doorkeeper of the Psalms and that is this look at verse 1 at the verbs walketh, standeth, sitteth you know the ungodly man sad to say as lot of the Old Testament a series of concessions often times takes place in the life First, they kind of walk past sin. After a while, they're enamored with it, and they no longer walk, but they just kind of stand and watch it a little closer. Before you know it, the process of spiritual erosion, they're in it up to their ears. And you know, whether we're talking about computer pornography or whether we're talking about the wrong type of programs on TV that people can get into staying up late at night watching the wrong kind of programs and whether we're talking about an affair that starts off as a casual relationship. It's always a process of erosion. First you walk by it and you notice it. Then before you know it, you come back and you stop and you're already sinning. You're already making provision, you see, because you didn't flee, but now you're standing. Before you know it, you're sitting like Lot with the elders of the city, and you lose those things that are most precious to you. How we have to be careful about these things. Satan rarely gets a believer to fall through one massive assault. We didn't win that hill in Afghanistan in one assault, I guarantee you. It took north, south, east, and west. That's why they called it Anaconda, the gradual drawing tight of the old noose, the snake tightening. But it was a progressive, purposeful, willful act. And Satan works in a subtle, progressive way through a series of concessions in our lives. Well, we're going to continue next week. Our time is up. Maybe we ought to go for coffee and donuts and come back for part two. Stay here until three in the morning. I'll do it. But there's tomorrow, right? And many of you have to get up before the birds do and do your work. But wouldn't it be so appropriate for us to say, Lord Jesus, reveal to me the concessions that have been made in my life? I've been tainted by this world in my thinking and in my philosophies. And what once shocked me doesn't shock me anymore. And the things that I allow through the television and the things that I allow in my home, the things that I have allowed... There was once a time where we took a stand against those things. And it's just like the process of erosion. As we study the book of Psalm chapter 1, and we've just looked negatively at the paths of the blessed man. Next Wednesday, we're going to look at what the godly man does. Not just what he doesn't do, but what he does. And may the Lord challenge us to be godly men and women for the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. And Lord, this psalm has been challenging and blessing hearts for centuries. And Lord, it speaks to us today in such a very practical, up-to-date way. Father, help us to realize that there's no spiritual shortcut to spirituality. There's no secret where you have to go to a bookstore and buy the latest trick-of-the-trade concept that some writer has come up with. It's right here in the Word of God. And it's simply yielding to the will of God. and establishing a loving relationship with you and knowing you as personal Savior. Lord, where there are those concessions, Lord, there may be some even here in this auditorium that, Lord, are now standing and allowing themselves to be tempted, and soon they'll be sitting, and Lord, there will be an inevitable fall. But Father, I pray that we would to separate ourselves from those things and stand in the way of God and God's people and not the way of sinners. Father, bless us. We would pray for one another and encourage one another. We pray for many that are off at school and, Lord, facing very, very definitive, Lord, assaults in so many ways at home and schools and abroad And Lord, even we are subject to it in the workplace. So many professionals today, even perhaps in our church, are having to go to seminars and briefings where New Age doctrines are taught all under the guise of productivity and positive thinking. Lord, help us to seek Your advice and Your Word. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.