The Way of the Righteous | Psalm 1 | Morning Psalms and Prayer

We begin a new chapter in our Morning Psalms and Prayer series by diving into the foundational opening of the Psalter: Psalm 1. While often read as a simple instruction for living, we look deeper to see how these verses point directly to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Join us as we meditate on what it means to truly delight in the Law of the Lord and find our strength as trees planted by the living water of the Gospel.

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Good morning and welcome to Morning Psalms and Prayers. This morning I went and started one of these and I started to read a prayer from Hughes Elephant Old from his Prayers of Illumination in his Leading in Prayer workbook and realized I was reading a prayer for Christmas Eve. So I am out of prayers from Hughes, Oliphant, Old, so we're gonna dig into this great book, this awesome resource I have called Reformation Worship. In it, they take some of the collocks from the Book of Common Prayer and they put it in more modern English, and so I'm gonna be working my way through several of those here as we go.

So let us go to prayer. God, the strength of all those who trust in you, mercifully accept our prayers, and because the weakness of our moral nature can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments, we may please you, both in will and deed, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

All right, yesterday we finished up Psalm 119. It was a fantastic journey for me personally, I hope it was for you, just seeing the importance of the word of God, the importance that we put this as a primacy in our lives. So now we are going to start from the beginning of the Psalter and we're going to go and we're going to work through some psalms. We will do the whole psalm for the day, like today, because it's shorter.

Other ones will break up. But we begin today with Psalm 1. Hear the word of the Lord. 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. As we start out today, we can see here right away, blessed is the man. Now, ultimately, this psalm is talking about all people.

Blessed are the people who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, et cetera. But ultimately, the most important thing, the most important thing is that this is talking about Jesus. All of the Psalter, all of the psalms are ultimately in some way pointing to this salvation that is going to come. There's an anticipation in the Psalms, particularly in the Psalms that talk about the King.

And so these first eight Psalms particularly, and if you go back and listen to some of the sermons I've done, I did a sermon series on Psalms 1 through 8 just last year, but you'll see that this is pointing to Jesus. And so as we see that we will be blessed in doing these things, The truth of the matter is that Jesus did it for us. He is the blessed man. He is the man who did these things for us.

He is the true king. He is the one that these Psalms are ultimately pointing to. That is important for us to remember. But, at the same time, just as we saw in Psalm 119, we can take this psalm, we can open it up, and we can pray with it, right?

Lord, may I be blessed. May I not walk in the counsel of the wicked. May I not stand in the way of sinners. You're getting the idea. This is the ideal that we want our lives to be. Well, doesn't that make sense? We want our ideal to be like Jesus. We want our sanctification. We want our holiness to have us conforming us to the image of Christ. And so that's who we want to be. And we get to these words in verse 2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

Well, what did we see in Psalm 119? That delight of God's Word, that delight of God's law is so important. And so, notice that there is an antithesis here. There is this one, the man who walks on the Council of Wicked, doesn't stand in the way of sinners, but what does he do? He's the opposite of things. Why? Because he focuses on the word of God. His delight is in the law of God.

And so what does this blessed person, what does the blessed man become? He's like a tree planted by streams of water and it yields its fruit. It does not wither. Look at all those descriptions. They are important. They are foundational. They're planted. They're firm. They're strong. They yield its fruit. Something comes out of it, and it lasts. It does not wither. And at the end of verse 3, in all that he does, he prospers. Now, this is not talking about prosperity like modern prosperity gospel heresy. that is so pervasive in our day. That's not what it's talking about. It's not talking about financial prosperity. It's talking about the prosperity of God. It's talking about God caring for him. It's talking about when things come down, when it comes down to the end of the day, God is using that.

His prosperity is not financial. His prosperity is in the things that truly matter. The things that are about the will of God, and that's where our focus, that's where our drive needs to be. That we will be prospering, not according to our standards, not according to human standards, but that we will prosper according to the standard of the word of the living God.

And so that is why we want to not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. That's why we delight in the law of the Lord, so that we can be planted, so that we can yield fruit, and so that we do not wither. As we go to prayer today, just a reminder that what we are doing now on Wednesdays is we're taking our church prayer guide here and we're praying for the missionary that's listed for that prayer guide for the week. So let us go to prayer this morning.

Triune God, as we begin this day, we pray that we would not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But today we ask that you would strengthen us to be the person whose delight is in your law, and that we would meditate on it today and into the night. Today we pray for the Ministry of Grace Covenant Ministries in Kentucky. Bless them as they serve those in need in their area. Uphold the servants who work there by granting them your strength. We pray that you would continue to use them to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that others may hear and believe the good news through the power of the Holy Spirit. We lift up the discipleship ministries at that ministry and pray that our sisters and brothers in the faith in their community would be built up and strengthened in their faith and trust in the work of Jesus for them. And as we step out into your world to serve you today, we thank you for the work of Christ for us.

And so may we desire to be like him. By your word and spirit, strengthen us to be like trees planted by streams of water. May we yield fruit and not wither under the pressure of the world. May our proclamation of the truth of Christ prosper, that he may receive all honor and glory for what he has done. It is in his holy name that we pray. Amen. All right. Well, I hope you have a very good Wednesday. Take care.

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