There is a Way that Leads to Life - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Psalm 1, in the wisdom genre, we see a contrast between the ways of the righteous and the ways of the wicked.
Transcript:
There is a way that leads to life. And there is a way that leads to death. Is that a controversial statement? There is a way that leads to life and there is a way that leads to death. On its own it shouldn't really be all that controversial, every human being practices out their belief in that statement.
We choose certain paths and not others because we believe that one will lead to life and prosperity and the other will lead to misery and death. We go for walks, take our multivitamin, pass on dessert, because we believe that it will lead to life. We avoid a daily diet of McDonald's because we will believe it will lead to poor health and death. We practice such discernment every day, choosing one thing instead of another, often with respect to the way of life that latantly resides in our minds. To say that there's a way that leads to life and there's a way that leads to death is not controversial in itself. The controversy arises when it comes to settling on which way leads to life and which way leads to death.
Very few people think that they are on the wrong path. Some might say that they are, but their actions indicate that they, in their heart of hearts, believe otherwise. No one pursues a way that would result in their loss. And I would say even those who would seek to end their own lives must believe that in some way, in some, in some way, they believe that they're winning, that they're coming out on top.
Now in our society, we are tempted to say that, well, maybe this is the right path for me, but not for you. Maybe you have your own right path, but I would say that this is not true, except in the case of minor details. Personal exercise plans may differ based on your particular circumstances, but there is no question that active life promotes health while a sedentary life saps our health.
There is a definite right way, and there's a definite, definite wrong way in life. We can say it's a natural fact. When we speak of nature, we are referring to the order of creation. We live in a world of design permeated by so-called laws. We count on gravity remaining constant, or else we would need to tie ourselves down, lest we float away into the atmosphere.
We respect that gravity remains constant, and so we build bridges instead of walking off cliffs. Moral truth is no less natural. We have been designed to be a certain kind of creature made in the image of God according to Genesis one. Naturally, it follows that there is a way that leads us closer to that end, and there is a way that leads in the complete opposite direction. Whatever leads us toward that perfect harmony with God is life. Whatever gets us, gets us out of tune leads us to a sour note of ruin. Now, as I've said the past few weeks, the Psalms are writings of worship containing Praise, Lament, Thanksgiving, and as we see today, also wisdom. In Psalm one, we are given lyrics which would lead us to life.
So we look at Psalm one verse beginning with verses one through three. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season, and whose leaf leaf does not wither-- whatever they do prospers.
The first word in this psalm is blessed or blessed, and it comes from the Hebrew eser, which means also happy. Happy and blessed are actually interchangeable and very, very often we think happy is a very kind of superficial sort of word, but when we're talking about happiness here, we're not talking about momentary pleasure.
We're talking about a state of affairs, which would lead us to say perhaps after a long life lived, we would say that man or woman lived a happy life. Not that every moment, every particular exact moment was happy, but on the whole, it was a happy life. It was a blessed life. And we hear Jesus take up this sort of language in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five verses three through twelve where he says, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who are who mourn, and just as in in the Psalms, you could interchange that word blessed with happy. Happy are the poor in spirit.
Now, what David intends to communicate here in the Psalm is what the blessed life looks like, what the happy life looks like, and he first starts off with what you shouldn't do if you're going to be blessed. The first thing is, is you shouldn't step with or keep in, or walk with, you shouldn't stand with, you should not sit with the wicked. In other words, you shouldn't have any partnership with them. You see very similarly in Proverbs, later in Psalms and also in Jeremiah, this sort of instruction given says in Proverbs four, verse 14 through 15, do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evil doers. Avoid it, do not travel on it; turn from it and go on your way.
So notice here, this isn't just some. This isn't some incidental kind of crossing of the ways with the wicked. It's actually walking on the way of the wicked, kind of arm in arm, Psalm 26: 4. I do not sit with the deceitful, nor do I associate with hypocrites. Jeremiah in Jeremiah 15:17 said, I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation. And Jeremiah's words there I think reflect the reality that all of us must encounter if we are not to walk with the wicked, which is that life may be somewhat lonely in certain respects if we're going to refuse to break bread with the wicked, to walk in their ways. And that's what I mean by break bread, not that we're having, we're always going to encounter the wicked and we'll see what Jesus has to say about that as we go along here. But we can't enjoy full acceptance by the wicked. And, and, and this is something that I think burdens us so much because we want to be accepted by others. We want approval from others. And if we're going to walk in the ways of God, if we're going to follow Jesus Christ, we are often going to be met with disapproval by the world, we're gonna be met with judgment from the wicked saying You're actually the wicked ones. You're the ones who are walking the wrong path. Now, this term mocker here, it says that we should not sit in the company of, of mockers. A mocker is someone who is proud, who is arrogant, who stirs up trouble. In Proverbs 21:24 says, the proud and arrogant person-- "Mocker" is his name-- behaves with Insolent fury.
Proverbs 29: 8 says, mockers stir up a city but the wise turn away anger. So troublemakers, people who are making a mess of things, we should have nothing to do with them. Now again, as I, as I just mentioned, there is a bit of a tension here because we do live in this world, and if I was going to kind of visualize it for you, this, this tension in which we are living in is, I think it's similar to going for a swim in the ocean, and some of you know that when you go swimming in the ocean, there can be very dangerous rip currents that you have to be wary of. And some of you heard this news last weekend, sadly, of how, Malcolm- Jamar Warner got pulled out to sea by one of these currents and sadly passed away. Now you could just avoid the ocean altogether of course, swimming is an optional sort of thing, but we don't have an option of living in this world. So if you're going to be in the water, you have to know, how close can you get to that current before you're going to get sucked into it and taken out to sea? This is something that requires great wisdom. I'm not giving you instructions on swimming here, so please don't take this, but maybe if you were a stronger person, a good swimmer, you could take more risks.
I'm sure surfers take greater risks in doing these things. That'd be one thing. But certainly you wouldn't send a little child getting very close to there. And we have to have that sort of self understanding for ourselves and the company that we keep. Am I mature enough in Christ to enter into these spaces to sit alongside these people without myself being drawn in and carried out to sea?
Or do I need to make space here unless I get carried away into the way of the wicked? Now again, we're not called to leave this world. Jesus says in John 17, verses 14 through 18, this is his prayer for his disciples. He's praying for us. He says, I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by your, by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. So Jesus is our example here. He has gone before us.
He was sent into the world. So now he is sending us into the world, and yet like him, we are not to be of the world. And so we must be very judicious. We saw Jesus, Jesus didn't have any problems sitting down with sinners, and we should certainly have no qualms about about that, but we just must be very careful that we're not entering into, into communion with sinners, that we're not taking up their ways.
It's not a concern of being polluted by sinners. It's a question of are we actually going to go hand in hand with what they are doing and saying, that's great stuff you're doing right there.
So the first thing that we understand from this psalm, those who are blessed are those who do not join hands with the wicked. They don't march in lockstep with them in their ways, down their path. So if that's what we're not supposed to do, what then are we supposed to do in the positive sense in order to be blessed, to know happiness? It says in verse two, it says, the one who is blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night.
Now, this is taking up a theme that was familiar to the Israelites. They heard it in the first chapter of the book of Joshua, Joshua 1:8, where the people are instructed in this way, it says, keep this book of the law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything in it. Then you'll be prosperous and successful.
The way that I think we should think about the law of the Lord is in this way, if we love God, we will obey his commands. Jesus tells us this, but sometimes when it comes to God's commands, it can be difficult for us to walk in accordance with his commands, but it should naturally follow that we would desire to walk in those commands because they flow from God himself.
To think of it analogously, it's, the law is not God himself. But the law, his commands, flow from who he is. So you think about, we all like the sun. We, we don't really like gray days. Usually we enjoy the sun. Now the sun, the planetary body itself, is distinct from its light and yet the light comes from it, and by it we can see the sun and everything else.
And so in the same way the law flows from who God is, it reveals who God is, who we are supposed to be, and who we actually are. It exposes us. Now, of course, certain provisions of the law have passed away in Christ that we find in the Old Testament that were introduced because of our own human weakness, because our of our sinfulness.
We think about all the dietary laws, things along those lines, but we understand that God's law is eternal in substance. That what we find in God's law is in fact wisdom for life. It shows us the way that we should go. So I want you to consider when you think about God's law, when you think about his commands, when you think about his, his teachings. Do you delight in them or do you find them bothersome? Do you delight in them or do you find them bothersome? Now I think it is possible to experience some tension here where we delight in the law of the Lord, even as we are grieved by it, maybe even frustrated by it, because we understand how short we come up. We see what God wants us to be, and we know we are not that as we look at ourselves in the mirror. Even so, we can yet delight in the law of the Lord because it represents the excellence of who we are supposed to be. You think about someone who's aspiring to be a professional musician or an athlete.
Yes, they get frustrated as they practice and they hit a sour note. Or they don't run as fast, you know, they drop the ball, but they love the art, they love the sport, they love the, the excellence of their profession. And what we find in the law of God is the excellence of what it looks like to be truly human in accordance with God's design.
And so even as we fall short of God's law, if we delight in it, we will nevertheless continue to seek that excellence. See, there's nothing wrong with the law. The problem is us. It's the corruption of our hearts. Paul in Romans 7 comments on this, reflecting on his own person.
Says once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.
So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. And then he basically goes on to say, say, I'm the, I'm the wretched man. I'm the problem here. So the law has this peculiar way of, it's righteous, it's holy and good, but it exposes us and even excites in us this rebelliousness, which has attached itself to our human natures because of the fall.
So we delight in the law of God, even as we recognize that we're just not there yet. It's almost as though we're impoverished and we're standing before a great house. Maybe some of you, you know, you ride in your car and you look at a house and you're like, oh wow, that's a really wonderful house. I'd love to have a house like that.
And you think to yourself, not now, I mean someday, somehow. It's in that sort of way that, that we should delight in the law of God. That we understand, yes, I don't measure up. If we thought we measured up, we're deceiving ourselves. We do not measure up. You know, we think to ourselves someday, somehow that's who I will be.
We delight in the law of the Lord. And so if we delight in it, we are meditating on it. The one who is blessed meditates on the law of the Lord. Now, when we talk about meditation, we're not talking about Eastern notions of meditation. If you know anything about that, kind of like the Buddhist form, it's an emptying of your mind, nothingness.
That's not Christian meditation. Instead, this sort of meditation seeks to fill the mind with the truth of scripture.
The one who will be happy, the one who will be blessed meditates on God's word. So this raises a question. I asked, you know, do you delight in the law of the Lord? Do you find it bothersome? Now, I ask, what do you meditate on? Do you meditate on God's word or do you meditate on something else?
Maybe it's your Facebook timeline, or Instagram, or the sports talk or political talk show you listen to. All these things aren't bad things. I, I, I've listened to all those things and looked at all those things. They're not bad. But the question is, is what are you making your meditation?
Are you being instructed, taught, conformed more by those things than you are God's word? Now, it's a great thing that you're here this morning, because this is part of what it means to meditate on God's word. We are all meditating on it here together. But if this is all you're doing, then I must tell you, and you probably know this yourself, by the end of the week, you're running on fumes.
You're starting to put other things into the tank based on those other things that you're meditating on. And they're not enough. They don't. They don't result in us being blessed. They don't result in our, in our true happiness. And so the, it's for this reason that every day we should seek to come before God's word to meditate on.
It doesn't mean you have to meditate vast portions of scripture, just even a portion of it. Just take a verse. You can just meditate on that. Let it saturate in your mind. A small thing that yet leads to the blessed, happy life that is being presented here in this song. Because what follows from this is that it says that a person, that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. So as we delight in the law of the Lord, as we meditate on it day and night, we come to life. You can imagine a tree, if it's in a desert, it's, it's, it's not getting water, it's not getting all the nutrients it needs.
You can have an apple tree in the desert and you say, that looks like a terrible thing. It's not becoming what it's supposed to be. Now plant that next to a river, becomes exactly what it's supposed to be. It begins bearing forth fruit season after season because it has everything that it needs. The same is true for us.
As we become rooted in God's word, we become exactly who we are supposed to be, and we become durable so that we bring forth fruit season after season. Every season brings its difficulties, but we can bring forth fruit even in difficult seasons if we are planted along these streams of water. The wisdom from God.
Now hanging over this is this big question of if, if we do all of this, we'll know the blessed and happy life. As I was saying before, the, as we stand before the law, we're exposed because we know we don't do everything that we were created to do. We're not measuring up. So the question is, is well who has done this?
Has anyone? And the answer is, yes, someone has. And that person is Jesus Christ. See, this is the way in which we look at the Psalms through the lens of, of the revelation of Jesus Christ, and we see this presentation of the blessed person as this one who doesn't walk in the way of the wicked, who delights in the law of the Lord, meditates on it day and night.
None of us have done that, but Jesus has done that. He is the human being that all of us were created to be. You see, Jesus is not the exception. He's the norm. He's the rule. He is who we are all supposed to be, and he came to redeem us so that we should be made like him. So if we have that in mind that, okay, we don't measure up to this, but Christ has measured up to this, we can approach this text with this mindset of both a now and a not yet. Yes, we understand we are not going to realize the fullness of this, but we realize that the fullness of this will be realized because of what Christ has accomplished and because we've been united with him by faith, and so we are looking forward to a perfect fruitfulness which will be revealed at the day of Christ's return. So we think someday, somehow, and Christ is the solution. He is the answer. And we have this very vivid picture in, in the end, in in Revelation 22, and this is drawing from the Old Testament in Ezekiel 47, where you have this vision given to Ezekiel the prophet of this new temple, and there's a river flowing from the temple that's bringing forth fruitfulness.
It says, fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. And then you see this vision taken up in John's own revelation, the vision that he received of the end in Revelation 22 verses one through two, the heavenly Jerusalem has descended upon earth, and it says, then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
This is what we are looking forward to, this fulfillment, which is brought about by Christ because Christ, Christ is the only one who has really, truly brought the law to life in himself, and it's, and it's him who has lifted the sense of death in himself, which has been hanging over us because of our disobedience of the law.
And so because everything hinges upon him, it's only as we've been united with him by faith as we've put our trust in him, that we can know that new life for ourselves. He, he teaches his disciples this in John 15.
He says, I'm the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every, every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it'll be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I and you, you'll bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and will be done for you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. What Jesus is talking about here is this, is that as we put our faith in him. We actually begin to bear forth the fruit of righteousness in our life that we were created to bear.
We become whom we are created to be. And that begins now, and it continues on into eternity when that perfection is realized at his return. Now this stands in stark contrast with the fate of those who are not joined to Christ, those who are not joined to him, who are trying to draw life from from within themselves, are just like dead branches.
And in the end, they bear no fruit. They have no life of themselves, and so they're cast into a bonfire and burned up. In verses four through six, we see that that's exactly what is said to await the wicked.
It says, not so the wicked. In terms of the fruitfulness, they're like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. Now, I love the contrast here where the righteous, those who are walking in the ways of the Lord are described as as trees rooted along a river. In juxtaposition here we have the wicked described, not even as a dead tree, but as mere chaff, and chaff is that which was separated from wheat when they were threshing the wheat. It was just the leftovers. It was nothing. It was just little things that as you thresh the wheat, it would just get caught by the wind and be driven away to who knows where.
This is the fate of the wicked. They will not stand in the end. And this is important for us to remember, because as we look out on this world, we are sometimes left under the impression that the wicked are so strong. It seems as though that they are the mighty oaks while we are the chaff, but this is not so.
In the end, it'll be exposed that they are nothing because they will not be able to stand in the judgment when they stand before God. They will have no excuse for their ways, they'll have no place in the assembly of the righteous. You know, talking before about this desire that we have for belonging and how lonely it can be sometimes to walk in the ways of God.
Well, I can promise you this, that in the end we will not be lonely. We will be part of this great company. This great, big, huge, beautiful family from all across the world will be all gathered together celebrating this blessed happiness, which is ours in Christ. But the wicked will have no place in that assembly. They will not belong. They'll be cast out.
You see our assurance as we go through this world, which has many troubles in it, our assurance is what we see in verse six, that the Lord watches over the way of the righteous. And what this means is that God's got his eye on us. He's keeping us safe. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't die. Jesus died. We all die, but we are safe in the father's hand.
Seeing John 10: 14 and 2 Timothy 2: 19 testimony of this, Jesus says in John 10: 14, I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me. This is the comfort that we have, that Christ looks over us as his sheep, and those who are truly his sheep will follow after him. Now, sometimes he has to go out and rescue us, find that lost sheep.
But the sheep know the voice of their shepherd. Paul in second Timothy says, nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: the Lord knows those who are his, and, everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness. The Lord knows who are those who are his.
Even if you feel like you're overlooked, even if you feel like you're downtrodden by the world, God knows who you are. His eye is upon you, and anyone who truly belongs to God turns away from wickedness. Now again, we're all a work in, in progress here. It's not that we're absolutely perfect right out of the gate, but when you, when you're joined to Christ, we should begin to see fruit.
And so it isn't, it's not wrong for us to be discerning in the case in which someone claims they are of Christ, they say, oh yeah, I'm a Christian. I believe in Jesus. And yet there are no indications at all that they've turned away from wickedness. That seems evidence that they in fact do not know Christ.
Because, you see, the wicked walk along their own path. They're not interested in the path of Christ, and that path that they walk ends in destruction. Now, they may confidently walk down that path. It's not any surprise that, again, I said at the beginning, no one thinks they're wrong. Proverbs 14:12 says, there's a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
The reality is that there is only one way to life and it is God's way. Only one man, Jesus Christ, the incarnate son of God, has walked faithfully in his way. There is no disharmony between him and the law. He is the sweet fulfillment of it. This is how Jesus can say to us I am the way, the truth and the life.
No man comes to the father, but by me. We are dead branches on our own, fit only for the bonfire, but joined to the living vine we bear much fruit. United with Christ, God's law becomes our delight and the meditation of our minds. And so season after season after season without ceasing, we bring forth fruit that continues on into the age of eternity.
Now, as we kind of look at this landscape of our society here in America, we may notice that Christianity has become somewhat repugnant to popular culture. It's, it's become unseemly even while the church has gained ground worldwide. Now, as we notice that, we should not assume that it'll always be considered noxious by our neighbors.
Sometimes we just think, oh, it's a lost cause. People just won't turn to Christ anymore That's not so, and in fact, I think there's a bit of a, a, we call it a quiet awakening that is afoot even now, because there's a certain emptiness of the way of wickedness that even now those who walk it know that it is not blessed and is not happy. And as they walk that path, they may be, they may be awakened to seek another path, the true path to life. CS Lewis, writing even 67 years ago, offers this comment that again, it seemed like it would apply to our time.
He writes this in his reflections on the Psalms. It says, in so far as this idea of the law's beauty, sweetness, or preciousness, arose from the contrast of the surrounding paganisms, we may soon find occasion to recover it. Christians increasingly live on a spiritual island; new and rival ways of life surround it in all directions, and their tides come further up the beach every time.
None of these new ways is yet so filthy or cruel as some Semitic paganism. But many of them ignore all individual rights and are already cruel enough. Some give morality a wholly new meaning which we cannot accept, some deny its possibility. Perhaps we shall all learn, sharply enough, to value the clean air and sweet reasonableness of the Christian ethics, which in a more Christian age, we might have taken for granted.
But of course, if we do, we shall then be exposed to the danger of priggery. We might come to thank God that we are not as other men. This introduces the greatest difficulty which the Psalms have raised in my mind. So if you had any difficulty tracking with what Lewis is saying there, he is saying yes, it seems as though Christians are are on an island now, and yet people may awaken to the reality that, hey, the teachings of Christ are actually a pretty sweet thing.
They make life better. And so people may turn back to Christ, but he does have this caution, and I, and I join him in sounding it, that we do not become prideful, boastful, backbiting, basically like mockers walking in the way of the wicked. Because we do live in a polarized age and we, we see some wondrous things happening with people flipping to the side of Christ, but these converts and we ourselves must be careful not to puff ourselves up with the pride and arrogance that so often characterizes American politics. Again, this would be to stray to the company of mockers. Rather, we should simply be known for our delight in the ways of God, not by any unseemly delight in destroying our opponents.
There is a way that leads to life and there is a way that leads to death. Our desire is to bring everyone we can to life by the grace of God, to introduce people to Christ so their lives can be saved in him, so that in turn they can be restored to the way of life God created them for, so that they along with us in Christ may all be called blessed.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we continue our series Summer in the Psalms. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)