Psalm 1: Knowing God Knowing God Meditations in the Psalms Pt. 1 Spence Shelton, January 15, 2017 CMO Update Good Morning. I want to start off by updating you about our Christmas Missions Offering. For those of you new to Mercy, One of our core values as a church is that we Love Our World. What we mean by that is that we believe we ve been greatly loved by God. And that love has so revolutionized our lives we want others to experience it. And God himself calls his church to be the tangible expression of his love to its surrounding community. So we care for the sick, the poor, & the hurting in our community and we proclaim ultimate hope in the gospel as we meet those needs here in Charlotte. And we plant churches around the world that seek to do the same in their community. The Christmas Missions Offering is our chance to rally together around the mission God has called us towards and give sacrificially to that end. Last year we gave $22,000 towards the CMO. Which was incredible and way above anything we expected would happen. This year we were not really sure where to set the goal. Truthfully year 1 was so overwhelming just to be able to do the same thing again would have been awesome. And anything over $30k would allow us to be a huge blessing to all of our partner ministries. So many of you gave so sacrificially towards this offering and all together we gave over $37,500! PRAISE GOD! I want to say THANK YOU. Thank you for the way you gave so sacrificially. I know you did. I m overwhelmed by that. Ya ll, I am excited with how we will be able advance the mission of God through this offering both here in charlotte & around the world. But the deeper joy I have is in being a part of a church that is ALL-IN for the mission of God. We ve got one life and I love that I am among a people that are making the most of it. I m so honored to be your pastor and I brag on you every chance I get with other pastors. Thank you again for how you lead in the mission of God! Makes me especially excited for this series we are getting into. Series Intro If you have your Bible, turn to Psalm 1. This is our passage for today. To find the Psalms an old trick is just to kind of let your bible flop open to the middle and it will open to the Psalms. Now we also have to say a trick to find it is to break your iphone in half and it will open to the psalms. Over the next 4 or 5 weeks we are going to be in a series we are calling Knowing God where we are going to be looking at a different Psalm each week. Here s why: The Psalms, maybe more than anywhere else in scripture, teach us about God and demonstrate how we are to relate to him. And I think that simple idea: how we relate to God, is the missing link in the spiritual 1
lives of so many people. I think one of the most common reasons Christians grow cold in their faith and a really common reason non-christians struggle to believe is because God becomes confined to a set of doctrinal statements you are supposed to believe and religion becomes a set of rules you are supposed to follow. So what happens for so many is their idea of God gets reduced down to just facts and rules? And this is why some people who have been Christian for a long time seem to plateau in their faith. They ve mastered the facts & rules. And sure you can always read more books and learn a few more facts, but generally those Christians will talk about the excitement of their faith as that which they experienced when they first became believers. And now they are kind of just going through the motions. But the bible doesn t talk about God like that at all. God is not a bunch of facts and rules. The bible talks about him as a person! And the bible is filled with people who are interacting with God and talking about God like someone they know personally. The bible tells you that God designed you to experience both Awe and Intimacy with God as you marvel at his greatness and rest in his closeness. Nowhere is that more out front than in the Psalms. So here s what I want for us these next four weeks. I do want us to learn about God (the facts). And I want us to learn about Godliness (the behaviors) because both of those are good endeavors. BUT, we cannot stop there. I want the ultimate end of our time in the Psalms not to be knowing about God, but to know God himself. And the difference between the two is everything. You understand the idea of knowing about vs knowing? I know you do on an intuitive level. Ever seen a famous landmark that just takes your breath away? Grand Canyon or Time Square? You go home and show your friends the 400 pictures you took and then after all that you say you really just gotta SEE IT FOR YOURSELF. Words & pictures just don t do it justice. Or let s say you get a bacon wrapped filet from BLT steakhouse in uptown I can describe it in ounces & smells & medium rareness Pittsburgh style with clarified butter on the side That description doesn t satisfy you. It makes you want to experience the real thing. I d be happy to let you take me there with you! Or I think about when I had our first child. I was reading the books on what to expect. Every week I knew exactly how big my child was and what item in the produce department his size corresponded to. I got to see pictures of him. I knew his name. But then one day I actually MET him. And it changed everything. I went from knowing about my son to knowing him. Fatherhood became more than a title, it was a relationship to this new little person. And there is no way I would ever settle for a detached relationship with my son now that we know each other. This is what I want for us. To transition from God being something we know about to someone we relate to, to someone you know. And this intimacy you begin to 2
experience with God: It s the difference between tired religion and a life giving, transforming relationship to Jesus. And the Psalms are the best place in scripture for this because what jumps out at you as you read them is not doctrine first, but an intense relationship between the writers and God. And that s what we are seeking. Our goal this series is for you to begin experiencing an awe-inspiring close relationship with God. And we ll find mountains of examples of that here in the Psalms. Now I will say the series is a misnomer. Just like you can t know everything about a person in 4 dates, you certainly can t know everything about God in 4 sermons. But it is the shift over to experiencing a relationship with God that we are after. And I think if you will commit yourself to the next 4 weeks together we can do that. Some of you are new today and you are trying to figure out if this is the church for you. Give it 4 weeks. That gives you enough time to really get a feel for the church. Also for those of you who are here and now just need to connect, we are launching new community groups today and they can be the place where you can begin to build some friendships with others here at Mercy. Ok I need to give you ONE important note about reading the Psalms then we ll get into today s passage. You can write this down because its important when you go to understand the bible that you understand what kind of writing you are reading. Here s the deal: The Psalms are Songs. We are spending time in the Psalms partly because they are not stories or letters. They are poetry or songs. And Songs are just a little different than prose right? They awaken the affections of the heart in a unique and powerful way. Think about it. How many sermons can you recite? It s ok, I m not offended. But if I give you just a couple bars of a song you can pick up and run. Like if I say alright STOP collaborate and listen! OR yesterday. Or fascinating when I say Hello! Some of y'all are thinking Lionel Richie and some Adele. For some of you it s the presong conversation Oh my gosh, Becky And ya ll are gone! You start moving & smiling because songs attach themselves to you and kind of open you up unlike anything else. God made us musical creatures and when we make music it stirs the soul! My family went to see Moana the other day She s in a classic Disney teenage angst situation where she s right and mom & dad are wrong and she s gotta follow her heart which is just the worst philosophy. And I m rolling my eyes. But then She starts singing. And the music starts to build. And she s singing about how the sea is calling her. Poor philosophy but incredible music and I m looking at my little girls who are watching and all of the sudden I m getting teary eyed and I m like its gonna be ok guys. We can get 3
through this. Why? Because music does something to us. It awakens our emotions like nothing else. That s the only reason some of ya ll watch grey s anatomy. Imagine it without a soundtrack. It d be the lamest thing ever. That s what makes the Psalms such a powerful book of the bible. The Psalms give language to the full spectrum of human emotions. You understand God created us as emotional beings? He understands our emotions. That should be a huge relief to some of you. There is no emotion that you can have that God will be surprised by. I m going to list just 24 emotions that show up in the Psalms. I m borrowing this from John Piper who put it together a few years ago during his study in the Psalms: 1. Loneliness: I am lonely and afflicted (Psalms 25:16). 2. Love: I love you, O Lord, my strength (Psalms 18:1). 3. Awe: Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him (Psalms 33:8). 4. Sorrow: My life is spent with sorrow (Psalms 31:10). 5. Regret: I am sorry for my sin (Psalms 38:18). 6. Contrition: A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalms 51:17). 7. Discouragement and turmoil: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me (Psalms 42:5)? 8. Shame: Shame has covered my face (Psalms 44:15). 9. Exultation: In your salvation how greatly he exults (Psalms 21:1). 10. Marveling: This is the Lord s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes (Psalms 118:23). 11. Delight: His delight is in the law of the Lord (Psalms 1:2). 12. Joy: You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound (Psalms 4:7). 13. Gladness: I will be glad and exult in you (Psalms 9:2). 14. Fear: Serve the Lord with fear (Psalms 2:11). 15. Anger: Be angry, and do not sin (Psalms 4:4). 16. Peace: In peace I will both lie down and sleep (Psalms 4:8). 17. Grief: My eye wastes away because of grief (Psalms 6:7). 18. Desire: O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted (Psalms 10:17). 19. Hope: Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you (Psalms 33:22). 20. Brokenheartedness: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalms 34:18). 21. Gratitude: I will thank you in the great congregation (Psalms 35:18). 22. Zeal: Zeal for your house has consumed me (Psalms 69:9). 23. Pain: I am afflicted and in pain (Psalms 69:29). 4
24. Confidence: Though war arise against me, yet I will be confident (Psalms 27:3). Do you hear all of those? God made us emotional creatures and the function of the Psalms is to stir up your emotions and then point those emotions to what they were ultimately designed for. They show you where to find ultimate happiness, how to deal with despair, grief, and suffering. What to do with your anger and apathy. The Psalms are this beautiful tool God can use to shape how you think and feel about him. They are an amazing gift to the church! God desires more in our relationship with him than facts & rules. And over the next few weeks we are going to look into these great lyrics so that we can truly begin to know God. Because once you begin to walk with him and relate to him, it changes the way you relate to everything else around you. There is an old hymn by Helen Lemmel written in 1918 that says turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face.and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory & grace. When you really know him, you will start to interpret the rest of the world through that relationship with God. He will prove so glorious, so steady, so good, so bright that anything not of him will fade. It wont hurt you as much, wont burden you as much, wont worry you as much. That s where we are going this series. And I gotta say this is difficult to preach. The psalms draw out such an intimacy with God and you may find yourself like me where I just don t feel like I m that close to God sometimes. My prayer is that you will today have your eyes lifted up to see God more for who he is and that he will use me to that end. Now let me get into our Psalm today, Psalm 1. Since its poetry and not prose I want to read it all once through and let you hear it all together. Then make a couple of observations. [1] 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; [2] but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. [3] 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. [4] The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. [5] Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; [6] for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. 5
The whole series could be preached out of this Psalm. There is no way I can do justice to how beautifully deep & layered yet simple this Psalm is. There is such POWER up in here. But with God s help we are going to get after it. Psalm 1 is written and positioned very intentionally as an introduction to the rest of the Psalms. The way one Church father said it was that as the foundation is to the house, or the heart to an animal, so is this Psalm to the rest of the book. It s not just your FIRST Psalm, but it articulates what is at the heart of the rest of the Psalms. That s what makes it so powerful and so important for us as we seek to understand what it means to truly know God. There are two types of people in Psalm 1. The blessed and the wicked. The psalmist is contrasting these two with the obvious agenda of depicting the virtues of the blessed life and the consequences of the wicked life. So that will be a part of our task today. The blessed man some translations say happy. Which is a fair translation of the word. But the fascinating thing about the word is that it is plural in the Hebrew. Which means the better way to understand it is An abundance of blessings belongs to the man. There isn t just a general state of happiness, but there is a vast treasure of good things from God that belong to this man both in this life and in the life to come. This is something the Psalmist wants you to see right out front that will be carried throughout. There is a present goodness & a future goodness in the life of one of the two people he s about to talk about. Psalm 1 puts you in one of two camps. Which is really what all of scripture does. You either know God and are blessed as you are growing closer to him or you don t know him and you are doomed. I want to show you five evidences of knowing God that appear in this Psalm. There are definitely more, but I see 5 pretty clearly. Evidences of knowing God 1. God s voice carries more weight in your life than anyone else [1] 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; Look at verse 1. It starts with a bunch of negatives. Blessed is the man who Doesn t. Before you see what he does, the Psalmist draws your attention to what, or rather whom, he avoids. In verse 2 we ll see who does influence him but first, who he doesn t let whisper in his ear. The blessed man doesn t take the advice of the wicked, he doesn t identify with sinners and this scoffer word that is the word for a mocker. 6
A couple of months ago we were talking about friendship and we brought to attention proverbs 13.20 that says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. And I told you that what king Solomon is saying there is that your current friends are the future you. And David, presumably the author of this Psalm, is saying you cannot walk closely with God (which is what all the Psalms are about) and at the same time be heavily influenced by those who are opposed to God. Verse 2 starts with the word BUT. As in instead of. Or as opposed to that. The psalmist is showing you two sides of the fence: one who knows and walks with God, and one who mocks God. And if you think mocking is harsh, listen the natural end of all sin is to despise the things of God. You will either worship God or mock God. There is no middle of the road here. And that SHOULD make you assess the people whose words matter a lot to you. You may have a lot of non-christian friends and that s great! But what weight do their words hold in your heart and mind? This is why I think it is unwise for Christians to date non- Christians. Because the person you date should be someone you like and respect. Someone whose opinion of you matters. And if they are opposed to God (and there is no middle ground) then their words and God s words will continually be in conflict. Same thing with your friends. Which is why we push you to be in community with other believers in the local church. So you have people echoing the voice of God in your life. Listen this word wicked may come with some baggage for you. Like I m some fire & brimstone preacher up here from a scary Salem witch trial movie. And I don t like how much wrong abuse has been done with this word. But what I gotta say is this is the word God opens the Psalms with to describe those opposed to God. And I can t back down from the word. It is every bit as heavy as it sounds. It draws a line in the sand and there is nothing good about it. But here s the thing: nobody becomes wicked because they have to - like it s a duty or something. That s the whole thing about the way this verse is structured. What happens is you watch, listen to, and immerse yourself in wickedness and then, you find that wickedness to be attractive. You ve meditated on it (we don t call it that) but that s in essence what you ve been doing, and now you find yourself wanting it. 1 And so you become what you put yourself in and around. Your current friends are the future you. So my question to you is: who are you listening to? Whose opinions and advice carry the most weight in your life? I m not telling you to pull yourself away from non-christians. In fact our whole ministry is built around sending you TO them. But whose words shape you? Are they God s words? 1 This idea comes from John Piper s fantastic sermon on Psalm 1 Songs that shape the heart 7
2. God s word is better to you than the world around you [2] but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. Couple of words here. The first is delight. This may be the word I want to most characterize the tone of our church as it relates to God & his word. Delight. Remember this verse is in contrast to verse 1. The contrast isn t BEING wicked versus BEING holy. No the contrast is from being shaped by one thing to being shaped by another thing. That s why the contrast in verse 2 refers not to duty and obedience, but to delight and meditation. The point is that the only hope against the pleasures of the world is the pleasures of the word. And just like the pleasures of the world are awakened by looking at them long enough, so the pleasures of the word are awakened in the soul by looking at them long enough day and night. 2 Ok so here s the question: do you delight in God s word? Does it make you joyful to sit down with the bible and read it? I m not saying everyday you bounce out of bed at 5:30am and Sing GOOD MORNING!!!! And gleefully turn open the pages of Deuteronomy to see what great promises of the Lord await you. That is not me most mornings. I groggily meander downstairs, turn on a bright light to wake 2 Piper sermon Songs that shape the heart me up. No words are spoken. But I do it because I know there is true delight there. Delight comes from knowing God s word is living and active. That it holds the only true way to make sense of the world. That it carries an abundance of promises from God to you and that most importantly it reveals God himself to you. The one who knows God has his or her affections stirred by God s word. Is that you? If not, listen the answer is not to try to smile your way through your quiet time tomorrow. It s to go back to the source of all joy and consider it again. 1 John 4.19 We love because he first loved us. Our capacity to delight in God grows out of his love for us. You must first sit down in God s love for you. That while you were far removed from him. While you were wicked, he loved you. There is nothing you can do to stop him from loving you and when you see that at your worst God still sacrificed everything for you that begins to break that heart of stone. The more you consider it God opens your heart to it. And you begin to delight in he who saved you. And then you delight in his word because it s the place where you meet your rescuer. Your savior. Do you see that the battle for your soul - between the wicked and God - is a battle that will be won by what you DELIGHT in? Because you will always chase what you want. As the great American Philosopher Woody Allen once said The heart wants what it wants. So the question is what will occupy your mind, your eyesight? 8
John Calvin, an old dead pastor who was brilliant, said you don t have true saving knowledge of God until you long to know and serve him. When the gospel does take root in the heart, the sign of it is that Christians are led to establish their complete happiness in him. Unless people experience this, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him. 3 That leads us to the other word I want you to see: meditate 3. God s word is informing how you see the world around you meditate (v3) Here is where I think a lot of us miss the power of God s word. We don t really dwell on it. It s kind of like the way my wife reads random novels before going to sleep Courtney likes to read before going to bed. It is her way of getting ready to go to sleep. And for 12 years I ve seen it at work but don t understand it. I get in the bed with a book and 12 seconds later I am completely asleep. I MIGHT get a page read, but pillows & books don t work for me. Anyways, I ll see her reading and I ll say, Hey what are you reading? And she ll say I don t know. Some book. And I ll say, What s it about? She ll say, I don t know. And I m like WHAT!? What are the unspoken subplots and what is 3 McNeil, Calvin s Institutes 1.2.1., 41. As cited in Timothy Keller Prayer : Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. (NY, NY Dutton 2014)79. the authorial intent!? How can you read and not exegete? But she s just reading words on a page as an exercise to help her sleep. The content of the words don t matter they are just words. That is how many people could describe their time in the bible. Just doing it to do it. Not really connecting with it. When the author says meditate, he is saying this is more than just reading it. Reading it is to know about God, - meditating on it considering it, is to begin to move to knowing God. J.I. Packer, in his phenomenal book Knowing God talks about meditation as the key to moving from knowing about to knowing God. He says: Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. 4 See some of you hear the word meditation and your mind goes to Eastern religions or mysticism where you sit crosslegged and hum a B sharp. That kind of meditation calls you to empty your mind of everything. The problem with that is you can t always be completely empty minded. Except for high-school boys. They pull it off naturally. Christian meditation is the reverse. God is calling you to fill your mind with his words which describe his character and his promises to you. Huge difference. As you meditate or 4 JI Packer, knowing God, 23. 9
think about him, you are at the same time awed by how small you are in light of who he is, and overwhelmed that such a God would love you so much. Packer goes on to say: It is as we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled (by the awareness of how small we are) and exalted (by how valuable we are to God) that our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength and our joy. God help us, then, to put our knowledge about God to this use, that we all may in truth know the Lord. 5 Here s how you do this: Take a pen and notebook with you the next time you sit down with the Bible. OIA! O Observe What does this say about God? What does it say about me? What commands are there? What promises are there? I - Interpret What truths do I need to believe? How does this point to or reflect on the gospel? A Apply What step do I need to take? Pray! Should never leave a time in God s word without asking him for courage to trust him with whatever he s called you to. Not saying this is easy. But it is so worth it. Without meditation grace never thrives, prayer is languid, praise dull, and religious duties unprofitable. Yet to flesh and blood without divine grace this is impossible. It is easier to take a journey of 1k miles than to spend an hour in 5 Packer, 23 close, devout, profitable thought on divine things. W.M. Plummer Basically Spending time thinking about God is really hard but really really necessary. 4. Other people are seeing God through you Fruit (v3) [3] 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. This image of a tree is supposed to be a contrast to verse 4 with the chaff. The tree is planted. Its roots dig down into the ground and over time it becomes immovable. The Psalmist is saying the one who delights in God will increasingly plant themselves in their identity in Christ. The chaff is the discarded part of wheat that gets blown away when the wheat is harvested. It has no weight and no strength. But the way you know the tree is planted and is growing is that it will eventually bear fruit. Maybe not right away. It takes a while for a tree to bear fruit but over time, if it stays by the stream it will always bear fruit. This is what will happen to the follower of Christ over time. The closer you get to God, the longer you walk with him, the more evident it becomes to others. You start to display his characteristics. The New Testament even calls them the 10
FRUITS of the spirit. Harkening back to this image here. God is loving, you become more loving. God is generous, you become more generous. God is patient, you become more patient. You start to become LIKE that which you love! And listen what is that fruit for? Is it for you? NO! Fruit isn t for you. Its benefit is to others. Are other people seeing Christ at work in you? Is there any fruit? Are you taking steps of obedience to what God calls you to? Easy example: Some of you need to get baptized. God calls you to it and you ve told us you know you need to but for any number of reasons you are hesitating. We are baptizing on January 29 th and you need to stop making excuses and follow Christ. Baptism is an act of obedience a visible sign God has saved you and is working in you. Here s another question: Is your life a blessing to others like Christ is a blessing to you? Are other people drawing closer to God because of what he s doing in your life? Are they benefiting from your fruit? If not go back to the water! You can t force fruit to grow it is a natural product of a tree feeding from the water. You can t force yourself to be patient or generous no more than you can duct tape apples onto an apple tree. That looks weird and eventually they will rot. Spiritual Fruit is the product of the gospel bringing life to your soul! The water in this image is the gospel. That s why we talk about it every week. GO TO THE WATER! EVERYDAY! Find life there. Find your joy there. DRINK IT! And trust that in time if you just stay there, the fruit will come. 5. You have peace with God in suffering & temptation There is a little phrase in verse 3 that carries so much meaning and I can only touch it for a moment. and its leaf does not wither. When seasons change, this tree doesn t. When drought comes, this tree doesn t wither. When storms come, this tree is rooted and doesn t fall. There is a phrase in Ephesians 3 that says you, being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend the love of God. Suffering will come. Temptation will come. The one whose delight is in the Lord will not be overwhelmed by either. The one who is planted by the stream of the gospel will be able to say, Christ is better. Your flesh will be tempted to go back to that old sin yet the new life flowing from the gospel will say Christ is better. When cancer threatens to destroy your body you will not be overwhelmed by despair or fear because you will be able to say CHRIST IS BETTER. So if you feel like you are overwhelmed by temptation, don t just try harder to run away from it: go to the water! If you feel beaten down or in despair in your suffering go to the water! The water will never leave! The water will never run dry! Some of you don t have this water and Christ says to you I AM the living water! Come to me and find life! 11
Meditation Time 1. How does God s words compare to the influence of others in my life? 2. What do I most often find joy in? 3. How is God s work in my life visible to others? 4. What suffering or temptation do I need to trust God in? 5. What step do I need to take? 12