I sat in the back car, and he suggested

Psalm 1 Because Life Is a Roller Coaster Living Wisely" 1 Rev. Brian North June 19 th, 2016 Would it be ok if I start today s sermon with a question? (That s my dad joke for the morning, by the way.) OK Here s the question: How many of you like roller coasters? I love roller coasters. I don t have the opportunity to ride on them very often but they are a lot of fun. Let me share a tip with you about roller coaster riding - free of charge. Do you know wheree the best place to sit on the roller coaster train is? At the back. If you want the best roller coaster experience possible, that s where you want to sit. When Gwen and I were in seminary at Fuller in Pasadena, the high-schoolers in our youth group who grew up going to these amusement parks would tell us that the back was the best. And they won me over. A lot of people like the front car and it s fun you have a good view of the track but the back is the best, because when you come up and over a rise in the track, the rest of the train in front of you pulls you over the top, making you go faster there, and giving an even greater sense of weightlessness. It s awesome. You should try it sometime if you haven t already, and you can thank me after your next roller coaster ride. So while we were in seminary, Gwen and I were co-directors of youth ministry at a Northminster Presbyterian Church in Diamond Bar. One time, we took the youth group to Knott s Berry Farm. Knott s Berry opened a brand new, wooden roller coaster while we were there, called, Ghostrider. It is fantastic. One of the first times I rode it I was sitting next to a high school kid who was a part of that youth group. His name is Travis. He and I sat in the back car, and he suggested we go the whole ride with our hands up by or above our heads no holding on to anything. Well, in the midst of one of the turns, with my hand up by my head, as we re zipping along at 50 miles per hour or so, somehow one of my fingers ended up in his nose. Not for very long, fortunately for both of us but still, it s not what you expect to happen on a roller coaster! Now, I wasn t trying to do that. And as crazy as teenagers can be, I m pretty sure Travis wasn t trying to do that either it was a surprise; totally unexpected for both us, which is the way roller coasters are. And: Life can be an awful lot like a roller coaster, can t it? Slow climbs

up to the top, fast descents down to the depths, twists, turns, loop-to-loops and unexpected things like your finger in someone s nose next to you. There s always an element of the unexpected in life, much like on a roller coaster. And in the midst of those twists and turns, mountain highs and valley lows comes the Book of Psalms, reminding us that God is the constant upon whom we can depend. He s our Heavenly Father, whom we can always turn to. From the first breath of life to the last one before death, and beyond, the Lord is there. And so just as life is a Roller coaster, so are the Psalms, because they reflect life back to us, while at the same time pointing us to our steady, rock-solid God, the unmovable foundation upon which the roller coaster of life is built. And as we go through the Psalms on this adventure, I pray that each of us is drawn closer to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the foundation in our lives. The first Psalm sets the tone for what is to follow in the 149 that come after it. It s like an invitation to study the rest of the Psalms. We don t know for sure who wrote this Psalm, though many attribute it to King Solomon. The book of Psalms is authored by several different people, though King David authored the most believed to be about 73 of the 150 Psalms. Just as a dad passes along his wisdom to his kids who hopefully listen the writer is doing the same thing for us. And in this Psalm we see that some people ground themselves in God s Word and try to live by it, while others do not. Some people recognize their dependence upon God, while others try to live independently of Him. And the wisdom being shared here is that one way leads to a life that is blessed and filled peace and filled with the presence of God in the midst of the twists and turns and peaks and valleys, while the other leads to a life that is far from God and looking for peace, meaning, and purpose. If we want to go through the roller coaster of life with some sense of grounding, purpose, peace, and comfort that leads to wise living, then we would do well to know God s word. That s the point of Psalm 1. It begins with Blessed are those who do not do certain things, and who do certain things, as we see in the first two verses. First are given some boundaries that those who are blessed and desire to live Godly lives don t 2

cross. Like a parent who sets up boundaries for his or her child, there is freedom to cross the boundaries, but there are consequences when that happens. Now: There s an element of progression as we read through this first verse, especially in regards to these verbs, walk, stand, sit. In life, we progress through these steps of walking, standing, and sitting all the time. We hear someone in the next room watching a television show. So we follow their lead and walk into the room to see what it is that s got their attention, that they re laughing at or cheering, or whatever it is. We stand for a moment to see what it is. We become engaged with it, we get sucked in, and then what do we do? We sit down and watch it. This happened to me just the other day with my kids. They wanted to watch a movie. I wasn t interested in watching it. But I helped get it going on the tv, and then I watched the first few minutes out of curiosity, and next thing I knew I was on the couch and had watched the whole thing. I wasted 90 minutes of my life watching a movie that I had no interest in. So that s the progression we re being warned here not to go in. So he writes: First, blessed are those who don t walk in step with the wicked. That s the first line not to cross: don t go along with people who would lead you down paths of unrighteousness, who would lead you astray don t walk with them. Second, blessed are those who don t stand in the way that sinners take. So we ve gone from walking to standing. The progression is that you ve reached a destination of sorts; there s a pause in the journey. You ve walked along a path, and now you re at a place where you can stand in one place and pause right where you are. The third step in the progression is that you sit. Don t sit in the company of mockers. When you re seated, you re not moving on. You re planting yourself there and you re going to be surrounded by the others who are seated there, and you re going to continue to be influenced by those who are seated there with you, and become one of them who influence others to take a seat there with you. These mockers, or scoffers, are seated in positions of influence, mocking the ways of God. And the Paslmist is saying: Don t go that way, don t walk with them, don t stand in one place with them, and for heaven s sake, don t take a seat with them. And so instead: Those who are blessed delight in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on His Law day and night (Psalm 1:2). Torah is the Hebrew word for law and it referred to a couple different things. Most 3

narrowly, torah meant just the Ten Commandments. More broadly and more commonly, it referred to the first five books of the Bible, which contain the Ten Commandments and a whole lot more. And so what we see here is that the blessed person takes delight in God s Word, and knows it studies it allows it to become a part of their very being. We would do well to remember at this point that the Old Testament was written by people who were Jewish, about God s activity in the Jewish community. The OT is the Jewish Bible. And for them, meditating on God s word/law especially meant (and I suppose still means) to remember how God had revealed Himself to people as recorded in Scripture. So this isn t a New Age kind of meditation where a person tries to empty their mind of everything. Rather, this is a meditation that fills us up with God s Word and who God is. We remember what God has done, and we absorb His Word. So in the Psalmist s day, they would remember the Covenant God made with Noah and then Abraham; the Exodus from Egypt with Moses leading the way; the Passover meal that commemorated that event; the Covenant that was then made with all of Israel through Moses; the way in which God brought them into the Promised Land, the way God provided for them in their time of need with manna from heaven and water from a rock, and so forth. All these events and ways in which God demonstrated His provision and trustworthiness, and revealed his character are what they would meditate on, remembering who God is. And Psalm 1 says that the person who does that is blessed they re like a tree planted by a river. A tree is a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. So the result of that is the growth of deep and abiding roots and the bearing of fruit, with a constant flow of God s life-giving water providing what is needed for that growth. In other words: The people who meditate on God s law/word have legs to stand on in times of difficulty to make it through life. God s Word gives us this stability in the roller coaster of life. We see in verses 4 and 5 that those who don t live rooted in God s Word are wicked. It might seem like a strong, even offensive word, but: It demonstrates the stark difference between those who know God and His word in their lives and those who don t. And the differences are vast, because 4

those who don t know His word simply don t have a leg to stand on. When trial comes, when there s judgment and those who aren t rooted in God s Word have nothing to stand on. Life apart from God leaves you without a foundation, without a relationship with your Creator. 5 And the comparison that s made is that they re like chaff. If you re like me you don t do much harvesting of grain and this is unfamiliar, but not to them. Nearly everyone knew what chaff was when this was written around 1,000 B.C. and in the centuries that followed. And the chaff is simply the exterior part of a seed that s removed and discarded. If we were translating this into today s language, we might say that they re like candy wrapper or Christmas wrapping paper: The chaff is easily blown by the wind, this way and that, with no foundation or direction in life. And this passage is saying that that s what people who have no regard for God s Word are like: no real direction or real sense of purpose in life and no relationship with the Lord. Now the last verse of the Psalm is the part that really rubs us the wrong way in the 21 st Century, because there s no synthesis between those who know God and those who don t. We want to read in verse 6 that in the end everyone is happy and blessed no matter what. But it doesn t say that here and doesn t anywhere in Scripture. It clearly portrays two different outcomes for those who meditate on God and His word, and those who don t. They remain apart, and there s no synthesizing the two together. 1 Jesus taught the same thing on a multitude of times. For instance, just a few weeks ago we looked at part of Matthew 13, where Jesus tells a story that we call the parable of the weeds. After some seed is planted, it starts growing up, and weeds also start coming up around it as well. The servants of the field owner and say, Sir didn t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from? An enemy did this he replied. And he tells them not to pull up the weeds now, but let them grow up together, and at the time of the harvest they will be separated, with the weeds discarded and burned up and the wheat brought into the owner s barn. We d probably prefer Jesus story to end with the owner saying, No, don t pull the weeds. I ll go into my 1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is credited (though many say it was actually Immanuel Kant) with introducing this thought into society. He talked about three stages of development: Thesis, which gave way to a reaction called the antithesis, and then the tension between them being resolved by a synthesis.

lab and see how I can devise a way for the weeds and the wheat to join together so that they become a new, genetically altered hybrid plant. Then we can harvest them all together and put all of it into my barn. But Jesus doesn t say that. He never teaches that. And neither does Psalm 1 or any other facet of Scripture. Living in relationship with God and living without a relationship with God are two totally different ways of living. One is wise, the other is not, and they lead us in completely opposite directions. The challenge for us, of course, is in living this out. The temptation is to listen to anyone who says they have spiritual insight and meld it in with whatever else we ve already absorbed: to get a little bit of Jesus, a little bit of Buddah, a little bit of Hinduism, a little bit of New Age But that s not delighting in the law of the Lord. Or who can meditate on God s law day and night? Even if most pastors who should spend time in Scripture did that, they wouldn t last very long in their jobs, let alone someone who works as a banker or electrician or teacher or whatever. Can you imagine your boss asking, How come you didn t get those parts ordered that we needed? Well, I was studying the Bible day and night and didn t have time. Oh! That s fantastic. I ll promote you to president of the company! Yeah, right! I doubt any of us can live up to that standard of meditating on God s Word day and night. That doesn t mean we throw in the towel and just walk, stand, and sit wherever anyone leads us; but that s a standard we simply can t reach on our own. Fortunately, there s help, and His name is Jesus Christ. By the grace of God there is a river of life that flows by an everlasting tree. Jesus is that tree, and when we put our trust in him we become his branches, grafted into his resurrection life, and bearing fruit. Jesus said so himself in John 15:5, I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5). Not too different from Psalm 1, is it? Meditate on God s Word, or remain in Jesus, and you ll bear fruit. Walk away from God s Word, or walk away from Jesus, and you re chaff getting blown by the wind, unable to do anything. Jesus Christ is the one you want to be connected to. Sometimes at Christmas time you ll hear people say, Wise people once sought out Jesus at his birth. Wise people still do. And it s true. Wise people seek Jesus, they study his word, and they follow where he leads them. 6

My prayer is that you and I would meditate on God s word and abide in Jesus Christ. I pray that we would cultivate that relationship; to grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ, encouraged in our faith, and be better equipped to help others be disciples of Jesus to lead others down the right paths so rather than walking, standing, or sitting in the seat of mockers, they ll walk the narrow path of life with Jesus Christ. It all begins in God s Word where we find true wisdom for Godly living. And when you and I dig deep into God s Word when we meditate on it day and night when we recollect what Jesus Christ has done, when we remember that he is faithful to us even to the point of his own death on our behalf, when we meditate on that reality, we will find an abundance of blessings and all that we need to bear fruit and to have deep roots that will keep us living wisely, and staying on the track in the roller coaster of life. Let s pray Amen. 7