Psalm 1 is featured again this week. This is part two of a two weeks study.

Notes are below. The material is made available so that any may use it, adapt it and preach it.

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Psalm 1 (part 2 of 2)

Last Week:
This psalm is not just brief, it is concise. Like a good poem that encompasses so much by the skilful use of very few words. It will reward those willing to meditate upon it.

“BUT!” This word is the great turning point in this Psalm as the godly and ungodly are compared.

1) The Godly Does Not (verse 1): Walk, stand, sit.
Walk - Go with the flow
Stand - Find solidarity
Sit - Linger.

2) The Godly Does (verse 2):
The godly delights in the law of God, the ways of God.

3) Why the godly “does”.
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This week:
1) “Delight”
2) The Tree
3) The Spirit

Structure
See the structure of these first three verses.

  • “But” is the hinge in the comparison between the godly and the ungodly in verses v1 and v2. The word “but” is also the tie between the two verses.

  • Verses 2 and 3 are tied by the progression of thought as the word “delight” leads to the revelation about the tree.

 

1) “Delight”
There is a difference between duty and privilege.

Delight in the:

  • Word Jeremiah 15:16. When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty.

  • Sabbath Isaiah 58:13,14 If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honourable, and if you honour it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

  • Prayer Isaiah 56:6,7 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

 

Not so the hypocrite
Job 27:10 May my enemies be like the wicked, my adversaries like the unjust! For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life? Does God listen to his cry when distress comes upon him? Will he find delight in the Almighty? Will he call upon God at all times?

Proverbs 21:27 The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable- how much more so when brought with evil intent!

Deuteronomy 16:10 Then celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the LORD your God has given you.

“What about when I feel like a hypocrite?” you may say.
We all feel fatigue but it is not our life characteristic, not the nature of the “new man”. We all have seasons of the soul. The believer finds it an unwelcome season of the soul, not something to be clung to or prolonged. Something to be borne with patience and prayer, not delighted in.

Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

Romans 7:24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Can a hypocrite delight in God?
Herod listened to the Baptist but was not converted.

See Ezekiel 33:28-33.

A person can do spiritual things yet not be in the light. See Ephesians 5:8-10 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

Carrying the Lord’s Prayer is not the same as carrying trust in God in your heart and praying it with conviction and zeal.

2) The Tree
See Jeremiah 17:8 planted/transplanted.
He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

“Poplar” (Smith’s Bible Dictionary)

This is the rendering of the Hebrew word libneh, which occurs in (Genesis 30:37) and Hosea 4:13 Several authorities are in favour of the rendering of the Authorized Version and think that “white poplar” (Populus alba) is the tree denoted: others understand the “storax tree” (Styrax officinale, Linn.). Both poplars and storax or styrax trees are common in Palestine, and either would suit the passages where the Hebrew term occurs. Storax is mentioned in Ecclus. 24:15, together with other aromatic substances. The Styrax officinale is a shrub from nine to twelve feet high, with ovate leaves, which are white underneath; the flowers are in racemes, and are white or cream-coloured.

 

3) The Spirit
See Isaiah 44:1-4
But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen. 2 This is what the LORD says- he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you: Do not be afraid, O Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen. 3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. 4 They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.

Context in verse 3 is the Spirit of God. Human beings are seen as the dry and thirsty ground. Will you admit your thirst and ask for the living water.

Such a tree, with reliable foliage provides shade, shelter and fruit. I am called to be such a tree, nourished by the Spirit of God.

See Isaiah 53:1-3 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

See Luke 11:1-13