Grand Parkway Baptist Church
Grand Parkway Baptist Church
The Blessed Life | Psalm 1 | Pastor Ian Weber
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Want to live a truly "blessed" life? Discover what it actually means to flourish according to Psalm 1 and how delighting in God's Word changes everything.
In this message, Student Pastor Ian Weber breaks down the six verses of Psalm 1 and explores its powerful parallels to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Learn how to identify the subtle progression of sin, move from duty-based religion to authentic delight in God, and become a fruit-bearing tree planted by streams of living water.
In this episode, we cover:
- How to Avoid the Slippery Slope of Sin: Understanding the progression from "walking" to "standing" to "sitting" with compromised values.
- Duty vs. Delight: Why a relationship built solely on rules feels cold—and how to cultivate true "Christian hedonism" by pursuing your highest pleasure in God.
- Fruit-Bearing Tree vs. Chaff: How abiding in God’s Word naturally produces lasting fruit rather than a shallow, forgotten life.
- Knowing About God vs. Knowing the Way: A powerful personal story on sobriety, transformation, and discovering real freedom in Christ.
Timestamps:
00:00 – The Danger of Flirting with Sin
01:37 – Welcome & Introduction to Psalm 1
04:30 – How to Become "Super Blessed" (Psalm 1 vs. Sermon on the Mount)
07:00 – Identifying the 3 Audiences: Wicked, Sinners, & Scoffers
11:45 – Duty vs. Delight: Moving Beyond Cold Religion
16:40 – The Agricultural Analogy: Fruit-Bearing Trees & Chaff
24:30 – Knowing the Way of the Righteous (A Story on Sobriety & Grace)
30:15 – The Two Paths & Closing Reflection Questions
Be sure to follow us:
– The Danger of Flirting with Sin
SPEAKER_00Sin is by definition, by its very nature, it is the opposite of progression in our faith with Jesus. Sin will only move us in the opposite direction of a growing relationship with Jesus. And so every Christian, if you ever find yourself in a position where you're like, I feel like I'm getting further away from God, I feel like I'm thinking less of Him, I feel like our relationship is getting strained. You should ask yourself, am I getting lax anywhere in my relationship with sin? Am I am I not thinking as big a deal of it as I should be? Am I am I thinking uh whatever that that's making me be more okay with sin in my life? The answer is almost always yes, and I can absolutely say that is true in my life. So this is a progression. We start flirting, that's the walking. We're I'm gonna, this is me walking, hey. We're flirting with sin. Oh man, it's just a TV show, it's just a small group or a friend group or whatever, it's just the the baseball team, whatever. But then eventually you start standing there and you're starting to get to know a little bit more. And well, I mean, I want to fit in with this group and I want to make sure that we're on the same page, and I don't want to feel like the weird one. And then finally you'll start, and I'm not gonna sit down on stage because that'd be weird, but finally you get to the point of sitting, where this becomes your natural habitat. This becomes your comfort, this becomes your normal, this becomes your identity. You are now indwelling in this situation, into this slippery slope of sin.
SPEAKER_01This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00Bow
– Welcome & Introduction to Psalm 1
SPEAKER_00your heads with me. God help us to adore you more. How wonderful this life gets, the more we adore you, the more we delight in you, the more that we give ourselves to you because you are worthy. Nothing else is. You're the only one worthy of our praise because you are holy. So, God, be with us. Would you would you uh get all the things out of our lives that that help us not see you clearly? And would you would you give us clean uh hearts and new eyes and everything we need to be able to see you clearly, to enjoy you, to give you the adoration you deserve. So, God, be with us this morning and be with me. Lord, would would I be able to uh help this passage make sense? Use me. Would your Holy Spirit speak through me? It's in Jesus' name through the power of the Holy Spirit. And all God's people said, Amen. Perfect. Well, good morning, good morning, good morning. I hope all of y'all had a great uh 5th of July, 4th of July. Um I was having a good time until I was woken up at 2 50 a.m. by fireworks being shot off at Austin High School, because I live right next to Austin High School. And I was like, I respect the 250, but also I want to hurt somebody. 250 for fireworks is insane. And then I also had my dog crawling up my body in the bed. And I was like, Evie, I'm about to throw you outside. Uh so I hope that you had a blast with your family and friends and food and everything else. Uh hey, so uh one, my name is Ian Weber. I am so uh excited to be here this morning with you guys. I'm the student pastor here, and uh Neil asked all of us teachers in July to preach on something that we had fire in our bones about. Well, there's a lot of things that I get really excited about, and so I was like, well, that doesn't help me at all. So I was flipping through the Bible and I was like, what's what's gonna jump out at me? And uh the very first chapter of scripture I ever memorized back in elementary school hopped off the page at me. Now, don't be impressed, it's just six verses. But it was really cool that it hopped off because I was like, man, one thing uh is that my mom taught me this passage when I was probably my single digits, and over years and years it has been a place of comfort, and it's been a passage that I've found a lot of joy and delight in. And so just a friendly reminder for all of us memorize scripture. Teach your kids to memorize scripture. It's a blessing when you have things just locked in your mind that that you can you can call at any moment. The other thing though is this passage is so interwoven with the Sermon on the Mount that as we were going through, as I was studying this passage, I was like, I cannot stop seeing parallels here between Psalms 1 and the Sermon on the Mount. Now, the reason why this jumped out at me is because uh the very first word is blessed. Now, I like that word because I don't know about you, I want to be blessed. Fair enough? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Come on, I wanna be blessed. I think all of you wanna be blessed. It's pretty cool. So it jumps off the page at me for that reason, uh, and but also because we use this word
– How to Become "Super Blessed" (Psalm 1 vs. Sermon on the Mount)
SPEAKER_00all the time. Already this morning I've had a couple of conversations with people. I'm like, hey, how you doing? They're like, man, I feel blessed, and that's amazing. I love that. If you hopped on Instagram and looked up the hashtag blessed, you'll see 162 million posts have been made with that hashtag. So it's worth us going, well, what is what is blessed? What is the blessed life according to the Bible? So we're gonna look at Psalm chapter one, six verses, in order to answer that question. Y'all ready? Perfect. All right, let's do it. Psalm chapter one. 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 this law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, its leaf does not wither, and all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind blows 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. This morning I want us to look at how someone becomes blessed, what the natural byproduct of the blessed person is, and then the end result of that blessed person. So, first let's talk about how somebody becomes blessed. When I began studying this passage, uh that very first word jumped out at me because one, like I said, we've been in Matthew, and the very first word of the entire book of Psalms is blessed, but what's the very first word of the entire Sermon on the Mount? Blessed. Matthew chapter five, verses two and three. And he, Jesus, opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom in heaven. Now, if you read any commentaries on Psalm, what you'll see is pretty much everybody unanimously says the Psalm 1 is essentially like a pair of glasses. It's the lens, or it's maybe even the rules of which you're supposed to see the whole rest of the book of Psalms, all 150 chapters. In the exact same way, the Beatitudes, chapter 5, the start to the Sermon on the Mount, is seen as the exact same thing for the whole rest of the Sermon on the Mount. And so I was like, interesting. Coincidence? Maybe. So uh the other thing that I thought was cool was that blessed here in the Old Testament, Psalm 1, is plural in the Hebrew. And then blessed in Matthew in the Greek is also plural. So not blessings, but more like blessed upon blessed, or I like to say super blessed. What's up? I want to be super blessed. So uh I know that I want to be super blessed. I'm sure you do, and if you're already thinking like is this about to be like a prosperity
– Identifying the 3 Audiences: Wicked, Sinners, & Scoffers
SPEAKER_00gospel thing? No, it's not. I promise. We don't believe in the prosperity gospel here. It's a load of barnacles. We're gonna keep it biblical. Cool? Fantastic. That's what I'm talking about. All right, so uh it's plural, it's super blessed. I wanna be the super blessed person. How do I get to be the super blessed person? Well, before Psalms 1 tells us, it actually tells us what the psalm or what the what the blessed person doesn't do. All right, Psalms 1, I'll play your game. What does the what does the super blessed person avoid? Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Two sets of progression. We see from walking to standing to sitting, and we see from the wicked to the sinners to the scoffers. What's going on there? Well, uh Neil's put it like this before, and I like this, so I'm stealing it from him. Credit to him. Uh, sin is by definition, by its very nature, it is the opposite of progression in our faith with Jesus. Sin will only move us in the opposite direction of a growing relationship with Jesus. And so every Christian, if you ever find yourself in a position where you're like, I feel like I'm getting further away from God, I feel like I'm thinking less of him, I feel like our relationship is getting strained, you should ask yourself, am I getting lax anywhere in my relationship with sin? Am I am I not thinking as big a deal of it as I should be? Am I am I thinking uh whatever that that's making me be more okay with sin in my life? The answer is almost always yes, and I can absolutely say that is true in my life. So this is a progression. We start flirting, that's the walking. We're I'm gonna, this is me walking, hey oh. We're flirting with sin. Oh man, it's just a TV show, it's just a small group or a friend group or whatever, it's just the the baseball team, whatever. But then eventually you start standing there and you're starting to get to know a little bit more. And well, I mean, I want to fit in with this group and I want to make sure that we're on the same page, and I don't want to feel like the weird one. And then finally you'll start, and I'm not gonna sit down on stage because that'd be weird, but finally you get to the point of sitting, where this becomes your natural habitat. This becomes your comfort, this becomes your normal, this becomes your identity. You are now indwelling in this situation, into this slippery slope of sin. So that's kind of the actions behind it, but just as important are the audiences. So, like I said, Psalm is kind of uh the the framework in which Psalm one is the framework in which you see the whole rest of the book of Psalms, and you see that these three parties actually will pop up over and over and over again in the book of Psalms: the wicked, the sinners, and the scoffers. Well, it's worth us figuring out what are those three parties. Well, the wicked is actually a legal term. Uh, in a ton of Old Testament stuff, in a court of law, the guilty party was the wicked party. Um, I won't bore you with the Hebrew words, but it there's a whole lot of phlegm, so that's exciting. Uh now. Uh so the there's a whole lot uh so it's it's the guilty party. And so for us, we understand that this these are the people that stand guilty before God because their s their sins have not been atoned for. We in the New Testament would would understand this as Jesus has not already washed their slate clean. They are not saved, they're not Christians. Okay, fair enough. The sinners are very similar, with a slight maybe addition. A lot of commentators were like, eh, like they're sort of kind of synonymous, but if there was to be a clear differentiate, it might be like somebody's guilty of a crime versus somebody's guilty of a lifetime of crime. The sinners are the ones that are like, I desire and seek this thing and actively pursue it. Fair enough. But then the scoffers are the one that I find the most interesting, because in my mind, the scoffers are the least threatening. I'd be like, the wicked sounds really intense, sinners sounds less intense, and scoffers, like, who cares? But actually, the scoffers are the ones that are in the deepest part of this idea of sin. Because it's not just that they live a lifestyle of sin, but they also seek to demean and tear down and break apart and make fun of those who seek righteousness and the path of righteousness. And so it's not just I want sin, it's I want the destruction of good. Does that make sense? Okay. So anywhere that you see those three people pop up in the in the Psalms, you now have a better understanding. Fantastic. Okay. Um, in student ministry, I really do see this kind of stuff happen all the time. I see uh uh students walk into some situation where they they just start getting further and further away from their the family, uh from their faith, from their church, because they just wanted to fit into this into this crowd. But it's not just students. Every one of us, every adult in this room, you can you can think on times that you've compromised just a little bit of something that you have a conviction of. You've gotten just a little lazy with something to not rock the boat, to fit in, to make sure that uh that friend is okay or a kid is okay, or a family member, you appease. We're all guilty of it, right? And so the thing that this is already calling us to do is to go, is there any place in my life that I'm starting to get a little
– Duty vs. Delight: Moving Beyond Cold Religion
SPEAKER_00lax with sin, that I'm starting to flirt in a way that isn't good for me, or be around people that are leading me in ways that I don't want to go? Okay, so that's what he tells us. The the blessed person does not associate with. But then he says, What do they associate with? Verse 2. But his delight is on the law of the Lord, and on this law he meditates day and night. I think if I was to give every single person in this room a multiple choice test that said, Should Christians delight in the law of the Lord, we would all say, Nailed it. Nailed it! You got a fantastic A plus on that exam. Way to go. All of us know that's the right answer, but I'd be willing to bet for the majority of Christians, more often than not, a different D word is the primary relationship that they have with their Heavenly Father, and that and that's duty. I think for most Christians, more often than not, we think of our relationship as duty. Like a good soldier, God tells me to do something, I do it. He tells me not to do something, I don't do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna nail this, it's gonna be awesome. But in reality, duty can only get you so far. Duty, it's not that duty's bad. In fact, uh the New Testament calls us soldiers in God's army multiple times. It's not that duty's bad, it just isn't the whole picture. It can't get you all the way to where you're supposed to be. And what do I mean by that is this uh I've been married to my wife for six and a half years. Uh I actually proposed to her on the 4th of July because we're patriots. That's what's up. Uh I kept telling her, I was like, all these fireworks, they're for you, babe. Uh and so what's up? And so I uh I've been married to her for just just shy of uh seven years now. And if everything that I did in my relationship in my marriage with Kendall was just duty, of course, babe. Of course I'm going to do the dishes because I'm your husband. And yes, of course I'm gonna take you out to dinner on your birthday, because that's my obligation. I'm your husband. And all it ever was was duty, eventually it would get really cold and really unenjoyable. A marriage that's just duty, any relationship that's just duty, it's pretty cold. Whereas I delight in my bride. She's wonderful. I really, really enjoy Kendall. She's super cool. And so, as I do have a gajillion duties as a husband and as a father and all of those, I do it from a place of delight, from an overflow of my enjoyment of her and my family, and that helps everything else become so much more enjoyable. If all my marriage with Kendall was was duty, it would be really hollow. If all our relationship with God is is duty, it's gonna be really hollow. Delight is critical to this process. And one of my biggest prayers for our student ministry is that our students wouldn't just know a bunch of stuff, but that they would delight in their heavenly father. If they could recite everything and all of the theological big words and whatever, but they were their their relationship with God was hollow. How how much of a missing is that? How much of a frustrating situation is that? I want them to delight in their heavenly father, and as they delight, let that overflow into every other part of their lives. And as I think about this word delight, it brings me back to an older book by John Piper, uh, it's desiring God. And kind of desiring God's whole thesis is this idea of Christian hedonism. Now, hedonism or traditional hedonism says it like this. I think I brought a slide here. Fantastic. Uh, traditional hedonism says, pursue pleasure as your highest good. Therefore, get as many lovers, get as much money, get as many uh experiences, get as much applause as you possibly can, increase pleasure, because that's really all that this life is about. And John Piper's book is like they're actually not far off from the truth. They just need to add two words. And he says it like this: pursue pleasure in God as your highest good. Essentially, what he's saying there is uh it's not that sinners think, or it's not that sinners want pleasure or want happiness too much, it's that they're seeking pleasure and happiness and things that will never ultimately give it to them. Whereas the Christian is like, no, dude, like in in Christ, in following his word and delighting in his law, I actually am experiencing the delight you want better than you. It's not found in quantity, it's found in quality, in a relationship with my heavenly father who knows the best way to do it. It's awesome. And I want you to enjoy it. Christian hedonism is awesome. We should all want to be Christian hedonists. Pursue pleasure in God as your as uh whoop as your highest good. It's a fantastic thing to seek pleasure in the ways that God has designed us to, because it's the best way. And so uh the way to know how we delight in the law of the Lord is the back half of that verse, uh, verse two. And on this law he meditates day and night. What takes up the most of your thought life is a pretty good indicator of what you delight in. What fills your mind, what goes through your head, what you talk about most often, are probably going to be the things that you most delight in. And the super blessed person thinks
– The Agricultural Analogy: Fruit-Bearing Trees & Chaff
SPEAKER_00most, ponders most, thinks, how do I live this out in my life? More than anything, he delights in the law of God, in the word of God. So what do you delight in? The super blessed man, their primary delight is in one thing. What is our primary delight in? Our primary happiness or joy. For most of us, if we're honest, it probably isn't always the word of God. It's gonna be things like I delight in my comforts, whether that's my stuff or sleeping in, or maybe I delight in my kids. My kids are my primary delight. So their happiness and giving them everything that I can for their good is my primary delight over what scripture might say actually brings true life. Or maybe it's like my friend group. Man, it's about me and my people, and no matter what situation I'm in, even at a church function, I'm only going to hang out with my people and forget the rest of the body because I delight in them. I don't delight in the word of God and being the body of Christ. All of us need to take into consideration what do we delight in, because if and only if we learn to delight in the word of God, we cannot experience the Zoe life that you hear from the stage almost every week. It has to come from a delight in our Heavenly Father. Well, man, that's just the first two verses, and you would not believe how much I left on the chopping room floor as I was preparing this. So we're gonna move on. Cool? All right, verses three through four. Uh, what is the natural byproduct of a blessed person? Let's look at this. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked or not, so, but they are like chaff that the wind blows away. So he makes these two agricultural terms. The first one is he he he talks about the blessed person as a fruit-bearing tree. So uh notice for for anybody that that has forgotten some ELA, there's actually something really helpful going on, English language arts. I know I got a couple of teachers in the audience here. Uh, in an active verb, the subject does something. I plant. In a passive verb, something happens to the subject. I was planted. This is a passive verb saying that the blessed man has been planted by a wonderful gardener who knows exactly where this plant needs to go in order to thrive, in order to flourish. And so he plants them next to this this river, to the streams of water. So that the inevitability is fruit. When the tree is planted where it's supposed to be planted, the only option for that healthy tree is it produces fruit. You see, the Christian life is way more about abiding, getting our roots where we're actually going to find nourishment than it is in producing. A lot of Christians think I'm supposed to like white knuckle and like have more discipline and read more books about how to produce fruit. But in reality, what happens is as we plant our roots in the living water of God, of his word, as we find our nourishment in that, we can't help but produce fruit. It's the natural outpouring, the natural overflow is fruit comes. And not only that, but its leaves do not wither. So man, is it a really hot day? I'm fine. I've got my roots where they're supposed to be. My leaves are fine. Man, I haven't had any rain in a while. Chill. I've got my I got my roots in the river. I don't eat it. Like my leaves are still fine. It's this idea of like, uh, well, tell you what, pause there. Last thing. In all that he does, he prospers. What a cool idea here. Now, the intellectually lazy person might go, oh, sweet, so if I delight in the law of the Lord, my business is gonna flourish. Yes. No. That's not what this is saying. When you delight in the law of the Lord, when his word becomes the thing that you cherish and you want to live your life according to him to bring him glory at all times, you cannot fail. Like you when your when your desires are aligned with his, it's not that his desires become yours, but yours become his. In all that you do, you succeed, you flourish. It's awesome. What a cool thing that is. Um and and I I I love that because church, we should never trick ourselves into thinking that we'd be more obedient or we'd have more delight if our physical circumstances were different. If I just had more money, if I just had more followers, if I just had more success, or lack of things, if I just had less problems, less anxiousness, less frustrations, or if I just had that thing I've been praying for for so long, if you just give it to me, I promise I'd have so much more delight in you. You just don't see that line of thinking in Scripture. Rather, you see this idea of abiding. Where do you get your nourishment from? Is it in the life-giving word of God that produces fruit in you, or is it in something else? And if it's in something else, you're gonna be you're gonna be beating your head against this wall for a long, long time. It's not about physical circumstances changing, it's about where we get our nourishment from. But then uh connecting another moment to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7, verse 17, uh Jesus says this So every healthy tree that bears good fruit I'm sorry, said that weird. So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. I feel so weird every time I take a swig of water, but I can't help it. I know that you can hear that, and it's just weird for everybody. So he makes this analogy of the good fruit, but then he makes this analogy of chaff. Now I brought a video to help this make just a little bit of sense. So let's see if it pops up here. Perfect. Okay, so these guys are throwing wheat in the air, and the heavy wheat kernel falls back down to earth, but then you'll see that the husk of the wheat, the chaff, is what's blowing off to the right of the screen. You see in that? Essentially, that's the idea is the chaff just blows away. It's forgotten. No agricultural farmer in all of human history has ever woken up in a cold sweat bang, like, my chaff! What am I gonna do with it? Like, I gotta, I gotta go back and get it. Not one. Nobody's ever had that thought process ever, because the chaff is blown away. It's forgotten. Who needs it? It's not it's not helpful. And so is this idea of what does our life produce? This idea of like the healthy uh fruit-bearing tree produces fruit that nourishes and gives life and helps other things. Like a healthy fruit-bearing tree, uh it blesses others around it. It's the salt and the light, it's the it illuminates uh so that other people can enjoy and experience the goodness of God. Whereas the chaff just blows away in the wind. It's forgotten. For the wicked, that that's just it's all about me and mine, or or or uh self-fulfillment, or whatever it is that they think is going to bring them that joy. That life that's all about the inwardness, it's just chaff. It's going to blow away. It's not helpful to you or to anybody else. Psalms 1 is inviting us into something so much better to be this fruit-bearing tree rather than the chaff. So my next question is simply what does your life produce? Classic analogy that we should always connect with this idea of fruit is the fruit of the spirit. Does your fruit does your life produce love and joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Does it uh produce fruit that doesn't just increase your delight of God, but it increases it in others? Or is it just this diseased tree from Matthew 7, or is it just chaff? Only good for being thrown away and forgotten. You see, in Matthew chapter 10, verse 39, he says, he says this whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake
– Knowing the Way of the Righteous (A Story on Sobriety & Grace)
SPEAKER_00will find it. For the person that thinks that they can figure it out, that they can master self-fulfillment and perfect joy and perfect happiness on this life apart from Jesus, they are going to lose it. They'll never find it. It'll be it'll be a fruitless task. But for the person that gives his life for God, that's the person that will find true life and life to the fullest. A life of delight produces fruit, but a life of self-fulfillment produces chaff. So what does your life produce? And then finally, let's look at the end result of a blessed person in the final two verses, verses five and six. 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. In student ministry, I've often been asked things like my friend doesn't, uh my friend professes Jesus, but he doesn't go to church or he doesn't pray or she doesn't, you know, fill in some religious idea, but they profess Christ, like, are they a Christian, are they not a Christian? And I always say something to the effect of, man, if somebody professes Christ, I'm not the one that's going to make the judgment call on if they're saved or if they're not saved. However, what I can say is when people forego what the teachings of Scripture have for us, they are missing out. They are missing out on something so critical to human flourishing, so pivotal to the delighting process in God. Don't miss out, and that's what happens in verse five, because uh I find it interesting that before he leads to the eternal punishment part of this passage, verse six, the first thing the author wants to get out is this FOMO, this fear of missing out. He's like, hey, what happens to the wicked is as follows. He says, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. What does that mean? Well, they won't stand in the judgment means that they will not be on God's team when he comes back. A year ago, this Sunday, I preached this same Sunday last year, I taught a little bit about that. The ultimate end goal of Christianity is not I die and I go to heaven. The ultimate goal of Christianity is that Jesus comes back and sets every wrong right. Do you remember this? Fantastic. Okay. When that day comes, Psalms 1 is saying the wicked are not going to be able to stand and go, I'm on his team. They're going to miss out on that opportunity. But even more scary is that they will not be able, uh, they will not be in the congregation of the righteous. What does this mean? They've lived their whole life seeking pleasure and joy and happiness and delight and fulfillment and all of those things, and they won't find it. And then there's going to be the Christians who are finally getting to enjoy it, not just in this life, which they've been doing, but even to the greater extent in the next, and they'll not have a place. They'll miss out. They will miss out on what they've always been searching for because they never experienced the way of the righteous. What is the significance of verse, the second half of uh I'm sorry, the first ver of verse six. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous. This isn't just intellectual knowledge. Uh rather, this is the end result of a relationship and experience. As such, the Lord knows the way of the righteous because he is the way of the righteous. He paved it, he knows it, it's his and it's awesome, and it's where we flourish. And a person that is on the way of the righteous will never, ever want to go back. It's never gonna happen. The person that knows the way of the righteous gets to experience this life in such a way that anything they had before they go, I don't miss it. For example, uh, I've shared this story uh in the in the in the youth ministry before, uh, and I asked for permission from uh my family member before I said it. Um I have a family member who was a severe drug and uh drug and alcohol abuser for a long time. Uh and and he finally started taking steps uh to get towards sobriety. Uh and and but it was it was an up and down. For any of you that know or have somebody in your life that's that's been on that journey, you know what I'm talking about. It's an up and down. So he was up and down, uh, and he was he was meeting with like his third or fourth sponsor, which essentially just somebody in the AA process that's like a couple of steps further than you, that like helps you kind of get some momentum to find sobriety. Make sense so far? Okay. So he's meeting with this guy, uh, and and the guy asked him a question, which is somewhere uh one of the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, which was like, hey, who's what's the bigger power than yourself that you're gonna rely on to give you uh help and to get you uh to where you wanna be, to be sober? And my family member was like, Oh, well, I'm a Christian. Uh I I think I think Jesus is is the one that's gonna solve that problem. And um the the sponsor said something like, interesting, so I'm like your third or fourth sponsor, and Jesus is gonna solve this problem, so then why are you standing in front of me? And and my family member was like, I'm not sure I follow. And the guy was like, Well, it's only two options. Either one, Christianity can't help you and Jesus can't help you, or your relationship with Jesus isn't right. Something's wrong there. You're not actually living this thing out the way that you're supposed to. And my family member told me as he was recounting this story, he's like, dude, I wanted to get defensive, but like he was right. I've known we I've known all the right answers my whole life. I was in youth group my whole life. I I did I did the Christian stuff. I knew the right answers on the test, but I didn't do it. Like I didn't live it out. I didn't pursue that. It wasn't, it wasn't uh what what mattered to me. And so I had to come to this realization of man, I I think it maybe this is where I kind of use
– The Two Paths & Closing Reflection Questions
SPEAKER_00my words for it. He knew of the way of the righteous, but he did not know the way of the righteous. And that's a massive difference. Huge difference. There's a big difference between knowing of and knowing the way of the righteous. And my and that family member, who I love with all my heart and soul, is now several years sober, which is awesome, praise God. Uh, and he'll now say things like, that desire for alcohol is there. Like, I'm an alcoholic, it pretty much will always at least ruminate. But it's been so overshadowed by a delight in my heavenly father that it's become really easy to say no to this and to say yes to Jesus. So it's like, that's that's knowing the way of the righteous. The old way becomes really easy to be like, I'm just not interested in that anymore. Like, it's just it isn't, it didn't produce what I wanted, but this does. This brings life and it's awesome. It's so cool. It's why I do what I do. I love that I get to be a part of bringing uh in helping students understand this in the student building, and once a year with y'all. So, um why is this all so important? Because at the end of the day, this has eternal consequences. Uh like I already said, the way of the wicked do not get to experience the magnitude of knowing Jesus, uh, which is, I would argue, the way bigger thing than what comes next. They also are going to experience perishing. Psalm one and Sermon on the Mount, here's another connection. The in Psalm 1, you see two ways uh pop up: the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked. But then in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically chapter 7, the last chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, he lays out these two ways over and over and over and over again. He talks about the good and the bad fruit, two gates, two roads, two foundations. One always leads to life, one always leads to perishing. Matthew 7, 13 through 14 says it like this: Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. I like when the Bible's really black and white, and this is one of those situations. The Bible is not shy of saying there are only two paths. You're on the path of righteousness or you're on the path of perishing. There's no like third, like what about political, politically correct answer. It's one or the other. And the and the thing that I love about that is it makes it really easy for us to have some reflection. And so this is where I want to land the plane. If you if you're in this room and you're like, I still don't really know where I am with God, I certainly haven't given myself to Him, or maybe you know somebody uh that's in that position. That what this Psalm 1 is asking you is, man, is your life really as good as it can possibly get? Is this really all there is to life is what you're currently experiencing? Because if it is, I can say from my own experience, there have been many a times in my life that I've known what God has asked of me, and I knew what I wanted, and I chose what I wanted, and I had temporary pleasure, I had temporary joy, but was it a eternal satisfaction? Heck no. Not even close. And so if that's if if somebody in this room is like, I still don't know where I'm at with this, I ask you, is your life as good as it can possibly get? I submit to you that it is not. I submit to you that there is a way better way to live, and that's in a relationship of knowing and loving and delighting in the word of God and knowing Jesus as your personal savior. It changes everything, and when you know the way of the righteous, you will never go back. All the things you thought you were finding life in, you're not. You're finding perishing at the end of the road. Whereas for the believer in the room, which I would assume is most of us, Psalm 1 asks us to reflect: hey, is there anywhere in our lives that we're uh we're delighting in something that's lesser than uh the living word of God? Is there any part of our of our mentality that uh we meditate day and night on something lesser than that? Is there any, is are we planted in the in the life-giving stream, or are we planted in something else? Were we planted by the wonderful master gardener, or were we planted by our cultural slogans or our friend group's ideas or our Western ideologies or whatever? And and the reality is that we should be thinking, man, is it where where should I be reflecting correctly so that I can learn to enjoy and delight and bring honor and glory more? Does that make sense to anybody who signs myself? Cool. So essentially what we always do, I told the non-believer, I want you to reflect. I told the believer, I want you to reflect. What we always do every Sunday morning is we do some reflection. We give you some space to think about what you just heard. So I have some mental worship questions here on uh the screen for you to kind of think, hey, what had my name on it? Uh what are some things that would help me get maybe a better understanding of what this next step is? Whether that's to even have uh a dialogue with somebody about what it means to follow Jesus, or maybe it's, hey, this is just the next step for me to learn how to delight. So I'm gonna step away for a second, I'm gonna give you some moments to just do some soul reflection, and then I'll come back up and close this in just a moment. Holy Spirit, work in and through us. Would you increase a delight in us for you and your word? Would you help us relate to our families, to our coworkers, to our friends, to our spouse, to ourselves, out of a correct understanding of who you are, because in that a delight like no other shows up. The freedom that we have in Christ, man, it beats everything else. So, God, help us be people that delight, that are planted by the streams of life-giving water. It's in Jesus' name, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And all lots of people said, Amen.
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