“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.”
At 13, I started at a new school. My parent were abroad, so it was a boarding school. And one of my new friends had been taught by his parents to pray that prayer every night.
It’s not a bad prayer as it happens. But it’s clearly a child’s prayer.
For an adult, life is messy and complicated. And we need a prayer life that is fit for the real world.
Many of us don’t pray. Or if we do, we’re unsure what we ought to pray for.
God wants to help here. He’ll teach us how to pray. Not to paralyse us with worry that we’re praying for the wrong thing. But to train our hearts, so that the things we long to pour out to God are the very things he’d love us to be praying for.
The Bible contains 66 books. 66 books of God’s word to us.
One of those books works in both directions. The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 prayers and songs for the people of God. Words from us to God. Contained within the Bible – God’s words to us. God-given prayers. God-given songs.
And Christians from every age have found them a tremendous resource in the school of prayer. It’s why God’s given them to us.
And over the next few months we’re going to work our way through the first 8 psalms in the book.
Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are a little different from the rest. They’re not actually prayers, but they’re really important. They’re a header to the rest of the book. They are there to set us up for the other 148. To make sure we are seeing the world the right way as we come to pray, as we come to sing, as we come to read the other psalms.
We’re going to look at 3 pairs of verses within this Psalm. There are two basic approaches to life, and each pair of verses shows us the contrast between them. Get those two approaches straight, and you’re seeing the world the right way up, and you’re ready to pray.
Having looked at three pairs of verses, we’ve got one more thing to do. The Psalm was written about 1000 BC. So having looked at those 3 pairs, we’re then going to look at the psalm again, to make sure we’re hearing it address us as New Testament Christians.
Two Lifestyles
Firstly, then, verses 1 and 2. We see contrasted two lifestyles. Two lifestyles.
You can take your cue from the world of unbelief, or the word of God.
You can take your cue from God’s opponents, or God’s teaching.
One approach to life comes in verse 1.
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.
Three phrases. Whichever way you look at them, the verse escalates as you move through it. More intense, more settled, more permanent, more influenced.
So look at the 3 verbs. Walk. Stand. Sit. It’s one thing just to walk along with someone for a bit, keep their company for a few moments. But then you stop moving, and stand still. You’re now settled down. But to sit is more permanent still, more entrenched.
Or there are 3 kinds of influence. Walk in step with the wicked, listen to their advice. Then we’re in the same way as them, traveling the same path, going in the same direction. Until, finally, we’re in their company. Literally, we sit in their seat, we take up residence in their home. This is now how we define ourselves.
Or we could look at how those who reject God’s ways are labelled. Wicked. Sinners. Mockers. The wicked are those who would be convicted if they were tried. The sinners are those who are in outright open rebellion, flaunting the fact that they don’t go God’s ways. Whereas mockers stand on the sideliners and make snide remarks about anyone who seeks to be faithful God. God and his ways are to be sneered at. Only a fool would treat God’s ways as a reliable guide to life.
Do you see how, as we move through this verse, we become more entrenched, more influenced with an approach to life that has no time for God. Our rebellion becomes deeper and more deliberate. Our identity becomes wrapped up with how independent we are from God.
This isn’t just a verse about young people picking up friend at school or university. Choose the wrong friends, then spend more time with them, until you’re in their group and settled in their outlook on life.
It’s something we all do, if we don’t choose the company we keep carefully. That’s not to say we cut ourselves off from people who have a different outlook on life. But it is to say that we’re not as different as we might think. We so easily slip from keeping someone’s company to becoming like them, permanently.
That’s one lifestyle. Taking your cue from the world of unbelief. Much better, be led by the word of God. Instead of taking your cue from God’s opponents, take your cue from God’s teaching.
Verse 2: “… but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”
That word “law”, is the word “torah”. It’s about so much more than laws. It carries ideas of “teaching”, “instruction”, “direction”, “guidance”. It’s the word for the instruction a father would give to his child before heading off to university. It’s the word for the training a craftsman would give to his young apprentice.
Here’s how to immunise yourself from being led astray by unsavoury company. Live for pleasure. That’s right: Live for pleasure. It’s simply a matter of what brings you the greatest pleasure. And here we learn that being on the right track in life is all about having your delight in the Lord’s teaching and instruction.
And so it is that you meditate on it day and night.
The word “meditate” is probably slightly unhelpful for us. We picture certain practices from the east, where the object is to empty your mind. For some reason, cross-legged on the floor.
What is described here is not about emptying your mind, but filling it. Filling it with the word of God.
And we do this “day and night”. Carving out the time to plan to read the Bible. Maybe the free Bible notes we print each month will help? But other things too. Have you ever tried memorising verses of the Bible? Or even short passages? Or even whole books? It can be done. I’ll run a training evening if a few of us are interested. And then, when you’re randomly awake at 3 in the morning, you can reach into your memory for something to think about.
Which bit of the Bible? Well, all of it. This is much wider than just the laws. It includes the narratives, the teaching portions and so on.
And this is not a cold discipline, dragging yourself to spend time in the Bible, when you’d rather be doing something else. Because remember this is something we do because it is an utter delight. Steeping ourselves in God’s ways becomes a firm favourite activity.
Two lifestyles. Take your cue from the world of unbelief, or the word of God. Take your cue from God’s opponents, or God’s teaching.
Two Consequences
Then verses 3 and 4, two consequences. Two consequences.
The psalm gives us two paths through life, and those paths have very different consequences.
On the one hand we have the tree. “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.”
Remember this was written in a dry climate. A tree lovingly transplanted near to underground water. When drought comes, its leaves don’t drop. In fruit season, fruit always comes.
The ultimate picture of stability, or security, of fruitfulness.
Moving back from trees to people, here’s what this fruitful tree represents: “Whatever they do prospers”. It’s a picture of prosperity. Success.
We have to make sure we hear that correctly. There are some preachers, particularly in parts of Africa and North America, who teach this absolutely. If you follow Jesus, you’ll be prosperous. You’ll be rich. Your dreams will come true.
That is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that following God is often the way of suffering. But as a broad brush picture, in Psalm 1 to open the book of Psalms, this is true. Jesus Christ is the winning team. If you’re on God’s path through life, things will work out for you. Because the maker of the universe has your back.
Of course, there are often times when this doesn’t appear to be so. That is why we have the other 148 psalms after these first 2. Many of them are cries of bewilderment to God: “Why are things not working the way they are supposed to? Why do the wicked prosper? Why do the righteous suffer? Why am I suffering?”
But it’s having this psalm your Bible that makes you out to God. This psalm tells you that the righteous are supposed to prosper. So then things don’t work like that, something’s broken.
Two paths through life. Two consequences. Verse 3, the tree. Then verse 4, the chaff.
“Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.”
It’s a picture from farming grain. You harvest your wheat. Then you thresh it, beating it with a spiked board, to loosen the husk from the edible grain inside. Then you toss the lot into the air. The wind blows the husks, the chaff away, and the grain you want falls back to the ground.
You couldn’t have a bigger contrast. The tree is planted by water; the chaff is dry. The tree produces fruit; the chaff is the bit you can’t eat. The tree is useful; the chaff is weightless and worthless.
Yet again, we need faith to see that this is how the world is ordered. We need to take God’s word at face value. Frequently, things will look very different. Which is why we’ll frequently cry out and wonder why the world is not as it is supposed to be.
But here is God’s assessment. Here are the two consequences of the two ways through life. Total security, versus total insecurity. Fruitfulness, versus worthless rubbish.
Two Futures
Two lifestyles.
Two consequences.
And then two futures.
Verse 5: “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.”
This life is not all there is. This is another piece of perspective we need to pray. The psalms keep returning to the theme of death, judgement and afterlife.
There is a day when God will call every one of us to account for the way we’ve lived our lives.
That’s a day when God’s people will be gathered together. We’ll assemble to worship our God. We’ll gather to celebrate that all is now right with this world.
What we do here, Sunday by Sunday, is a tiny foretaste of that. This is church, gathering, assembly. That will be the big assembly.
You know how good it is when there are huge crowds together for something. There’s far more atmosphere seeing the new year in on the South Bank. Far more fun to watch the rugby at Twickenham rather than with a few mates in the pub. The Wimbledon final is something else actually on Centre Court. Or to be at The Oval to watch Ben Stokes score yet another century.
It’s good to gather together as the people of God, Sunday by Sunday. If you get the chance from time to time to do this with a few hundred, or even a thousand, that feels really good. It will be so good to be there on the day when Jesus returns, to celebrate that he rules, that he’s victorious, that death is gone, that his people are rescued, and he and we can live forever and ever.
So good. “… the assembly of the righteous.”
But those who are on the wrong path in life will miss that. In fact, they’ll be condemned, found guilty, sentenced to be punished for all the wrong things they’ve done. “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.” To put it another way, they won’t have a leg to stand on. There’s no defence. Nothing to say, when standing exposed before the Lord Jesus as our judge.
Two very different futures.
Two paths through life. Two lifestyles. With two consequences. Heading to two futures.
Drawing it together
And verse 6 brings it all together with great clarity. “For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”
There’s a choice to be made. You can be on what this psalm calls the “righteous” way. If you’re on that path, God is watching. God is taking care of you. God knows you intimately. God is your security. And God will bring you through to everlasting life.
Or you can be on the “wicked” way. That road leads straight over a cliff. It’s the road to destruction.
Notice that it doesn’t say that God sends you to destruction.
If you’re on the road to life, that is because of God’s loving, watchful care.
If you’re on the road to destruction, that is down to you. That’s the road you’ve chosen to walk.
Those are the two ways through life. And if we will come to pray, the first thing we need to do is to orientate ourselves. This is the way life works.
Jesus, the righteous man
I said at the beginning that we read this psalm as Christian men and women. We’re reading something that was written 3000 years ago. So we need to make sure we’re hearing it as Christians.
The coming of Jesus does two things to the way we hear this psalm.
The first thing is that it reinforces it. You find lots of very similar language in the teaching of Jesus. That picture of the fruitful tree might remind you of Jesus saying that he is the true vine. If we remain in him, we will bear much fruit.
The language of the chaff might remind you of the parable of the end of the age, when the farmer gathers his grain into his barn, but puts the weeds onto the fire.
But I keep coming back to the sermon on the mount. If Psalm 1 tells us to live by the Lord’s teaching, we have this parable: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
And if Psalm 1 tells us about two ways to live, and how one of those ways leads to destruction, perhaps it’s this parable we need: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Jesus reinforces much of what we find in Psalm 1.
But there’s a second thing to say about Jesus and this psalm, and it’s really important.
Verse 1 literally says, “Blessed is the man who …” Our Bible is careful not to use male language for words that just refer to a person in general, and you can see why. “Blessed is the man…”, in this day and age, makes us want to point out that presumably women like this are also blessed. And that’s correct.
But if we’re not careful we lose site of one really important thing. When it boils down to it, this psalm really is talking about one man in particular. And that is the Lord Jesus.
He is the one who knew how spend time with people whose lives were a mess, who were shunned by society for being notorious sinners and criminals, and yet never once threw his lot in with theirs.
He is the one who chewed on God’s word, and the Psalms in particular, so that even as he hung in agony on a cross it was the words of a Psalm you found on his lips.
He is the fruitful tree, the true vine. All he does prospers.
He is the one who will stand on the day of judgement. Everyone else will be standing around him.
Jesus is the one who is on the path to life. And left to our own devices, every one of us would be on the path to destruction. We’re all wicked sinners. None of us has a leg to stand on.
The Christian good news is that Jesus offers us the chance to go through life with our hand in his. For his destiny to be our destiny. For us to be on the road to life, not because we’ve earnt it, but because we can be his “plus one”.
This psalm still says basically the same thing. It just means that the road to life is not to be found in reading the Bible in general, and trying to be good enough. It’s found in paying close attention to Jesus. The whole Bible speaks about him. We meditate on it day and night to draw close to him. And then, purely by God’s kindness, verse 6 becomes a promise that the Lord will watch over our way.
Conclusion
Then we’re seeing the world the right way up, and we’re ready to pray.
So if you’d love to learn to pray, God would love to help.
And his first lesson is not about what things to ask for or what words to use. It’s to make sure you’re on the right road in your life, and then stay on that road. Not led astray by those who dismiss God, but hand in hand with Jesus, the fruitful tree, to learn life from him.