Psalm One (click to read!)

I’m not sure if this Psalm is officially counted as a Wisdom Psalm or not, but it definitely has some wise teaching for us.

The Psalm presents us with two ways to live and the consequences of each choice.

The first picture we are painted is of one who is slowly becoming more entrenched in wicked ways – first they are walking with bad influences and taking their advice. Then they stop and stand and hang around with those who do bad things. Then they sit and stay, not moving on, in the company of mean people.

The second picture is a contrast – and this is the person who God blesses – the one who delights in the Lord and studies His word. This person will not be easily led astray because he is deeply rooted in God, constantly being refreshed, connected to the source of life, as in John 15, and producing fruit (one assumes the fruit of the Spirit – Galatians 5:22-3). This person is full of life and prospers because he has deep roots (Colossians 2:7).

But the wicked person has no roots and quickly blown away. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Now we see the consequences – the wicked person is judged by God and brought down, but the righteous person is seen and known by God, they will grow and be refreshed.

These concepts of ‘wicked’ and ‘righteous’ can sometimes seem a little archaic to our ears, and people are never this black and white. I’m sure this psalm has been misused in the past to encourage young people away from ‘hanging out with the wrong crowd’. For me, however, that is not the takeaway. The man who is blessed is the one who is seeking God’s advice, God’s perspective, not man’s. He is looking for a heavenly mindset. It is so easy to get so used to culture, society, the media, that their messages which bombard us everyday become our standard pattern of thought. And ‘what goes in to the mind comes out in the life’ – we can so easily become the man sitting down in the company of nasty people without realising it.

Don’t get me wrong here – there are a lot of great and insightful and fun television programmes and films and books and art and music, and we can learn a lot from them. But there are a lot of these things (even some of the really good ones) that are at odds with the Biblical lifestyle. We have to make sure we are flooding our minds with the Word, so that that influences our lives more than the culture around us.

When I was at university, I developed a bit of an addiction to that wonderful sitcom, favourite to so many, Friends. (I still love it!) I got to the point where I would chain watch multiple episodes, even fall asleep watching it. And then I started to notice that when my friends were talking about problems in their lives, I could more easily bring up a joke from friends than an encouraging Bible verse. When I thought about my own life and relationships I could more easily relate it to what I was seeing onscreen than what I was reading in God’s word. It started to affect the way I thought about life and so, in the end, I gave myself a break from the show until I had got myself more stuck in the Bible and seeing things God’s way.

This isn’t easy but it is so much the better way, because it brings life and health and refreshment to our souls.