BLESSED IS THE MAN…

SCRIPTURE READING:  Psalm 1

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

           or stand in the way of sinners

           or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

           and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

           which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

           Whatever he does prospers.

Not so the wicked!

           They are like chaff

           that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

           nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

           but the way of the wicked will perish.

INTRODUCTION:

Willliam Broyles, Jr., was senior editor of Newsweek magazine.  It was a heady world of power—intrigue---and creativity.

·        He spent every day on the phone and in the company of the most influential people in the world.

·        He helped to determine the public perception of events that were shaping history. 

·        He made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

·        He was the idol of everybody who knew him.

·        Almost every door in the world was open to him.

Yet Broyles found it all increasingly empty.

·        He awoke in the mornings with the taste of despair in his mouth.  There just had to be more to life than this, he was convinced.

·        So one day he walked away from all of it.  He cleaned out his desk and retired before he was forty.  He began climbing mountains, trying to find something up there that was missing down below.

·         When he thought he was in shape for it, he signed on for an expedition to climb Mount Aconagua in South America, the tallest mountain in this hemisphere.   It was a harrowing experience.  In the freezing cold at night, they lay in their tiny tents high on the mountain’s side listening to the wind and fearing they would be blown off the side of the mountain.  However, Broyles found at those altitudes the clarity of thought he had been missing as an executive in New York.

Marcia Edelman was a doctor in Florida and her husband was a civil engineer.  When his company sent him to a project site in North Carolina, Marcia decided to answer a nagging call she had been feeling for several years.  Instead of remaining at her practice or opening another practice where her husband went, she entered seminary to learn more about her faith.  When she finished her degree, she became a deacon in a local church and gave her time as a volunteer on the staff.

Janwillem van de Wetering was a Dutch businessman who lived all over the world.  He was happily married and enjoyed a high style of living.

·        But he was haunted all the time by the question of meaning:  what did his life mean and what is life itself all about?

·        He traveled to Kyoto, Japan and spent a year in a Zen Buddhist monastery looking for answers.  This only made him more restless.  He continued to need great chunks of time away from his business to contemplate the deeper aspects of human existence.

·        He returned to Kyoto.

·        He spent several months in a Zen commune in the northwestern U.S. He began to write books, always probing and seeking.

·         He now lives in Maine. He is still looking.

Are these people unusual today?  No. they reflect the great spiritual unrest in our world, the sense that there must be something deeper and more meaningful in our culture than we have found.

·        Our world has changed enormously in the last fifty years—probable more that it had changed in all the thousands of years before.

·         philosophies

·         institutions

·         the church

·         families

·         the way we think about existence

·         And as the earth shifts, our sense of well-being, our trust in the traditional answers, our understanding of ourselves all shift with it.  We hunger and thirst for meaning, for understanding, for a way to be, for a way to make a difference. and instinctively, because as Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in God, we turn to

·         spiritual journeys,

·         pilgrimages of the heart, to discover what is missing in our lives.  We know there is something deeper, and we know it has to do with discovering the divine spirit.

Listen again to the words of our text:  “Blessed is the man…whose delight is in the Law of the Lord and on His Law he meditates day and night.

Exactly what does the word blessed mean?

In the Old Testament and in the New Testament the word “blessed” conveys the idea of happiness, being endued with power for success, prosperity, fertility and longevity. In other words, a rich and abundant life!  (zoe!) And God is its only source. 

Do you see what it is talking about?  We may have a negative sense of the law because of our Christian upbringing.  It was lawyers who crucified Christ.  Paul said the law kills and the Spirit gives life.  In general the Law was considered beautiful and gracious, a gift of God for the fulfillment of the human spirit.  Jesus himself loved it and said not a jot or tittle would pass away from it because of anything he did. 

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have sought the good life.  Most have made the grave mistake of equating the good life with possession of health and wealth.  Blessedness is a gift from God and has to do with a well-founded sense of well being.

Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm and as such, it recognizes the standard wisdom motif of the “two ways” of righteousness and wickedness. 

If you were to open a handwritten medieval manuscript of the Psalms at its beginning, chances are that you would discover this psalm—written in red ink and without any evidence of a number. It was not numbered like the rest of the psalms, because it was understood to be an introduction to the whole Book of Psalms, not just another psalm.

 Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 were originally together and serve as the gateway to the rest of the Psalms.  It sets the tone for the rest of the Book of Psalms.

·        Psalm 1 compares the man who meditates on the Word of God and the man whose mode of living is godless. It compares the two separate ways of life and their consequences:

·         One who makes decisions based on the spirit and the law of God and the other who makes his decisions based on the self or the flesh.

·        The psalm is, then, an exhortation –through both positive and negative examples—to adopt the fruitful and satisfying life characterized by immersing one’s self in the Word of God.

·        Then and only then will the faithful find themselves on the “way” that has been prepared as blessed and watched over by God Himself.

NOW LET US CONSIDER THE REST OF PSALM 1.

I.         WHO ARE THE BLESSED?  The Psalms contain a number of descriptions of the blessed.  The blessed person is one who:

·         does not walk in the counsel of the wicked (Ps 1:1)

·         whose sins are covered (32:1)

·         takes refuge in the Lord (34:8)

·         makes the Lord his trust (40:4; 84:12)

·         has regard for the weak (41:1)

·         possesses the strength of the Lord (84:5)

·         has learned to acclaim the Lord (89:15)

·         is disciplined by the Lord (94:12)

·         maintains justice (106:3)

·         fears the Lord (112:1; 128:1)

·         lives without blame(119:1)

·         keeps God’s statutes (119:2)

·         whose help and whose hope is in the Lord (146:5)

These are the descriptions of the qualities of a faith relationship with God and of obedience to him.  To such persons, God is free to give his richest, most abundant life.

According to other passages in the New Testament, we believers are called on to bless others rather than to curse them (e.g., Luke 26:28; Romans 12:14; 1 Cor. 4:12).  No matter how we may be treated, we are to respond in a positive way and to seek to introduce others to that life in Christ that brings blessing.

II.      THE BLESSED IN THE BEATITUDES.

The blessed ones are:

·         the poor in spirit

·         those who mourn

·         those who are meek

·         those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

·         the merciful

·         the pure in heart

·         peacemakers

·         those who are persecuted because of righteousness (Matthew 5: 3-10)

The blessed life includes material blessings based the conditions of (6:33).

·         “But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

This world is obsessed with getting and keeping wealth and self-protection. God’s way of blessing includes:

(Luke 6:38) “Give, and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”   BLESSED IS THE MAN OR WOMAN OR CHILD WHO PUTS THIS INTO PRACTICE. 

BLESSEDNESS IS THE CONSEQUENCE OF FAITH AND LOVE PUT INTO ACTION. 

DO YOU WANT TO BE BLESSED OR DO YOU WANT TO BE A PARKING LOT?

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