Most nonfiction books have an introduction. This is typically a brief but essential section at the beginning of the book. One of its purposes is to present the information necessary to comprehend what the book is about. The author answers the question, What does my reader need to know to understand the rest of this book? The book of Psalms is no different.
While the Psalms has been known as the prayer book of the Bible, it doesn’t open with a prayer but with an introduction. You could say Psalms details for us the blessing of direct and honest access to the Creator of the universe. Psalm 1 shows us where that access to God is found.
The author gives a sweeping view of the blessed life through contrast. We either delight in the ways of the wicked or in the law of the Lord (vv. 1–2); we’re either blown like chaff or firmly rooted (vv. 3–4); we’ll either burn up in the judgment or stand confidently with the congregation (vv. 5–6). The psalmist details these contrasts to show us a progression. Your delight informs your roots, which inform your stability on the last day.
What’s Your Delight?
If you were to set a marble down on the hardwood floor of my house, it would slowly begin to roll away. That’s because the foundation of my home has been settling and shifting for the last 82 years. Each time I begin a construction project, I must consider that nothing is square.
Psalm 1 tells us the wicked are building on uneven supports. They’re expecting steady results but working from a flawed foundation.
Throughout the first psalm, the author gives a sweeping view of the blessed life through contrast.
But to delight in the law of the Lord is to build on a level rock. It provides stability, clarity, and accuracy that the shifting sands of the wicked, sinners, and scoffers cannot. The foundation on which you set your delight informs the direction of the structure it supports. Just as my uneven foundation makes nothing in my house square, the psalmist is saying the direction of your life will be misguided if your ultimate delight is placed anywhere but in God.
Where Are Your Roots?
At the start of each spring, the fruit trees in my yard begin to blossom. We see the little apple, plum, and peach buds growing where just six weeks earlier, the same trees looked like nothing more than planted sticks. In the cold winter, they were bare and seemed dead. But they weren’t. No, those barren trees had been drawing up whatever water they could find from the drought-ridden California ground. All winter, they were preparing for the spring ahead so that in their season, they would yield fruit.
Psalm 1 warns against our world’s definition of blessedness. A tree is alive even when fruit-bearing isn’t apparent because it’s not wilting or withering (v. 3). In the same way, the psalmist tells us that a blessed life isn’t always defined by visible fruitfulness but by visceral faithfulness.
The fruit of the Spirit will always be seen in the life of a believer (Gal. 5:22–23), but that’s not the quantifiable blessing and prosperity this world prizes. The world values results. The psalmist values faithfulness.
Maybe you’ve bought the world’s lie. Maybe despite your best efforts, your church isn’t growing numerically. Maybe you’ve evangelized and prayed for your kids for years, but they refuse to believe. Maybe you’re having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, let alone accomplishing your to-do list.
Christian, in the cold, hard seasons of your life you can keep from withering by delighting in the God who is with you, by meditating on his word (v. 2). It’s in those seasons you prove not only that you trust the Lord but that your trust is the Lord (Jer. 17:7). During the hard days, be like my trees, and faithfully draw up the water of God’s word. Let it work within you (1 Thess. 2:13). It may be winter now, but God has appointed spring fruit only winter faithfulness can produce.
How Will You Stand?
Often in the Bible, God’s presence shows up in fire: God appears to Moses in a burning bush (Ex. 3). He leads Israel by a pillar of fire in the wilderness (Ex. 13:17–22). The Spirit came upon the early church as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:1–4). And the author of Hebrews describes God as a “consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
Blessedness isn’t only defined by fruitfulness but by faithfulness.
Do you know what can’t stand fire for even a second? Wicked chaff (Ps. 1:4). Chaff is kindling. Deadwood and dry grass are burned up in an instant by the flames. At the judgment, the wicked will not be able to stand in God’s presence without being burned up.
The wicked fall in the judgment, and God’s blessed ones will stand. How? By delighting in the One who was thrown down and consumed by the flames for us. The Gospel accounts show us Jesus Christ, a man who truly delighted in the law of the Lord (Matt. 5:17). Jesus was the man who ate, breathed, and drank the Scriptures (John 4:34). So much so that if you were to cut him, he seemingly bled God’s Word (Matt. 4; Mark 15:34; John 19:28).
But what does the Bible tell us? That this man—the man Psalm 1 describes—was burned up like wicked chaff so we could be rooted in his righteousness. He sat down in our cursing so we could be confident to sit in his blessing.
He first delighted in us, and now we love to delight in him in return. This is our introduction into the blessed life, and this is the truth we need to press deep into our hearts to make it through our wintery seasons faithfully. Once we’ve first been properly introduced to the truth of Jesus Christ, we can delight in the honesty of the blessed relationship described throughout the Psalms.
The Gospel Coalition