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My meditation today (again on the first Psalm) led me to a more general conclusion. Many writers remark that this Psalm is placed first deliberately, in order to set the tone or theme that encompasses all the Psalms. Taken as a whole, it’s a simple (and stark) contrast between those who belong to God and those who do not. The righteous are vigorous, continuously nourished trees and the wicked are chaff. Perhaps most importantly, the Lord ‘knows the way of the righteous’ but the way of the wicked ‘will perish’. At the risk of observing the obvious, the conclusion I came to as I considered the Psalm today is that I have every reason to desire to be among the righteous and to flee from the path of the wicked.
Thinking on this today, even now, that thought seems like the most obvious application of the Psalm that is easiest to miss. Perhaps it’s my current theological bent, or just the way I tend to look at things, but when I observe a passage like the first Psalm, application such as what I just described takes an awfully long time do dawn upon me. At root I’m sure it has something to do with indwelling sin. How easy it is to look idly or passively at the Scripture! I’ve tried to reflect on my habits of analysis and I think something like this happens: I read a passage (i.e., Psalm 1). I understand the terms. I connect that my trusting Jesus (which I believe I am doing) makes me righteous before God in Him. I conclude that the promise of salvation in the passage (likewise the assurance of non-damnation) belongs to me, and that the statements about ‘the righteous’ must in some way refer to me or reflect my experience. While some of that line of reasoning is true, if I stop there at the surface and back up I can see that I’ve almost missed the point entirely, without even getting into my glaring inability to relate to the experience of the ‘righteous’ man in Psalm 1. But it took meditating on verses 2-4 to even awaken my curiosity in another direction. Life is lived in pursuit of righteousness (sanctification) on the foundation of of an established righteousness (justification). Neither one alone can be called Christianity.
Which observation brings me to the title of this entry. Here I am, again rediscovering that I instantly forget crucial truth when I am away from the Word, and when I was reading a Puritan writer today at lunch (also been a while for me in that category), the clarity and consistency with which they grasped Biblical concepts and Biblical living struck me afresh. I’m sure they had their moments, but to read them, one would think they never forgot powerful truths – that they lived in constant application of Biblical principles. What I read today struck a chord with me particularly because of the conclusion of my meditation on the Psalm – essentially, the necessity and privilege of pursuing godliness (or the folly of not doing so). Here is a bit from the introduction to Thomas Watson’s book entitled The Godly Man’s Picture, published in 1666.
‘What a rare thing godliness is! It is not airy and puffed up, but solid, and such as will take up the heart and spirits. Godliness consists in an exact harmony between holy principles and practices. . . Godliness is our wisdom. “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28). Policy without piety is profound madness. . . Godliness has the promise of the present life and of that which is to come (1 Tim. 4:8). . . Godliness puts a man in heaven before his time. Christian, aspire after piety; it is a lawful ambition. Look at the saints’ characteristics here, and never leave off till you have got them stamped upon your own soul. This is the grand business that should swallow up your time and thoughts.’ [emphasis mine]
He’s right, and the fact that he’s right implies that I, along with the vast majority of our visible American church, am wrong. I’m learning, but one thing at a time often seems too slow.
Ok, ok. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding the ‘2nd day air’ package I ordered – shipped on the sixteenth of December, arrived a week into January – but the most current installment of the ‘my wife is trying to get a job with them’ saga leaves me with little reason to respect that hallowed institution.
To begin with, the postal service places ads in even the most useless employment publications – ads that completely drown the competition with ‘$18/hr’ in HUGE PRINT emblazoned over the grand old flag. The only way to respond to this ad is by phone. Suppose you want to respond. Speaking with a friendly representative, you find out that in order to begin the process of competing to qualify for an interview, you have to pay the postal service over $100 for a ‘training kit’ to prep you for a group exam – a group exam offered locally at the discretion of the postal service. (Under several conditions, you can get that money back, though you must in any case follow through with the process [however long] to do so.)
There many not be an exam in your area for months, or even years, but thankfully, USPS provides you with a website that lists upcoming examinations. This turns out to be the only reliable way to know that a test is happening in your area, as the promised ‘notification’ (if you are fortunate enough to receive one from them) will likely arrive within a day or two of the test itself. And, by the way, the test is not easy. You’d better study those hundred-dollar materials. If and when the materials arrive. If it’s any consolation, you’ll receive your test results quickly.
Assuming that you have ascended to the higher echelon, or at least passed the test, you now qualify for an interview. This doesn’t mean they have to give you one – at least not until they think it’s a good idea. And in this case, there is no telling how many jobs you may have started and quit by the time the postal service gets back to you. But you had better be on guard when they do. If it’s anything like our experience, you’ll walk in with the mail one evening after work, having totally forgotten about USPS, with a heavy packet from said antagonists in hand. The packet will contain about fifty pages of paperwork (some of which need to be notarized), along with documentation regarding the upcoming interview. What will shock you is that the paperwork must be in the hands of the postal service before noon tomorrow. And that your interview is two days later, whether you are available or not. At that time, you will think to yourself, ‘There must be some mistake! I’ll just check the dates on this and let them know I need a little time.’ Then you will see the violence inherent in the system. The documentation with your paperwork will be dated at least one week before you received it, and – for the clincher – your packet’s packaging won’t be postmarked.
So think twice before closing your lips around that hook.
So begins the fourth verse of Psalm 1. Only this morning did I see how that verse completely contradicted my almost subconscious cultural paradigm. The words ‘not so the wicked’ follow the words ‘And in whatever he does, he prospers’ (NASB). It’s clear, of course, that in taking the short psalm as a whole, a contrast is being drawn (with simple parallelism) between the righteous and the wicked. But the force of the turnaround in verse four struck me in a peculiar way this morning. I decided to linger on that passage.
When I look at the ‘wicked’, those (for instance) with whom I work who do not fear God, my initial analysis does not take me to Psalm 1:4. The wicked seem to prosper! I feel the force of this more and more as I continue to be the only Christ-follower in a group of non- and anti-religious men at work. I am regularly ridiculed (along with the Scriptures, God, and Christ Himself) with unabashed confidence by very intelligent men who are, to all outward appearances, doing very well in the world. Every day I feel the pressure to ’sit in the seat of scoffers’ who make delighting in the law of God seem like a fatuous pursuit. All evidence I put forth for the Scripture and for faith is met with scorn or apathy, making the goal of my life seem wholly irrelevant.
In the midst of the battle for my own faith and joy, verse four arrives. ‘Not so the wicked.’ What can that mean? If anyone is in fact prospering here, it doesn’t appear to be me! And that is just it: from the correlation between verses three and four it is apparent that material gain, power, and security are not the sort of prosperity that is intended in verse three. Prospering in verse three is more akin to fruit bearing (don’t forget the tree metaphor), inward strength and vitality. Thinking through this I arrived at my own deeper dissatisfaction with this verse.
Having understood the intended contrast, I was frightened by the fact that I am not prospering in this sense. Perhaps ‘floundering’ is closer to the truth. The wicked prosper in an outward sense (as in Psalm 73), but I am weak both outwardly and inwardly. The heart-strength that ought to bear me up in times like this is flagging. I am prompted to wonder whether I am indeed in Christ when I consider passages like this. But at the dead end, I am reminded in a new way that what is impossible with man is possible with God – indeed, the fruit of the Spirit is the gift of God. I think I’m beginning to see that what differentiates strong and solid Christians from those more like myself is that those who are strong have learned to diligently pursue God; by that I mean that they are knocking down His door day and night, pleading for the fruit. Those like myself have unconsciously turned the sovereignty and all-controlling power of God into an excuse for not doing the same. The Bible will not allow us to get away with that. That whole argument and its conclusion is contained even in the six verses of this psalm – the God-fearer delights in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, and he who lives in this way prospers. ‘Not so the wicked’. May it be so with me.
So, 2007 finds me working as a systems administrator, and says “What were you thinking?”
But seriously, here I am in a new year – married, in Atlanta, not (yet) an R&B heart-throb, working in web hosting, trying to find time to play music I worked hard on for so many years. I find it providentially funny. Except for the R&B part. That’s just a crime.
I’m reviving this blog mainly to have a place to put personal journals and meditations, as I’m finding that important to maintaining (or restoring) joy and Biblical focus. And because it’s amazing what we forget as a result of not writing. Read at your own risk. Everything in ‘the old blog’ is, well, from the old blog. There’s some fun stuff in there even I forgot I wrote.
‘witty saying to send you on your way’
1 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;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
As this is my first meditation, I took the counsel of a good friend and decided to begin by looking at the second verse of the first Psalm. “[B]ut his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.” The first thing that entered my mind upon consideration of this verse was a sort of failure to relate. I haven’t any idea what it’s like to meditate on anything “day and night”. My attention is always divided and somewhat shallow, even when reading. The righteous man is said in this verse not only to meditate on the law day and night, but to “delight” in it.
That got me thinking: perhaps there’s a reason for the order of the verse – delight, then meditation. Delighting in a thing certainly enjoins meditation! But can it work the other way? By meditating on the law, is it possible to arrive at delight in the law? [I suppose I'm performing a sort of meditative excercise right now - perhaps my delight is imperceptibly growing in the process.] The reason I have to ask the question at this point is that I haven’t been experiencing a great deal of delight in the law of God in this season of my life.
According to Matthew Henry (whom I trust before Webster here), “To meditate in God’s word is to discourse with ourselves concerning the great things contained in it, with a close application of mind, a fixedness of thought, till we be suitably affected with those things and experience the savour and power of them in our hearts. This we must do day and night; we must have a constant habitual regard to the word of God as the rule of our actions and the spring of our comforts, and we must have it in our thoughts, accordingly, upon every occassion that occurs, whether night or day.” What’s more, such a delight (with discipline) is the root of the prospering tree in the adjoining verse, whose “leaf does not wither.” If nothing else (and there is certainly more), the text implies that I am to devote my most earnest thought and time to the word of God, day and night, if I ever expect the sapling that is my soul to fill out into such a tree.
