Psalm 1

Psalm 1

Verse 1

"Blessed" - see how this Book of Psalms opens with a blessing, how he gave the famous Sermon of our Lord on the Mount! The word translated "blessed" is very expressive. The original word is plural and is controversial whether it is an adjective or a noun. Therefore, we can to learn about the multitude of blessings that will rest upon the man to whom God justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness that He he will enjoy. We can read: 'Oh, the beatitudes!' and we can consider it (as Ainsworth does) as a joyful acclamation of man's happiness Funny. May a similar blessing rest upon us!

Here the graceful man is described both negatively (verse 1) and positively (verse 2). He is a man who does not walk in the counsel of unrighteous. He accepts a wiser counsel and walks in the commandments of Lord your God. For him, the paths of piety are paths of peace and Pleasure. Your steps are ordered by the Word of God, and not by the wiles and more intentions of carnal men. It is a rich sign of inner grace when the outdoor walking is changed and when wickedness is put away from Our actions. Note later, he does not place himself in the way of sinners. His the company is of a type of choice from what it was. Although he is a sinner, he is now a sinful person washed in blood, encouraged by the Holy Spirit and renewed in the heart. Standing by the rich grace of God in the congregation two just ones, he does not dare herd with the crowd that does evil. Once again It is said: "he doesn't even sit in the chair of the disdainful." He finds no rest. in the mockery of the atheist. Let others mock sin, of the eternity, of hell and of heaven and of the Eternal God; this man learned better philosophy than that of the infidel, and has a great sense of the presence of God to endure hearing his name blasphemed. The thirst of the scoffer can be very high, but it is very close to the gate of hell; we will flee from it, for the logo will be empty, and destruction will engulf the man sitting on it.

Mark the gradation in the first verse: He does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Do not stay on the path of the sinners, He does not sit in the seat of scoffers.

When men are living in sin, they go from bad to worse. At first, they simply follow the advice of the careless and wicked, who they forget about God - evil is much more practical than usual - but then they become accustomed to evil and oppose declared sinners who violate intentionally the commandments of God.; and if much less, they go one they go beyond and become pestilent teachers and tempters of others, and thus they sit in the seat of the scornful. They graduated in vice and, as true Doctors of Damnation, are established and are seen by the others like Masters in Belial. But the blessed man, the man to whom all of God's blessings belong, cannot maintain fellowship with such characters like these. He remains pure of these lepers; he withdraws from him the bad things like garments stained by the flesh; come out from among the wicked and left without the encampment, bearing the disgrace of Christ. The purpose for which grace be thus separated from sinners. And now mark your positive character. 'Your joy is in the law of the Lord. He is not under the law as a curse and condemnation, but he is in it, and he delights in being in it as his rule of life; He delights, moreover, in meditating on it, reading it during the day and thinking of him at night. He takes a text and carries it with him all day long; and in the vigils at night, when sleep abandons his eyelids, he meditates on the Word of God. On the day of his prosperity, he sings psalms of the Word of God and, On the night of his affliction, he finds solace in the promises of the same book. 'The law "the Lord" is the daily bread of the true believer. And yet, in the days of Davi, how small was the volume of inspiration, for they practically did not had nothing but the first five books of Moses! Much more, So, we must value all the written Word that is our privilege to have in all our homes! But, what mistreatment is given to this angel from heaven! We do not we are all Berean researchers of the Scriptures. How few among We can claim the blessing of the text! Perhaps some of you can. claim a kind of negative purity, because you do not walk in path of the wicked; but let me ask you: Is your pleasure in the law of God? Do you study the Word of God? You make man from your hand. right - your best companion and guide hour by hour? If not, this blessing does not belong to you.

Verse 3

"And he will be like a tree planted" - not a wild tree, but "a planted tree", chosen, considered as property, cultivated and protected from the last terrible uprooting, for "every plant What my Heavenly Father has not planted must be rooted out: "Matthew 15:13." "By the rivers of water"; so that, even if one river fails, it has another.

The rivers of forgiveness and the rivers of grace, the rivers of promise and the rivers of communion with Christ, are inexhaustible sources of supply. He is "like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that produces its fruit in its time; thanks not being out of season, like untimely figs, that are never full of flavor. But the man who delights in the Word of God, being taught by her, produces patience in the time of suffering, faith on the day of testing and holy joy at the time of prosperity. Fertility is a an essential quality of a graceful man, and this fertility must be seasonal. "Your leaf will not wilt either"; your weakest word will be eternal; your small acts of love will be remembered. Not just your fruit it will be preserved, but also its leaf. It will not lose its beauty nor the his fertility. "And everything he does will prosper." Blessed is the man that has a promise like this. But we should not always estimate the fulfillment of a promise by our own vision. How many times, my brothers, if we judge with weak sense, we may reach the sad conclusion that Jacob: 'All these things are against me!' For, although we know our interest in the promise, yet we are so experienced and disturbed, that vision sees exactly the opposite of what this promise announces. But for the eyes of faith this word is certain, and through it we realize that our works are prosperous, even when everything seems to be against us. It is not prosperity the exterior that the Christian desires and values the most; it is the prosperity of the soul that he clam. Frequently, like Josiah, we build ships to go to Tarshish for gold, but they are broken in Eziom-Geber; but even here there is a true prosperity, for many times it is for the health of the soul that we would be poor, mourning, and persecuted. Our worst things are usually our best things. As there is a curse involved in the the mercies of the wicked man, there is also a hidden blessing in the crosses, losses and sorrows of the righteous. The trials of the saint are a divine creation, through which it grows and produces abundant fruits.

Verse 4

We have now arrived at the second head of the Psalm. In this verse, the the contrast of the state of evil of the wicked is used to emphasize the colorfulness of that beautiful and pleasant frame that precedes it. The most forced translation of the The Vulgate and the version of the Septuagint is: "The wicked are not so, they are not so." we are here to understand that anything good is said of the righteous, isn't it truth in the case of the wicked. Oh! how terrible it is to have a double negative in the promises! And yet, this is only the condition of the wicked. Mark the use of the term 'ungodly', as we saw in the opening of the Psalm, these are the beginners in evil are the least offensive of sinners. Oh! if this is the sad state of those who silently continue in their morality and they neglect their God, what must be the condition of open sinners and shameless infidels?

The first sentence is a negative description of the wicked and the second is the positive frame.

Here is their character - "they are like straw", intrinsically worthless, dead, unusable, without substance, and easily taken away. Here, also, mark your destruction - "the wind blows away"; death will hasten them with its terrible explosion in the fire in which they will be completely consumed.

Verse 5

They must be there to be judged, but not to be acquitted. The fear will take hold of them there; they will not resist their ground; they will flee; they they will not remain in self-defense; because they must blush and be covered with eternal disdain.

Well, may the saints long for heaven, for no evil man will dwell there., nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." All our congregations on earth they are mixed. Every church has a devil in it. The tares grow among same grooves as wheat. There is no ground that has been completely removed from the wheat. Sinners mix with the saints, for the dross mix with gold. God's precious diamonds are still the same. field with pebbles. Just Lots are this side of heaven continuously tormented by the men of Sodom. Let us rejoice, then, that in general assembly and in the church of the firstborn it will admit only a single unrenewed soul. Sinners cannot live in sky. They would be out of their element. Earlier a fish could live about a tree than the wicked in Paradise. Heaven would be a hell unbearable for a unrepentant man, even if he could enter; but Such privilege will never be granted to the man who perseveres in his iniquities. May God grant that we may have a name and a place in your cuts above!

Verse 6

Or, as the Hebrew more fully has: 'The Lord he is getting to know the path of the righteous." He is constantly looking into your path, and although it may often be in fog and darkness, still So the Lord knows this. If it is in the clouds and in the storm of affliction, He understand this. He counts the hairs on our head; he will not allow that no evil shall befall us. "He knows the way I take: when he tests me I will come out like gold." (Job 23:10) "But the way of the wicked will perish." Not only will they perish, but their way will also perish.

The righteous carves his name on the rock, but the wicked writes his memory. on the sand. The just man plows the furrows of the earth and sows a harvest here, that will never be fully harvested until he enters into the enjoyment of eternity; but, concerning the wicked, he plows the sea and, although it seems there is a trace brilliant behind its keel, the waves will pass over it, and the place that it one does not know nor will ever know. The very "path" of the wicked will perish. If it exists in memory, it will be in the memory of evil; because The Lord will make the name of the wicked rot, become a stench in noses of the good and only be known by the wicked themselves for their decay.

May the Lord purify our hearts and our paths, so that may we escape the fate of the wicked and enjoy the bliss of the just!