Great to see everyone last night. Next week we’ll be back in home groups. Here are the notes from the study:
Psalm 1
Psalm 1 lays out two paths…The Blessed life is the life we want. What “blessed” means—“This is the truly blessed life.” The life to be envied, to be admired. “Happy.” This is “the good life.” We say: “They have the best life.”
Verse 3 helps us define what this means:
- Fruit: Your life is producing all the things it’s supposed to produce.
- Leaf: You are healthy, you have what you need.
- Prosper: Your life is successful, according to God’s design for humanity.
The way to it is to ignore the counsel of the ungodly, and spend your life meditating on God’s word, because you love it.
What is the counsel of the ungodly?
- It is advice about how you should think, act, or live your life that comes from people who don’t know God.
- It is when people who don’t actually acknowledge God as their king tell you who you should be.
- It is when people who don’t make following Jesus a priority tell you where you should be headed.
Today, the counsel of the ungodly doesn’t just come through people we know, but also through a whole network of technologies and media and all that that keeps all these ideas pressing on us 24/7.
How do we actually, practically avoid the “counsel of the ungodly” and instead “meditate on the law of the Lord”? Here are some scriptures for food for thought…
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
- Keep these words in your heart… by actively involving them in your life as much as possible. (v.7-9) Talk about them everywhere, teach them, center your family around them, start your day with them, end your day with them, make them central in your identity, let them shape your home… This is how to avoid “walking in the counsel of the ungodly.”
Psalm 119:11, 97-100, 104-105
- Saturating yourself in God’s word is how you avoid all kinds of traps.
Jeremiah 17:5-8
- This is a meditation on Psalm 1. Notice the parallels: “Walking in the counsel of the ungodly” becomes “trusting in Man” and “meditating on the law of the Lord” becomes “trusting in the Lord.”
Jeremiah 23:16-28
- There is such a thing as people who speak with an air of authority, but everyone who listens to them is worse off (v.16)
- The antidote is verse 18.
- There are all kinds of voices out there. There are people who offer all kinds of advice. There are people who claim to have higher knowledge and insight… God calls it all “chaff.” The Word of God, spoken faithfully, is the only thing that matters.
Matthew 7:24-27
- Why would someone ever build on the beach? Maybe everyone told them it was a great place to build. The Counsel of the ungodly will tell you where to build your house. They’ll tell you the sand is a perfect place to build. They’ll give you all kinds of advice about how to build on the sand, where to build on the sand. But they’ll never acknowledge that it’s a bad place to build your house, or that there’s even another option. In other words, they’ll never acknowledge that someone should base their whole life on Jesus’ words.
John 8:43-47
- A possible interpretation of verse 43: If you can’t listen to God’s word, you won’t understand the things Jesus said either. If the Bible is uninteresting to you, you’ll misunderstand Jesus.
John 15:11
- How does Jesus protect our emotional life? What provision has he made to keep us happy? His words. He spoke the things we needed to be inwardly whole. And he made sure those words were written down so we could meditate on them day and night, and be ok. Even if everything around us got tense or anxious or angry or lit on fire… we can have inner joy.
- For instance, see…
John 16:1-4
- What has he given us to make sure we don’t give up or freak out when we face real opposition? His words. Remember them, and you won’t stumble.
Sum Up: Psalm 1:1-4
“The counsel of the ungodly” doesn’t just come through people we know, but also through a whole network of technologies and media and all that that keeps all these ideas pressing on us 24/7.
God is calling us to ignore all of that, in terms of anything that really matters about our lives…and give ourselves to reading, knowing, thinking deeply about, loving, talking about, and even spreading… God’s words. That’s how you’ll avoid being ruined by the counsel of the ungodly. That’s how you’ll have a life that isn’t weightless and worthless like chaff. That’s how you’ll be healthy, strong, resilient and fruitful… till Jesus comes.