Psalm 1
The title of this Psalm is “The way of the righteous and the end of the ungodly”. This psalm is unusual in the fact that it declares God’s plan for our lives and the result if we live by His way or reject His way of living. The starting point is that we understand that God wants to bless us but His blessing is conditional to the way that we live. While it is true that God forgives and forgets sin, we must never forget that our actions have consequences, for example, when I am driving I choose not to stop at the red light and hit another car and the driver dies, although I am forgiven by God, I still will have to spend time in jail because of my behaviour. It is easy at times to take for granted the way God loves us and desires to bless us. Verse 1 commences with “Blessed is the man”, the word blessed means ‘the happiness we experience when we are going in the right direction or on the right path ’. while God wants to bless us He very clearly tells of behaviour that will deprive us of that blessing. The first behaviour is “Who walks in the counsel of the ungodly”. We must be aware of the danger that there is so much ungodly counsel today. The media is full of fake news and false agendas, we are bombarded by unproven opinions of people on social media, and the same thing applies to the internet. This is where our walk with the Lord is so precious and must be guarded at all costs. I am surprised by how many people that I know can easily talk about conspiracy theories as facts but never talk about how great the Lord is in their lives. They have chosen to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. Next, we are warned “not to sit with sinners”, this speaks about being comfortable with ungodly ways and I noticed some of those people quoting scripture to justify their actions. It is not about how much we know about the bible but about having a daily life-changing experience with the Lord. I am reminded of Psalm 119:11 which says: “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I may not sin against you”. This is where it is essential to experience the freshness of the Lord daily. The final warning is: “Not to sit in the seat of the scornful”. For many years I thought it was my right to find fault with the governments, the way churches were managed and the way people lived. I excused myself because of my technical background – I was trained to analyse things. It took a major encounter with God to understand – what I was doing was judging people and that was against God’s way for my life. This is something that I must guard against and not allow it to be part of my life. “Scornful” means to hold in contempt or disdain, and this should never be part of the way that we live and as such be very careful not to sit with people with that attitude. This attitude is ungodly and we know that ungodly ways should not be part of the that we live. It is so important that we are not contaminated by ungodly ways. I am so glad that God makes it very clear the behaviour that takes us away from being blessed.