(Guest post, written by my 17-year-old son, Everett)
Today we’re looking at Psalm 1:1, which says:
“Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”
As the name suggests, this is the first psalm in the book of Psalms. I don’t know who wrote Psalm 1, but there is a lot to be gleaned from it. I’m just going through the first verse, but I’ve found three major points here that will do us all good to remember:
1. Don’t follow advice given by evil people
2. Don’t hang out in shady places or go looking for trouble
3. Don’t join in with trolls, whether they’re in real life or on the internet, or people who mock God and His Word.
If we are careful not to do these three things, we will be blessed. That word “blessed” means prosperous, happy, enviable, or fortunate. Don’t you want to be blessed by God? Just looking at it logically, doing the things we’re warned against won’t end well for us. So not only will we avoid those damaging consequences, but if we don’t do those things, we will be prosperous or receive favor in some way.
So let’s look at the first line: “Blessed is the person who does not walk in the council of the wicked.” “The council of the wicked,” refers to the advice or example given by those who are wicked, (i.e. satanists, the pope, politicians, your uncle.) And we know from Proverbs 12:5 that, “The thoughts of the righteous are just, but guidance from the wicked is deceitful.”
Sometimes the wicked mean to do us harm with deceitful guidance, but I also think that sometimes people will just give bad advice, no harm intended.
An example of this can be found in 1 Kings 12:4, when the Israelites addressed King Rehoboam, saying, “Your father made our yoke hard; but now, lighten the hard labor imposed by your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.”
Rehoboam asked the elders what he should do, and they told him to treat the Israelites gently as they asked. But as we keep reading the story, it says he ignored their advice and instead asked the “young men who had grown up with him” what they thought, and as verses 1-11 say, “And the young men who had grown up with him spoke to him, saying, ‘This is what you should say to this people who spoke to you, saying: “Your father made our yoke heavy, now you make it lighter for us!” You should speak this way to them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist! Now then, my father loaded you with a heavy yoke; yet I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions!’”
Long story short, Israel rebelled against this harsh rulership, and Rehoboam’s reign over Israel ended quickly. If he had listened to the elders’ council and treated them kindly, it probably would have gone better for him. He would have been prosperous, but he followed the wicked council of his friends instead.
If you want a more modern example of this, before he died in 2006, the Welsh preacher Selwyn Hughes wrote that there are three lies that have infiltrated Christianity and need renouncing. These lies are as follows: human beings are basically good, we are not responsible for the way we are, and we can find happiness independently of God. Since the time Selwyn wrote about this, these falsehoods have only sunken deeper into Christianity. If we listen to these lies, then we’re believing false teaching, and therefore accepting wicked council. For we cannot entirely appreciate what Jesus did for us on the cross until we accept how hopeless our situation would be without Him. The world’s advice or council that people are generally good, are not responsible for their shortcomings, and can find happiness and fulfillment outside of the Lord are nothing short of wicked lies.
All this also goes along with what Jesus said in Matthew 16:5-12, when He warned His disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. They thought He meant actual leaven like for baking bread, but Jesus explained He meant to watch out for their false teachings. Fortunately for us, God gave us all the wisdom and good advice we could ever need in The Bible. We can read everything Jesus instructed His followers to do anytime we need a good example to follow.
If we follow the Word of God, we will be blessed in all that we do, if all that we do is according to His Word. Like Jesus said in Luke 11:28, “But He said, ‘On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.’”
We shouldn’t walk in the council of the wicked. Instead, we should follow the council that Paul gives in Galatians 5:16, which says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
The second directive in this verse is, “Nor stand in the path of sinners.” This translation says the “path” of sinners, other translations say the “way” of sinners, but it doesn’t mean like if you were literally standing in front of a sinner and they were like, “Get out of the way!” Rather, it means their way of life or pattern of behavior. And to stand there is to linger or loiter; you’re waiting to see what will happen. So it’s saying that we shouldn’t hang out in shady places looking for trouble. Instead, we should follow Joseph’s example in Genesis 39, when Potiphar’s wife tries to tempt him into sleeping with her. Joseph didn’t wait to find out what would happen next; he literally ran away from her. He didn’t stand waiting in the path of her sinful desires. He ran away without hesitation. We should do the same as Joseph; whenever we are faced with temptation of any form, we can’t afford to stand around waiting to see what will happen. We have to escape. If we feel like a demon is tempting us, we believers actually have the power to rebuke them in the Name of Jesus, and send them packing. But if, like Joseph, we are tempted by another person, then we should make it our priority to escape.
Again, God will bless us if we obey His Word. Since it’s written, “do not commit adultery,” Joseph followed God’s word and even when he was wrongly accused and imprisoned, God still blessed him in prison. God knows whether we’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. God wouldn’t have blessed him in prison if Joseph had committed adultery with Potiphar’s wife. That’s why he’s a great example to follow. We shouldn’t stand in the way of sinners, rather we should, “Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” as 1 Corinthians 16:13 says.
Last, let’s look at the third directive. It says, “Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” So, what’s a scoffer? Scoffing at something is basically dismissing it as stupid or pointless. The first thing that comes to mind are the people on the internet we call “trolls.” They’re people who go online to Facebook or X or wherever and find something negative to say about anything and everything anybody else posts. Like if you posted a picture of your cat, a troll would be like, “Cat’s are so dumb, I hate cats!” Or a song you wrote or a picture you painted- they’d basically just say it’s stupid as though they could do better.
Scoffing is also similar to cynicism. A harshly cynical mindset isn’t ever open to change or suggestions for improvement. People who are cynical of Christianity and scoff at it rather than give it an honest assessment end up missing out on the single greatest thing in the world. So we should do our best not to scoff at things right off the bat.
What we should really be afraid of is when we become cynical towards an individual. If we scoff at someone, it’s like we have no hope for them, and that just leads to bitterness. Scoffing at someone is to condemn them as being lost causes, like Jonah’s attitude towards Nineveh. God told Jonah “Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry out against it, because their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah ran away. He didn’t have any hope or compassion for Nineveh, so he ran away from God’s command. If you’re familiar with the book of Jonah, you’ll recall that he couldn’t escape the Lord’s command. He ended up getting swallowed by a fish and taken to Nineveh via aquatic escort. And when he finally did preach repentance to Nineveh, they didn’t hesitate to repent from their sins. So we should be careful not to scoff at people who are in sin, for isn’t anything possible for God? If not for God, would we be any different than them?
God values compassion and empathy. It’s like Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, when he says, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”
We can’t be loving if we’re scoffers. And we’re just giving Christianity a bad name if we act like jerks. So we should be compassionate towards everyone and pray that God gives us His heart towards them so that we may deliver His good news with His love. It’s like James 2:8 says, “If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.”
Another thing to be aware of is this: scoffing isn’t just limited to how we view other people. It’s easy for me to become cynical about myself, thinking that anything I say will get scoffed at or shut down, so I give up. I become too cynical toward everyone (myself included) to say anything. That leaves me feeling senselessly bitter towards everyone else, and that’s not a good attitude to have. Instead, we should be patient towards others, and be sensitive when we start to scoff at them, so we can reassess where we stand and present differing opinions in a patient and loving way. Bitterness is never helpful.
Bitterness is kind of like spiteful hopelessness where we focus on negative aspects of whatever we’re scoffing at. If we become bitter from being cynical, it’ll just make us miserable. Some people will take pride in being scoffers as though they think they know better, even though scoffing doesn’t include offering alternative viewpoints. Like the Pharisees attitude towards Jesus in Luke 16:13, when Jesus told the parable of the unrighteous steward, He ends by saying, “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” That’s true, and solid advice we all should take to heart, but then Luke 16:14 adds, “Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him.”
The Pharisees missed the fact that Jesus was and is the Messiah they were waiting for. Maybe they would’ve seen the truth if they hadn’t been busy scoffing.
No one wins from scoffing. It doesn’t help anyone at all. So instead we should take Paul’s advice in Philippians 4:8-9 which says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
If we focus on things that are negative and just scoff at them, we’ll make ourselves miserable. But if we focus on things that are true and good and pure, the blessing we will receive is God’s peace will be with us. Instead of sitting in the seat of scoffers, we should follow Mary’s example, who, to the annoyance of her sister Martha, “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39). Jesus says she chose the better way, and so should we.
So now we’ve looked at what all three things are, and what they mean, but what else can we learn from this verse? If you look at all three together, you might notice the difference in the actions described. Let me explain: the verse says that we can’t walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. Do you see the what I mean? First, we’re walking. Technically, you can walk through all sorts of shady places without participating in anything wicked. Of course, it’s better to avoid those places all together, but sometimes we end up traveling nearby. But if we stand in those places, we’re waiting around to see what will happen. Not good. But then if we sit down, we’ve now joined in and taken a seat with the people doing wicked things, we’ve become one of them. One can lead to another, that’s why we should follow Proverbs 4:27, which says, “Do not turn to the right nor to the left; Turn your foot from evil.”
It’s better to avoid the first step altogether so that we don’t sink in deeper. Otherwise, we put ourselves at risk of falling headlong into sin.
Now that we’ve looked at all three points from Psalm 1:1, I think they can be summed up just by saying, be careful who you hang out with. Don’t keep bad company or else their misbehavior could lead you astray. We, as believers, are called to be in the world, but not of the world. We should stand out from unbelievers in everything we do, even when it seems like we’re greatly outnumbered. We should walk by the Spirit, and stand firm in our faith, and sit at the feet of Jesus.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, help us not to walk in the council of the wicked, stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers. Rather, help us always to walk in Your wisdom, stand in Your Way which is the Truth and the Life, and sit at Your feet. In Jesus’ Name we pray, amen.
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