Psalm 1: The Difference Between the Righteous and the Wicked

(Guest post by my 17-year-old son Everett)

Psalm 1:1-6 (NASB) 

We Christians ought to be set apart from the rest of the world in our conduct and in our hearts. We are called to be holy; which means we are to be set apart for God. How can we be righteous, though, if we live wickedly? Psalm 1 shows us the differences between the righteous and the wicked, so to understand this better, let’s look at what it says.

Psalm 1:1-6 says, “1 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!

2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord,

and on His Law he meditates day and night.

3 He will be like a tree planted by streams of water,

Which yields its fruit in its season,

And its leaf does not wither;

And in whatever he does, he prospers.

4 The wicked are not so,

But they are like chaff which the wind blows away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the wicked will perish.”

In case you missed it, the last sermon I wrote was about verse one, but this time I’ll go through the whole Psalm. To review, verse one states that whoever doesn’t follow advice given by the wicked, or hang out with sinners, or join in with scoffers, will be blessed. So you could say that whoever follows the council of God, and stands in the way of the righteous, and sits at the feet of Jesus—listening to His teachings rather than scoffing at them—will be blessed.

A good example of this is what happened to King David throughout his life. God blessed him and watched over him in everything David did, up until he spied Bathsheba. Remember my mother’s previous sermon? There was a war going on and David should have been with his troops at the scene of the battle, but he stayed home for some reason. And then when he saw Bathsheba, he stood there in the path of sinners when he should have looked away and put her out of his mind. But instead, he sat down in his sin and committed adultery and murder as a result. David’s life would have been nothing but blessings from God had he not sinned against the Lord in that way, but instead, he received the negative repercussions of his sin. We should strive to do the opposite that David did and run away from sin when we are tempted.

Moving on to verse two, it states, “For his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on His Law he meditates day and night.” God will fill us with the Holy Spirit if we follow Him, and He will also give us the desire for His Law. If you love the Lord, you will love His will for you (His Law) and you will delight—you will find joy—in reading the Bible and keeping its principles on your mind, both day and night. If we are truly following God, then nothing can bring us greater joy than studying His Word, and we should keep it on our hearts and minds constantly.

My great grandpa (or as I knew him, Grandpa Great) is an example of this. He’s since gone to be with God, but during his life, he was a devoted Christian and a pastor. Even after he retired, besides playing tennis, he would spend all his time reading the Bible and praying. When my mother was in middle school, she noticed him reading the Bible all the time and she asked him, “Haven’t you read that before?” And his reply was, “I have, but every time I read it, I learn something new.” He delighted in God’s Word, and he serves as an inspiration to me as to how a Christian ought to meditate on that Law day and night. And because my great grandpa read God’s Word so much, he had a powerful faith that was such that right when his wife of over sixty years passed away, he bowed his head and said, “I’m so happy for you” as he wept. He knew that she’d gone on to be with Jesus, and even though he missed her, he could rejoice at the joy he knew she was experiencing. His faith came from all the time spent meditating on God’s Word.

If we want to have faith like that, then we should read God’s Word until it’s on our minds and hearts constantly. Reading the Bible is easy if you can make it a routine: just pick a time either first thing in the morning or before you go to bed and make a habit of it. We are so blessed to have easy access to God’s Word nowadays. If you don’t own a Bible, it’s easy to find it on the internet. I think all Christians need to read the Bible regularly, especially if you’re in ministry.

And then verse three says, “He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not whither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.” This makes me think of Jesus’ parable about the seeds and where they fall. Matthew 13:3-9 says, “And He told them many things in parables, saying, ‘Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and they sprang up immediately, because they had no depth of soil. But after the sun rose, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. But others fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundred, some sixty, and some thirty times as much. The one who has ears, let him hear.’”

I think Jesus is talking about the same thing as Psalm 1:3. If we meditate on God’s law, then we will be like the seeds that fall on good soil: we will yield a good crop for God from following His Law and our leaves will not whither. God will also bless us in whatever we do if we obey Him. An example of this is Israel. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God bring success to the Israelites whenever they follow Him. If they sin and turn away from God, everything falls apart because they aren’t obeying His Law anymore. But as soon as they repent and follow Him again, they prosper in everything they do.

The same can be seen in the lives of Christians today. If we don’t obey God’s will for us, He can’t bless us because we’ve uprooted ourselves and gone away from His streams of the water of life. But if we follow Him, and obey His Word, then He promises that our cups will overflow with His blessings, and if not on this earth, then they certainly will in eternity.

Then in verse four, we see that, “The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind blows away.” In other words, since the analogy for righteous is a tree planted by streams of water, this verse is saying that the wicked don’t have the water of life to live off, so they eventually dry out and wither away. It’s like all the different cities or peoples that Israel fought in the Old Testament. They would go to war and be wiped off the face of the earth, whereas even through times of defeat, Israel still stands today.

This also reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:26-27, when He said, “And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and its collapse was great.”

We need God’s Law as a rock to build our lives on, and His Holy Word as the water of life to live off of. Without Him, we’ll dry out like chaff and be blown away. We know from what Jesus said that the rock on which we should build our lives is the truth that Jesus is the Son of God, and that the water of life is His Holy Word, which is the Bible. So then we should make Jesus the center of our lives and live according to everything He commands and instructs to do. We should look to Him and rely on His help in all areas of our lives. Of course, this isn’t always easy to do. My human nature wants to do things on my own, apart from God. But whenever I try to do anything without Him, it all just falls apart. I screw up and fail at everything I do when I do it without praying for God’s help and guidance.

Instead of trying to do things on our own or as the world does things, we should look at everything from a Biblical perspective. We should read the Bible and pray about absolutely everything. Otherwise, we’re coming from a worldly perspective, which is wicked if it isn’t from God. And that will ultimately lead to our demise. So again, we need to study God’s Law, and obey what He says, or else we will suffer the consequences. Which, according to the next verses, means we will die.

Verse five says, “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.” This is saying that people who are wicked and people who are righteous will be judged accordingly. God will decide whether we’re to be saved or destroyed based on whether we are righteous or sinful.

If you’re wondering how we are made righteous, let me explain. Since everyone is blemished by the sin in this world, we need the Holy Spirit to come and wash us clean so that we may enter the presence of the Lord. When we have faith in Jesus and repent of our sins, God washes us clean and we become holy and pure in His sight. We need to stay strong in our faith so as not to fall away from Him and be corrupted by sin again. God cannot allow sin into His presence, so that’s why we need to repent and be cleansed if we want to stand in the assembly of the righteous when we are judged. Jesus speaks of judgment day in Matthew 25:31-33, saying, “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left.”

He then goes on to explain that the sheep represent the righteous who will inherit the earth, while the goats represent the wicked who will be cast away into destruction. In verse 46, Jesus says about the goats, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” So we really need to strive to live righteously, and pray that God will forgive us and help us in our shortcomings if we don’t want to be counted as goats.

And all this is elaborated on in verse six, which says, “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” So basically, God knows the way of the righteous. This means He has an unwavering bar to measure us against. And if we fail to follow Him and live wickedly, we will be judged as unrighteous and we will perish. We can’t pull a fast one on God, He sees into our hearts. So if we pretend to live righteously, even if we fool everyone else in the world, God will find us out. Like Jesus said to the Pharisees in Mark 7:6-8, “But He said to them, ‘Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me. And in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”

In other words, God knows the way of the righteous better than anyone. He sees into our hearts and knows all our intentions, so we better make sure that both our hearts and actions are in line with God’s Law, which is His Word.

Psalm 1 shows us the difference between the lifestyles of the righteous and the wicked. When you break it down, everyone is really one or the other- there aren’t any other positions to be in. You either serve God or Satan. He shows us immeasurable amounts of grace and mercy that He would even consider us. And even when we fall into sin, He will help us climb out and wash us clean as many times as we come to Him in repentance. Salvation is a free gift given to us through our faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, but we need to live righteously. The danger of living wickedly is that sin is a slippery slope. We’ll sink deeper without noticing until we’re too far gone to care. If that happens, then we might fall away and lose our faith and lose our salvation. So we need to do everything in our power to live righteously. If we do that, then as Psalm 1 tells us, we will continue to have faith in Jesus and be blessed with eternal life.

The best way we can follow what Psalm 1 says to do is by reading God’s Word, the Bible, every day. If you feel like you don’t have time to read the Bible, I think God can help you with that. I think it’s fair to pray that God would help you make time for studying His Word. He gave us 24 hours in a day, that’s actually a lot of time. If you make reading the Bible a priority, you’ll find it doesn’t take that long to read a couple of chapters every day. There are many devotional schedules that take you through the whole thing in a year. I always do my devotions last thing before I go to sleep, but other people like reading it in the morning. The trick is just to make it a priority. If we understand just how important reading the Bible actually is, then we shouldn’t have any trouble. And then we will find joy in reading His Word, and we’ll see clearly how to walk the way of the righteous.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that You would help us to live righteously. Please help us to keep You and Your Word on our hearts and minds all day and all night. Thank You for giving us a path to follow. Help us to stay strong through everything the Enemy uses to attack us. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.