The Secret of Happiness-Psalm 1:1-6

Old Testament, Psalms, Sermons

Psalm 1:1-6; 2

“Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night” (Ps 1:2, HCSB). “But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night” (Ps 1:2, NLT).

What Bible verse or verses do you delight in and meditate on day and night?

How to be happy in 2015? Love God, love others and love Scripture.

Let’s start 2015 with the Psalms. Happy New Year. I wanted to continue where I left off in Romans chap. 3 in Oct 2014. But I felt that Romans would be rather heavy and theologically technical to start off a new year. So to begin 2015, I settled on Psalms. (I had not studied the Psalms other than just reading through them over the last 30 years.) These are the tentative outline of the sermons from Psalms in the coming weeks and months:

  1. Happiness (Psalm 1): The Secret of Happiness. (Alternate titles: Happiness. True Happiness. True Blessedness. The Blessed Life. A Truly Happy Person. A Truly Happy Man. Gateway to Happiness. Two Ways to Live. What Do You Think About? Prosperity as a Problem.)
  2. Sovereignty (Psalm 2): God’s King Rules.
  3. Confidence (Psalm 3): Fearless Before Adversaries; Confident When Condemned.
  4. Peace (Psalm 4): Peace When In Pain.
  5. Joy (Psalm 5): Joy Among Liars.
  6. Agony (Psalm 6): Barely Able To Pray.
  7. Vindication (Psalm 7): Slandered, Opposed and Attacked.
  8. Man (Psalm 8): What is Man.
  9. Justice (Psalm 9-10): Justice Will Prevail.
  10. Faith (Psalm 11): Face and Fight Fright with Faith, not Flight or Fear.

The theme: One is happy and blessed when they delight in the law (instruction) of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night (Ps 1:2). Loving God’s word necessarily includes loving God (Dt 6:5) and loving others (Lev 19:18).

Questions:

  • What Bible verse(s) do you delight in and think of often (2)?
  • How does delighting in God’s word relate to loving God (Dt 6:5) and loving others (Lev 19:18; 1 Jn 4:10-12)?
  • Why should Psalm 1 not be read with dichotomous, divisive, dualistic thinking (1-3 vs. 4-6)?
  1. What is the theme of Psalm 1? What does the blessed person not do (1)?
  2. What is the source of delight of a blessed person (2a)? What does a blessed person do to experience such happiness and delight (Ps 1:2b; 19:7-10; 119:97; Dt 30:11, 14-16; Josh 1:8; 1 Ti 4:13, 15-16)?
  3. What is a blessed person like (3a; Jer 17:8)? What does such a person experience (3b)?
  4. Who are the wicked (Ps 1:4a; 50:16-17; 119:53; Hab 1:4)? What are they like (4b)? What happens to them (5)? What is their destiny (6)?

What does it mean to delight in God’s word? In the past, for the first 25 years of my Christian life, I would have preached this sermon (and answered this question) quite differently. As recently as a half a dozen years ago, I would have said, “Study the Bible and teach the Bible.” I personally still love to do so. But today I would say and stress that loving God’s word cannot be separated from loving God and loving others. Delighting in God’s word should include at least the following:

  1. Loving God.
  2. Loving others.
  3. Loving Scripture.

God’s word has transformed my life again and again over the last 34 years. Jesus said, “The Spirit is the One who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (Jn 6:63, HCSB). It is why God’s people throughout the ages have delighted in God’s word. By God’s grace, the Bible is also my delight. Why? Since I became a Christian in 1980, these Bible verses have brought me enlightenment, peace and joy, along with stability, conviction, courage, motivation, inspiration for living and newness of life:

  • Gen 1:2 diagnosed my life apart from God with a single word–EMPTY–two weeks before my conversion.
  • Gen 2:16-17 led to my conversion in 1980.
  • Gen 6:5 (Jer 17:9) shows me that my heart’s natural bent, intent and inclination is not good.
  • 1 Cor 15:36 helped me marry the best woman in the world in 1981.
  • Mk 11:24 gave me faith to believe that I could become a U.S. citizen in the late 1980s.
  • Phil 4:5 and Mt 11:29 exposes how much I lack the gentleness of Christ.
  • Jer 31:3 grounded my heart by affirming God’s love for me after I lost $1,000,000 in 2004.
  • Ps 115:3, 135:6 declares that God does whatever pleases Himself, not me or any man.
  • Prov 29:25 states clearly that I should not fear any man, but God only.
  • Ac 20:24 confirms that manifesting the grace of God must be my only aim in life since West Loop began in 2008.
  • Phil 2:4-5 reveals that greatness is genuine condescension—not being condescending.
  • Phil 2:12-13 explains that sanctification is God’s work, yet I am fully responsible for working it out.
  • Ac 20:27 motivated me to study “the whole counsel of God” found in the 66 books of the Bible.
  • Rom 1:17 (theme for 2015) teaches me that I do not live by faith to be righteous, but that because I am righteous by faith, I live.

I. Love God

  1. Delight yourself in the Lord (Ps 37:4).
  2. Love God with all your heart (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30).
  3. Love God and delight in God when (not if) we are tempted to sin. We sin by doing what we should not do (giving in to “younger brother sins” and to “older brother sins”) and by not doing what we should (availing ourselves to the means of grace: Scripture reading, prayer, meditation, contemplation, reflection, repentance).

II. Love Others

  1. Love one another (Jn 13:34-35).
  2. Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18; Mt 22:38; Mk 12:31).
  3. Love and embrace those who sin, instead of criticizing and condemning others as the Pharisees did.

III. Love Scripture

  1. Meditating on God’s word day and night (Josh 1:8) and all day long (Ps 119:97).
  2. Delighting in God’s word as being sweeter than honey (Ps 19:10).
  3. Practice, persist and persevere in the reading of the Bible and the living out the Bible.

What happens when we do not delight in God’s word? It produces Christians who are split between loving God and being influenced by the world, as aptly stated by George Verwer in Hunger for Reality:

“If we give the matter a little thought, we will realize that most of us are living in ‘two worlds’… In the first place our religious experiences; what we believe; what we sing about; what we pray about; and what we defend in argument. The second category contains our world of secular values and actions: our use of leisure time; our actions taken to impress people; our attitude towards associates who are better or worse at their job than we are; and how we get our money and use it… This evangelical dichotomy has had more serious results than we admit. It has produced men who are hard to get along with, women who rank themselves by the furnishings of their house and the style of their clothes, and whole families that put on smiling faces with their Sunday clothes for a few hours at church… Everywhere I go I find young people who are aware of this split of Christian and secular values. Many have become atheists or agnostics because of it, while others have skidded into pits of indifference. Many Christians–leaders included–have admitted to me that their beliefs do not control their everyday lives. Yet many are hungry for reality and genuineness in life.”

But there need not be a split between the sacred and the secular. A. W. Tozer addressed this beautifully in his book, The Pursuit of God:

“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary.”

Thanksgiving. I thank God for the stewardship and leadership of our West Loop leaders. I last preached at West Loop in Oct 2014 since I left for Manila and Malaysia for over five weeks. So I have not preached here for almost three months. But I thank God that things are going well if not better in my absence. What a joy, delight and marvellous grace of God this is!

2015, the year of faith. At the end of 2014 I reviewed our six year story at West Loop, 2008-2014. Over the last few years, I chose a yearly theme for West Loop: gospel (1 Cor 15:3-4), grace (Ac 20:24), sanctification (Phil 2:12b-13), the whole council of God (Ac 20:27), remembrance (Dt 15:15a). For 2015 the theme is faith: “The righteous by faith will live” (Rom 1:17c). We do not become righteous by living by faith. But because we are righteous by faith in what Jesus has done for us, we live confidently with our heads held high.

Your feelings don’t matter! To begin 2015 I decided to preach on Psalms. How are the Psalms related to faith? A horrible thing I used to say to my wife for the first two decades of our marriage was “Your feelings don’t matter. Just deny yourself and do what is right.” It comes from a totally misguided misunderstanding of “deny yourself” (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23). Now for the rest of our marriage and our lives I have to apologize to her for having said this to her. Today, I say to her, “Please tell me and share with me all of your feelings. Don’t spare me any of your feelings!” By God’s grace, I believe that our marriage is getting better as the years go by!

Faith must be holistic, having feelings, actions and thoughts. It should encompass orthodoxy (right beliefs), orthopraxy (right practices) and osteopathy (right emotions). But often our faith has more head and hands (thinking and doing), than heart (feelings). It’s like believing in the Father (the “head”), the Son (the “hands”) and the Holy Bible (the Word, instead of the “feelings” from the Holy Spirit). In regards to faith, our emotions often lag behind our knowledge and our practical Christian life. But the Psalms reveal that the people of God expressed their emotions freely, be it love, joy, thanksgiving, or anger, fear, frustration, helplessness, discouragement or despair. In 2015 I pray that our faith may be real with genuine authentic expressed feelings and emotions.

The way of happiness. Psalm 1 and 2 is the introduction to the book of Psalms. It teaches us they way of blessedness, or true happiness. Briefly, our happiness is closely related to our life–how we live (Ps 1:1) and our hearts–what we desire and think about (Ps 1:2), and the rest will fall in place and take care of itself (Ps 1:3). It is also prudent to regard the consequences of an unfulfiling and unhappy life (Ps 1:4-6). Thus, the happy and blessed person carefully watches and considers:

  1. Their life (Ps 1:1), their walk: how they live and who they hang out with.
  2. Their heart (Ps 1:2), their delight and meditation: what they desire and think about.
  3. Their foundation (Ps 1:3): what they are grounded, rooted and planted upon.
  4. The lives of unhappy people (Ps 1:4-6), which lack the following:
    1. No permanence: They lack a solid foundation (Ps 1:4).
    2. No righteousness: They lack righteousness (Ps 1:5).
    3. No life: Their lives dwindle and perish (Ps 1:6).

A caveat. When studying Psalm 1 in the past, it was too easy for me (and for many other Christians as well, I suspect) to think in an unhealthy dichotomous way: “I love the Bible. Surely God will bless me with abundant blessing and happiness. But God will never bless those who do not read or study the Bible, or those who read the Bible unfaithfully and/or hurridly without deep meaningful personal application, reflection or repentance.” This troubled me for some years because I found myself despising anyone whom I regarded as not treasuring or valueing the Bible as much as I did: my non-Christian friends, some “laid back” church members, and even my own family members. My prayer and hope is that you do not become self-righteous like how I was for many years.

The following two paragraphs are Pastor Abraham Lincoln’s conclusion of his sermon on Psalm 1 from last Sun, 1/4/2015:

The “wicked” (Ps 1:4) does not necessarily mean evil doers in general, but believers who do not take God’s word personally (Ps 119:53; Hab 1:4) and instead rely on their own strength and smartness (cf. Prov 3:5). What happens to them? They become like the dust of the ground that the wind blows away (Ps 1:4b). They have no one to defend them in court, and they are unfit company for an innocent crowd (Ps 1:5). God is fair. God blesses those who delight in God’s word (Ps 1:2-3), while those who do not will perish (Ps 1:6).

In the end there are only two ways of living for all people: Godly living centered in his word and the way of the wicked–those who disregard God’s word. We may be able to influence other people to live a godly life. However, we cannot save ourselves from our own sin. But the word of God is able to change us from the inside out. Let the word of God work in us in such a way that it transforms us into a godly happy person in our daily living (Jas 1:25). Let’s learn to meditate on God’s word in 2015.

  1. Positive Reflection: “(God) enjoins what is good because it is good, because He is good. Hence His laws have emeth (Hebrew: truth, firmness, veracity) ‘truth,’ intrinsic value, rockbottom reality, being rooted in His own nature, and are therefore as solid as that Nature which He has created. Their delight in the Law is a delight in having touched firmness; like the pedestrian’s delight in feeling the hard road beneath his feet after a false short cut has long entangled him in muddy fields.” “…in the Law you find the “real’ or ‘correct’ or stable, well-grounded, directions for living.” C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, VI. “Sweeter Than Honey.”
  2. Negative Caution: “The danger…when the study in question is from the outset stamped as sacred…(is) the danger of spiritual pride (that) is added to that of mere ordinary pedantry and conceit. One is sometimes (not often) glad not to be a great theologian; one might so easily mistake it for being a good Christian. The temptations to which a great philologist or a great chemist is exposed are trivial in comparison. When the subject is sacred (i.e. from the Bible), proud and clever men may come to think that the outsiders who don’t know it are not merely inferior to them in skill but lower in God’s eyes… And as this pride increases, the ‘subject’ or study which confers such privilege will grow more and more complicated, the list of things forbidden will increase, till to get through a single day without supposed sin becomes like an elaborate step-dance, and this…breeds self-righteousness in some and haunting anxiety in others. Meanwhile the ‘weightier matters of the Law,’ righteousness itself, shrinks into insignificance under this vast overgrowth, so that the legalists strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.” C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms.

Personal Application:

  1. Love those who are unhappy. Do not judge, criticize or condemn others for their wickedness.
  2. Repent of self-righteousness and condescension toward others, just because you think God has truly blessed you, your family and your church.Ultimately, it’s not because of you.
  3. Know the wickedness within yourself when you:
  4. blame others, including God.
  5. worry anxiously about your future rather than trusting God.
  6. are jealous and envious of others, especially those who have what you want.
  7. gossip and slander others behind their back.
  8. are hypocrites by speaking, acting and behaving in a “holy Christian way” while our hearts are not.
  9. lie, are dishonest, and do not speak the truth.
  10. do not love others the way God has loved us.
  11. are ruled by your ego that seeks value, validation and vindication from people rather than from God.
  12. Know that if you are blessed, it is entirely only because of the mercy and grace of God, and not because of any righteousness of your own.
  13. To be happy, know that you need to be blessed more than you need anything else in all of life.
  14. Jesus is the only truly blessed and righteous person who ever lived out Psalm 1, not you!

To be happy in 2015 do this: seriously, reflectively, meditatively and contemplatively consider how you are living (Ps 1:1) and what’s in your heart (Ps 1:2). Our happiness is intimately related to how much we love God, love others and love Scripture. To be truly happy, we need to know just how much we are loved by Jesus who gave his life for us.

References:

  1. Lewis, C.S. Reflection on the Psalms, Chap. 6:”Sweeter Than Honey.”
  2. Motyer, J Alec. The Psalms. New Bible Commentary. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1994.
  3. Kidner, Derek. Psalms 1 – 72:An Introduction and Commentary.Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1973.
  4. Psalm 1 — The Truly Happy Man.

 

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