TALK · 2025 · PSALMS
Psalm 1
Two paths, one tree — on the crossroads, the Torah and being rooted.
1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits 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 is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; 6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 1
A manual for the Psalms
- David, Čenda and I agreed that we'd start a series of expositions of the Psalms, in order to learn to pray.
- Psalm 1 fell to me — with a warning, though: it's the key to understanding all the other Psalms, the lens through which you're meant to look at the rest of the Psalms.
- That carries no small responsibility, because if I get today's material wrong, you won't be able to keep up for the whole rest of the year.
A fundamental work
- So we don't miss how fundamental today's text is: that whole great book, which took shape over 1000 years and was finally carefully arranged — even it begins with the word Blessed.
- By the way, King David isn't signed as the author here — about 73 Psalms are attributed to him. No author is mentioned here, and since all Scripture is inspired by God, we can attribute the authorship here only to God.
- Connections to practically the whole of Scripture were swirling in my head: the psalm seemed to me loosely connected with just about every one of Jesus' parables.
- The Jews divide the Old Testament into three sections: the Law, the Prophets, the Writings. If you took all three volumes and opened them to the first page, this is what you'd see: the first book of the Law is Genesis, the first book of the Prophets is Joshua, and the first book of the Writings is the Psalms.
- Genesis begins with the word “bereshit” — “in the beginning” — and at its root, in the very heart of that word, it contains our word “blessed” — ashrei. The Jews have a beautiful interpretation of this: while Genesis presents the ordering of the world around man — the reality around us — the Psalms describe the reality of a person's inner life — with all its emotions, joys and worries, celebrations and battles.
- So if you want to understand better how a person works on the inside, read the Psalms.
- But an even more interesting connection is between the first chapter of the Psalms and the first chapter of Joshua: when the Jewish people, after 40 years of wandering in the desert, are finally about to enter the Promised Land, Joshua takes over the leadership of the people, and the LORD himself speaks to him. And the content and the advice that come up there sometimes sound indistinguishable from Psalm 1.
A manual for the human being
- But Psalm 1 isn't just a manual for the other Psalms — above all it's a manual for the whole human being.
- I'd sum up the main message like this: the whole of creation was given a certain order. We know the laws of nature, and we know we can't ignore gravity, for example, or we'll fall flat on our face. But human beings were also given a certain order, and along with it a manual. And if we ignore it and just improvise, we'll fall flat on our face. We can break down completely.
- So read the instructions day and night. So that you know how a human being is meant to work.
- You'll say — what nonsense — we don't need a manual for being human.
Dave Chappelle
Let me start by quoting an American stand-up comedian, because he sets up the theme of Psalm 1 nicely:
- “Good people of Atlanta, we must never forget… that Anthony Bourdain… committed suicide. Anthony Bourdain had the best job show business ever created. He flew all over the world eating incredible food with amazing people. And this guy… with this job… hanged himself in a luxury suite in France.”
- “I knew a guy in high school who was the local genius. His grades were so good he made it out of the ghetto and into an Ivy League school on a full scholarship. From there he went on to one of the best law schools in the country. And while he was in law school, he met a beautiful woman. I told him not to rush into anything, but he was in love and wouldn’t listen. He married her while he was still in law school, and they got divorced while he was still in law school. He was a street guy from the ghetto. The man had NOTHING… and that girl took half of it.
- And then I didn’t see him for years. Until two years ago, when I was back home in Washington, D.C., buying socks for my boys at Foot Locker. And guess who the manager was? This guy. A shop assistant dressed head to toe in a referee’s uniform. He was 45, and he told me he’d been living at his mum’s for the last ten years, trying to get back on his feet.
- But that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is… that it never once crossed this guy’s mind to kill himself. He’s alive and well in Washington, D.C. I even suggested he should think about it…”
The basic questions
- And my point is this: it isn’t all that easy to say what a truly good, full and happy life actually is. How could a failed sock salesman be living a more bearable, maybe even a happier life than Anthony Bourdain?
- By every standard of today’s culture, his life really was “the good life”. Why don’t the usual standards work? Are there any others?
- So what does a happy, full life look like — one you can look back on and say, “that really was a good life”? How do you start living a life like that, and keep at it? Where are the role models?
- Our first Psalm answers these questions.
The stork
- If people really were delivered by the stork… they’d come in a box with a little booklet like this, titled: Psalm 1. And the subtitle would read: a user’s guide to being human.
- You’ll say to yourself — that’s nothing — 6 verses, I’ll get through that in no time. For the purposes of this illustration I’ve paraphrased the whole Psalm into the language of a user manual for humans:
The human being (hereinafter “the Device”) works properly as long as you don't follow the advice of saboteurs, don't try pressing random buttons and don't despise the manual.
The more days and nights you spend poring over the Big Manual, the more you’ll come to love it. The device will then remain fully functional, make life easier for you and for those around you, and hold up even in adverse conditions. Cheers!
Those who deliberately damage the device will be left with nothing but a pile of scrap. Saboteurs will be held accountable. The manufacturer provides regular servicing free of charge. Deliberately wrecked devices are left to their fate.
Psalm 1 in the language of a manual
- It’s the key to how a human being works. So if we don’t go through this material properly and just improvise instead, our whole person can stop working. It breaks down.
- So right at the start, let me give away the main message of today’s sermon for a second time: let’s read the manuals. And this one in particular you’d better truly fall in love with — and stay in the closest possible contact with the manufacturer’s technical support. Your whole life will be a lot simpler.
Crossroads
- Just as Jesus, at the so-called Sermon on the Mount, had before him all those half-wretched people in an occupied country — people he felt sorry for — and so began painting a picture of hope for all the unprivileged, ordinary folk, repeating this one word: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger…”
- Here too, Psalm 1 obviously feels for its readers and tells us where the secret of the good life actually lies.
No choice
- Psalm 1 is the gateway to the whole book of Psalms; it places us at a crossroads and says: in reality, there isn’t much of a choice.
- There is only one road that leads to life, and if you take a different one, you’ll break down — you’ll crash. There’s no way around it. God gave the world an order, just as he gave it gravity. Ignore gravity and you’ll fall flat on your face. It’s the same with God’s order.
- It’s not that God will punish us if we aren’t good — it’s that we’ll either be connected to the source of life, or we won’t.
- It makes no difference at all that besides that narrow little right path there’s a huge motorway most people are travelling along. This isn’t a democracy where the majority is right. The world was created by one God alone, and he gave clear instructions on how to move through life.
Two explorers
- And look — two people are coming back towards us from that motorway — waving at us not to go that way. Both of them drove all the way to the end and they’re bringing back news of where it leads!
- One of them is the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, and the other is Anthony Bourdain.
- Both experienced a life of wealth, full of fantastic, pleasurable experiences, meals and conversations — basically everything pictured on the billboards along the motorway.
- And both come to the same conclusion — most people never reach their ideal, and maybe that’s a good thing, because those who do make it all the way to the end sink into a sense of futility and emptiness.
- Only someone who wants to crash takes this motorway — Psalm 1 warns us strongly against it.
The stranger
- The person of Psalm 1 has a clear direction, but it makes him a bit of a stranger, someone who doesn’t fit in. And either he holds on to his direction and can thereby point to the grace in his life that others need too, or he conforms.
- In any case, the very first verse sketches out how not to stray from the path — how not to slip into passivity and get stuck on the way: he does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.
- There are two interesting triads here. The second one is a gradual slowing down: in the first there’s walking, in the second he stops, in the third he’s already sitting.
- And three different names for people heading in a different direction: “the wicked”, “the sinner”, “the scoffer”.
1 — the wicked
- The person of Psalm 1 has a clear direction — that direction is God — but around him there are also those heading the opposite way. The Bible calls them “the wicked”, “the ungodly” or “the wilful”. And you can’t help hearing their advice — it’s there in films, in songs, on social media…
- The point is that it mustn’t get hold of your rudder and start turning you off course.
2 — the sinner
- Sinners, by contrast, are those who miss the target. They aren’t necessarily evil at heart, but they fail, even though they may have some inkling of what’s right. They’ve lost their direction.
- The point is not to stop alongside them — and not to start wandering yourself! The person of Psalm 1 moves among them, but they don’t unsettle him; he doesn’t stop among them and end up confused himself about where he’s actually heading.
3 — the scoffer
- An arrogant stance that simply mocks everyone around from a position of superiority.
- Their attitude makes them people who are genuinely immune to the good news.
Passion — Torah
His delight is in the law of the LORD — and on this law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:2
The word Law
- That first word in Hebrew is Torah, and “law” probably isn’t quite the right translation. Because we associate the word “law” with what you may and may not do, and with the punishments that go with it. The person of Psalm 1 isn’t crazy about a collection of statutes.
- Torah is, broadly speaking, God’s wisdom, God’s instruction. So it covers the whole of Scripture — including the Psalms, and certainly the entire teaching of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament.
- Because in Scripture he finds direction and the source of life.
Sour gummy worms
- It saddens me that we can no longer savour the Psalms the way the Jews once did… Imagine sitting someone from the 19th century down in a cinema and showing them, say, Dune — they’d have to be carried out of the theatre. Not us anymore — that’s how numb we are.
- Now imagine the opposite: someone hands you a bag of sour gummy worms, and the moment you’ve finished it, takes you to Aplaus for a meal aspiring to a Michelin star.
- An introduction to what a Psalm means for a Jew: in a culture without images or likenesses of anything created — with only the invisible word — imagine that nothing distracts you. All you perceive is nature, which speaks of the LORD, and people, who are his image. A poem or a song is then the most colourful thing you can ever encounter.
- That’s why it seems to me that a certain restraint in our media diet is more than beneficial.
Muttering
- Interestingly, in Joshua it says: This Book of the Law shall not depart… from what? From your mouth. And it goes on: you shall meditate on it day and night. So is he supposed to keep talking about the word, or just think about it? The answer is: yes.
- For the Jews, the two go together. They didn’t have a Bible at home. So they usually first heard the word read aloud by others, and then repeated it to themselves to memorise it.
- That’s why it is written that faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God — it’s not that the word heard is somehow more powerful than the word read, but that for most people the Word was simply heard, and then spoken out again and again.
- That’s why here too “on his law he meditates day and night” — and the word for meditating means muttering to yourself — reciting it over and over.
- And by the way, that’s not a bad model for us at all — with the Psalms you get fed and pray at the same time.
Planning
- It takes planning and a bit of discipline. A habit tracker — it only takes a few weeks to cement a habit.
- An endless loop: the more he meditates on Scripture, the more he loves it — and the more he loves it, the more time he gives it.
- How to start: a habit tracker · prayer · begin with Luke, for example · watch the series The Chosen while you’re at it · if you don’t understand something, feel free to ask ChatGPT, or better still: find someone you can send your questions to or meet up with to study.
- Underlining in two colours has worked well for me: with a pencil I underline whatever raises questions or speaks to me; with a highlighter I mark one or two words that capture the whole paragraph — it helps me find my way around, but above all it helps me keep in view what the author is getting at — what he wants to tell me.
On the vineyard
- But there isn’t only the written Torah — there is also the Torah in person. Jesus was and is a walking instruction manual and example of how a human being is meant to work. He alone truly was the Man of Psalm 1, without compromise.
- So we don’t just have to read the Torah. That’s why Jesus then says: “Abide in me” — he no longer points us only to a text, but to himself as the source of life.
- When Jesus was here on earth, the disciples had it a tad easier — they simply followed him everywhere, listened to him, had him explain things to them. They watched how he reacted, what he said. They always stayed close and imitated what he did. They were his disciples.
- All of that is still possible even though Jesus can’t be seen. He gave us his Spirit. We can still talk with him, follow him, consult him on each step and decision.
- Just as the tree in Psalm 1 draws from the water, so the Christian draws from Christ — and the fruit isn’t the result of effort but the consequence of staying where life flows. That’s why we need, as Brother Lawrence says, to practise the presence of God. To stay as close to him as we can.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:5
The tree
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither — in all that he does, he prospers! 4 Not so the wicked: they are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Psalm 1:3–4
- OK — picture that tree. It’s firmly planted by the water, so it has everything it really needs, and it takes a lot to shake it.
- It’s full of life; its leaves don’t wither. In fact it’s so full of life that life overflows into its surroundings, so it refreshes everyone around it too.
A body without a soul
- That’s the picture Psalm 1 sets before us as the ideal. Especially when you picture this: a person lying in bed like a body without a soul — so dried up and lifeless that he doesn’t even have enough energy for himself. He needs others to care for him.
- A body without a soul is actually quite an accurate comparison, because chaff driven by the wind is a picture of how people separated the grain: when the wind blew, they scooped up the grain with a shovel, threw it into the air, and the wind carried the light stuff away. And that’s exactly what the Psalm compares the others to.
- Success in life here is mainly about stability. And as the contrast, picture that tree — so full of life that it has plenty for others too, who can rest in its shade and be refreshed by its fruit.
- In Psalm 1, life itself is literally at stake! You’re at a crossroads — so decide right at the start which way you’re going to go.
Judgement
- The wicked will not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
- God knows the righteous — he watches over all their ways. The wicked, though, are left to their own fate. And in the end that fate leads before the judgement.
- Psalm 73: they expected judgement in this life. How come I see so many wicked people around me living in comfort and safety — where is the justice? My feet had almost slipped, because I envied them what they had. Before God’s face I understood that I had been like a stupid beast. But thank goodness I didn’t go around talking about it at the time — now I know I was wrong.
- Only later does it become clear that the judgement won’t come until later.
Conclusion
- If we’re caught in a downward spiral somewhere, we need to turn around — as John the Baptist cried out: the first step is repentance.
- To cling to Christ and live close to him — with his Scripture on our lips day and night.
- The more you stay in Scripture and close to Christ, the more you’ll come to love him. The more you love him, the more you’ll want to stay in him.
- And a road like that leads to us becoming the tree.
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