Summer Psalms - Psalm 1

I'm excited that you're working through the Psalms. And when Pastor Simon said, you know, he's going to be preaching on Psalm 23, I thought, okay, there's 149 left to choose from. So let's. Before we, before we get into it, let's just commit this time to the Lord and ask that God would speak to us, each one according to our need. Lord, we thank youk for your presence always and thank youk for your Word.

We ask that supernaturally, Lord, by youy Holy Spirit yout would open up our hearts, give us receptivity to hear not just with the hearing of our ears, but to hear with our hearts what yout want to impart to us today. Thank youk, Lord, that yout have a purpose for each of our lives. I pray that yout'll do something special for each of us today as we draw closer to you and serve you, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Well, we're continuing in the Psalms, I think. You know, I like reading Proverbs because there's one chapter per day, so you can choose the day of the, of the month and just go with that. But how do you work your way through 150? And that's still over again.

For many years, I've been working my way through the One Year Bible. If you don't have a plan, get a One Year Bible. There are different versions around. You can get your favorite version and systematically. So today's the 26th of January.

You go to the 26th of January and you read what it says for the 26th of January. There's no science. You don't have to be confused about that. I know very early in my Christian life, and I was just something Pastor Simon mentioned earlier reminded me of this experience. As a young Christian, I practiced what we used to call Bible roulette.

Do you know what that is? You know, just open up the Bible and see whatever verse pops out at you. And because the Psalms are in the middle, there was always a chance you get a verse from the Psalms. And so I was living and working for the Australian government in Caracas, in Venezuela, and I went through a period when I traveled flown millions of kilometers, but I went through a period when I was afraid of flying. I don't know why.

It was just a momentary phase that I went through. And I thought, okay, I need something from the Lord, you know, God, give me something. And I flipped it open and the first words my eyes fell upon were in the version I was reading at the time. And they shall fall down from the sky and their bones will smoke.

True story. And I thought I better get a better method because it didn't happen. It didn't happen. But if you don't have a pattern, if you don't have a plan, start in the one year Bible and God can speak to you. And every day, every day when I read, you know, there's a passage from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and I find Psalms really exciting and relevant, and they speak to my circumstances.

And sometimes I'm not a great journaler. Some Christians are, you know, rabid journalists. And then they'll lecture about if you do, I love you and I respect you for that. I'm not a great journaler, but occasionally something will stand out and I write it down in a book and I'll look at it later on. And so I was looking through that little book the other day, and there's a passage that I read in the Psalms and I went back a few pages and I'd written it down a year ago and went back a few pages and I'd written it down the previous year so God can speak to us.

Out of the 150 Psalms, where do we start? Where do we finish? Well, as you'd know, you know, the Psalms were written by a number of different authors over a period of time, different periods, different circumstances. But when you open them, you know, on good days, bad days, periods of trial, of personal victory, there are powerful lessons. There are lessons that are written for you and me today.

And there's a strong sense when I read the Psalms, that here are hymns, songs written by people who wrote what they did because they knew where the rabbi hit the road. And some of the Psalms are very graphic. You know, it's not about covering up problems because life can be a roller coaster. And you get that sense often when you're reading the Psalms that it was a rollercoaster so that they didn't try and sugarcoat what they were going through. But each one, you know, through the good days and bad days, came to a realization as we were singing before, that God is still the God of the breakthrough, that God is still the God of today and each of our lives.

And that if we will anchor our lives and our hopes and our future and our aspirations on a deep and abiding faith, and trusting God in each and every circumstance that we go through, then he will give us wisdom and resilience to get through. And that, to me, is one of the overarching messages from Psalms. You Know that God will give you the wisdom and the resilience to get you through. And so if you need a guide for your ongoing walk as a Christian, I'd encourage you to read Psalms, a section from the Psalms every day. Every day, God will speak to you.

He'll give you what you need. Because you know when you read it, you can see yourself in there and you can be honest about the realities that we all face. And at the same time, you know, while it takes us up, takes us down some very deep valleys, he always brings us back to a place of hope as we follow God's way and the Holy Spirit who inspired, who instructed those who wrote these words, he can make them come alive to you. I want you, as you're reading the Psalms, to say, holy Spirit, you know, you're the author. I want you to make these words come alive to me and help them to relate them to my difficult circumstances.

Psalm 1 says this. I thought, where do we start? Well, I'll start with Psalm 1. I won't start with Psalm 23, but Pastor Simon says you're going to be looking at a couple more Psalms over coming weeks. So let's stick to the book.

Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners. That doesn't mean don't have friends who are sinners, you know, Some of my Christian friends don't know any decent sinners anymore. If we're going to be salt and light in an unbelieving world, we have to be in relationship or in contact with people who are not Christians. But let's just stand around with sinners or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.

They are like trees planted along the river bank, bearing fruit in each season. Did you hear that? Bearing fruit in each season. Their leaves never wither. They prosper in all they do, but not the wicked.

They are like worthless chaff scattered by the wind. They'll be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly, for the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. So that's a good place to start. Psalm 1.

There's no Psalm 0, so let's go right back to Psalm 1. You know, new Year for me is always. I don't make resolutions. I learned a long time ago that, you know, if I paid a year subscription to a gym, I'd go once and they'd Make a profit. And the rest of the time, I didn't turn up.

I've given up making resolutions. But there's a sense in which it. We're still at the cusp of the old year, New year, time of new beginning, and an opportunity for a moment to just reflect on some of the big issues that we face. What's really important. Why am I here?

Where am I going? What's my purpose in life? What are my goals? And so, on New Year's morning, my wife and I were visiting friends in Melbourne. We'd been in Adelaide for a big family gathering over Christmas, and I opened up my Psalm 1 because it was 1st of January.

No science. And as I sat in the tiny, tiny, hot, cramped room in our Airbnb reservoir, I read these words, and I could picture the writer sitting on the bank of a river somewhere in Palestine, mulling over the ups and downs of life and the complexities of life, and wondering how to manage, how to manage, how to get through, how to survive in times of heat and discomfort and when life feels like you're going through a desert experience, wondering how to deal with the difficulties that we all face, how to cope with the sense of isolation that sometimes we experience. And as I was sitting there thinking about him, you know, sitting there looking down into the cool water, looking up at the shady trees. Some of the trees had seasonal fruit, but others were really, really struggling. And he looks at them and makes this great comparison.

He sees a picture of life as we live it and the choices and the results of the choices that we make.

A little bit of context. I've been. I've traveled all over Israel, and the last time I was there, I was coming up the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, up the Jordan river, past the two places where Jesus was baptized, because over, you know, there are three places where Mary was born and two Golgothas and two. You know, that's. Everyone competes to be authentic.

But I was sitting there with the driver, and he said, let's go through no man's land. And I thought, how can there be a no Man's land in the Middle East? But there was. So he went through a little gate, and I looked up at the Golan Heights, and he said, smile, because, you know, the Canadians, the Europeans, the Americans and the Israelis are all watching. So I waved and I took a photo of them, and he said, this is no man's land, but this is where the water comes through.

There was desert to the left of us, desert to the left of us. Desert to the right of us. But where we were traveling up this narrow road, there were hundreds and hundreds of palm trees. Because down in the midst of this desert, there was a trickle of water, and it was coming through, and it was joining up and eventually with the Jordan river, ending up in the Dead Sea. And I thought, this is a powerful analogy about the experiences we find ourselves.

And I was looking up at the spy holes, and I could hear bombs going off because, you know, Islamic State were fighting the Syrians just across the border.

And so when. But as we stopped, I hopped out of the car and I sat watching, looking at these palm trees surrounded by desert. And the single difference for these palm trees was that there was a little bit of water trickling through. And as I watched them and I thought about the political circumstances and everything that I was physically involved in right at that moment, I felt a sense of calm and optimism and a hope for new life. I thought, God, you can bring life to the desert.

You can bring hope out of hopeless circumstances. So getting back to Psalm 1, because this is the context, right? We've got to understand the context. This was the kind of land that these writers lived in. A lot of desert.

You know, where I was, the Jordanian hills, right up to Mount Nebo, desert to the left, to the west, the hills of Judea and desert over the old ruins of Jericho. Desert, or almost never rains. And as the writer's sitting looking at this, he looks at some of the trees that have got fruit, and he says, in this life, there are two kinds of people. There are two kinds of people, and you and I fit into one of these categories. There are two kinds of people.

Those who are fruitful and those who are not. Those who get stuck in the desert or those who find the refreshing waters that bring life and refreshment and renewal into their experiences. Those who experience the blessing and the presence of God and who understand, or even if they don't intellectually understand, understand by faith, that God is the One who renews us and keeps us and builds us up and he is our life. Or the other side, those who go through life lacking substance altogether, there's nothing to account for. So on one hand, those who have promise and purpose and thrive and bear fruit and come to maturity, and on the other hand, those who are just like husks of hay that get blown away with nothing to show.

And the single difference, again, is that one person meditates on God. This is what the psalm says. One person is meditating on God, his word, their relationship with Him. While the others ignore him. We either have a relationship with him or we don't have a relationship with him.

We either meditate on him or we don't meditate on him. And whether we bear fruit or not in our lives is a result of those decisions that we make. This is a very powerful analogy. You and I can bear fruit or we can be fruitless. It's not about our personal circumstances.

It's not about getting lucky. It's not about our hard work. It's not about our good intentions, but how we prioritize God in our lives. We've seen before about priorities, how we prioritize God in our lives. Now I know that we're all human.

I think, put your hand up if you're not. We're all humans. Sometimes our priorities get muddled. Sometimes we get distracted. Sometimes we feel besieged by personal circumstances, and we need to stand back and clear our heads and refocus and get back to what's important.

What's he saying here in Psalm 1? He says, what's important is to learn how to meditate on God, how to have. How to have a relationship with Him. And if you do that, you won't wither. If you do that, you can be fruitful.

So what's the secret? He says, those who are fruitful are those who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night. How many of you meditate? Well, I think sometimes that gets a bit of a bad word. I was at Monperrey Cafe a couple of weeks ago, and I picked up a card of meditation.

You know, guru or sri. Someone was visiting and. And was going to come to Australia and teach us how to meditate. I thought, well, in many people's minds, that's what meditation is. But we're not talking about a relationship with a spiritual guide or working our way through the mantra.

What we're talking about is meditating on the purpose and reality and presence of God in our lives. And that's a very real experience. I talked to somebody at church last week and they said, well, in our background, we. We attended a spiritualist church and we attended seances, but that didn't bring anything. It was empty.

But there are millions of people who search for those kinds of experiences because there's something in each one of us that needs to have someone or something to meditate on. Psalm 1 says that we can meditate on the Lord and on his presence and purpose in our lives. What he's calling us to as Christians, as Christians is to make A commitment to God that involves our whole being, a commitment to him that involves who we are. So rather than getting hung up on these alternatives, he says, this is the man or woman or young person who meditates on God day and night. So what do we mean by meditation?

Is it. Is it sitting in a corner with their arms crossed or reaching out? What do we mean by meditation? In the ancient Hebrew, the word meditation, it comes from that. The sense is like a cow chewing its cud.

I had an uncle who was a dairy farmer, and one day he said, this piece of grass, the great mystery, you know, the brown cow eats green grass and produces white milk. How is that? Because it's got four stomachs. And it's just, you know, it spends all its day either eating or chewing its cud. Chewing its cud, Just chewing its cud, going over and over and over and over.

And that's the word. That's. That's. That's a kind of a parallel word that's used here. Meditation in the Old Testament is like chewing a cud.

And you know what it's like when you're mulling over something. You know, you just talk to yourself and think it over and, you know, chew the cud. There's something going on when we set aside our time and our energy to focus on our relationship with him. Something goes on when you set aside your time in who you are to intentionally, intentionally read the Bible, intentionally pray, intentionally meet with other Christians, intentionally get involved in the life of the church. It means being mindful of what God is saying.

Psalm 85, verse 8 says, I will listen carefully to what the Lord is saying.

I will listen carefully to how many of you come with that intention. I'm going to listen carefully to what the Lord is saying. So you know, God, you're wasting your breath because I'm not listening. No, I'm going to listen carefully to what God is saying because. Because what he's saying is something that's going to be real and relevant and up to date and personal for you and for me.

God is still speaking. He'll speak to you through this psalm. He'll speak to you through this challenge about getting to know him better and walking with him. It means being mindful of God's presence moment by moment in the present, living in the present, opening up your heart and your mind and opening up your understanding and being willing and in the place to list, to hear his voice. God is still speaking.

Will you pray with the psalmist? You know, I will listen to what the Lord is saying, because he says, if you'll pay attention to him and meditate on him and meditate on His Word, then by the Holy Spirit, he'll give you the power to incarnate His Word in your life. That is, to make it real, to make it personal, to make it workable in your life so that you can live in obedience. Listen to him and walk with him day by day, and follow his leading day by day. And live in the will and the purpose and the plan of God and say, God in this life, it's a short life, but I want my life to be fruitful.

I don't want to be fruitless. I don't want to get to the end and think there's nothing to show, there's nothing to account for the life that I've been given. He says, no, focus. Focus on Him. Meditate on Him.

And as we do, as we read the Word, as we pray, as we just spend our time thinking, whether it's when you go walking early in the morning or, you know, the moments, you've got, you know, fewer distractions. Oh, it's so easy to turn on the news. It's so easy to feel depressed and anxious. But sometimes it's good to leave it off and just talk to the Lord. Just talk to Him.

You know, people say, I've got no time. We've all got oodles of time. Let's not fall into the trap of saying we don't have time. But as you do, as we do, we find that he becomes in his purpose and his plan and his ways become embedded in our lives. His attitudes become our attitudes.

His peace becomes our peace. His joy becomes our joy. His purpose becomes our purpose. And as we meditate on him, the way this passage is encouraging us to do, we find ourselves doing the will of God, living by the will of God. Not resenting it, not running from it, not compromising it, but saying, God, I want to live the way you want me to live.

Can you give me the power? I'm going to focus on you. And as I focus on you, in my life, my work life, my family life, my study life, whatever it is, whatever it is that occupies our time, listening to the Holy Spirit, drawing on the life of Jesus Christ that is living in you, you have the life of Christ in you. You can hear the voice of God. I think I shared once before, if you're a Christian, you have heard the voice of God, right?

So you can hear the voice of God. You can hear what the Holy Spirit is saying. And as we do that, he says that the writer who's watching what's going on, he says, as the tree draws from the stream and despite the heat, or sometimes even because of the heat, but draws on the, on the stream, the trickle that flows past it becomes fruitful. So you and I draw our strength and life and purpose from him. Amen.

Amen. Amen to that. So if you want wide branches, if you want to be fruitful, if you want wide branches, you've got to put down deep roots.

You've got to put down deep roots because there will always be deserts, there will always be storms, there will always be conflicts, there will always be disappointments, there will always be failures, there will always be criticism. I have a friend, Mick Brown, who lives up in the north of Canberra, and I saw one of his. How many of you remember that storm that came through a few weeks ago? We were going to get giant hail, but it all hit Gungahlin instead. Remember that?

Anybody here from Gungahlin? I live in Canberra, so for us that was a pleasant fall of rain rather than the damage that caused up in Gungahlin. Anyway, so the following day Mick says, I love my pomegranate tree and the fruit's there is just about to be picked. And me and my pomegranate tree, we go back a long way. And here's a picture of my pomegranate tree lying out of the ground.

You know, the winds just come along and pulled it up because it didn't have deep roots. And so it's dead, it's gone. Bye bye pomegranate tree. It's blown over because it's just a surface feeder just because it has shallow roots.

Now we've got a gum tree at the back of our place. When our kids were little, they, you know, they shimmy up the gum tree and avoid, avoid the, avoid the insects and other things that would. Anyway, that tree now is like, it's tens of meters high. And so as you know, beginning of the year you're going to go around and pick up tons of bark. How does it survive?

How does it survive? Why doesn't it get blown over like Mick Brown's pomegranate tree? Because it's got deep roots, it draws. We live under the shadow of Mount Taylor. So it draws from the water that comes underground.

It puts down maybe 10 meters of root. You'll never get that tree out, right. It's firmly planted and because it's firmly planted, it keeps on producing bark for me to pick Up. It keeps on sucking out the water from the grass. And so we've got to reseed.

And we put in a new irrigation system, that jolly gum tree. It takes the rain from above and draws on the underground wells in drought. But what Psalm 1 is saying is, God wants you and me to be like that.

He wants us to be like that. Don't be a surface feeder. You know, we can come to church every week and still be surface feeders. You can say, I'm a Christian and be a surface feeder with no depth. Get some depth.

Put down deep roots. Get involved in the life of the church and in home groups and read the Bible every day. Spend some time in prayer. You don't have to be a great theological prayer. Just talk to the Lord, meditate on him.

Because he says, we are like those trees. Either we get blown over by circumstances, or we put the roots down deeper into the ground and we survive. If we focus our lives on God and drill down into him through the hard rocks and through the clay and through all the obstacles that we naturally face, then we discover the river, the water, the refreshment, the renewal, the life of the Holy Spirit coming out of our lives. You know what I'm talking about. But he says that's a choice.

No one forces us. We can either be the fruitful one or we can be the unfruitful one. But it's the choice that we make. And that's what. That's a big encouragement and a challenge that this psalm is putting to us.

Our fruitfulness comes not because of our efforts, but because of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. He in us is the key. Meditate on Him. Meditate on His Word, meditate on his presence, meditate on his purpose and make him the priority in your life. So there's a lesson here for each and every one of us.

Life can be hard. Life can be disappointing and frustrating. Sometimes it can be hard to be positive. How many of you find it? Naturally, it's easy to be positive.

I like the word enthusiastic, right? Enthusiastic. If you look at the makeup, from the Greek, it means entheos in God. Someone who's in God should be enthusiastic. Enthusiastic.

I have B positive blood, and so I'm really glad that I've got B positive blood because I think that should make me one of the most optimistic people around. But life gets hard. Life's hard. Our circumstances can become hard and disappointing. But as Christians, as Christians, we know that we have the privilege to live our lives in the presence of God and spend Time with him and meditating on his call and his purpose and who he is in each one of our lives.

Do you believe that? Surrender to his purposes, surrender to his priorities, and at the same time, letting go of the chaff. There's no future in cultivating chaff unless you're selling it to the farmers. But there's no future in living your life just to be chaff and fruitless. God wants you to be fruitful.

He wants your life to count. He wants your life to be meaningful. And that means meeting with him, walking with him, watching him, listening to him, spending time with his people, reading his Word, capturing his vision, embedding his word and his priorities in our lives day by day, putting him at the center, putting him at the center. And that can be hard because we want to be at the center. What it means is not allowing our own priorities to morph into an aimless drift, because it's really easy to drift.

It's really easy to drift from one year to the other. And like I said before, Christmas is nearly here and another year's gone and we find ourselves drifting. It's easy to drift. But what he says here, what this psalm is encouraging us, reminding us, challenging us to do, is to put him at the center and shape our minds and our thinking and our planning so we can hear his voice and follow his lead. Will you do that?

Will you make a time to pray each day? Will you make a time to open up God's word? Even whatever the minimum is, start with the minimum. If you're at zero, think, then anything's going to be good. Like they say, if you don't exercise, you start 15 minutes a day.

That's better than nothing. I go walking every morning. I learned a long time ago that it's easy to reside at number nothing. So wherever you start, yes, there will be storms, there'll be droughts, there'll be deserts. Sometimes we go through painful experiences.

We do. Sometimes we need to persevere. Sometimes we need to dig deep during those dry seasons. Dig really deep. I was in Myanmar a few years ago, and there'd been a drought.

And I went to visit a pastor and his wife at their house. And they said, we always have water. Look, the fields are dry, but we always have water. How is that? And they took me out the back and they showed me the well, you know, deep down into the well, Right.

There's always. If you dig a deep well, there's always water down there. So dig deep. Dig deep. Get closer to God.

Get closer to one Another learn how to in him, in his strength and his power to triumph over those feelings of dryness and solitariness that we all experience from time to time. And so what the psalm says is, if you do this, if you do this, you'll experience the power of your relationship with him. If you do this, you'll experience the power of the impact of the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. If you do this, you will bear fruit that will last. I want to bear fruit that will last.

I want to have a life that is, is purposeful and fruitful and meaningful rather than, you know, you know, he died at 20 and they buried him at 80.

There was nothing in. There was nothing to live for. There was no purpose. There was no meaning. No, no.

God help us to be fruitful and purposeful. And as Christians, that's our key. And I don't care if my non Christian friends disagree with me. I know from my own personal experience and my life, my relationship with God, it works. It works.

Prioritizing him, spending time with him, spending time in his word, spending time in prayer, spending time with his people, prioritizing him and his plan, his purpose in our lives. Meditating, chewing the cud, chewing over the word of God, getting revelation, understanding it, applying it. That's going to impact the kind of people where you come. Do you believe that this is such a challenge? This psalm is such a challenge.

It's a wake up call. It's a reminder to us as we face the end of January and continue to work our way through psalms. God wants to make your life fruitful. God wants to make your life purposeful. And this is the way to do it.

Verse one says, oh, the joys of those who do not follow men's evil advice, who do not hang around with sinners and scoff at the things of God.

Later in the passage. For the Lord watches over all the plans and paths of godly men and women and God is watching over your life. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Are you prepared to believe that, that God is watching over your life?

It changes our thinking, it changes the way we react, it changes the way we approach the situations that we all go through. Everything stems from your relationship with Him. The Holy Spirit can speak to you, The Holy Spirit will speak to you. God will speak to you. Jesus said, he'll be in you and with you.

He will teach you, he'll lead you, he'll empower you. And that's what makes the Christian life different. He'll give you the answers and he'll make your life fruitful. He'll make your life, your Christian life, real. I want my Christian life to be real.

I just. I don't want to just live by a code, you know, my mind's being coded in a certain way by the. It. You know, whatever. They sort of control the way I think.

I want my. My coding to be set by him. What am I thinking? To be in line with him. Yeah, I'm still independent.

You're still independent. You can think for yourself. But let's. Let's allow the Holy Spirit to help us to think the way God thinks, to look the way that God wants us to live and make us fruitful. Make your life count.

If you take this word, these words seriously, take this passage from someone seriously. He will teach you. He'll show you how to live. He'll show you how to respond as a child of God. He'll show you how to live, and he'll show you how to respond as a child of God.

In 2025, God, help us. Give us the capacity to read your. This. This word. God, watch over my path.

Make. Make my life fruitful. Make my life count.

I don't want to get to the end. And they'll say, well, that was it. Moving right along. I want my life to be building up something that will have eternal consequences. And that's God's purpose for you as well.

Eternal consciousness, consequences in your life and in the lives of the people you know and love. Will you let God speak to you? Will you spend time with him? Will you open up your heart to him? Will you meditate on him?

Will you learn to. To pray more, to. To make that a priority? Lord, I want to live my life in a way that's. It's not stuck out in the desert, drying, shriveling.

I don't want to shrivel. I don't want my life to shrivel. I want to live and be fruitful to the glory of God and to live a life that's powerful and purposeful, because that's what Christ has called each one of us to. Do you believe that? I'm going to ask Pastor Simon to come back and take over.

Let's just close our eyes in a moment and pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you that you always want to remind us of the importance of important things in life. Thank you for the words of this psalm written so, so long ago to people very different to us, but at the same time, people very similar to us, who face many of the same issues and challenges. But found that through you they could live right in lives not of shriveling but lives of purpose and plan and fruitfulness.

Help us to be fruitful. Show us how in each of our lives we can be more attuned to you living your purpose and your plan, empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christian men and women living for you in our society. Use us to touch the world around us. This year, in Jesus name, God bless you.