The Good Life Sermon Notes
Psalm 1
What is the good life? Or more specifically, what is the good life
for you?
Actually, why don’t we all take a moment, close our eyes, and
what is the first picture that comes in your mind when you
think “the good life”
I’m sure many of you stayed right in this room right?
Okay, well, pastors can dream…
So what did you picture?
Is the good life for you like a Corona commercial…laying on the
beach with your feet up listening to the waves break on the
shore?
Is it a perfect day of golf, where every drive is straight and
three putts never take place
I don’t know about you…but often for me, when the thought,
this is the good life comes across my mind…it typically is on a
sunny day, relaxing somewhere…
But there is a flaw in our thinking about the good life: because
really, what we often call the “good life”, is a moment…right,
it’s ephemeral, it only lasts for a short period of time…it may be
an amazing moment but ultimately, it won’t last,
It reminds me of a vacation Colleen and I took to Hawaii about
3 years ago. I had gone once before with my family, but family
vacations in the Strachan household were always a bit of a
mixed bag…
But this time, it was just me and Colleen…in our own little
condo just across the street from the ocean.
And man did we have a good time. We snorkeled just about
every day and I’ll never forget, our last day, driving back from
an amazing snorkeling adventure, heading to the airport for a
red-eye…and all I could think is…this is the good life…and…I’m
not ready to go back to work.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with this experience.
As much as I wish that vacation could have lasted forever, we
all know that such a thing is just not possible…even if we could
somehow find a way to stay for a while longer, life would
ultimately catch up to us, and that experience we had would
have evaporated.
And therefore, these “good life” moments cannot provide us
with the best advice as to how to truly live a “good life”
We are going to have to look elsewhere…
The idea of the “good life” is really a perfect example of our
Western culture’s infatuation with the immediate…right…what
feels best in the moment
Just this week, Mark Oerter came into my office and we began
talking about this Sunday’s scripture passage, and I start
explaining the gist of what I was thinking of saying and he gave
me this quote that I think very well sums up the “good life”
mentality…he said “we so often aim for happiness, but end up
with pleasure”…which of course is fleeting, and often leads to
an incredibly unhappy life.
I once heard someone else say something to this extent: the
surest way to be unhappy is to make happiness your life’s
ambition”
So if the good life is not a moment, it must be something else
entirely.
And this being church, of course I am going to offer up the
possibility that the best advice comes to us in scripture.
“The Good life” as a phrase is not found in scripture but as a
concept it certainly is.
That is what our passage today is about “what does the good
life look like to the person who follows God”
So we are going to explore this this morning
We are going to do so by looking at the first psalm
The psalms as the prayer book of the Bible
This 1st Psalm is really an introduction to the whole collection
of psalms known as the Psalter.
It is really about how to live our lives as God’s people
So let’s open our Bibles to Psalm 1:
Psa. 1:1 Blessed is the onea
who does not walkb in step with the wickedc
or stand in the wayd that sinners takee
or sitf in the company of mockers,g
2
but whose delighta is in the law of the LORD,b
3
4
5
6
and who meditatesc on his law day and night.
That person is like a treea planted by streamsb of water,c
which yields its fruitd in season
and whose leafe does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.f
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaffa
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not standa in the judgment,b
nor sinners in the assemblyc of the righteous.
For the LORD watches overa the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.b
Blessed are the one who do not walk in the way of the wicked
Now before we jump into our discussion of the two paths, the
path of wickedness and the path of righteousness, I think it
would be helpful for us to take a minute on the very first word
in our text this morning, “blessed”.
Now, I don’t know about you, but there are at least a few
meanings that are associated with the word blessed.
Blessed as something positive that someone was born with
“She is blessed with beautiful curls”
Blessed as someone who has had say, a pretty easy go at life:
Oh he’s just been blessed with a good family, a great job, etc…
This is not what the writer of this psalm, David means when he
says “blessed” according to professor Peter Cragie, “is not
something given automatically by God, but is a direct result of
one’s activity”
In other words, the decisions we make can impact our
“blessed-ness”
Now, a word of caution here… when it comes to these
sayings, it would sound worse, but be Biblically more
accurate if what the translation said was this: “In general,
blessed are those who dot dot dot
Does that make sense?
Because it’s not a simple formula of x+y=z right?
It’s more like in general, life would go better if instead of
following the ways of the wicked, you meditate on God’s
word.
See it doesn’t sound good…but it could keep us from
following into the trap of thinking, oh, well, if blessed is
the result of my decisions than I just do x and then I’ll be
happy, well, we have some issues, because life doesn’t
always work out that way…sometimes we do the right
thing and things get worse, at least in terms of our
circumstances, but in general, following God’s ways will
go better for you than hanging out with the wicked.
So now we find ourselves at the first path mentioned in this
psalm…blessed are those who do not walk in the way of the
wicked.
But who exactly are the wicked? Wicked to me is kind of a
catch-all word for bad people, people who enjoy immoral
activities.
But the Hebrew word we translate “wicked” has a more
technical definition.
The “wicked” according to Gerald H. Wilson, “are those who
have been judged ‘guilty’ in a court of law or would be if
brought to trial.
In a legal contest between two parties, a judge would hear
the testimony of the parties and make a determination of the
facts of the case and what the individual parties should have
done in response. What actually happened is then compared
with the ruling and judgment is pronounced on each party.
Those who appropriately fulfilled the expectations of the
ruling are proclaimed the (“righteous”), while those who
failed to live up to this standard were pronounced (“guilty”)
i.e. wicked.
Incidentally, if this sounds familiar it should because this is
exactly what happens in the famous case brought before
Solomon of the kidnapped child. Solomon listens to the
testimony of each party and then makes a ruling, a ruling
which reveals both the wicked and the righteous.
So on a broader level, what David is saying is that those who
are found guilty, guilty of what you may ask, I think it’s fair
to say guilty of not following the Torah, which we will
discuss in a minute.
The wicked, according to David, are not merely those who
do not follow the Torah, but those who “are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Now chaff, as many of you probably know, is the casing of
the wheat plant that is separated from useable wheat during
threshing…we’ve all heard the phrase separating the wheat
from the chaff, which essentially means, getting rid of what
is not valuable and holding on to what is.
Now according to David, the wicked are like chaff that the
wind blows away”…and that is precisely what happens
when the threshing begins…the chaff floats up into the air.
SO what exactly is King David trying to say.
I think he is saying the very opposite of what he will say
about the blessed just a few verses later.
What he is saying is that the wicked do not understand the
point of their lives…and as such, they do not produce
anything valuable.
So that is the wicked…they often scorn those who pursue
righteousness…they are often held captive by sinful lives. SO
what about the blessed? What can we learn from them?
The blessed, as David puts it, are those who “meditate on the
law day and night”. Now this of course requires some
translation from the Jewish faith to the Christian one.
To begin with, the word “law” is just inadequate here, well,
and anywhere else we find the word “Torah” translated as
“law”.
A much better translation as many Biblical scholars have
argued would be “instruction.” But even this fails to convey
what is meant by the word “Torah”.
Torah is generally understood as the collected wisdom
handed down to the Jewish people from God through the
prophet Moses.
It is not merely a set of rules to be kept. Nor is it merely a set
of laws that are supposed to govern the Jewish people.
The closest comparison for us would be the gospel. It is
essentially for the Jews, their way of understanding how to
faithfully follow God with their whole soul, strength, heart,
and mind. So to translate it as “law”…is just a bit
underwhelming. But I digress…
So following the Torah, is essentially, to follow the covenant
that God made with Moses, to be a holy nation…
So what does that mean for us who live on the other side of
Christ’s resurrection, a different covenant is to be followed.
And that is the covenant of grace.
In just a few minutes we will celebrate communion and we
will recite the very words Christ said to his disciples
including these words “This is my blood of the covenant,
which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
David understood in his own time, and we understand in our
own, that life is not meant to be lived in communion with
God. St. Augustine understood this so well, and put it so well
in his spiritual autobiography: “You have made us for
yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in
you”
Augustine, if you know his story, was a seeker, he bounced
around from philosophy, he was a neo-platonist, to religion,
he later was a Manichean, until finally he met the true God in
Jesus Christ. And after he met Jesus, he never let go. Because
he learned, just as King David did, that the blessed life is
lived with God.
So what is the good life for you? Is it a beach vacation, a long
hike up a mountain. A great day of fishing?
While we may continue to use the phrase to describe idyllic
moments, we know that life must be something much larger
than those moments of sheer bliss.
For that advice we turn to King David, whose wisdom
teaches us to pursue not the way of the wicked, but the way
of the righteous. Those who pursue God from the moment
they wake up to the moment their eyes close at the end of
the day.
May we be such a people, a people that David would
describe as full livers-of life. Amen.
The Lord’s Supper:
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took
bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it
and said, “This is my body,a which is for you; do this in
remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper
he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenanta
in my blood;b do this, whenever you drink it, in
remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s
death until he comes.a