This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to the start of our study of
the book of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a book that has spoken to our hearts,
your heart, many, many, many times. If it's your first time to look through it,
you're going to find that it speaks to your heart.

Martin Luther called the book of Psalms God's good word addressed to God's
faithful people. God has good words for you through the book of Psalms. And John
Calvin called the book of Psalms an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.

He said there is no affection in man which is not here represented as in a
glass. There's something about the book of Psalms that lets us see ourselves
like in a mirror. Augustine said the same thing.

He said if a psalm prays, you pray, if it laments, you lament, if it exalts, you
rejoice, if it hopes, you hope, if it fears, you fear. Everything written here,
he said, is a mirror for us. So Psalms is like looking into a mirror.

It's a mirror in which you see yourself but you also see the person that God is
fashioning to you to be. That's the kind of mirror that it is. I've always liked
what Billy Graham said about the book of Psalms and also Proverbs.

He said the Psalms tell us how to get along with God and the Proverbs tell us
how to get along with our fellow man. So if you want to learn how to get along
with God, you're studying the right book. Now the book of Psalms, an Old
Testament book, we're not going to do a psalm a week.

That'd be a lot a week for the 150 Psalms. We're going to do a psalm a day and
in fact I'm going to do it in six parts so you can listen through to 25 Psalms
at a time. So this is our first part of the book of Psalms, starting with Psalm
1, which is a psalm that talks about the purpose of the book.

I can't think of a better way to start than to read for you Psalm 1 verses 1 to
6. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand
in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the
law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its
season and whose leaf does not wither; whatever he does prospers. Not so the
wicked; they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Nor the wicked will not
stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked
will perish. The book of Psalms tells you how to live in this space of God's
blessing, how to live in this place of genuine holy happiness. God wants you to
live a blessed life, not a problem-free life, that's not until we get to heaven,
but a blessed life.

And Psalms is a guidebook to the blessed life. Psalm 1 tells us that God's
blessing comes from what you choose not to do, and from what you choose to
delight in. And then it describes what that blessing looks like.

Let's look at those things in Psalm 1. First blessing comes from what you choose
not to do. Psalm 1, 1.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in
the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. Do not walk in the counsel of
the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of mockers. He's
telling us here that it's not what you do that steals God's blessing from your
life.

Oh, in the end it is, but what you do depends on something else. It's who you
let into your life as your best friends, your closest counselors. That's what
steals God's blessing from your life, because it's what causes you to make wrong
choices.

The people that you walk and sit and stand with. Because in the end, those are
the people who will determine what you do. Paul, when he was writing the
Corinthians, wrote in 1 Corinthians 5, 11, "I am writing to tell you that you
must not associate with those who call themselves believers in Christ, but who
sin sexually, or are greedy, or worship idols, or abuse others with words, or
get drunk or cheat people.

Don't even eat with people like that. " It's not that you can't ever see that
kind of person or talk to them, but don't be a partner. Don't associate with
them.

Eat with them. Be best friends with them. Don't let them become an influence in
your life.

Blessing comes from what you choose not to do. But blessing also comes from what
you choose to delight in. In verse 2, "His delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

" So you delight in God's word. His delight is in the law of the Lord, in the
word of the Lord. But we're also told how to delight in the word of the Lord.

You do this by meditating. On his law, he meditates day and night. This word
"meditate," we're going to hear it a lot in the book of Psalms.

And it's not necessarily with the idea of silence. We have false ideas of
meditation now that are based on maybe Eastern meditation or humanistic ideas of
meditation. There was a meditation in the Bible that precedes all of those.

And the idea here is to really focus in on the words. And often, even in the
word "meditate" is the idea to read in an undertone. So if you mumble to
yourself as you meditate on God's word, that's a good thing.

In fact, it's one of the ways that the Lord talks to you as you look through the
book of Psalms. You just sort of say the truth back to yourself in a quiet way.
Meditation is considering the truth from every angle.

And it's looking at how you can act on that truth. And when you do that, you
will live a blessed life. Now, what is this blessed life that God wants to give
you?

Well, Psalm chapter 1, verse 3 is this picture of blessing, this picture of true
success. Psalm 1, 3 says, "When you do this, you're like a tree planted by
streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaf does not
wither. Whatever he does prospers.

" This is the blessing of life, endurance, and significance, life, a tree
planted by streams of water, endurance, leaf that does not wither, and
significance, yielding fruit in its season. Whatever you do prospers. That's the
blessing that God wants to give into your life.

It is not the blessing of perfect circumstances. Like I said earlier, we don't
get that blessing until we get to heaven, and we will get it then. But even on
this planet, where you face imperfect circumstances and struggles, and even the
imperfections of your own heart, God wants to give you this blessing of life and
endurance and significance by what you choose not to do, who you don't hang
around, and what you choose to do, meditating on God's word.

It's interesting. The first word in Psalm 1 is the word blessed, and the last
word is the word perish. In Hebrew, the word that's translated blessed in
English begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, and the word
that we translate perish begins with the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet,
tov.

So from beginning to end, we would say from A to Z, he's talking about going
from blessing to perishing, or do you want to go from perishing to blessing? And
Psalms is a book of instruction about how to live in this place of blessing.
It's a book of instruction for happiness, and a book of instruction for
holiness.

Now you may have heard the phrase, "God doesn't want you to be happy, but be
holy. " And I understand that phrase. It comes from people who say, "Well, you
know, I just have to do this wrong thing because God would rather me be happy
than have to still endure this difficult relationship, or still endure this
difficult circumstance.

So even if I have to sin, God would rather have me sin than be unhappy. " And
that's a total misunderstanding of holiness and happiness. The truth of the
matter is, when you think of lasting happiness, true happiness, God wants both
in your life.

He wants genuine happiness, and he wants genuine holiness. So how is that
attained? How is happiness attained?

It comes through holiness. Happiness does not result in holiness, but true
holiness always results in true, genuine happiness. So this blessing that we're
talking about, it's not a dry, unemotional blessing.

It comes with God's joy in your life. It's a totally different way of thinking.
Holiness is not difficult, it's not dry, it's not boring, it's not painful.

Holiness is a delight. And God wants to bring the delight of his blessing into
your life. That's what we're going to be looking at as we look through the book
of Psalms.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your blessings. What would life in
this world be like without your blessings?

And although in our circumstances, we often find a measure of happiness that
we're glad you've provided for us, and we're grateful for the ways that our
circumstances have fallen into right places. We know that the true blessings of
life are much deeper than that. The blessings of knowing you, the blessings of
seeing you at work in our hearts and our lives, the blessings of, Father, true
life and true endurance and true significance.

So we praise you for those blessings today. In Jesus' name, amen. Well,
tomorrow, we're going to look at Psalm 2, which is the most often quoted Psalm
in the New Testament.