An overview for Sunday School teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Psalm 1:1-6, “God’s Wisdom,” for Sunday, June 1, 2025. A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRODUCTION:

??? Does anyone have a favorite Psalm, verse in Psalms, or a treasured experience with Psalms???

(You and many of your members likely do. God has used Psalms so powerfully in my life, many times. A recent experience was when my wife Cheryl had her stroke the last day of August, and we were in the hospital room for a week straight; we never left. I slept on the couch there every night. Wasn’t much of a time or place for a “daily Bible reading” or quiet time.  But I had just finished memorizing Psalms 116 and 118 earlier last year, so each morning when I woke up, or if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would quote those Psalms, and in that worst of all times in our lives, God used His word in those Psalms to keep me so close to Him in that time. Cheryl did the same thing. We relied on Psalms we had memorized. Her testimony was: “The doctors saved my life; God’s word saved me from the darkness” of that time.

You/your class members can share some of your favorite Psalms/experiences.

ILLUSTRATIONS: (you may use these for alternate introductions,  or at some point later in the lesson)

Augustine lived about 300 A.D., and his classic autobiography, Confessions, he writes in Book IX, Chapter 8, how his heart was “inflamed by (Psalms) with love for You (God). He spoke of his enemies, the Manichees (Followers of Mani, 3rd century, who considered himself the last prophet) who taught that there is not one omnipotent God, but there is an everlasting conflict between light and darkness going on. Augustine used to be a Manichean, but he came to know Christ. So now, he says I wish the Manichees could have seen my face, and heard my voice, as I read Psalm 4, and could have experienced what that Psalm did for me.The Psalms just worked so powerfully in Augustine’s life.

OR:

C.S. Lewis, in his Reflections on the Psalms, wrote: “A man can’t be always defending the truth, there must be a time to feed on it.”  Alister McGrath in his biography of Lewis referred to Lewis’ claim that apologetics were “very wearing.” He needed not only to defend the scriptures, but to feed on them — we ALL do!  And the Psalms is one of the very best places in God’s word to feed each day!  

CONTEXT:

Today we begin a 14-week study on the Book of Psalms which will take this entire quarter. I have been looking forward to this, as Psalms is my own very favorite book of the Bible. I begin every day quoting and praying through several Psalms. I consider it my “daily bread.” And of course I’m not unique in that. Millions of believers have found the Psalms to be so powerful in their lives. 

Our word “Psalm” comes from the Hebrew word “mizmor,” “song or melody.” The root word, “zamar,” means to “pluck or play a stringed instrument”— As Hebrew scholars Keil & Delitzsch write, “Psalms are songs for the lyre, and therefore lyric poems in the strictest sense.” (KD p. 3) 

(NOTE: “mizmor” is the Hebrew word for an individual Psalm; “Tehillim” is the word they use for the whole Book of Psalms; it means “praises,” or “songs of praise.”) But the point is, the Psalms were/are songs, meant to be sung.

ILLUSTRATION:

Author J. Frank Dobie wrote about an incident in the life of Sir Walter Scott. He had ridden low and ridden high taking down ballads from the lips of Scottish people. After he printed them in his book, Minstrelsy of the Scottish border,  “he took a copy to an old woman of the Highlands. ‘Thank ye, sir,’ she said, ‘but they were meant for singing and nae (not) for reading.’” (quoted in J. Frank Dobie, Tales of Old-Time Texas, Introduction, p. 1) 

We can also say this of the Psalms: “they were meant for singing”! 

DISCUSSION QUESTION:

??? “How many can think of a Psalm that is put to music”???

(There are numerous Psalms put to music: 

— “All People That On Earth Do Dwell” is Psalm 100 put to music.

— “This is the Day that the Lord Hath Made” is Psalm 118:24

— “Come Let Us Sing for Joy, Let us Shout Aloud to our King” is Psalm 95.

And on and on … you/your group can think of many. Originally ALL of the Psalms were sung. Thus, the old Puritans had tunes made for all of the Psalms — and many churches today are going back to the Psalms. It truly is “The Hymnbook of the Church”!

As song lyrics, the Psalms are poems; this is important for our understanding and interpretation. They are poems/song lyrics; so do not read it as straightforward didactic prose like you would Romans 12; it is not! Soremember, these Psalms are “poems,” or rather lyrics to songs. 

The Psalms are a very important book, both theologically and “practically.”

— One theologian said that every major New Testament Christian doctrine is contained somewhere in the Psalms. 

— No Old Testament book is quoted more often in the NT than the Psalms.

— Jesus Himself after His resurrection taught His disciples in Luke 24:44 that the Psalms spoke about Him:

“Now He said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’”

And the Psalms are not only important “theologically,” but also “practically,” to benefit our Christian lives.

Tim Keller wrote: “There is no situation or emotion a human being can experience that is not reflected somewhere in the Psalms. Immersing ourselves in the Psalms and turning them into prayers teaches our hearts the ‘grammar’ of prayer and gives us the most formative instruction in how to pray in accord with God’s character and will.” (Prayer, p. 255)

So for whatever situation you/a loved one are facing, there is a Psalm that will help. It is a rich, rich treasury of blessing for us — and it is our great privilege to study it together these next weeks!

And we’ll start this week, appropriately, with Psalm 1!

CONTEXT OF Psalm 1. I have read a number of books on the Psalms, but no one has yet figured out WHY the Psalms are ordered into the 5 “books,” and in the particular order they are. But we can definitely see God’s purpose in putting Psalm 1 first.

Psalm 1 begins with the word “Blessed” (Hebrew “ashere”, pronounced “ash-uh-RAY). This “blessedness” is more than just “happiness”, which can come & go with circumstances. For example: if we are at a ball game, and we are hungry, and then we get some nachos, then we are “happy.” But if when we go up to the concession stand, they are OUT of nachos, we are NOT happy! “Happiness” just comes and goes, depending very much on our circumstances.  

But one of the lessons of the Psalms is that the person who walks with God has something more than trite “happiness.”  Psalm 4:7 says: “You have put gladness in my heart, MORE than when their grain and new wine abound.” In other words, God has something for His people that is MORE than worldly “happiness” which is based on circumstances, like having plenty of grain, or new wine — or nachos, or a winning sports team. And that “something more” is “ashere” — spiritual “blessedness.”  Ross translates it “the heavenly blessedness.” (p. 185)  

So Psalm 1 begins by saying, here is the key to the “blessed”/happy/truly successful life. As we shall see, it comes when we refuse to follow the world, and choose to serve God in His word.

OUTLINE:

I. The Choice of Wisdom (:1-2)

II. The Temporal Results of Wisdom (:3-4)

III. The Eternal Results of Wisdom (:5-6)

TEXT:  Psalm 1:1-6

I. The Choice of Wisdom: (:1-2)

A. Choosing NOT to follow the way of the world

:1 “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers”

This verse talks right off the bat about the kind of LIFE that is “ashere” or blessed.  It is a life that avoids sin in every possible way.  Notice the picture this verse give us of that:

It says, “Blessed” (“ashere”) is the man who:

— “does not WALK in the counsel of the wicked”

— “nor STAND in the path of sinners”

— “nor SIT in the seat of the scoffers”

This is a very comprehensive picture.  It says to be “blessed” you don’t 

— “WALK” in the counsel of the wicked — don’t listen to ungodly people, get your advice from them, or DO what they do.  

— You don’t “STAND” in the path of sinners — do not be found among them, for your fellowship. Don’t be caught living in fellowship with Sodom. 

— And you don’t “SIT” in the seat of the scoffer — you don’t sit among them; have fellowship with them, and adopt their attitude.  

NOTICE:  the 3-fold POSTURE here: you don’t “WALK”; you don’t “STAND”; you don’t “SIT.”  In other words, you do not have ANY posture towards sin in ANY WAY if you want to have the “blessed” life. 

This is important.  You can’t just live any way you want to live, and think that you have a blessed life of fellowship with God.

— Remember Jesus said in Matthew 7: “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”  If you purposefully practice lawlessness and sin, you cannot expect to have fellowship with the Lord.  

— Psalm 66:18 says “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the LORD will not hear.”  

— I John 1:5-6 says: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”  You can’t fellowship with God and walk in the darkness at the same time. The Bible says that will not happen.  

Some time ago Cheryl & I were watching a news show and they were talking about the immigration issue. We learned something we didn’t realize: that if you are here in the United States as an illegal immigrant, you cannot apply for U.S. citizenship. I’d never really thought about it before, but I guess it makes sense: you can’t apply for citizenship to live in our country at the very time you are actively engaged in breaking the laws of our country!  

And the Bible tells us it’s the same way with the Lord. You cannot have fellowship with God, if you are actively engaged in breaking the laws that He gave you in His word. We are foolish if we expect that.  

Now, this does NOT mean that we somehow “earn” God’s favor by living a good life. NO, any blessing God gives us is only of His goodness and grace, through Jesus.  But His word also makes it clear: the quickest way to NOT be blessed is to ignore God’s commands, and to “walk in the counsel of the wicked, and stand in the path of sinners, and sit in the seat of the scoffer.”  It will ensure that you do NOT have the “blessed” life — as many people have discovered first hand!

B. Choosing TO follow God’s Word:

2 “But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.”

So the person who will be blessed does NOT live a life of sin, but he DOES delight and meditate on God’s word. 

???DISCUSSION QUESTION???

“What is something you would say you “delight” in?”

(Discussion could include: When you “delight” in something, how much time do you have to set aside for it? How much do you have to make yourself think about it? You don’t, right? You just enjoy doing it. No one has to make you. This is what that word “delight” means — and that is how the blessed person regards God’s word! They “delight” in it!

— Secondly, the blessed person will “meditate” on the word of God. Now, the word ”meditation” in the Bible does NOT mean what it means in some other religions.  You may have heard of “Transcendental Meditation” or “TM” for short. This is a Hindu religious practice, in which the adherent takes a sound, or a syllable (like “om”) and hums it, or repeats it, over and over until their mind is emptied of everything, and they’re no longer aware of thoughts or words, and they supposedly gains a “higher consciousness”.  This kind of “meditation” is NOT what the Bible and Psalm 1 are commending to us. 

Christian meditation is meditation ON THE WORD OF GOD.  The Hebrew word for “meditation” comes from a word that means “to mutter”; it is the picture of someone who has memorized a scripture, and is “muttering” it out loud to himself as he ponders it.  It is not EMPTYING your mind of thoughts and words, rather it is FILLING your mind with God’s thoughts and words from scripture; thinking about what they mean, and how they apply to your life. It is totally different than TM. In Christian meditation, you memorize a scripture, maybe a chapter or one of these Psalms, and you review it over and over in your mind, learning everything God’s Spirit has to teach you about it, until its truth fills your life.  

The next verse (:3) gives us the picture of “a tree firmly planted by rivers of water.” Just like a tree slowly “soaks up” that water, so our soul “soaks up” the word of God as we memorize it and let it “soak” into our lives.  THAT is Christian meditation. And :3 shows us what happens when we do meditate on God’s word like that:

II. The Temporal Results of Wisdom: (:3-4)

3 “He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season, And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers. 4 The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind  drives away.”

Psalm 1 says if you will delight and meditate on God’s word like it suggests, it will result in the best kind of prosperity and success. It describes the life of this person as being like a tree planted right by water, that bears fruit. It’s the picture of a fruitful, satisfying, abundant life.

Last week Cheryl & I had an opportunity to see the amazing results that WATER brings to plants. We all “know” this, of course, but we really saw it in action last week. Cheryl loves to garden, but it has been very challenging for her to get outside and do anything since her stroke. But a couple of weeks ago I thought, what if we put a raised garden bed just outside the back porch, and she can wheel her chair, or maybe even walk, and stand and work at that bed? So we did put a raised bed in, and she literally sat and wept. She loved it so much. (So now we added two more!) But one day last week I noticed some of the plants were not looking very well. They were dry; beginning to wilt. I thought, I missed a day or two in watering them, so I made sure to give them a big drink that night. The next morning, all the plants had perked up. They were lush, such a deep dark green. They were now flourishing with that water. And a couple of days later, Cheryl actually harvested some of the “first fruits” cuttings of some of the herbs!

Psalm 1 tells us: THIS IS THE PICTURE OF THE PERSON WHO WALKS IN GOD’S WORD! This is what their life will be like: they won’t “wilt” in life’s circumstances; they won’t be dry. They will be strong, and flourish, and they will bear fruit. 

+x it reminds me of what Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” Abundant life! That’s what Psalm 1 promises here. 

But NOTICE: that kind of life doesn’t just “happen;” it only happens IF you avoid the temptations of evil, and delight and meditate on the word of God. It’s a choice that we all make. 

CONTRASTING that, Verse 4 gives us a picture of those who do NOT make that right choice: “The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind  drives away.” 

You see the contrast here:

— the righteous who love God’s word are like a well-watered tree

— but the wicked who deny God’s word are like “chaff.” “Chaff” refers to the agricultural process of “winnowing.” When wheat is harvested, it will be threshed, leaving lots of bits of both wheat and stems. So then it is “winnowed,” a process in which a farmer will take a bunch of wheat and chaff (dry pieces of stem or other material around the grains) and throw it up in air. The wind just blows the chaff away, but the heavier grains of wheat fall to the ground beneath him and are saved. 

So you see the picture here: the wicked are like “chaff, which the wind drives away.” They don’t last, they just blow away. I think of the dead pieces of grass and bugs and so on that occasionally accumulate on my front porch, but after I mow I blow them all away with the blower. They’re just temporary, blown away.

What a sad picture of a human life — but that is an apt picture of so many, who reject God and His word. They may seem to prosper for a season, but in the end they’re just blown away like dead grass.

Surely none of us wants to end up like that! So we need to determine to be like the righteous, who are committed to God and His word.

DISCUSSION/APPLICATION:

Historian Will Durant summarized Aristotle’s teaching in what has become a famous quote from Durant’s The Story of Philosophy:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

You might post that quote and ask your group what they think of it — and then challenge your group:  What specific habit can I get into, which will help me delight and meditate on God’s word, and have the kind of success Psalm sets before us?

(What Bible reading plan can I start? What Bible study book will I undertake? What scripture will I memorize so I can really “meditate” on it? 

And then what sins might I be “walking in/standing in/sitting in,” that are keeping me from being the kind of person God will bless?

Remind your group that “Excellence” — flourishing like Psalm 1 talks about — won’t just “fall into your lap.” It will only come as you implement specific habits to repent of sin and delight in God’s word, like Psalm 1 instructs us.  

But the results that Psalm 1 forecasts are not merely temporal, for this earth only. They have eternal impacts, as we see in :5-6:

III. The Eternal Results of Wisdom  (:5-6)

5 “Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.”

A. The End of the Wicked

“Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous … but the way of the wicked will perish.”

The end result for the wicked is described 3 ways at the end of Psalm 1:

— they “will not stand in the judgment”

— they will not stand “in the assembly of the righteous”

— their way will “perish”

Let’s look at each of these briefly:

— They “will not stand in the judgment”

God’s Judgment is coming. This is one of the consistent themes in scripture. What will happen when it does? A person will either “stand,” or “fall,” in a sense. It’s like a great hurricane is coming — who can stand? 

Jesus used this very illustration at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, didn’t He — in the parable of the two men who built their homes, on the rock, and on the sand. “The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, and burst against that house” — and it either stood or fell, depending on what he built his house upon.

That’s what Psalm 1 says will happen to the wicked: they “will not stand” in the Judgment to come. It will “blow them away,” in a sense. It will be devastating to them. (But like in Jesus’ parable at the end of Matthew 7, those who built their house on the rock — significantly, what He defines as “hearing His word and doing it” — will stand!) But the wicked will not stand, because they did not delight in the Law of the Lord, and meditate day and night”!

— They will not stand “in the assembly of the righteous”

They won’t be gathered, and counted, as the people of God. When God gathers all His sheep together, the wicked will not be among them. “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness,” Jesus put it, again at the end of Matthew 7. They will not have fellowship with God, or with His people, for eternity.

— Their way will “perish.” 

The Hebrew word here, “abad,” is translated with the same Greek word (“apollumi”) that is used in John 3:16, “perish.” 

Old Testament and New Testament indicate the same judgment for the wicked, who refuse God’s way: they will “perish.” 

B. The End of the Righteous

“YHWH knows the way of the righteous …”

Theologians tells us that when God says He “knows” someone or something, it means much more than just “knowing about it.” It implies a personal knowledge and fellowship. 

Again +x Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 (it’s amazing how much Old Testament foundation there is in Jesus’ New Testament words) “I never knew you …”. Jesus says “I never KNEW” the wicked. That doesn’t mean He didn’t know they existed; it means He had no personal fellowship with them. God KNOWS the righteous. We have a personal relationship, and fellowship with Him. We KNOW Him. And that is the biggest privilege there is in life. It is the purpose for which we were created. 

In his classic book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer wrote:

“I walked in the sunshine with a scholar who had effectively forfeited his prospects of academic advancement by clashing with church dignitaries over the gospel of grace. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said at length, “for I’ve known God and they haven’t.” The remark was a mere parenthesis, a passing comment on something I had said, but it has stuck with me and set me thinking.”

It ought to “set us thinking,” as Packer said. Are we one of the righteous? Do we really know God. And most importantly, does God know US, and our way? Do we know Him, and please Him? Knowing God is the eternal state of the righteous, Psalm 1 says.

I believe John the Baptist may have had Psalm 1 in mind, in his sermon announcing the coming of Jesus in Matthew 3:12, “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Here John says that the same ultimate separation that Psalm 1 points to, happens through our response to Jesus. If you accept and follow Him, then you will be that “blessed” man, having “abundant life” like a well-watered tree — especially as you follow Him in His word like Psalm 1 describes. But if you choose NOT to follow Jesus and pay attention to His word, you are making yourself “chaff,” who will be separated from God’s “wheat,” and will be consumed by eternal fire at the Judgment.  

Those two “ends” that Psalm 1 describes are very different, aren’t they? Thus each of us needs to be very mindful, of which path we choose in life: the way of the world, or the way of the Lord found in His word.

ILLUSTRATION:

It was said of the second U.S. President John Adams that when he was a lawyer he like to quote the line, “In every thing one must consider the end.” (David McCullough, John Adams, p. 102)

That is exactly what Psalm 1 is setting before us. God says very clearly here that there are two different roads you can choose to follow with your life. The consequences are very distinct, and are clearly differentiated. Which one will you choose? As President Adams used to say, “One must consider the end.” That’s God’s wisdom that Psalm 1 urges us to consider.

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