Psalm 1

Psalm 1
The first Psalm starts as a Beatitude. Blessed are... or blessed is.

1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

This Psalm begins with a command to avoid the negative, you are blessed if you avoid evil. Stay away from people who don't believe in God or follow his ways. People who deliberately go against God's commandments and love to sin. Stay away from those who make fun of or mock God. They are negative and are controlled by darkness and should be avoided.

Then, on the positive side, he tells us that the blessed person delights in the Law (law of Moses meaning the written law or the scriptures) of the Lord.

2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

Here we learn to enjoy the scriptures, study them, learn lessons for life from their pages, memorize them and think on them both day and night. One translation says "...they find happiness in the teachings of the Lord." Memorizing scriptures was much more common before the printing press when books were hand written and hard to come by. However, now that scriptures are in every home, it is all too easy to leave them sitting on the shelf while we pursue other, more pleasurable activities. We must take care not to let them gather dust but to study them, and though they are always nearby, we should still memorize important verses to make them part of our thought process. For it is through these positive thoughts the Lord can guide us and protect us through our lives.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

In verse 3 we are reminded that we receive our nourishment from the Lord, the source of living water. We are also reminded of the 23rd Psalm, "He leadeth me beside the still waters." Verse three tells us that those who receive nourishment from the Lord bring forth fruit, it is only natural that those blessed by the Lord produce something good to share with those around them who may be in need. Perhaps it would be good to take a moment when reading this Psalm to write a list of the fruit that we have brought forth because of our desire to be near living water and because of our desire to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Verses 4-6 tell us that the ungodly do not take root in a beautiful place with the righteous but are blown like chaff, unwanted and useless, only some day to be burned and perish. Of course chaff in the wind is a very common image in early days as chaff is the dry husk around most common grains and in those days farmers would toss the newly harvested grain into the air on a windy day so the lighter chaff would blow away and the heavier usable grain would fall to the ground. This made the wind a convenient way of separating the unusable chaff from the grain.