40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Psalm 1 (Episode 374)

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Chad and Daniel discuss Psalm 1. Have a listen! Show Notes: 1517 Podcast Survey Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Faith and Reason Exchange @ 1517.org 2023 HWSS Conference Livestream Signup Join the 1517 Academy Faith in the Face of Tyranny More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to an additional episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament that will not be 40 minutes long. What's going on here? Why is this in your feed? Well, it turns out that there's an entire book of songs, prayers, the Old Testament hymnal, whatever you want to call it, the book of Psalms, and then there's also a book of sort of wise sayings, you know, a book you know as Proverbs. As Chad and I were discussing what we were going to do with Psalms and Proverbs, we were like, are we just going to hit these eventually and just spend a bunch of time going 40 minutes at a time and ending in the middle of psalms or doing multiple psalms an episode or multiple proverbs an episode or how are we going to do this and we decided that what we would do is

we would begin recording an episode on the psalms and an episode on the proverbs after the psalms we'll do the psalms first and we'll just do that as a companion to what we're already doing and so what you're going to get, lucky you, is two episodes a week until we work our way through this, which is going to take a while, Chad. And so you're going to be getting a little Psalm episode each week alongside your regular 40-minute in the Old Testament. And we won't go 40 minutes, we'll go as long as it takes to go through each one of them. So Psalm 119, you can look forward to that very, very long episode of 40 minutes in the Old Testament. Yeah, so this is the first one of those this is a psalm one and uh chad the the book of psalms is uh in one way it's my favorite

old testament book even though it's not narrative and that kind of stuff i you know i'm i'm partial to genesis i really love genesis it's different than the psalms is i mean the psalms is the book that gives you uh permission to pray in certain ways like if you want to know like how to talk to god i mean there's i mean that's what the psalms are they're talking to god and it is surprising in that way yeah because some of the things that we say to god in the psalms we probably wouldn't pray if we were just like pre-praying coming up with stuff on our own we'll see a lot of examples of that uh over the over the course of these hundred and 150 prayers uh it's i will say this so i just probably two weeks ago i was teaching at a local congregation and i said by

show hands whose favorite old testament book is psalms you know how many hands went up zero zero hands which kind of surprised me uh i wouldn't say it's my favorite but i would say it's in my top three yeah i will say it's weird because it's not i wouldn't say if someone asked me straight up what's your favorite Old Testament book? I would say Genesis. That's what I would say. Yeah. But there's a reason that if you get a little New Testament,

it has Psalms included. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, if you said, Chad, all right, you can have one and only one biblical book with you on this deserted island, you know, the whole, which book would you choose? Only one biblical book. I would probably choose the book of Psalms.

Yeah. Because you've got, you've got history woven into it. uh you've got uh all kinds of prayers everything from uh what in the world's going on where are you to hallelujah you got everything in there and uh so it's it's in my top three favorites uh but it is by far the book i spend more time in than any other biblical book old testament or new testament so i i try and pray through the book of psalms every month and uh been doing that for a lot of years so i definitely spend more time in it than i do any other old testament book have more of it memorized than i do any other biblical book and love it in in many ways uh more than other biblical

books but it's kind of hard to pull me away from genesis or exodus because i mean yeah that was at the very top so it is also the most quoted book it is yeah yeah if you look at so for those who have ever studied Greek or maybe have a copy of the Greek New Testament, you look in the very back. The typical edition is called Nestle-Alan.

So you look in the back and it'll have the biblical books in the Old Testament listed out with all the times in the New Testament where there's either

an explicit quotation or an echo or allusion to that book. It's a great resource, especially for people like me who like to notice all these overlaps between Old Testament

new testament but of course there's a ton in genesis ton in exodus uh so on so forth you get to the psalms and you find out that uh the psalms are quoted more than any other old testament book in the new testament yeah yeah in psalm 110 verse 1 the lord said that my lord said at my right hand until i make your enemies a footstool for your feet psalm 110 verse 1 is the most quoted old testament text in the new testament so yeah they are they are woven into the fabric of the new testament for sure i think it's safe to say like in the time of of jesus and in the apostles it's got to be the the book that had the more people have portions memorized than anything else because because it is prayers and songs and this sort of thing the same way that uh you might

not be able to quote six lines from the sermon that your pastor gave on Sunday, but if all of a sudden someone starts playing Great is Thy Faithfulness, you could probably sing most of it without any help. Yeah, I would guess that in the first century, because the psalms were sung in synagogues and in the temple and no doubt at home the people had a a lot of the psalms memorized especially you know i've been in the situation everybody has where if you're singing solo somebody says hey chad stand up and sing great is your great is our faithfulness i might be able to but if i'm in a group singing it oh yeah no problem because i'm carried along by everybody else's uh voices as well it's kind of like that with the psalms if you're in a group

and uh you're you're singing a psalm then you just fall into the same rhythm of everybody else one more thing and we're gonna we're gonna actually we're gonna accent this over and over and over and that is that the heart and core of the psalms is about christ yeah so there's different ways that you can approach this with each of the psalms uh but in one way or another they all relate to him either as the prayer the one who's actually praying these words along with David and along with us or the one who uh the prayers are about so we'll see a lot of examples of that as we go through there and really no need to to say much about about Christ in the psalms as a preface other than you're going to see and you're going to hear plenty of that as we

as we go through each of these anything else to add no man let's do it psalm one yeah so uh I'll just read it. It's only six verses. And this is, I'm reading it from the ESV. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

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 that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers the wicked are not so but are like chaff that the wind drives away therefore the

wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the lord knows the way of the righteous but the way the wicked will perish pretty uh pretty brief psalm to start things out with this really so i'll say more about this uh when we next week when we talk about psalm two uh but just as kind of a a prelude to that i would argue that psalm one and two are the double doors that open into the rest of the book of psalms and i'll next week i'll accent the the overlap of language that we have between between these two so of course as a as in a lot of the psalms you have a sharp contrast between two groups you've got the righteous you got you You have the wicked, and they're known by various other names.

Sometimes they're referred to as the Hasidim, which is usually translated as saints, or the righteous, or the holy ones, or whoever it might be. You have those, that's one group. And then you have the wicked, or the sinners, or the scoffers, as they're called here. So there's a pretty sharp contrast between these two. Now, we'll see in many psalms where there's a blending of these two, of course, where that line between good and evil cuts between every human heart. but uh in this opening psalm anyway which is very much in the wisdom genre you have a stark contrast between between these two now notice one more thing that's kind of curious about not only psalm one but other psalms as well this is not couched in typical prayer language because when we pray

we say oh god you know blessed are you oh lord uh please give me this or almighty i confess my sense you whatever it might be we address god directly when god is talked about in psalm 1 he's talked about in the third person not so that it's a prayer i would i would argue it's a prayer but it's not the typical kind of prayer where we explicitly evoke god instead we are speaking to god but in the third person and we're talking about who he is and what the blessed man does and the outcome, the different outcomes of the righteous and of the wicked. Now, one thing I want to point out right away is that throughout Christian interpretive history, and I'm fully in line with this, the man in Psalm 1, verse 1, is not understood to be every man,

but instead is a reference to the Messiah himself, to Christ. Yeah, it's a singular word for man, right? yeah it's not i mean you do have uh like even in english we'll uh we'll sometimes use man or men in a generic sense refer to all people who for us like in the creed who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven by that we don't mean males we're just using that in a very universal generic sense for humanity but hebrew also has the word ish which is the word here so psalm one begins in hebrew ashrae haish blessed is the ish blessed is the man which refers to a to a male to a singular male and we have this singular man described in detail he doesn't

walk in the counsel of the wicked he doesn't stand in the way of sinners he doesn't see sit in the seat of scoffers well what does he do well he delights in the torah of yahweh and in that torah he meditates day and night and we have these these uh picturesque descriptions of him where he's like a tree planted that could also be translated as transplanted by streams of water he's always yielding his fruit leaf doesn't wither and whatever he does he he prospers in christian interpretive tradition this man is understood to be the messiah who in psalm 2 is can be referred to also as the son of god and as the anointed one and as the as the king but right away he's introduced here as the one who in a very in a very regal kind of way is actually

spending his time doing what deuteronomy 17 says the king should do meditating in throra day and night so if you go back to deuteronomy 17 which is that part about what the israelite king is not to do and is to do. He's not to amass horses or wives or riches or all these other things. Well, what is he supposed to do? He's to make a copy of the Torah and to meditate in that Torah. That's what the king does. Well, that's exactly what this guy's doing. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you know this about Jesus, but he did not amass wives, riches, or horses. We know this about him for sure. He had none of those things. so i mean the point here is that it would be inappropriate to translate this word man

so maybe you could if you're translating something it's okay for you to translate this word a word that would say that we might translate for men and just translate that as people or something like that so but you could not rightly translate this blessed are people who walk not in the counsel of the wicked. That would not be a valid translation. A particular person is blessed, and he is a male, and he walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. You know what's interesting about this, too, is that you're like, well, I don't know, man. Does this describe Jesus? Because I seem to remember him hanging out with sinners a lot. This is a big accusation against him. Doesn't he do this? I mean, isn't

he the friend of sinners? Isn't this what people got all up in arms about? Isn't he associating with the wrong sorts of people? And the answer to that question, of course, is yes, he does. But that's not what it says. It doesn't say that he's not the friend of sinners, or he does not care for sinners. It says that he doesn't stand in the way of sinners, which is a different thing altogether yeah when we hear things like counsel way seat uh these are metaphors that are intended to describe uh an entire way of believing and doing life more or less especially the way i mean there's a lot of talk in the old testament and new testament about the way of course that's the first name of christianity was it was referred to as the way so it's an all-encompassing term for this is

the way you do life this is what you believe this is how you act and so this is saying that doesn't match this blessed man he's he's not he's not among the wicked acting like the wicked he's not among the sinners acting like sinners he's not among the scoffers acting like scoffers his delight is not in those things in other words right that's that is the contrast there right like so you have jesus who eats with tax collectors and prostitutes but he doesn't collect tasks taxes and hire out prostitutes right yeah yeah so his uh uh he's he's there but he's there for a different purpose he's he's there because he delights this is this is the great thing about this so this guy's this the blessed man uh the son of god his delight is in the torah of the lord and that torah he meditates

day and night and because of that not not uh uh not in distinction from it but because of that he's a friend of sinners because what do you hear over and over in the in the Torah of the Lord well that God is gracious and compassionate and merciful and he's always showing this grace and mercy and compassion to who well the sinners he's actually living among them he's in the tabernacle right in the middle of the camp he's forgiving them for all the terrible things that they do over and over and over and when Jesus meditates up in the in the Torah of his father he is then taking what he learned in the Torah and he

is incarnating that in his own life as he becomes a friend of sinners you could say Yahweh in the Old Testament is the friend of sinners and Jesus then continues that in his own life he's got to be the friend of sinners or he can't be the friend of anybody

yes he's just going to be friends with this is all there are reduces your friend pool down quite a bit Yeah, and I think it's, you know, people might have noticed that you sort of retranslated this word law, because this is a, man, this verse gets thrown around all the time, and as evidence of what you ought to be doing, which is just sitting there thinking about all the do's and don'ts all the days of your life, day and night, you're just thinking about what you should and shouldn't do all the time, and that's part of it, but that's not what this is saying. that uh all every day all day and at night when you go to bed just think about the ten commandments if you could no you you can do that but uh you would be you would not be uh meditating in the torah of the lord at least you'd only be meditating in a small portion of it yeah the torah as uh

we've frequently commented uh is the teaching that's basically what it means so in the instruct instruction is sometimes the way it's translated so he his delight is in the instruction of the lord that is all the things that god has has taught us and we think of torah specifically in reference to the five books of moses this is probably meant in a more even more uh general sweeping sort of way anything that god teaches us whether it's law or whether it's uh promise whether it's narrative or whether it's whatever it might be then he's meditating in this in other words we could translate it his delight is in the word of his father yeah i think we're ready to do that um who is he like well he then we have two different very very different images of what he

is like and then what those who are opposed to him are like the wicked well he's like a tree not a bush not a plant not uh anything that's kind of passing and shallow rooted no he's he's a tree that's planted by streams of water and he's yielding his fruit all the time his leaf doesn't wither everything he does he prospers so he's he's got stability he's got fruitfulness and this fruitfulness is an ongoing kind of fruitfulness it never ends so it's a picture of stability it's a picture of fidelity it's a picture of of activity and fruitfulness and in all of these blessings because he is meditating day and night in the word of his father and then in one line we have the contrast set up the wicked they are not like that well what do they like they're like chaff

the wind drives away chaffing a pretty pretty common biblical metaphor for something which is ephemeral just easily taken away by one little breeze that comes by so no stability no fruitfulness basically just deadness that's all that's the big that's the big thing right chaff is not living yeah yeah chaff is useless it's not not alive it's just it's just dead it's good for starting fires though it's good for starting fires for sure therefore verse 5 says therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment we have a i would argue we have the the eschaton we have the last the last day is already creeping here into into this song therefore when you know when the judgment comes along the wicked are not going to stand nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous

for the lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish perish like that chap that the that the wind drives drives away yeah the lord the lord knows the way of righteous, because he is the only one who's walked it, right? So he knows this road. This is the part of this eschatological thing here, where, you know, okay, the wicked aren't going to stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. And again, if you're talking about being righteous, we have to go back to this blessed man. I mean, this really only describes one person and so you're going to need to be with him yeah that's the that's the only way that you're going to make this through uh in fact the uh the end of psalm 2 will uh will make this

explicit where it says blessed are all who take refuge in him that's right yeah so if uh if you want to be blessed if you want to be with this blessed man well then that's that's the only way he's the only one who really knows the way of the righteous and he's the only one who makes us righteous declares us righteous by making us one with with himself that sounds like that sounds like the way is narrow it does it does extremely in fact it sounds so narrow as as as you've taught me over the years it's so narrow that there's room for only one person that's right yeah we all get there on the shoulders of uh the blessed man of psalm of Psalm 1. And that's a great way to start out. I mean, it's brief, but in many ways, you've got

everything. You find out that the Son of God is going to become a man, an ish, a blessed man, who's going to do what his Father sent him to do. He's going to have stability and fruitfulness. And in the end, because he knows the way of the righteous, then blessed are all going to be who take refuge in Him. That's right. All right. Well, there you go. There's Psalm 1, door number one open. Next week, we'll open up door number two in Psalm 2. Hopefully, this is an enjoyable experience. As we go through the Psalms, you get a little additional thing. I don't know if you were looking for more from me and Chad every week, but you got it, whether you were asking for it or not. That's it. That's how it works. So, all right, Chad. Well, I'll see you next week for Psalm 2.

All right. See you then. See you.