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Blessed Is the Man
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Father’s Day, June 18, 2006
Part of a series from
favorite Psalms, “Lift Up Your Eyes!”
Brian Bauknight tells the story of a man who was the
president and CEO of a major corporation here in America. He had read a book
entitled The Sons and Daughters of God. It so impressed him, he
decided he would give it to all of his people throughout the nation who were in
charge of other people. He found out that no book store where he lived had that
many copies so he, he sent a request to the publisher. And he said, “Please
send me 350 copies of The Sons and the Daughters of God.
Headquarters was in Chicago. He got an email back. It said, “Sorry, but we
can’t find 350 Sons and Daughters of God in Chicago. Try Los
Angeles.”
In the middle of our Bible are two books, Psalms and
Proverbs. Instructions to sons and daughters of God are given in these two
books. Also reflections from them are encompassed.
It is fascinating that the end of the Proverbs book
contains a tribute to a daughter of God of great virtue. And the beginning of
the Psalms contains a tribute to one of the sons of God who is worthy of esteem
and admiration. Look at Psalm 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 the mockers.
But his delight is in the law of
the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
And, He is like a tree planted
by streams of water,
yielding its fruit in its season
and whose leaf does not wither.
And whatever he does will prosper.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
the wind blows away.
Verse 6 says,
For the LORD watches
over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
And this is the word of the Lord.
Look at the Psalm with me, please. Blessed is the
man.
Blessed in the Bible is a strong word. It is a
word that sets people apart from other people. It is a personal name, word.
When someone says ‘Have a blessed day,’ we use it
as a greeting. It is a kind of a Christian smiley face. And that’s good. Use
it. Enjoy it. Share it. Spread it. Have a blessed day. But you need to know
that in the Bible the word ‘bless-ed’ or ‘blessed’ is a strong word, it’s not a
greeting word. It’s a word that is used rarely, in special occasions, for
special people. To Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she went to see her
kinswoman Elizabeth. Luke tells us that the baby Elizabeth was carrying, John
the Baptist, leaped for joy in her womb. And Elizabeth broke forth with this
affirmation of Mary, ‘Blessed are you among women. And blessed is the child you
will bear.’ That’s not just a greeting. That’s an incredible affirmation of
the fact that God has picked out and chosen certain people, even his own son.
Thirty-plus years later, on the slopes of Mount
Herman, Caesarea Philippi, kind of a retreat area, Jesus says ‘Who do you think
I am?’ as he talks to his disciples. I, I think there was a pause and then the
word waves of commitment sweep over the other apostles and Jesus hears these
words from Simon Peter, ‘I believe you are the Christ, the son of the living
God.’ And what’s the first word out of Jesus’ lips? ‘Blessed are you, Simon.’
That’s going to happen to anybody who truly
confesses Jesus Christ to be the lord of their lives. The father in heaven says
‘Blessed are you. You have chosen to follow my son and your savior.’ Psalm 1:
‘Blessed is the man.’ This is one you want to pay attention to. Blessed is the
man who. Now ‘who’ in this instance is a huddle up word. It’s a call to listen
word. It’s a pay attention word. It’s a look at the conductor word. And at
this point, would we not expect a string, a necklace of positive words? We love
positive. We are not so fond of the negative. What we would be expecting is
something like in the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, so
forth. We would expect it to be like this: Blessed is the man who loves, who
is full of joy, who is full of patience. But that’s not what we get. Look at
it. Blessed is the man who does NOT. We get a negative, who does NOT walk in
the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, or in the seat of the
mockers.
Those who study us, particularly those in the
family systems field, understand quite well that before you can discover who you
are you have to discover who you are NOT.
Negative discovery often precedes positive
commitment. Let me say it again. Negative discovery often precedes positive
commitment. I read in the paper this week that some young people out in
Goochland way who were, I guess, celebrating the end of school. Heavy drinking
party on up into the night. The neighbors call. The police arrive. Several of
those young people under age, heavy drinking, were arrested. The best thing
that can come out of that is for some of those young persons to take stock of
themselves and to say ‘Wait a minute. This is not who I am.’
Negative discovery precedes positive discovery,
As Psalm 1 says, there are two things that a
blessed person really doesn’t do. First is, doesn’t hang around with the wrong
crowd. That’s true in every epoch of life. The second is, not to be skeptical,
cynical, critical, and not to be with people who are. Blessed are the ones who
are NOT going to be affecting me negatively.
Peterson paraphrases this verse like this:
How well God must like
you— you don't hang out at Sin Saloon, you don't slink along Dead-End Road,
and you don't go to Smart-Mouth College.
As Psalm 1 sees it, start first with the negative,
who you are not. And if the crowd you’re running with, if the group at work you
are working with, won’t let you say ‘No’, then it’s time for you to delineate
who you are, to draw the line in the sand and to say, ‘Sorry, I honor you but
you have to honor me. And this is not who I am.’
Verse 2 turns to who we are. Blessed is the man
who does these things. Listen as I read: ‘Delights in the law of the Lord and
in his law he meditates day and night.’
Need to do a little bit of teaching here. That
verse used to just bug me. Because it sounds like, you know, you’re going to
mediate on what you don’t do all the time. I mean, do you get up in the morning
and say ‘Whoopee, I get to be a law-abiding citizen today.’ No, I don’t, I
don’t think so. But you need to know that there in the ancient world were two
words for law. One of them is the Hebrew word torah and the other
one is the Greek word nomos. This is the one we hang onto. It
means, hm, a kind of a directive, a policy-directive that says ‘no.’ But this,
torah, the Hebrew word means teaching. What you’re doing is
you’re paying attention to the teaching of the Lord. You’re not ignoring it.
And, much of that teaching you’re going to discover, verse by verse, in the
Scripture.
Peterson says, ‘you’re going to chew on it through
the day.’ Here’s one to chew on – it’s the verse for the month. We’ve already
quoted it three times: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on
your own perspectives.’ And here’s the catch, ‘In all,’ boy, the alls of
scripture are so important. ‘In all your ways acknowledge him, in all of the
ways of your life, recognize God is there, acknowledge him and he will direct
your paths.’
Many of the teachings of the Old Testament are so
positive. Look in Psalm 37. Now listen to this and hear how positive the
teaching is – ‘Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe
pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your
heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and he will bring it to
pass.’ Positive, not a breath of the negative in it and that’s torah,
that’s teaching, and that’s what this psalm, Psalm 1, is talking about.
Now what else is the blessed man like? He is like
a tree. Go back to Psalm, chapter 1. He is like a tree planted by rivers or
streams of water -- a little geography, please. If someday you should go
westward from Virginia and go over the Appalachians and go on straight westward
to the central plains of the United States, what you would discover are miles
and miles where trees are virtually absent. Wheat fields aplenty; corn, yes;
oats, yes; soybeans, yes; trees, no. And if you see one, you’re apt to find it
by a stream of water and somebody probably planted it there.
What the Psalmist is saying, coming from that kind
of a world, semi-arid, few trees -- fact is when Solomon built his temple he had
to get his trees from the north land, from Lebanon. Shall be like a tree
planted by rivers of water, by rivers. Southern border of our country there is
a river that marks the territory between the United States and Mexico; it’s
called the Rio Grande. In English, the ‘great river.’ As it wends its way
around the southern border of our country. If some day you should stand waste
deep at Boca Chica, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf, you would say great?
River? Why, this is like a stream. This is just barely moving. And, I could
stand here waste deep, chest deep and this is no great river. But what you may
not know is that, except for the Nile, the Rio Grande is the most drawn upon
river for irrigation in the world. The river has literally given itself away.
Now, in the scripture, water is a symbol for what
God gives. Jesus said I am the living water. But we, we are the trees, we are
the vines, we are the fruit-bearers. God’s spirit will be like the water but we
are to be there to put down roots and bear fruit. ‘Shall be like a tree,
planted by rivers of water, bringing forth its fruit in its season.’
John Ortberg tells a story of his grandmother on
his father’s side. Her name was Florence. And after she passed away, his
grandfather was going through the attic when he finally had enough composure to
do so. He called up Kathy and he said, “There’s a box of dishes up here and I
was about to give them away or even throw them away but I noticed they’re blue
and I know blue is your favorite color. Would you like to come and look at
then. Well, Kathy was very busy but she went anyway to the old home place and
climbed up in the attic and opened the box expecting to see some just regular
ordinary dishes like you would have to eat breakfast with and, instead, instead,
she found each plate had been individually painted with a pattern of
forget-me-nots. And the cups were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. And the dishes
and cups were rimmed with gold. And the plates had been handcrafted, it turned
out, by a Bavarian factory that was destroyed in World War II and so those
plates literally could not be replaced. And yet, Kathy, the daughter, had never
even seen them before. She turned to her father and said “Have you ever seen
these before?” He said, “Never!” They both wondered how they could never have
seen these immaculately beautiful plates and then asking some other members of
the family, they found out how. When Florence was young they decided as a
family they would give her these valuable cups, saucers, plates, but they would
give them one at a time for they couldn’t afford more than one and so when
birthdays came, graduation came, confirmation came, Christmas came, they would
give her one. And she would carefully wrap it up and put it in the box, waiting
for that special time when she would take them all out for a celebrative
moment. But the moment never came. Wasn’t special enough, I guess, and so
Florence went to her grave with her greatest gift unopened and unused.
The person God blesses is one who unwraps their
gifts and uses them. Every day. And who continues to grow, and continues to
learn, and continues to explore, and continues to produce -- his leaf also shall
not wither. And whatsoever he does shall prosper.
Now there’s warning. You can be begin, you can
become like the chaff which the wind drives away.
Greg LaVoy has written of a common cold of the
soul. He writes about the common practice of stalling out spiritually, of
losing a lust for living, of giving in and giving up, rather than growing up and
putting down roots. He writes about sinful patterns that never got confronted
or changed, about abilities and gifts that never got cultivated or deployed.
About weeks and months and then years passing by, and then he says one day you
are looking back on a life of futility and you think about those gut-wrenching
honest conversations you never had, about great bold prayers you never prayed,
exhilarating risks you never took, sacrificial gifts you never offered. Lives
you never touched. Confessions you never made. And you sit on a reclining
chair with a shriveled soul and forgotten dreams and you realize that there is a
world of desperate need out there that God loves and you haven’t even touched
it. Blessed is the man who is willing to listen and to learn and to surrender
and to change and to be fruitful. Blessed is the man.
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