“The Righteous Way Fulfilled”
Rev. Matthew Wright | Cottonwood CRC - Jenison, MI
Transcript:
Last year Krista and I tried to grow tomatoes in pots on our deck. In the past when we lived in a house we grew them in a garden, but since we’re in a condo now the deck was our best option. Things went well at first. The plants grew pretty quickly, and then after a little while there were some blossoms. But as spring turned to summer, things went downhill. The leaves turned yellow, the stems were weak, and no matter how much we watered and fertilized them, the plants didn’t thrive. One caught a disease, they all struggled for a while, and we eventually just threw them out.
It wasn’t like that in the past when we would grow them in the ground—those plants flourished. They grew tall enough that we had to put cages around them, and they gave us so many tomatoes we had to find people to give them to. The difference was obvious: the potted plants just didn’t have the deep, healthy roots that they needed to stand up to the stresses of the growing season.
These days, I think a lot of us might feel a bit like those potted tomato plants, a bit rootless. Our jobs feel temporary. Families are stretched thin, scattered across the state or country, or even broken seemingly beyond repair. Institutions that once grounded us—churches, schools, even neighborhoods—often feel hollowed out.
Our reading this morning, Psalm 1, offers God’s solution to this problem, God’s medicine to cure this modern disease. It offers another way of life. In this Psalm, we find a beautiful image of stability, of permanence, of flourishing—all of those things that we crave these days that seem in such short supply.
So what does this way of life look like, and how can we live it?
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The psalm is pretty straightforward. It gives us two paths to consider: the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked. Let’s dig into it.
It begins with a beatitude: “Blessed is the one…” It’s talking about one who is flourishing. And it tells us right away what they don’t do: they don’t walk in step with the wicked, they don’t stand in the way that sinners take, they don’t sit in the company of mockers.
Do you notice the progression here? From walking, to standing, to sitting — it paints a picture of how sin often gets hold of us. At first we’re just walking along, not taking it too seriously. We think, “I’m just passing by; I can turn around whenever I want.” But then, we pause, we linger, we stand still. We have a conversation with sin, and we’re drawn in a little deeper. Finally we’re sitting in the seat of mockers, fully comfortable, as if it’s where we belong. It becomes a habit. At that point, getting up and walking away is no longer easy.
What does the psalm say about someone trapped in sin like that? They are like the chaff that the wind blows away. Do you know what chaff is? This is an agricultural image. With grains like wheat, farmers first thresh it. That’s how they separate the edible grain from the husks and stalks. Then they winnow it by tossing the wheat up into the air. The heavier, good grain falls back into a pile, but the lighter, worthless chaff gets blown away by the wind. It’s rootless. Weightless. Useless. That’s what happens to those who walk the way of the wicked—they become unrooted, disconnected from anything lasting, and ultimately, blown away.
But the one who follows the way of the righteous is different. Instead of walking with the wicked, standing with sinners, or sitting with mockers, this one has delight in the law of the LORD. They meditate on it day and night.
This is not just about following rules and avoiding sin. It’s about letting God’s Word be your anchor, your source of life. The psalm gives us a beautiful picture of someone who does that: they are like a tree planted by streams of water. The roots grow down deep, and strong. They drink deeply from the Word of God through daily prayer and reading. Little by little, the roots grow, and the tree becomes sturdy and healthy. It yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. It prospers in all it does. That doesn’t mean that life is perfect—it doesn’t mean that there are no storms or fires or dry seasons. But the tree is so deeply rooted that it can endure anything.
When you compare these images—the sturdy, fruitful tree and the worthless chaff—the choice seems obvious. Who wouldn’t want to be the tree?! But here’s the challenge: when we look at our lives honestly, how often do we find ourselves falling short of being that tree? How often are we more like chaff, tossed around by the winds of life?
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This is where we get frustrated. Because we try, don’t we? It’s almost the end of January. I bet a lot of you make new year’s resolutions. Sometimes they’ll have to do with reading the Bible, and we’ll set out to read the whole Bible in a year. It’s a great goal, for a lot of the reasons we’ve been talking about. It connects us to God’s story, helps us see the world more accurately.
But those calendars you find that will get you through the whole Bible in a year can be kind of relentless. If you miss a day or two, you might be able to catch up. But if you miss much more than that, it feels like a hopeless task. A lot of times we might get to about Leviticus and then give up in frustration.
It’s often a deeper problem than that, though. Maybe you make good progress on the reading part of it, but you’re not sure you like what you find. Maybe for you, it’s the delighting part that is the bigger struggle.
You keep reading your Bible, and as you do you keep bumping up against parts of the Christian life you struggle with. It could be something that seems on the surface, like being patient with others, or being a cheerful giver; maybe it goes deeper and it’s a problem with greed or lust. Or pride, a kind of idolatry of the self. We live in a pretty narcissistic age, and there are plenty of opportunities and temptations to try to put ourselves in God’s rightful place. And it seems like everywhere you turn in scripture you keep being reminded of where you fall short. The demands seem impossible.
This kind of struggle can be even more frustrating, because it goes deeper than just not making time to read. This is going to require more than a change of habits—this needs a change to your very soul. And that hurts.
Well we seem to be a long way from that nice fruitful, flourishing language of the tree, don’t we? It’s hard to delight in being shown how you don’t measure up. But it’s necessary. John Calvin calls this the first use of God’s law. He says that the law acts as a mirror, in that it reflects back to us our sin and our inability to live righteously. Just like when we look in a mirror under a bright light, we can see every blemish, every flaw. When we take a hard look at ourselves, when we compare ourselves to what the Bible says God expects of us, we can start to despair. And we might want to just give up.
But you know what: when you get to that point when you realize that you just can’t do it—When you realize that no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to be able to make yourself righteous (acceptable to God)…you are never closer to the gospel than right then.
But where does that leave us?
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(It leaves us) With the one who is perfectly righteous. Jesus is the fulfillment of Psalm 1. He is the true righteous one of this psalm. Do you know who meditates on God’s law day and night? Jesus.
Remember the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about the law a lot in Matthew 5. He explains the law. He goes through murder, adultery, divorce, saying ‘you have heard it said, but I say to you…’ This is someone who knows and delights in God’s law. And he says, I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. We can’t fulfill the law but he did it completely, in our place.
You’ve been hearing all about this as you’ve gone through Romans. It’s one of the great themes of Romans. It’s said directly in a passage you’ve already gone through: 3:20ff. “No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather though the law we become conscious of our sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known,…this righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”
I’m sure we’ll hear even more about this next week when Pastor Matt picks up Romans again at the beginning of chapter 8, how there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who sets you free from the law of sin and death.
Or in another month or two when we get to Romans 10:4, “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”
Jesus is the righteous one (of Psalm 1) who stands in the judgment (where we can’t). And when we are united with him in faith, we are clothed with his righteousness. When we put our trust in Jesus, the Father looks at us—in all of our imperfections and sin—and sees Christ, in his perfection. We don’t have to worry about standing in the judgment—because (as it says in 2 Corinthians) God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We sang about this just a few minutes ago:
Dressed in my Lord Jesus, a crimson robe made white
No more fear of judgment, his righteousness is mine
The way of the righteous is available to us. Does the way of the righteous seem elusive? Jesus is the one who has gone that way. He calls himself “the way, the truth, and the life,” and tells us that he himself is the only way to the Father. Even though it’s laid out very simply in the psalm here, we can’t follow the way of righteousness on our own. But it’s ours in Christ. The way of the righteous—and all that it entails—is given to us in Christ.
That tree image helps us out. When we’re rooted in him, we’re nourished by the living water. Remember the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4? Jesus was sitting at the well and a woman came to get water out of the well, and Jesus asked her for some. They get into a conversation and Jesus tells her, “If you knew who I was, then you would have asked me and I would have given you living water.” They get into a back and forth about it and Jesus eventually says, “Everyone who drinks this water (from the well) will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”
Jesus plants us firmly by streams of water. Rooted in him, the living water sustains us. Even in the face of whatever drought or fire or problem that life throws at us, the leaf does not wither. What a beautiful picture!
But Psalm 1 does not just give us a picture of Christ and leave us on our own again. It shows us a way to respond in grace.
***
So what does this way of righteousness look like for us, when we put our trust in Christ? We come back to the Psalm and read it a little differently. Instead of a stark path that we’re always wandering away from, we can see the psalm as an invitation to a life of gratitude in prayer and worship.
If you like big, fancy theological terms, this is where we move from justification (being right with God) into sanctification (being made holy). If you like the language of the Heidelberg Catechism, this is where I move from knowing “how great my sin and misery are, and how I am set free (in Christ) from all my sins and misery,” to “how I am to thank God for such a deliverance.”
This is Calvin’s third use of the law, where he writes that “The Lord instructs by their reading of it [the law] those whom he inwardly instills with a readiness to obey.” (Read 2x). What does that mean? Out of gratitude for the saving death of Christ, now the law shapes our living and our response that is powered by the grace of Christ. As redeemed people, we’re shaped by God’s word to live lives of grateful obedience.
So let’s try to see this psalm in that light. Meditating on God’s law is not how we save ourselves (which we will always fail to do), but it is the way that we stay connected to Christ.
The psalms have long been thought of as the prayer book of the church. The psalms teach us how to pray, and yet this first psalm is not a prayer at all, but encourages us to meditate on God’s law, day and night.
It’s like it’s saying that if you expect to have a good prayer life, it will be based on a life of meditating on God’s Word. Reading scripture and praying is the way the Lord deepens our roots. When we do this on a regular basis, those roots grow stronger and more connected to the living water of Christ. It makes us better able to withstand the trials that come our way. It becomes a way of delighting in the law of the Lord. It becomes a way of life—a life of prayer, worship, and gratitude.
Instead of a vicious cycle where we read scripture and are driven to despair because we don’t measure up, we meditate on scripture and draw nourishment for our daily life, and stay connected to God’s instruction. When we are reading that story everyday, we’re constantly reminded of how we fit into God’s larger story. This makes us less tempted to think that we’re the author of our own story, that we have to make everything work out.
Let the psalms guide your prayers.
Let them shape your hearts.
Let them push you to other parts of scripture, to root you in the story of God’s grace.
Let it become a habit that shapes your spiritual life.
If you’re not sure how to get started, it doesn’t have to be complicated. You could read and pray one psalm everyday. Pray it in the morning, thinking about how it might connect to your day. If you can, read it again throughout the day as moments of challenge or joy arise. Then read it again before bed, and reflect on how God has shaped your day.
When you struggle to delight in God’s law, don’t be discouraged, but let this book of prayers nourish you and draw you closer to Christ. He is the one you are praying through when you pray the psalms. He is the one who stands in the judgment in your place, and his living water will strengthen your roots to help you withstand the difficulties of life.
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There is great promise in this psalm as an antidote to feeling like we’re tossed about. Do you want stability and fruitfulness? Do you want true flourishing in your life?
Blessed is the one who delights in the Word made flesh, who is planted by the living water, who flourishes in the righteousness of Christ.
Let us pray.
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