“Blessed is the man who does not… sit in the seat of scoffers.” (Psalm 1:1)
What is the problem causes one to be a scoffer and what is the result? “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling (a fall, KJV).” (Proverbs 16:18) Perhaps that is the reason that they stay seated. In reality, I think they are armchair quarterbacks for life. “They continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people…” (2 Chronicles 36:16) But life is no game, and neither is scoffing. “Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you.” (Proverbs 9:8) “…if you scoff, you alone will bear it.” (Proverbs 9:12) There are many such judgments proclaimed upon scoffers in Proverbs. Not merely wicked action is judged but also wicked, proud, derisive speech is an abomination to God that portends a bad end for scoffers. Jesus suffered at the hands and mouths of scoffers, as Luke 18:32 says, “He…will be mocked and mistreated.” He patiently bore their abuse “yet He did not open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7) While witnessing to others, I must share in His suffering by not reacting to their abuse other than with love and truth. It is a balancing act, because I must discern when to “not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:6) Do not be surprised by such treatment because “in the last days mockers will come…” (2 Peter 3:3).
“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me and I know the Father.” (John 10:14) “….even as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” (v.6) It is an intimate, kindly knowledge. God knows of the wicked and will judge them, but He neither reveals Himself to them nor is He known by them.
“The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff.” (Psalm 1:4)
Everything grand and beautiful and secure and well provided for and productive about the righteous man tree is not so of the chaff of the wicked man. He is insubstantial, soon forgotten, of no consequence, useless, to be rid of, and bothersome. Chaff is a worse than useless, dead and dusty off casting of anything of value. The grain is taken into the barn; the chaff is blown away, trampled, or burned. Do you want to feel and be helpless, hopeless, and purposeless? Then pursue evil.
Consider the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12: “Blessed are [the righteous]…for…kingdom of heaven…comforted…inherit the earth…satisfied…receive mercy…see God…sons of God…kingdom of God reward in heaven is great.” And “everyone who has left…for My sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:29) It is inescapable from Psalm 1, these verses, and many others that the blessing of prospering will include physical, mental, and spiritual elements even though Scripture teaches that we are not earning God’s blessing and we will experience loss, too.
He will give you “length of days…and peace.” (Proverbs 3:2)
“You will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man.” (Proverbs 3:4)
“Healing…and refreshment” (Proverbs 3:8) are yours.
Physical prosperity by way of “barns…filled.” (Proverbs 3:10) This is not Prosperity Gospel. The Christian will have trials and “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:12)
And some of the difficulty comes from God for our good through “trials…testing of your faith produces endurance…[so that you are] lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4) And “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:11)
Regardless of the good or bad, Jesus says, “I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20), so that “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)
Day 4 Evening #2 Entry: I forgot that I had already written reflection on that evening and wrote again later.
“He does” denotes an active faith over a conceptual one. “Prove yourselves doers of the Word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” (James 1:20) The “effectual doer” is “blessed in what he does.” (James 1:25)
Know the Word, do the Word, and be blessed by and through the Word.
But of course, his “whatever” is formed, informed, directed and constrained by his delight and meditation upon Bod’s law. As in Psalm 37:4-5,
“Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He will do it.”
The desires of my heart and God’s accomplishing of it proceeds from my delighting in Him and committing my way to Him. We are on the same page, or far more accurately, I am on His page, and He is pleased to delight His child.
The righteous one “does not walk…stand…sit.” Deuteronomy 6:7: “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” In the way you act in your personal life will train your children. You add words by teaching and talking in order to explain how and why you “sit…walk…lie down…rise up.” God’s commands should be on your heart and your lips rather than the “counsel…path…seat” of the wicked (Psalm 1:1)
What do the righteous do? They delight in and meditate on God’s law, His Word. What one delights in he spends time with, thus day and night. There is not an ounce of passiveness in this pursuit but all intentionality and passion as with a first love.
A “tree” is substantial, long-lived. Though the word “firmly” is not there in the original, the implication of “planted” is not easily pulled up, pushed over, or beaten down. Being “by streams of water” means it does not suffer drought, is always supplied, and has confidence in that supply. “Yields fruit” communicates that the tree is useful, has purpose, supplies others, nourishes, and is sweet to those who feed from it. “In season” says that the fruit is ready at the appropriate time and patient with full confidence of yield. When a “leaf does not wither”, it is always growing, not threatened, fresh and supple rather than dried and brittle, and must be evergreen, not experiencing autumn. “Whatever he does” will be by God’s will and power, and aptly led by the Spirit. “He prospers” because God has promised it, even as He did to Joshua: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” (Joshua 1:8). In a word, tremendously blessed.
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*Yes, other than outright missing 4 days, I also missed writing twice daily several times, so there is no D2M, Day 2 Morning.
The radio preacher challenged his listeners to read Psalm 1 twice each day for 21 days and journal impressions, adding, “It will change your life.” As best I could, I took him up on that. I began reading the psalm on December 1st and completed my 21 days in the 25th. As, you will see, I also failed to record impressions or read twice each day on four occasions. I was curious to see if non- repeating insight would come 42 separate times (38 in reality since I missed 4 times). I hand wrote my journal which I intend to copy to here with only minor corrections and clarifications. I will be labeling the entries along the following scheme: D1M means Day 1 Morning, etc., and here it is:
Here follows an expanded version of the comment I made concerning it.
“Bach organ fugues are the best. I got interested in these as a young teenager. Fugue in G Minor was one of my favorites for several reasons. It has a certain joy with melancholy undertones. The latter is probably the result of the minor key and the lilting, repetitive nature. These two characteristics, joy and melancholy matched my aspirations and personality as a young person. Secondly, I was introduced to the tune by my older brother who whistled it frequently. I dare say that by now I have whistled it more than him, because I did for many years, though only occasionally now. Thirdly, the pipe organ has both an awesome and eerie sound that brings out the full emotion of this tune. This brass rendition is very good. I realized after I had listened to all of it that the flugelhorn is brighter, less eerie, and smoother than the powerful, foreboding, staccato of the organ (1). I like both, but it also occurs to me that this flugelhorn quartet speaks more to my present personality. Music is far more than notes. Even renditions attempting to be identical in tempo and instrumentation may be far different in emotion and intensity. God has given us a great gift in music, which we should use as Bach did: “Soli Deo Gloria” (2)
My daughter, son-in-law, and I went for hike on Saturday before last to bag her thirteenth Sixer. My wife and I drove down to Candler, NC, to spend the night with them in an Airbnb so we could start reasonably early the next morning. My wife, Mamaw, was only too happy to spend the day at the Airbnb with two of our grandchildren. We were headed for Shining Rock up the Old Butt Trail. It is quite steep. The began only overcast, but we experienced hours of drizzle before the day was done. See what else we got into at “Not So Shining“.
I must confess that I have been to so many waterfalls in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina that relating names to scenes is a lost cause with me. So, when my hiking partner said that he would like to take his brother to Margarette Falls, I responded that I had probably been there but couldn’t remember. His brother was in for the week on business and to visit from Vancouver, WA. I knew miles before we got to the parking lot that I had been there not so long ago. In fact, it is a bit embarrassing to recall that it had been as recently as September, 2022 (check it out at “Birthday Hike“). This hike was different for many reasons. Compare this Tuesday hike of about ten days ago with the one 15 months ago at “M and B Falls.”
Many of the Psalms are calls to praise. I reflected recently on how Psalm 96 calls us to praise God when I was asked to read it as the call to worship at the beginning of the worship service.
Though a short psalm, it is big in scope and extent of worship that should be offered unto God. I observed first of all that the psalm may be divided into three types of praise: 1) Sing and say (v. 1-6), 2) Ascribe (v. 7-10), and 3) Nature resound (v.11-13).
After reading it several times to myself I mused on the question, what do we praise God for? First and foremost, we praise Him for His person as described in His attributes. Who He is, is totally sufficient for our praise to Him. Secondly, we praise Him for His works. There are many categories of His works that help us to focus our praise: His works in creation, the peoples of the earth, His own, in heaven eternally as well as preparing us a place, His sovereignty in the universe, and on it could go. Thirdly, we should praise Him for His name which represents in concept and use His glory and power. Fourthly, we should praise Him for His holiness. You may react that this is just separating out one of His attributes for focus. But holiness, that separateness from His creation, His otherness, speaks of the perfections of His attributes. By this I mean that I think that holiness is an attribute of His attributes. Is He good? Infinitely so, utterly holy in His goodness. Is He strong? Beyond imagination, a holy power in His person. Each of these reasons to praise Him could be expanded in sermons and books, and of course have been. Psalm 96 praises God directly in all of these ways (1).
At my first several readings of Psalm 96, three terms jumped out at me. The first one was “ascribe” (2) in verses 7 and 8. A few other English translations use “give”, but ascribe seems the better and stronger word, because it denotes the acknowledgement of the Source of all glory and strength in the world spoken of in the verses.
The term in verse 9 is “holy attire”, a much more problematic translation. It seems that the Hebrew is vague on the antecedent of the holy attire (3). Does the Hebrew word, hadarah which means “adornment, glory” (4) refer to God’s covering or the worshippers or even the site of worship, the temple? Many translations choose God and translate it “splendor of holiness” (NIV, ESV, HCSB) or “beauty of holiness” (KJV). Two older versions chose “glorious sancturary” (1599 Geneva) or “holy hall” (Wycliffe). Other than the NASB, its older precursor translates it “holy array” (American Standard Version). I would be remiss not to mention a certain conservative bias (5) in the following discussion due to a nearly life-long use of the NASB. I think that the immediate context of “holy attire” supports the strong possibility that it is the intention of the writer. The worshipper is commanded to ascribe glory and strength to God and glory to His name (v.7-8). As a part of this worship the worshipper is urged to “bring an offering and come into His courts.” (v.8b) It follows then that the worshipper should have an attitude of reverence in all respects for this God of glory and power including how he dresses. And furthermore, the actual presenter of the offering was required to wear “the holy garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons, to minister as priests.” (Exodus 39:41) They did not wear these garments apart from ministering, as Ezekiel 42:14 says, “When the priests enter, then they shall not go out into the outer court from the sanctuary without laying there their garments in which they minister, for they are holy. They shall put on other garments; then they shall approach that which is for the people.”
The third term that arrested my attention was “equity” in verse 10. It is a word very near fairness in our modern thinking. Other translations render it “righteously” (KJV) or “fairly” (HCSB). The word means “evenness, uprightness, equity” (6). Any accusation that God is not fair in His judgments of men’s sins is wholly false. He always has done and will do rightly. It is a parallel idea in the moral realm to “He reigns” and the “world is firmly established” in the verse.
The overflow of praise in this psalm ends with Creation praising Him in the future when He comes again to judge the earth. Why would the Creation praise Him for this act done to people? I think that we can glean the answer from Romans 8:19-22 where it says, “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” Creation will rejoice at His coming, so should we. Our great God will return for His own and set all things right in “righteousness” and “faithfulness”. (v.13)
Let us not be silent in our praise for our great and good God.
Verse 8a does enjoin the worshipper to ascribe glory to His name. Furthermore, there is implied praise for His name by the singular use of LORD, YHWH the covenant keeping God revealed to Moses, eleven times in the thirteen verses and six of those times in two triplets (v.1 and 7-8). For more direct praise of His name, see Psalms 7, 66, and 68 to name but a few.
I study and memorize from the NASB.
I am told that the Hebrew language is notoriously vague. My first strong realization of this fact came in the writing of a song I composed whose chorus comes from Psalm 90:12. My chorus says, “Help us count our days so we give to You a heart of wisdom.” When I sang it for a former pastor, he admonished me that the verse said, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (NIV). In the NASB from which I wrote the song it says, “that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” Do we give or gain? The Hebrew is ambiguous. Could it be both? Could it have been intended to be both? Or do we not have native language context to discern which one it is?
“New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”, p.1510, entry 1927a.
or preference bias if you are considering science rather than psychology.
“New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible”, p.1548, entry 4339.
The link does not include pictures or descriptions of the night before soup dinner, the flag football game, or the other meals and late evening discussions, but it does include details on things that I directly participated in and could take pictures of. I went hard at the flag football game and have the sore muscles to prove it. I realized that I am the last of my generation to be playing, the next oldest being in his early 40’s. I am thankful to have an active life. Check out my pictures and commentary at “Active Thanksgiving.”
The elder preached from Nehemiah 8 last Sunday. Ezra read the book of the Law to all Israel. They and we need it regularly read and preached to us because we dismiss or diminish its authority and efficaciousness (1) in our lives. He further pointed out that this passage is very frequently used to promote and instruct on expositional preaching. To read, explain, and exhort with the Word is the pattern for expository preaching. The passage also speaks of God’s people’s 1) need of the Word, 2) requiring the leadership to read the Word, 3) requirement to obey the Word, 4) need to speak with a unified voice from preachers, teachers, to all church members and parents on the truth of the Word, 5) need to understand the Word, and 6) response to the Word.
It was on the sixth point that my mind started musing as he unpacked it. In good preacher language, he proceeded to alliterate the process of God returning His people to Himself in “r’s”. The “r’s” caught my attention for two reasons. Firstly, I have been ruminating on the very idea for quite some time. Secondly, he said one minor thing that I disagreed with based on that rumination, namely that rejoicing is the endpoint. To be fair, when I asked him about it afterwards, he agreed with me, saying that it was effectively an intermediate endpoint since he could not preach the whole of Nehemiah in one sermon. So, his sermon helped me to complete the following diagram which had a few holes beforehand.
A continuing reverence for God and His Word will not prevent the need for repentance but it will reduce the depth of repentance needed as you keep short accounts and avoid presumptuous, chronic, and devastating sins. Also, as regular disclaimer for my diagrams, this is not the only way God may draw you back to Himself. It may be in a different order with additional or less steps. These are merely major signposts of restoration (2). Without spoiling the diagram by over-explanation, I offer this one clarification. One, saved or unsaved, may recognize (3) the message of revelation to their heart but not repent. He/she may never or just delay repentance as he/she resists the work of the Holy Spirit. So with all of the steps, the time across the arrows may vary greatly. May God bless us as we seek to draw nearer to the burning center (4) of His presence.
efficaciousness- successful in producing a desired or intended result; effectiveness- the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result; success
There is a certain cyclic nature to my thinking, that is, I think on a thing for a time, lay it aside for reasons of being busy, getting stuck in progress, or overwhelmed with how to proceed (1). Then at a later date, I return to the subject out of need or random reminder, pushing it forward with further insight procured from the Source through various secondary agents (2).
October 31st, 2023 was the 506th Reformation Day Celebration. I wrote as follows in my journal:
Reformation Day”! We are always in need of reformation though the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. I am musing on how wisdom is acquired. Certainly a right worldview is precursory (Proverbs 1:7) and the Scripture is the source text (John 17:17), but Proverbs and Christ and others point to perspective and procedures for acquiring wisdom. I have some preliminary thoughts, which I hope to later support with references to Scripture.
One must be teachable which requires humility. You can learn from anyone. Jesus references the sons of this age and their prudence. He does not condone their evil, but He does point out that their ways regarding certain issues are instructive. One should be observant, a practiced skill which should be challenged regularly as to how it is done in order to increase perceptiveness. Hone the skill. Gain knowledge, and with it understanding which is knowing what the knowledge means. This gain will involve much time in Scripture, prayer, fellowship, and listening to deep preaching for the purpose of developing discernment. Discernment is beyond understanding in that it enables the discerning to perceive what motives and origins undergird attitudes and actions and what the ramifications of choices may be. From these one may take experiences and wisdom which is the awareness of what right actions and reactions are applicable to circumstances of life and then act accordingly with prudence.
In my preliminary look at the subject these nine perspectives and procedures are the tools of wisdom. Have I left anything out? Might several of them be combined into one?
Yesterday, I went along with four young people to hike to and explore The Channels just north of Abingdon, VA. It was a beautiful day in every sense. Check it out at “The Channels“.
CreatorWorship 