Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Psalm 1

And we’ll put it in the whole context of the entire psalm. So we’ll read the entire first psalm. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

**Psalm 1**

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Let’s pray. Merciful God and heavenly father, we ask you to give us the light of spiritual understanding that we being instructed by the pure doctrine of your word may walk in the way of your truth that we may know, love, and obey you ever more fully in this life and rejoice in you forever in the world to come. Through Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

Please be seated. Nursery people may be dismissed.

I have to outline this morning which may produce more diligence on your part or more confusion. I pray for the first. What I will be doing is talking about Psalm 1. I’m going to focus on these avoidances that we’re told is the state of the blessed man. He’s blessed by some negative things that he does. He doesn’t do three things. I’ll mention briefly the positive side of that toward the end of the sermon, but I want to put it in its proper context first.

So we’ll talk a little bit about the context of verse one so we can understand it a little bit better. Then we’ll talk about the specifics of verse one and mention briefly verse two and then we’ll return to the greater context again as we move to the conclusion of the sermon.

So we’ll begin by putting this in a context of the position of this particular psalm in the Psalter. Now we know that Psalm 1 is an introduction to the entire Psalter—that’s widely acknowledged by commentators and most also agree that it is linked with Psalm 2 in that introduction. Psalm 2 further explains and elucidates upon the truths that we find in Psalm 1. So both Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 serve as a unit. They can be examined as one psalm or they can be examined as separate psalms with the same dominant themes. And in either case, what they show us is an introduction to the entire Psalter. So this is sort of like the thing that helps us to understand the entire 148 following Psalms.

Verse two says that the positive side of the man that is blessed, and the word “blessed” here is in the plural. So the great blessedness is being spoken of here. Great happinesses. How blessed is this man? It’s like an exclamation at the beginning of this altar. This blessedness is tied to an avoidance, but it’s also tied to the man who delights himself in the law of the Lord. And in his law does he meditate day and night.

One of the reasons I want to look at the context for these first couple of verses is to talk a little bit about meditation. When we look at the structure of a psalm or a particular piece of the scriptures, what it causes us to do is meditate on the meaning of what we see. So if we look at Psalm 1 and meditate on the first couple of verses, the way it opens and then the way the psalm closes, that’ll help us to understand this first verse a little better.

Or if we believe that Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are a unit, we can then look at the opening of Psalm 1, the opening verse, the closing verses of Psalm 2, and that’ll help us again. Perhaps if we’re correct that these Psalms are a unit, then it’s going to help us understand verse one. Or if we meditate on the opening verse of Psalm 2, seeing that it extrapolates out on Psalm 1, we can compare that opening verse of Psalm 2 with the opening verses of Psalm 1. And in comparing these things, we produce a meditation on the law of the Lord.

We’re told that the core of the positive action of the believer is this meditation on the law of the Lord. Now, let me just say here that it is interesting to me as I’ve meditated on this psalm, this verse, these two verses for the last few months—you know, it’s interesting that the core of the blessedness that we just sang about and we will sing about it again at the conclusion of our service. We’ll sing a different version of Psalm 1. The core blessedness is this meditation on the law. And we, at first coming with our backgrounds that we have, being suspect of the law, seeing a contrast between the law and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, incorrectly reading in the Gospel of John that the grace and truth of the Lord Jesus Christ is contrasted with the law given through Moses as opposed to seeing those things being a parallel or rather a climactic development of the two.

We come to this text and we think, how can we sing this really? It is at the core of our blessedness to meditate on the law. But this text tells us that meditation on the law is a meditation specifically on the law of the Lord. You cannot meditate on the law properly if you do not keep in mind that it is a reflection of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a reflection of the character of the triune God. So there is no opposition, there’s no contradiction, there’s no difficulty in the scriptures between saying that the core of our blessedness is a meditation on law and yet saying as well that it is a meditation on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So you cannot have law here without understanding that the blessedness is tied to our meditation of the law of the Lord. We could say the other way around and say that if that’s true, then we also would want to say that it is impossible to have blessedness if all we meditate on is the Lord Jesus Christ somehow divorced from the law or the way of God.

The word “law” here in verse two is Torah. It refers to the way, not simply the statutes or specific portions of the law, the whole lifestyle characterized by lawkeeping and by the word the life of our savior. So this meditation is what we want to do, and looking at the context of scripture, looking at it not just as an isolated verse, but how it relates to other aspects of scripture is a great help to us in meditating upon the meaning of God’s word.

So what I’m going to start with here is looking at the first couple of verses and see their correlation to the first couple of verses of Psalm 2. So we’re going to look at Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 as if they were side by side because they are separated in that development and see a little bit of correlation.

We see that Psalm 1 begins, of course, with this assertion that we’re not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor walk in the way of sinners, nor to sit in the seat of the scornful. And Psalm 2, we notice, begins in this way: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands in pieces.’”

So we see here a description of the full-fledged meaning of what Psalm 1 exhorts us not to engage in. When we think of the counsel of the godly—the counsel of those who are not committed to the Lord Jesus Christ—we can sort of think of it as sort of neutral counsel, or the way of the sinner. Well, we know we shouldn’t engage in specific sins and we don’t want to miss the mark, but we may not have the full impact of what these verses are telling us. But we do get that full impact as we parallel it with Psalm 2.

Psalm 2 tells us that the counsel of the ungodly—and the word “ungodly” is generally the most general term for the wicked as opposed to the righteous—the counsel of the ungodly is formulated; the base, the foundation for that counsel is an act of rebellion against the King of Kings. The rulers of the peoples, the nations and the people—I think that means specifically the people of God—and the nations round about Israel are combined together against the Lord Jesus Christ. The rulers of the people as well as Pilate, the rulers of the nations, the kings of the nations come together in their opposition to Christ being foretold here.

But what it tells us is that Psalm 1, the first verse, wants us to have a firm grasp on the antithesis—on the absolute difference, the warfare that God has judicially placed in the context of our world between those who are godly and righteous and those who are ungodly and wicked. Even though they may not seem to be full-fledged in their rebellion, their underlying motivation is fleshed out for us in the first couple of verses of Psalm 2.

We could also note that, first of all, this meditation on Psalm 1 in relationship to Psalm 2 helps us to focus on the antithetical nature between the godly or the righteous and the wicked or the ungodly. A second thing that this parallel—looking at these two verses—can help us with is an understanding of who these mockers or scornful are, which is the third group of people in verse one.

We go from the wicked to the sinners to the scorners in the progression of the men we’re to avoid in verse one. And if we look at Psalm 2, we see some things happening here in response to this godlessness and sinful action of the people opposing Christ. We read that God will have these men in derision. God will have these men in derision. They take counsel together in the opening verses—the nations rage, the people plot a vain thing, the rulers take counsel together. This is the counsel of the ungodly. So we see that paralleling verse one.

And what we see is that God will have these men in derision. And we see that if we look at that in parallel, it tells us that the scornful will be had in derision. They’ll be scorned by God. Now this word for “derision” in Psalm 2 is a different word than the word for “scornful” in Psalm 1. But what that tells us in this parallel development is it’s proper in our thinking about the scornful of Psalm 1 to bring into the discussion the mockers, the deriders, that God will, in his typical *lex talionis*—eye for eye, tooth for tooth—judgment, he will have them in derision.

So this parallel looking at the context, meditation on Psalm 1 in relationship to Psalm 2, tells us first of all this antithesis between the godly and the ungodly. And it also tells us that this derision of the scornful is going to be repaid to them by the judgment of God. There’ll be this—again—*lex talionis* judgment. Scoff at God, be scornful of him, and he will be scornful of you. He will mock you as it were.

And then if we look at the conclusion of Psalm 2—or rather, I’m sorry, these first opening verses of Psalm 2—we see that God’s response in having these men in derision is to place his king firmly upon the throne. So Jesus is placed in the seat. He’s not the scornful one, but he will have those scornful ones. He will hold them in scorn. But his seat is the established seat.

So there’s this counsel of the ungodly in the first psalm that becomes an understanding that counsel is a radical rebellion against God as fleshed out in Psalm 2. And we see that the sinner’s actions are specifically actions. We know that Psalm 2 is prophesying about the actions of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see that the scornful will be held in derision by God. And finally, we see that the scornful will not forever occupy the seats of governance in the context of a culture. Jesus has been placed upon the definitive seat, the definitive habitation of rule and authority in the world.

And so this parallelism helps us to meditate upon not just Psalm 1 in isolation from Christ. We’re exhorted to meditate on the law of the Lord. But as we tie it to Psalm 2 in the way that the format of this literature is produced, wants us to, we see that it leads us very directly to a meditation on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We could as well talk about the scornfulness of the New Testament in relationship to Psalm 2. In the New Testament, what you see going over and over again is that the leaders of the people are deriding, sneering, and mocking at the Lord Jesus Christ. The most common word for “mocking” in the New Testament is used in all but one or two places in the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And in each of those occurrences, it’s about people deriding, scorning, holding in derision the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, later, the church is held in derision as well by the rulers of the people in the book of Acts.

So the reason I’m going through all this is that when we get around to talking about the scornful, we want to bring all of this into our discussion of that—to remind ourselves: ultimately, if you enter into scornfulness, derision of people trying to be holy or pious, you had best be careful because what you are really doing is entering into scornfulness, derisiveness, mocking of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

If you sit with people whose lives are characterized by a scornfulness and a mocking, beware because they are at the brink of destruction, because what they’re really doing is attacking the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And very specifically, they’re told that they will be destroyed in the rest of Psalm 2. It ends with their sure destruction being carried out.

So we see these parallel developments as a way of meditating on the word of God, and that meditation drives us to a better understanding of what verses 1 and 2 are all about. But it also drives us to a meditation and contemplation on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, one other parallel we could draw here, by the way, is in verse 12 of Psalm 2. Verse 12 concludes Psalm 2. We read: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in him.”

See, again, as this one portion of Psalm 1 and 2 comes to a climactic fulfillment at the end, we read references back to the original verse of Psalm 1 where we’re warned about not being in the way of the godless or the wicked. And at the end, their way is going to perish and they will be destroyed in that way—destruction will be brought upon them. In verse 12, and instead of a conclusion as Psalm 1 comes to, which stresses the destruction of the wicked, Psalm 2 perfectly caps off the beginning of Psalm 1. Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the man.” And Psalm 2 ends with the last line, “Blessed are all those who put their trust in him.”

Now, this helps too because it shows us that this blessed state involving a working away from, getting away from sinners, and a meditation on the law of God that’s summarized at the conclusion of Psalm 1 and 2 as those who put their trust in the person and work of this exalted King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So a meditation—what I’m trying to show here is that as we meditate on the word of God and try to look at Psalm 1 and 2 and meditate on its correlations, meditate on the structure of it, it brings us from a passage which we normally think of as somewhat Old Testament to a direct meditation on the person and work of the Savior and a calling of us, as we meditate on his law, to put our trust in him. So it’s obviously very much focused on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of Scripture is like that. Jesus said that all the Old Testament witnesses, testifies of him. And this meditation produces an understanding of these things.

All right. So we’ve talked a little bit on the positive side, the value of meditation. Let’s talk now about the specific things we are not to do in relationship to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lifestyle. What things are we not to do? And we have here three actions specifically given to us.

And these actions—people have noted it—there’s three actions being moved in three ways. We are to avoid three categories of men: there’s the ungodly, there are the sinners, and there are the scornful. And there’s a progression of not walking, standing, or sitting. And there’s a movement of the counsel of the ungodly, so counsel to the way of the sinner to the seat of the scornful.

And so there’s this kind of progression—maybe not an intensification, but there’s this movement. There’s these three sets of three again that provides plenty of material to meditate on as we look at the context of what this verse is telling us to do or not to do.

One commentator has summed it up: the counsel refers to how men think, the principles that undergird our actions. The way of the sinner is his practice, his behavior. And then the seat of the scornful—the word “seat” can be translated “habitation” or “house.” And it’s generally seen to be an association with scornful people.

Now, in all three of these areas, we’re to flee from wicked men. But the third group of men we’re to be very careful about the scornful. We want to be very careful that our actions—not considering what we’re thinking about, perhaps embracing the counsel of the ungodly, and then having our actions dwindle off from righteousness to now being in the way of the sinner to now becoming a fixed association with scornful men in their particular association of men who are characterized by a scorning and a derisive attitude to things biblical or things religious or spiritual.

So there is this progression that is helpful to us in terms of our actions: the wisdom of the world, the ways of the world, the actions of the world, and then the associations or communions of the world. The scornful in their habitations are things that we’re told to be very careful to avoid.

So let’s talk a little bit. What I want to do is talk a little bit about these three specific groups of men. And the first group are the ungodly. And I’ve already mentioned that this is the most general term used most often in the scriptures contrasted to the righteous, the ungodly man. And we’re to not sit in his counsel.

So the ungodly have a particular base understanding, and that understanding drives them to their actions. And that’s what we’re being warned against here. In Psalm 119:115, we’re told, “Depart from me, you evildoers, for I will keep the commandments of my God.” And that’s a sort of summary fashion of this first group. We’re to depart from, or cause them to depart from. We’re not to have association with those who are ungodly in terms of listening to their counsel. Instead, our emphasis is on a meditation on the law of God.

So these wicked men are ones that are to be avoided. And specifically, this term for “wicked man” or “the ungodly”—translated in some verses or in some translations rather—these men are characterized as having a restlessness to them. In Isaiah 57:20, we read: “The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”

So the wicked in their counsel are unsettled. They have a general unsettledness to their character. These men are not at peace. And if we associate with them, and if we enter into their counsel, their way of thinking, it leads to a state of mind that is unsettled, that is troubled, as the sea.

Luther in commenting on this first group of men and commenting specifically on the counsel that’s related to this group of men, he says that the word “counsel” here is without doubt meant to be received as signifying decrees and doctrines. Seeing that no society of men exists without being formed and preserved by decrees and laws, David, however, by this term, strikes at the pride and reprobate temerity of the ungodly—first, because they will not humble themselves so far as to walk in the law of the Lord, but rule themselves by their own counsel.

So we have this: the beginning slide of the Christian who walks away from God is beginning to think his own thoughts. The Christian’s own thoughts as the basis for his action as opposed to seeking out God’s thoughts, his discernments, and judgment. This is a repeat of the fall, is what Luther is saying. The ungodly have a counsel that is prideful. They don’t submit themselves to the determination of good and evil from the hand of God in his word, but rather, repeating the sin of Adam, the sin of the serpent, they determine for themselves good and evil.

They decide how things are to work in the context of a culture. They decide the best ways to bring up their children pragmatically speaking. They decide, you know, what it is to have a culture that abides and how we’re to accomplish that. They decide what are the best business practices to produce wealth without turning to God’s word but using their own determinations.

Luther goes on to say that he then calls it their counsel because it is their prudence. It’s their wisdom. It’s the way that seems to them to be without error. For this is the destruction of the ungodly: they’re being prudent in their own eyes and in their own esteem, clothing their errors in the garbs of prudence and of the right way.

He contrasts the counsel of the wicked with the law of the Lord. So we’re not to enter into the counsel of the wicked, but we’re to meditate on the decrees and judgments of the Lord. That we may learn to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, who are always ready to give counsel to all, to teach all, to offer assistance unto all, when they are of all men least qualified so to do.

Now, very practically, when we were in Moscow, there are some students there that we’re friends with who are going to the University of Idaho. There are a number of young men and women in our congregation who are beginning to attend community colleges the last couple of weeks leading into this year. And what we have to do is teach our children that their blessedness, their happiness, will be determined in large part by how well they have a weariness about the counsel of the men that they’re going to be in contact with in these community colleges.

It’s good and proper to go and seek out wisdom and counsel in particular sciences. But we must be very careful with our children and warn them to be diligent not to walk into the counsel of the ungodly by moving the presuppositions that all things are mediated to us by God’s word to our being set up now as the authority over everything that we have in our lives.

So as a way of practical application of this first point, we want to train our children to be very careful as they enter into the world, as they enter into places of learning or instruction which are useful to them in terms of vocation, the callings that God has given to them. Nonetheless, they must be very careful and wary of not entering fully into the counsel of the ungodly.

Additionally, our culture—I think some men have said that the basic religion of American culture is pragmatism. Pragmatism says what works. It doesn’t say, “Well, let’s do what God says is right, and whether we prosper or not in the short term by it, we’re going to do what God says.” Pragmatism says, “Let’s do what works in the short term.” And that’s what the ungodly does—rejecting the knowledge of God and deciding for himself what wisdom is. His best guess is he does this and this result happens, which he deems as good. And so he’s moved into pragmatism.

We must be very careful in our discernments and judgments not to enter into pragmatism. So our blessedness is specifically tied, first of all, to an avoidance, a fleeing from the philosophies of the world in which God has placed us—the philosophies of the world system in which we walk and converse in the context of our culture. We must understand the antithetical nature of that counsel, of those philosophies and worldviews, to our worldview.

Remember Psalm 2. It may seem that we’re just sending them off for neutral instruction in grade school or at the public schools or even in the context of the community colleges. But we must understand that when our children come into contact with men and women who have a philosophy they’re expounding, that philosophy may seem not really directly attacking of Christianity, but its root—Psalm 2 tells us—the counsel of the ungodly is always to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. Romans 1 tells us, and it’s always really aimed at tearing down the restraints of the wonderful kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, the counsel of the ungodly is aimed at the Lord Jesus Christ and his reign. And our children have to know that as they go off to colleges. They’ve got to know that. We’ve got to know that as we enter into the marketplace tomorrow, as men go into the business world. You’re entering into a world that in most companies or businesses is dominated by a worldview of pragmatism and not biblical counsel. And so we want to be very careful, first of all, that we don’t get sucked into all of that, but rather we’re to meditate on the law of God as the means by which we attain understanding of business, science, or whatever discipline we put our minds to do.

These first sins are sins of omission, you might say. If we omit to meditate on the word of God, we’re going to end up committing the sins of the sinners. If we change the counsel of God and move into the counsel of the ungodly, then the next step here is we’re going to enter into sinful patterns.

The second group of men are sinners. The word means to fall short of the mark, and it’s an intensive form here in this verse one, which means they’re always falling short of the mark. They’re never doing what God requires them to do. Their feet are swift to do evil, to shed blood, and they don’t rest at night. The Proverbs and Psalms tell us that until they’ve done something wrong, they don’t rest. That’s the progression here: the counsel leads to actions. And we have to be very careful in avoiding the counsel, and we must of course avoid completely these actions of godlessness that are portrayed in the context of sinners.

So Proverbs 1 tells us that the sinners—their feet are quick to run to evil. Their mode of conduct or lifestyle is being talked about here. I want to look at a parallel text here for a couple of minutes. Turn to Proverbs chapter 4. We’ll begin at verse 14 and talk about a few of these verses.

**Proverbs 4:14-19**

“Do not enter the path of the wicked. Do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it. Pass on.”

Okay. So there’s the same admonition, isn’t it? It’s a parallel text. Don’t enter the path of the wicked. Don’t walk in the way of evil. Don’t enter into the counsel which determines the path of these wicked men, and don’t do what they do, the way of evil. And in fact, that’s not enough. It goes on and tells: avoid it. Don’t travel on it. Turn away from it. Pass on over repetitive exhortations. Avoid that counsel.

Now, let me just say this. I said a couple of minutes ago that we have to be very careful not to enter into these councils. But the fact of the matter is that for those of us who are not raised with the self-conscious awareness of the antithesis—the judicial enmity that God has placed between the two seeds in culture—the fact is that we grew up in our formative years in public schools or in the context of a culture in which we have imbibed deeply on the councils of the ungodly. Well, that’s what we were taught and trained. That’s how we lived our lives all too often without an emphasis on the law of God to counterbalance it.

So what we have to do positively is not just avoid it. Now, this, you know, assumes Psalm 1 is written assuming that the people it’s written to are those who’ve been raised in the context of the biblical faith. Most of us have not been, and if we were in churches, we didn’t understand this antithesis, and we didn’t have the law of God to meditate in determining the counsel, the undergirding presuppositions of what we do.

So our job—my generation and the adults here—is to not just avoid these things but to root them out of our system. And our job in doing that is to be very careful that we don’t pass on to our children some of those presuppositions, undergirding philosophies of the world that we’ve partaken of. See, we have to work, going back to last week’s sermon, diligently to examine what we’re instructing our children in the everyday warp and woof of life.

By the time we get to seeing sinful actions, it’s probably because we’ve undergirt some of their presuppositions we’ve added from the world as opposed to from the scriptures. But here we’re told again, repeatedly: avoid it, don’t travel on it, turn away from it, pass on.

It’s like Joseph, you know, when an adulterous woman after you and these councils of the ungodly—you want to drop your cloak if necessary and scram. You want to get out of there. You want to get away from those councils. “Do not sleep. They—” this is why they don’t sleep unless they’ve done evil. Their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fail or fall.

**Proverbs 4:16-19**

“They eat the bread of wickedness, drink the wine of violence. But the path of the just is like the shining sun…”

See, again, this association of the scornful, the cedar habitation, is being spoken of. They—their bread and wine is taken in the context of communion, not with the Lord Jesus Christ and his people, but rather the ungodly. That’s their communion. That’s who they get together with.

You got to know this about these people. You listen to pop culture, we watch movies, we do this stuff, good and proper, but not if we’re not doing it in a very discerning way. Understand that it may seem like you got some nice biblical themes that we can draw some truths from and common ground from, but the men that wrote that movie, produced it, directed it, or that are doing the song are not dedicated to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re really in antithetical opposition to him.

Now, you know, we can still take from what they develop and take every thought captive and see if it assists us in our development of our understanding of redemption, but we want to be very careful in that process. You see, we want to be careful that we’re not entering into these councils of these men or putting these councils or presuppositions and vile actions in the context of our children.

Contrast verse 18: “The path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is like darkness. They don’t know what makes them stumble.”

We’ll get to that in a moment.

**Proverbs 4:20-27**

“My son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart. They are life to those who find them, health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, out of it springs the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth. Put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet. Let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or to the left. Remove your foot from evil.”

Diligence here—parents are to train children to be diligent in heeding the instruction of the parents as they provide that undergirding counsel that will sustain them as they go into the world, into the colleges, into the workplace where they’re going to come into contact with these philosophies of the world and of those who oppose the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Most important thing for children here in this proverb in terms of avoiding the evil is to listen to the words of the father. Now, of course, this illustration of us applies to our heavenly father, but certainly applies to our own families—young men and young women. You want to be happy. You want to be blessed in your life. You don’t want to be destroyed from off the path. And the scriptures tell you that the way to do that is to avoid these worldviews of the ungodly and to listen diligently. Get the wisdom of your father as you move into adulthood. Ask your dad to sit down and explain things that you’re thinking about. Look at them from a biblical pattern.

And we’re to be diligent to train our children to keep their hearts diligently as they fulfill these requirements of the blessed man of Psalm 1.

The third group then—this way of the godless leads to the path of the sinner who is continually falling short of the mark. And then the third group that’s talked about are the scornful. One commentator said that if these are not the most scandalous in this list, they are the furthest away from repentance. I guess that was Derek Kidner and his comment on this group of the scornful.

At the end of Psalm 2—well, actually Psalm 1—if we look at Psalm 1 again as a unit, and we see at the beginning we have the counsel of the ungodly, the path of sinners, the seat of the scornful, and as we go through it, we then have a picture of the righteous man and his blessings, and then we return in verse 4 to the ungodly. They’re like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

Then the summary statement. So we have at the end in verse 5 two of the three groups mentioned again, don’t we? We have the ungodly and sinners. But where are the scornful? Well, I think they’re in that chaff which the wind drives away. They’re not even mentioned as the psalm moves to its conclusion because their way is almost unrecoverable. Of course, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ can accomplish that. But when you see a man who meets this category of the scornful, he is so fixed in his rebellion to God that there’s little or no hope for him, is the picture that’s placed before us here.

The scornful just disappear by the end of Psalm 1. They’re that chaff driven away. And I wanted to talk about this a little bit more than the other groups because I think there is a cultural progression here as well. As our culture has moved away from the word of God, as the churches has moved away from the law of God—thus not providing the proper worldview meditation grist for that worldview mill that the scriptures tell us to use—the culture moves away from Christ as its underpinnings. The actions of the culture become more and more habitually falling short of the mark. And what that is accompanied by in the context of our culture is a rise of derision, a rise of sarcasm, a rise of scornfulness.

And so I think that our culture is going to lure us, lure our children into scornful and derisive attitudes, a mockingness. And the scriptures tell us—God wants us very powerfully—when we think of the scorner to think: that guy is on the edge of the abyss.

We’ll look at some verses here. You know, we were talking about the voters’ guide and we were talking about 1 Samuel where it says that the king that they want, the godless king, will take a tenth of all that they have. And some people say, well, that means that, you know, we should civil government can take up to 10% of our taxes and it’s okay. But I think that Doug says—I think he’s right—that the proper interpretation of that verse is when the civil government takes 10% of your money, you should be like, “Wow, what happened? This is really bad. It’s taking as much as God.”

I saw George Bush on the TV, I guess of Larry King, a week or two ago, and he was arguing for bringing down the top tax rate from 39% down to I think 33% or something like that, and he said I think it should be a fixed principle that the government should not take more than a third of your money. You know, I mean, if 10% was supposed to make you aghast at the claims of this king over the claims of Yahweh, the king, what must 33%? What kind of response should we have? And yet apparently most people are saying, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe they need to take 40% of some people’s money.”

Well, the same thing’s true here. When we read “scornful” in the scriptures, if we understand who they are, we should immediately think, “Oh, that is that bad group on the verge of destruction.” And if we make that kind of association—which I haven’t demonstrated yet but I will in a moment—then the application is that we want to be very careful with our tongues in our homes, in the converse of men at our church, converse of men and women.

And then we want to train our children to be very careful not to be scornful, not to enter into sarcastic mocking.

Now, you know, the caveat is that God holds in derision the ungodly. And there’s a sense in which it’s proper at times to make fun of the ungodly. But that is, you know, that is just way out there in terms of understanding what ungodliness is and then a proper response. Our kind of sarcasm, mocking, and scornfulness we normally enter into isn’t directly related to those who are mocking God. But rather, unfortunately, it can all too often be of one another. Or it can be of men or women that we don’t agree with their view of personal piety. It’s easy to mock or deride them.

I hear it all the time. I’ve heard homeschoolers kind of mocked and derided as a group. And I’m not trying to say that kind of language is equating with the scornful here, but I do say that it’s like that 10%. If that’s such an abomination to us, then we should be very careful about coming close to that.

And I think that this last category of men that we are warned against in the context of trying to achieve blessedness is a real warning to us in our speech about undue sarcasm or mocking or scornfulness toward other men and women.

All right. So I’ve said this, and now I have to talk a little bit about the underlying worldview of this being based upon the scriptures. So we’ve said that this is the third group. We’re to beware of the opinions of the godless. We’re to beware of and keep far from the practical life, the sinful attitudes of the godless. And now we’re to keep away from the company and association of these sinful men, which is a communion—a seatedness, a habitation.

There’s a communion that is based upon their mockery and scorn, their scornfulness of God and his people. So Jeremiah 15:17 says this same thing. We read there that “I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers.” So again, it isn’t just the seat of the scornful. It doesn’t mean he’s just coming home to his house and he has a settled position there. The cedar, the habitation, means this assembly of men who are scornful. And Jeremiah warns us of that same thing. And Jeremiah says that “I wouldn’t sit in the assembly of the mockers. Nor did I rejoice. I sat alone because of your hand.”

And sometimes that’s what a position like this ends up in. You end up in isolation from other men, of course.

Okay. So in the Proverbs, the scornful—this term is almost exclusively used in the Proverbs of a particular group of people. We’re going to look at some of these verses. In general, they are defiant and cynical freethinkers contrasted with the wise. So in general, the scoffers are contrasted with wisdom—the way the ungodly are contrasted with the righteous. And what we’ll see is that the root of the scoffer is pride and self-sufficiency.

In Psalm 119:51, the proud have had me greatly in derision, yet I have not declined from thy law. So there’s a reference in Psalm 119 where the derision is in contrast, again, to the man who meditates in the law. And this derisiveness is a result of the actions of the proud. So pride is the base sin of those who are the scornful.

Proverbs 3:34: “Surely he scorns the scorners, but he gives grace unto the lowly.”

So the contrasting is that the scorners are not lowly; they’re not humble. So the implication is that they’re proud. Now, that was the Septuagint version. Changed the word “scorners” to “the prideful.” You know, the translation that was made from the Hebrew Old Testament, which was then used in New Testament times, actually changed the word “scornful” to “the prideful.” And then that became inscripturated truth for us because this verse is quoted both in James 4 and 1 Peter 5.

In James 4:6, he says, “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So see, that’s—it’s the same verse. And now instead of the scornful, the inspired text, the New Testament, tells us there is this exact correlation between the scornful and the proud.

Again, in 1 Peter 5:5: “Likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another. Be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

So the immediate application, in terms of avoiding scorn, the young ones are going to be tempted to be scornful of older ones. Those under authority are going to be tempted to become scornful of authority. Children are going to be tempted to become scornful of parents. And that temptation is going to come to them in spades as they come in contact with what may be a proper interaction with our culture.

We don’t withdraw from culture. We take it, we take every thought captive, we change it. But as we come into contact with that culture, our children are going to be encouraged more and more to be scornful and derisive of their parents and of the culture in which they live, of the rulers and authorities. And we add to that—now, like I said, it is proper. Jesus called Herod a derisive name. And I’m not saying it’s always wrong to speak derisively of rulers and authorities in our land who are fools. But we must be very careful because we’re laying down a pattern for our children of derisiveness against authority.

And that, the end, the underlying presupposition of these children is a proudness or a pridefulness. And that’s what we’ve got to work on with our children—making them humble before the Lord—to drive this out.

Again, Proverbs 1:22: “How long, you simple ones, you love simplicity? The scorers delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge.”

See, the scornful scorns. He derides because he thinks it is wisdom. He delights in that mocking derision of other men and particularly the righteous because he thinks that’s the wise thing to do. It’s a settled thing because he is proud of who he is.

Now, I said that Psalm 2 gives us validity for looking at the mockers in the Old Testament as well. In Proverbs 17:5: “He who mocks the poor…”