The Two Ways

Psalm 1 with notes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermon on the psalm.

Psalm 1 — Christian Standard Bible; C.H. Spurgeon’s notes follow the Scripture text

1. How happy is the one who does not

walk in the advice of the wicked

or stand in the pathway with sinners

or sit in the company of mockers!

2. Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,

and he meditates on it day and night.

3. He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams

that bears its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

4. The wicked are not like this;

instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.

5. Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

1:1 “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers!” Everyone is seeking happiness. If that is true, then everyone should read this psalm, for it directs us to where happiness is to be found in its highest degree and purest form. “Happy,” says David, “is such and such a man,” and the word which he uses is, in the original, exceedingly expressive. It implies a sort of plurality of happiness, and it is scarcely known whether the word is an adjective or a noun, as if the happiness qualified the whole of life and was, in itself, better even than life itself. Surely this is the highest to which the human heart can aspire! This happiness is as attainable by the poor, the forgotten, and the obscure as by those whose names figure in history and are trumpeted by fame. It is not the hermit or the priest, but it comes to any man or woman who loves God and seeks to obey him. His position has nothing to do with it. His character has everything to do with it. The happy man is described as one who avoids the way of the wicked persons. The tragic folly and sin of the wicked is that they have neglected the chief thing to be remembered, namely, that there is a God, that they are his creatures and, being his creatures, ought to live for him. They give God no part of their lives, and he is in none of their thoughts. The godly man, however, does not consider first how the world regards a thing but how God looks at it.

1:2 “Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.” People must have some delight, some supreme pleasure. A person’s heart was never meant to be a vacuum. If not filled with the best things, it will be filled with the unworthy and disappointing. The true Christian has his holy delights, and chief among them is his reveling in the law of the Lord, the Word of God. David did not have a fourth of what we possess — it was a little Bible then. We, therefore, should take ten times more delight in it than the psalmist did.

The “happy” person spends his time meditating on God’s Word. Reading reaps the wheat; meditation threshes it, grinds it, and makes it into bread. Reading is like the ox feeding; meditation is it digesting when chewing the cud. It is not only reading that does us good but the soul inwardly feeding on it and digesting it.

C.H. Spurgeon