Hope In Tigard
Hope In Tigard
Psalm 1- Blessed Way
The sermon that you're about to hear is from Pastor Paul Borman at Hope Lutheran Church, located in Tigard, Oregon. For more information and for more content, go to hopeintigardcom.
Speaker 2:As we begin this new series on the Ten Commandments, we are going to begin at the very beginning, but not with the first hymn. We're going to begin with the first psalm of the book of Psalms, where the poet is going to show us who is blessed. We'll read Psalm 1. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous. This is God's Word. Life is a journey. You have to know how to walk it. Rightly, I got to tell you.
Speaker 2:There are so many things that popped into my head on how to illustrate this. Maybe the first one that popped into my head was the poet Robert Frost. He wrote the famous poem the Road Less Traveled. It's a poem about life, and by the end of the poem you kind of hear that he seems to be encouraging us to take the road less traveled. Christians often use that sentiment to say, yeah, we take the road less traveled, we take the narrow road. Life is a journey. We have to know how to take it rightly.
Speaker 2:Another illustration that I thought of this was just yesterday morning. Our son, titus, is a year and a half old, and right now I would describe him as a kind of human pinball. He, he walks around the house and he kind of pinballs to this cabinet, opens it up and takes out stuff that he's not supposed to play with, and then he pinballs over here and he takes the book out of the bottom of the shelf and all the books fall onto his toes. And then he comes over here and he puts a glue stick in his mouth. That's going to hurt him, right. And so I was thinking about this we have to know how to walk rightly. We have to know how we are going to be able to walk without hurting ourselves, without poisoning ourselves every 10 minutes. Then I thought about maybe the one that resonates with me the most, about this psalm.
Speaker 2:You guys remember the show the Mandalorian? A couple years ago it was a huge thing in our house, a Star Wars show. Do you guys remember Grogu, better known as Baby Yoda, cutest little furball on TV, as cute as Baby Yoda is? What made this show big for me is Mando. You know he doesn't say a whole lot. He keeps his helmet on why. What's his phrase? This is Mando Now. He doesn't say a whole lot. He keeps his helmet on why. What's his phrase?
Speaker 2:This is the way and it kind of pops into my mind with this poem, this psalm. Here the poet comes to us and he says this is the way. He makes it very simple for us. He actually makes it black and white for us. He makes it simple and says there is a way to walk, there's a right way and there's a wrong way, and this is the way. There is no other way. This is the way.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate that about the psalmist here, that he makes life black and white. He makes it simple like that, even though there are so many complexities in life. He says no, there are two kinds of people. Again, that's so refreshing to me, because there are so many things that would divide us, that would make differences between us. But he says, nope, doesn't matter, your gender doesn't matter, your race, your ethnicity, your background, none of that matters. There are two kinds of people there are blessed and there are wicked people. Simple, two kinds of people Blessed, wicked. How do you know which one you are? It's a more complicated question than most people think.
Speaker 2:The poet keeps going. There are two kinds of people there are blessed and there are wicked. Here's what happens as the blessed and the wicked, they walk on their way of life. There are two kinds of traveling companions who give two kinds of counsel. Two kinds of counsel are you can listen to the counsel of people or you can listen to the counsel of God, which I know is a big statement to make. Right, because right. If we're going to define wickedness, normally we're going to point to the Ten Commandments and say murder, stealing, right, and so you could sit and you could say I have not been to jail for murder, I've never defrauded a major corporation and done jail time about it. So that's fair enough.
Speaker 2:But this poem, this psalm, defines wickedness very differently. He says wickedness is this. Wickedness is listening to the Council of people, if this is where you get your definitions of right and wrong. If this is where you define goodness itself, wickedness is going to be the result. The blessed people they hear the counsel of God, they listen to his counsel, they trust in him, they trust in his command, they trust in his word. So again, the psalmist makes it very simple. He says two kinds of people, blessed and wicked, two kinds of traveling companions that have two different kinds of counsels. You can listen to people or listen to God. Third, the poet says there are two different destinations. Third, the poet says there are two different destinations.
Speaker 2:He pulls out the image of this tree, which I love. You can kind of imagine it. I almost went into an AI simulator to try and get a really cool picture of this. But you can imagine this strong tree. We're Oregonians, we can imagine a strong tree that's been there for years, planted beside streams of water. And this tree, it bears its fruit in season. Its tree, its leaves never drop, it's an evergreen tree. We can see that in our minds. Right, this evergreen tree. By the way, this is a symbol of everlasting life. So two destinations. The one is eternal life with God.
Speaker 2:The other image that the poet pulls out is the image of chaff. Maybe you know a little bit about chaff. My grandpa was a farmer in upstate New York and the little bit of time I got to see on his farm I got to learn about what it's like. At harvest time the combine comes through on these dry crops that are ready to be harvested and it separates the fruit from the rest of the plant. And what the combine does is it throws out the dead stuff, the chaff of the plant behind the combine, and it chucks it out really hard and really high, in the hopes that the wind will catch the chaff and blow it away. Because the chaff is good for nothing. It's no good for fertilizing the field, it's no good for feeding animals. Chaff is nothing. And that's what the psalmist says. The wicked will be like they will be blown away from the presence of God. Be blown away from the presence of God. So there we go. That's Psalm 1.
Speaker 2:Two kinds of people, two kinds of traveling companions who have two different kinds of counsel that lead to two different destinations. This is the way. Amen, no, just joking. You know today I've said this a bunch of times we're starting this sermon series on the Ten Commandments, and so I'm kind of wondering, if you're wondering, why are we halfway through the sermon and you haven't mentioned the Ten Commandments yet? But maybe you're also seeing the connection here. You know I mentioned this before the sermon. I've had this series kind of bubbling up in me for a long time, but I've been really nervous to preach it. So I want to make this statement for you here. I'm going to make this statement. This is the foundation on which this whole thing is going to be based and I'm going to repeat it two times so that you can commit it to memory.
Speaker 2:God, in his love, has given us his word and his commandments so that we will be blessed. God, in his love, has given us his word and his commandments so that we will be blessed. That is so important for us to know that God has given us his commandments out of love and he has given them to us to bless us. This is why I've been so nervous about this, because I know how so much of the world looks at the Ten Commandments. I mentioned a couple of them before. That God's Ten Commandments are his list of things that you've got to do if you want to be a Christian. If you don't do them, you're out.
Speaker 2:They're God's list of things that you've got to do. It's his kind of test to see if you're committed or not. Or they're God's list of arbitrary rules that are mostly out of date and are more like guidelines these days. Or, at worst, they're God's list of ten things that you're supposed to do but that you're never going to be able to do, and so God gave them to us to keep you down, to keep you subservient and sad Again. This is why I've been so nervous about this sermon series, because I don't want us to see the Ten Commandments this way. I want us to see God's Ten Commandments for the reason that he gave them to us Again. God, in his love, gave us his commands so that we will be blessed, just like the psalmist said. That's why this psalm was chosen for this introductory Sunday, so that we could look together at the whole Christian life.
Speaker 2:There are two kinds of people and there are two kinds of traveling companions with two different kinds of counsels. And who do the righteous listen to? They listen to the counsel of God. What is the counsel of God? It's the Ten Commandments. And when we follow God's Ten Commandments, what is the result? Eternal life. What is the result While we are still on earth. We're like a tree a tree that is healthy, that is rooted deep down. Nothing is going to move it. It's going to be healthy, it's going to bear its fruit and season. Its leaves are never going to drop. You know what that looks like in life. It looks like a person who is always peaceful, always joyful, always hopeful. Can I say it again? This is the way.
Speaker 2:I've got two big goals for this sermon series. Again, I'm going to state this, and I'm going to state it often. I've got two big goals for this sermon series. The first one is that I want you to know God's law. I want you to begin to know it inside and out. I want you to know it really well. I want you to know his law because I want you to know how good the law of the Lord is. The law is good. It blesses us. Three ways that it blesses us and, by the way, we are going to have Bible study after church. I encourage you to think of Bible study today as an extension of the worship service. Please stick around.
Speaker 2:We're going to dive deep into these three ways that the law blesses us. It blesses us as a mirror as a curb and as a guide. Imagine this scenario you wake up in the morning, you look at yourself in the mirror and you notice a patch of skin that doesn't look right and you say that doesn't look right. I've got to go to the doctor and the doctor says that doesn't look right, you're sick. You maybe wouldn't have noticed that you were sick if you didn't have the mirror In that way. We need the mirror, even though it shows us the bad news. The law blesses us in that way that it holds up a mirror to our lives so that we can see the places that we are sick. And even though it shows us we are sick, that's a blessing, because we know that there is healing in Jesus. The law blesses us as a mirror because we know that there is healing in Jesus. The law blesses us as a mirror.
Speaker 2:The law also blesses us as a curb. You know how, when you're going down I-5, you take that left around the curb so that you can see Mount Hood out to your right and there's kind of a steep drop down towards the river. There's a really big concrete curb there. You know why? Because we don't want people flying off a cliff. We need those curbs in our lives, and this is like a lower level illustration of it. Like at a bowling alley, you have the bumpers up for the kids so that the ball isn't just going into the gutter all the time. The law functions as a curb for us as well, and you know what the curb looks like. It's not fun. Sometimes it looks like chastisement, sometimes it kind of looks like punishment, whether it's natural. The law is our curb. It corrects us so that we're not falling off spiritual cliffs or getting stuck in spiritual ditches. The law blesses us as a curb. It also blesses us as a guide.
Speaker 2:You know us PNWers, we love to hike. Right when you're about to do a hike, imagine you're driving down the gorge and you see a peak I want to go there. And so you just pull off the highway and just run off into the forest straight up the mountain. How is that hike going to go? It's not going to go well, you might get hurt, you might get lost. You need a guide. You know, when you go off on a hike, what do you do? You pull out your AllTrails app, you pull out your and you find out how far this trail is, how much elevation is how long am I going to be out there? What food, what water do I need? The guide helps you to take that trail. Well, the law functions in that way for us too, and it blesses us. It teaches us how to walk. It teaches us how to live well for God.
Speaker 2:The law is a blessing to us.
Speaker 2:That's my first big goal. I want you to know the law. Over the next 10 weeks, we're going to go through each one and see how each one of these commands is that blessing for us. I want you to know God's law for us. I want you to know God's law. But then we can't stop there.
Speaker 2:We heard from the psalmist that there is a destination, and the destination is eternal life. And how do we reach that destination? Do we reach that right? This is the big thing. Do we reach that destination by keeping the law? Is that possible? Can we reach heaven by obeying the law? Well, yeah, but you have to be perfect. Have you been perfect? If you read down the list of the Ten Commandments, could you say I've been perfect at that? Not a chance. That's why we need to keep going. That, not a chance. That's why we need to keep going. That's my second big goal.
Speaker 2:I want you to know this to the deepest depths of your heart and your soul, and each Sunday as you leave, I want this to be the thing that is resounding in your ears. You know you have not kept the law, but there is someone who has, in one of the more intimate statements that Jesus made. We've got these banners in the back. They're not just for color in the room, by the way. They're to remind us of something Jesus said I am the way, and there to remind us of something Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life. We cannot keep the law perfectly. It is impossible and so without Jesus, there is no way to heaven. But Jesus came down from heaven to earth and he made a way. This is what makes us Christians.
Speaker 2:By the way, you know we weren't always called Christians. We were first called Christians in a city called Antioch, as the gospel was spreading like wildfire through that city and people kept saying about Christians you know, you guys keep acting like little Christs, that's what you're doing. And the Christians said, yeah, we are. And so they adopted that name for themselves. But before they were called Christians, you know what they called themselves Followers of the way, because Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life. Jesus is the way. He died, he rose, he lives for us, to make a way for us to be in heaven with him forever. I say this is the way. Jesus is the way. It's simple, right, the psalmist says it's simple Two kinds of people, two kinds of traveling companions with two different kinds of counsel, two different destinations.
Speaker 2:I'll show you how true this is. In the beginning, the beginning of the world, there weren't two different kinds of people. Adam and Eve were blessed, they were perfect, but they had a bad counselor who gave them really bad counsel. And they believed him. They took the fruit of the tree and they ate it and they started down a really bad path, path towards being chaff, blown away from God's presence forever. And that would have been the end of the story. All things considered, that should have been the end of the story.
Speaker 2:God is righteous, but God is love and he sent his son to the world to make a way. Jesus is the only blessed man. He did not walk in the way of the wicked, he did not stand for it, he never sinned, he did not listen to the counsel of the wicked. He only listened to the counsel of his Father, the will of his Father, and so why did he end up on a cross? Why did he end up being like the chaff that we should have been? Why did it end up that he said my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why am I being blown away from your presence? It was for us so that we would be blessed, so that we would be like that tree planted beside streams of water, with water welling up into us, into eternal life. This is the way. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. Jesus has made a way for us by his cross, so that we will live forever.
Speaker 2:So now, here's my call to you Hope Lutheran Church, right, plant yourselves in God's word, plant yourselves in his law, plant yourselves in his gospel, and as you do that you know, here's the call for your here and now. Right, show up for the sermon series. No, be here. Be here for these Sundays and be here for the Bible studies. And don't just be here physically, also be here spiritually. Don't just let the words wash over you, let them affect you, let them change the way that you live, the way that you think, the way that you look at the world. Let your roots grow down deeper and deeper and deeper into God's word. And what do we say here at Hope? How do we walk? We walk with Christ. Where are we going? Home? To heaven. Will you pray with me? Christ be my leader, by night as by day, safe through the darkness, for he is the way. Gladly I follow his future, his care. Darkness is daylight when Jesus is there. Amen.