May 6 Daily Devotional

How the Godly Man Lives: A Meditation on the First Psalm

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Devotional

(continued)

But the law of God includes more than the Ten Commandments. It embraces all of God's Word. Are not the Holy Scriptures in their entirety an exposition of God's law? Do not the Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man? And is not this the purport of the law? The man of God, then, is he who neglects not the whole counsel of God. All of Scripture is for him the supreme rule of life and none of it is laid aside. He inquires into all of it, he believes all of it, and he obeys all of it.

Here, then, in the first Psalm is an exhortation to read and study the Word of God and a rebuke for the neglect of it. We ought to cry with the Psalmist in another place, "O let me not wander from thy commandments. Blessed art thou, 0 Lord: teach me thy statutes. I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. I will not forget thy word."

What shall we say if we come to the Word of God just because we are driven to it as an unwilling slave is made to perform his tasks? Is the service of God a burden? Are God's precepts grievous to he borne? Is our religion an imposed something? Does it rob us of pleasures more to be desired? Such religion, such a worship of God, is far from meeting with God's approval. It is no better than none at all. When the Israelites offered their sacrifices to God because of custom and external restraints, the word of the Lord came to them: "When ye come to appear before me, wh6 hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations.... I am weary to bear them ... I will hide mine eyes from you." What does this teach us but that nothing else will do but an inward and continual leaning on God's Word. Let us beware lest we serve Him with the activities of the body only.

None are true inquirers after God and disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ but those to whom the precepts and doctrines of God are a delight and pleasure and joy. When such people are in the presence of God what more is to be desired? Here is the chief place of their interest. What more is to their profit than when they are learning of God? What place in this world is more sweet to them than at the feet of Jesus? In fact when by God's grace they walk in God's precepts, any other way would be pain and misery.

What a standard for the truly pious man we have presented to us! Who is not conscious, even if once he took delight in God's Word, of some interruption in this pleasure? The Apostle Paul felt something of this when he said, "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." Every child of God knows something of this experience too. But through Jesus Christ our Lord there is offered to us grace to study and keep all that God has so wonderfully revealed to us.