Knowing God through His Word … Day by Day

Part 5 of John Piper’s message from Psalm 1….”Songs That Shape the Heart and Mind” 

A Fight Won by Delight

Here’s the picture of the Christian life: There are streams of water. This is the life of God flowing through the word of God, the Psalms. You are planted there by God’s sovereign grace (see Matthew 15:13). Your roots reach the water of life that makes your leaves green during the drought and makes you fruitful when others are barren.

The root system is not mechanical or automatic. The roots work by mediation, that is, by giving attention and thought to the Psalms. Meditation on the Psalms is the way the roots touch the water. The result is delight, spiritual pleasure in what we see of God and man and life. And from this delight comes all kinds of changed attitudes and behaviors.

The battle to avoid the counsel of the wicked and the way of the sinner and the seat of the scoffer—the battle to be righteous and holy and humble—is a fight that is won by delight. And that delight is nourished through meditating on God’s instruction in the Psalms day and night.²

What About Jesus?

Which leaves us very little time to ask our final question: What about Jesus? How does this psalm lead us to Christ? Of the three ways (at least) that I see this Psalm leading to Christ, I will only mention one.

The word righteous in verse 6 presses us forward to Christ as our righteousness. “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” So only the righteous will survive the judgment in the end. But who is righteous?

Psalm 14:3: “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” Psalm 130:3–4: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? [Answer: None.] But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” Psalm 32:2: “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.”

So “the righteous” are the sinful who can somehow be counted as righteous when they are not righteous in themselves. How can this be? How can a holy and righteous God “not mark iniquity”? How can a holy and righteous God not count sin? How can he not require perfect righteousness for his perfect heaven?

Righteousness Performed in Christ

The answer is that God does mark iniquity, and he does count sin, and he does require perfect righteousness. And that is why this psalm, with all of Psalms, leads to Christ who “was wounded for our transgressions; [and] crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5). God did count our sin, and he punished it in Christ. He did require righteousness, and he performed it in Christ. Romans 10:3: “The goal of the law [the goal of the Psalms] is Christ for righteousness for all who believe.”

This gospel truth is part of the living water that flows into the roots of our lives. This is part of what we meditate on day and night when we read and sing the Psalms. This is the source of our sweetest delight.

Embrace This Gospel River

So I urge you to embrace this gospel as the river of your life. And I invite you join me for the next five Sundays as we seek to think with God and feel with God in the Psalms. May God shape our thinking and shape our feelings so that we bear the fruit of Christ-exalting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). Amen.