By The book of Psalms is a rather comprehensive collection of how believers live in this world. For a believer, life in this world is a place and time to worship God with great exaltation, but is also a place and time to sense the severe effects of sin and pour out our hearts to God. The Psalms are testimonies of how believers live so very differently in the same world as the wicked. Psalm 1 begins this wonderful collection of Psalms with the starting point of this new way to live. But it does so by first pointing us to a new way to think.
Blessed is the man
Psalm 1:1-2
–who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
–nor stands in the way of sinners,
–nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but
–his delight is in the law of the LORD,
–and on his law he meditates day and night.
As much as v. 1 mentions the activities of “walk”, “stand”, and “sit”, it is really the mental faculties of being “counsel” in a “way” of life that is the focus, the the extent even of joining those who seat themselves down as opinionated critics of everything (“seat of scoffers”). Before you can embark on the new way to live, you will need to embrace this new way to think.
This new way to think is not as complicated as it sounds—it is rather simple. Instead of living according to the advice of wicked people, instead of living just like the way sinners live, instead of sitting in opinionated judgment of others, open your Bible, discover how utterly transformational it is! Delight in the simple fact that in Scripture you discover so much better advise for daily life, so much better ways to live, so much better truths to believe!
This new way to think means that the content of God’s Word guides your walk of life more than your unbelieving friends do. This new way to think means that the content of God’s Word establishes your principles and convictions more than the newspapers, radio stations, podcasts and blogs of the world do. This new way to think means that the content of God’s Word is reflected in your opinions, remarks, and suggestions more than the Facebook trolls, WhatsApp chatters, and Twitter blasts on your social media are.
God’s Law tells us how to live. But first it tells us how to think. Then we discover that God’s Law is not merely a list of Do’s and Dont’s, but reveals a rather delightful liberation of the mind where all the counsel of the wicked is replaced with counsel in righteousness, where all the ways of sinners are replaced with the ways of holiness, where the seat of scoffers are replaced with the seat of knowledge and discernment.