The Blessed Person - Part 1

Psalm 1:1 - "How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the parth of sinners, nor sit int he seat of scoffers."

Who doesn’t want to be blessed? I believe that everyone desires to be blessed. What life teaches us though, is that very few people are actually blessed. There must be a reason that some people are blessed more than others. That is very true. The very first of the Psalms given to us in the book of Psalms is a short Psalm of just six verses. It provides for us a contrast between those who are blessed by God and those who are not. The first verse sets a negative standard for the blessed through a series of triad statements. It is negative in that it talks about what a blessed person will not do, and it is a triad because there are three statements with three common elements in each one. This will be contrasted then in verse 2 by what the blessed person does. For now, I want to take a closer look at the things that a blessed person does not do and see why the avoidance of these is characteristic of a blessed person.
There are three sets of three in this one verse. There are three activities, three places and three types of people mentioned. The blessed person lives their life outside the boundaries of these three sets of three.
Let’s look at the first set. A blessed person does not walk in the counsel of the wicked (or the ungodly , as some translations say). The first action we see is the action of walking. When the Bible talks about walking in the manner it is talked about here, it has to do with the way that a person lives their life. The Hebrew word for walk means the behavior that a person normally engages in. It is their habit; their manner of life; their chosen lifestyle. It is what a person is familiar with and how they are known. So the very first thing that we discover about a blessed person is that there is a particular lifestyle or manner of living which they avoid. Walking also indicates that the person walking is moving in a particular direction. There is a destination for that person’s life. This is why it is important for unmarried people to be careful who they date and especially be careful about who they marry, because if they marry someone who is moving in the opposite direction they are going, either the relationship will end in separation or one of the two parties will have to change the direction they are going. Most often, the person who changes direction is the person who was following God.
The second part of this first triad is the place where the activity is done. In this case the place is that of counsel. When we think about counseling, the first thing that normally comes to mind is the picture of a person sitting or lying down in a psychologists office discussing the problems of their life and receiving “counsel” from the psychologist. This concept is not far from the Biblical idea found here in this verse. Counsel includes the idea of advice being received from another person. We receive counsel from many different sources. Most often we receive counsel from our friends. They may suggest a new place to eat, or recommend a movie to see. We receive advice on relationships, cars, furniture, children, hobbies, money; in fact we receive advice all the time on everything around us. What becomes important to us then is where that advice is coming from.
That leads us to the final part of this first triad - the person. This first person is called wicked or ungodly. What is a wicked or ungodly person? These are people who are morally wrong. Whose morals are they violating? They are violating God’s morals. The ten commandments is a good place to start to understand God’s morals. People who are morally wrong will steal, lie, cheat, kill, blaspheme God by using His name as a swear word, and generally do bad things to other people. An ungodly person therefore is not just someone who does not know God. They are a person whose lifestyle is in direct opposition to the character of God. They are people that cannot be trusted. They are dishonest and self-centered. In contrast there are some people in this world that we might call “good” people, yet they are not believers in Jesus. What makes them “good”, in our eyes, is that they are trying to live a life where they do not steal, kill, lie, cheat or do any of the many other things that are contrary to the character of God. So, a wicked person is someone who is guilty of wrong doing; a bad person.
Our conclusion then on this first triad, is that a blessed person will not listen to the advice of an ungodly person, nor will they become familiar at all with their lifestyle. They will avoid becoming like the ungodly. They will not talk like them. They will not behave like the ungodly. The ungodly have no influence on them. The blessed person will not live their life in the same way that an ungodly person lives their life. However, a failure at this point will lead a “good” person to the second triad in this verse, which I will discuss next time.