(Vs.1) “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! (Vs.2) But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night. (Vs.3) He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers. (Vs.4) The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind drives away. (Vs.5) Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. (Vs.6) For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish.”

Right through the Word of God in both Testaments we are told that on earth there are the righteous and the wicked.  Here in this Psalm we are told that the righteous are blessed but that the wicked are not so. We know from the Word of God that no living person is righteous by nature but that all of us have gone astray and turned to our own ways and have all turned our backs on God and do not have the ability to keep the commandments of God by the power of our own self-effort or will power (Isaiah 53:6a) (Romans 3:10-18). We all fall short of what God created us to be (Romans 3:23).

All of us are born into this world with a sinful and rebellious nature and by nature are children of wrath, being under the wrath of God because of the spirit of disobedience to His laws and commandments and our enslavement to the desires of our sinful nature (Psalm 51:5) (Ephesians 2:3). We are also told in God’s Word that a standard of righteousness from God, that is acceptable to Him, has been made available to us in the person of the Lord Jesus and received by faith in Him to all who believe regardless of their status in life or their nationality. They are justified freely by faith because of the unmerited favour of God provided for them when the Lord Jesus shed His blood on the cross to atone for sin and to redeem us back to God.

God presented the Lord Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement that turned aside His wrath upon man and it fell on His one and only begotten Son whom God treated as a sinner even though the Lord Jesus was without sin and has never sinned, so that God might treat us, as His sons and daughters who by nature and birth are great rebels and sinners in His sight. He did this to show Himself to be just and the one who justifies the one who has faith in Jesus to save them (Romans 3:21-26). God can and will pardon sin because His forgiveness and impartation of His own life and nature is only given on the basis of the atoning cleansing blood of Jesus who has died in our place and for our sin, not for His own sin because He was, and has been, and will always be without sin. He died in our place. He exchanged places with us at the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the spotless sacrificial Lamb of God, who by His atoning substitutionary and sacrificial death on our behalf as the Passover Lamb, has taken away the sin of the world and through His blood will cleanse a repentant sinner from his or her sin (1 John 1:9, 29) (1 Corinthians 5:7).

By faith in the blood of Jesus to atone, to redeem and to cleanse us from sin when we repent and believe in the Lord Jesus to save us, we are justified freely by God, our sins are forgiven, and we will be protected from the coming wrath of God when the Lord Jesus returns to judge the world in righteousness (1 John 1:7-9) (Ephesians 1:7)  (Romans 5:9). So then, all who repent and are willing to turn from their sin and believe in the Lord Jesus by faith to save them from the power and penalty of sin, being hell and the lake of fire, are declared to be righteous in God’s sight as if they had never sinned at all, even though they know and God knows they are great sinners and lawbreakers in His sight.

Added to this, having been rescued from the power of and penalty of sin they are clothed with the garment of salvation and wrapped around with the robe of the very righteous nature that the Lord Jesus has Himself (Isaiah 61:10a) (Philippians 3:7-9) The Holy Spirit comes to live deep down on the inside of them when they believe in the Lord Jesus and they are spiritually reborn from above and sealed by the Holy Spirit for that day when their ultimate redemption will come at the rapture and resurrection of all faithful believers (John 3:3) (Ephesians 1:13).

The difference between a righteous and wicked person  then is that the righteous person has repented of their wickedness and partaken of the free unmerited gift of salvation and redemption only found in the Lord Jesus and through his atoning blood have also received the forgiveness of sin (Ephesians 1:7; 2:8-10). The wicked are those who remain unrepentant and in rebellion against God, against his laws and commandments and hostile to the Lord Jesus and remain indifferent to what the Lord Jesus did for them at the cross.

Having now looked at what it means to be righteous from God’s perspective we will now very briefly consider this psalm to see how the righteous and the wicked are different from each other and how God responds to them individually.

(Vs.1) “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!

According to God’s Word the Bible, to be blessed is to have a deep sense of happiness and contentment, to have a sense of being fulfilled in life that has nothing to do with one’s status or position in this world or outward circumstances. This is true shalom or peace that comes from the Lord Jesus when we are in a right relationship with Him. A peace that transcends all human reasoning or understanding, because it is not the false sense of peace the world gives which is dependent  on ones outward circumstances, one’s health or possessions or status in life which are all temporary in nature (John 14:27) (Luke 12:15) (Philippians 4:7). God’s definition of abundance is to have successfully completed the will of God for our life. If we are walking in all of God’s will then our temporary needs will be met according to His good, acceptable and perfect will (Romans 12:1-2) (Romans 8:32). As the Lord Jesus said; “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:33-34).

Now there are three things that a righteous person will not do…

A righteous person will “not “walk in the counsel of the wicked.” It does not mean that the unsaved cannot give us wisdom or advice in certain given situations, they can, but the righteous person will always be guided by the Word of God before they accept the wisdom or the word of man. To walk in the counsel of the wicked is to be continuously open to the words and advice they offer and to throw ones lot in with them and compromise the Biblical standards for righteous living.

A righteous person will “not stand in the path of sinners.” The path of sinners is living a life independent from God, indifferent to the Lord Jesus, despising the laws and commandments of God, and motivated by self-reliance, selfish ambition and every wicked work. The righteous man or woman will not be a partaker of the ways of the wicked who are not born again but in slavery to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and to the pride of life, having been snared by Satan, the god of this world’s system, to do his bidding. A righteous person, born again and spiritually sustained by the power of Jesus blood and by the Spirit of God will not be living in this way (1 John 5:18-19).

A righteous person will “not sit in the seat of scoffers!” Once again “to sit” carries the idea of a fixed and continuous attitude that scoffs at God and everything that is Biblically just, good and upright in this world, it is to scoff and deride the message of salvation and to even mock the blood of Jesus and the message of salvation and all things pertaining to life and godliness. This is what it means to abide or to continuously sit in the seat of the scornful. The righteous person will not be found sitting in the same seat. What will the righteous be like? Let’s continue…

(Vs.2) “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night.”

For the truly righteous man of woman they will take great delight in meditating, reading and studying the Word of God, being “a lamp to their feet and a light to their path.” To meditate can be likened to a cow chewing its cud over and over continuously. It is something that spans the day and the night. As the Lord Jesus Himself said; “man shall not live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Just as we need regular food to sustain our physical life, so we need the nutritious grain of God’s Word continuously to nourish our spiritual life. The righteous person will be seeking to live their lives every day in conformity to the Word of God. Of course this is only possible by meditating continuously on the Word of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the cleansing and keeping power of the blood of Jesus. And then we read…

(Vs.3) He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.

It is the work of the blessed Holy Spirit to water the seed of God’s Word firmly implanted in the receptive soil of the heart, being the control centre of our souls. “With man this is impossible but with God all things are possible!” The spiritual roots of a righteous person will go deep down into the soil of his or her heart, and as it remains there by exercising the faith of obedience it starts to produce the spiritual fruit of God’s righteous nature (Galatians 5:22-25). The fruit will be evident but more so in some believers than others, as there are fathers, young men and babies in the Messiah (1 John 2:12-14). Of course it has nothing to do with age but with the depth of one’s spiritual experience in their daily walk with God and in their heart knowledge of His Word. This is the way to prosper in God’s economy. He will always give us what we need through His divine power for life and godliness through our knowledge of the Messiah our Lord Jesus (2 Peter 1:3).

As for the wicked they will not prosper, even though they may be successful in life, their end will come and they will take nothing with them when they leave this life. Their reward is in this life but there is no reward in the life to come which will go on forever and ever into eternity. So we read…

(Vs.4-5) “The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

Chaff has no substance and neither do those who are living in this world estranged for their creator. “As for man, his days are like grass— he blooms like a flower of the field; when the wind passes over, it vanishes, and its place remembers it no more” (Psalm 103:15-16). Such is the end of “the wheelers and dealers” in this fallen world that have no time to consider eternity! Their lives are like a vapour that is here for a little while and then vanishes when examined in the light of eternity (James 4:14). Once they have gone who really remembers them? What they have laboured for in this temporary life is left to others. When they die they face judgement, not oblivion or annihilation. As it is written; “Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

And so we read; “The wicked will not stand in the judgment Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.” When the unsaved man or woman appears in God’s courtroom after they have departed this world they will be weighed in His legal balancing scales and be found wanting because they have refused to be saved, despised His commandments, trodden them and the blood of Jesus underfoot, and do not have the righteousness of the Lord Jesus deep down on the inside of them, and so they stand self-condemned and that without excuse. Their destiny is Hell and ultimately the lake of fire (Revelation  21:8).

Added to this, they will never be found in the assembly of the righteous who have been made righteous with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus bestowed upon them and imputed into them through faith in Him to save them. Without the wedding garment of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus they will not be at the wedding feast but shut outside in the eternal darkness where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth! (Matthew 22:11-13). Such is the lot of the wicked that despise God’s laws and commandments and reject the only one who really loves them dearly and has shed His blood for them, and who wants to save them, but they do not want to be saved because they love their sin and cling to it! They are lovers of self and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (2 Timothy 3:2-5). This will a very conspicuous feature of the last days in which we are now living. Finally we read…

(Vs.6) “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish.”

God sees everything that we think, that we say and that we do (Psalm 139:1-4). He examines and weighs up the motives, the thought and the intents of the human heart. He sees the way of the righteous seeking to live by faith, not perfect of course, but keeping on with Him. Keeping short accounts with Him when they do sin, but who keep walking by faith and seeking to be obedient with that child-like faith, depending continuously on the grace, the mercy, and on the loving-kindness of the Triune God! He knows our frame and remembers that we are like dust and that we are weak and helpless and spiritually basket cases without his continual spiritual support. He will “never break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoking flax!” and “A humble and contrite spirit He will never despise!”

The way of the righteous in this world is a very narrow path that only a few will find in the end. However, the path of the wicked is a broad path that many will walk and one that leads to eternal destruction, not annihilation, but being cast into the fire no longer being used for the purpose for which they were created and there experiencing conscious torment (Matthew 7:13-14). For many wicked in this world who have things good in this life may well waltz and sing merrily down the yellow brick road of worldly fame, fortune, pleasure, prosperity and success in the eyes of man, but at the end of that road they will meet someone far more sinister and deadly than the Wizard of Oz!!!

The way of both the righteous and the wicked are seen and known by God. Because He is eternal and inhabits eternity He knows who will be saved and who will be lost, but the choice is still given! Will we be among those who have chosen the path of the righteousness of God that is bestowed and imputed by faith in the Lord Jesus, or will we be among those who have chosen the path of wickedness and the rejection of God’s righteousness that comes by the faith of obedience in the Messiah our Lord Jesus? (Romans 1:5; 16:28). The way of the righteous will flourish even into old age by God’s grace and perfect will, but the way of the wicked will perish and that being suddenly cut off beyond recovery, having hardened their hearts after many rebukes!!! (Proverbs 29:1) or in old age knowing they face an eternity without God, but have left it to late, having remorse, but finding no place for repentance!