Bible Commentaries

The Tree and the Chaff

Psalm 1:1

There is a law to obey which is life; there is a King, to serve Whom is blessedness, and rebellion against Whom is destruction.

I. Note first the picture of a fair and fruitful life. If you have not learned to shelter your positive goodness behind a barrier of negative abstinence, there will be little vitality and little fruit in the weakling plants that are trying to blossom in the undefended open, swept by every wind. But then note further how in this abstinence there is a certain progress. It is quite clear, I think, that there is an advance in the prominence of association with evil, expressed by the three attitudes, walking, standing, sitting.

II. Then we come to the next step here. Abstinence is useless unless it be for something. There is no virtue in not doing Psalm 1:1

Tennyson was very grand on contemptuousness. It was, he said, a sure sign of intellectual littleness. Simply to despise nearly always meant not to understand. Pride and contempt were specially characteristic of barbarians.

—Wilfrid Ward in The New Review (July, 1886).

Contempt is murder committed by the intellect, as hatred is murder committed by the heart Charity, having life in itself, is the opposite and destroyer of contempt as well as of hatred.

—George MacDonald, David Elginbrod (pt. ii. chap. IX.).

References.—I:1.—A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi. p269. C. Bosanquet, Tender Grass for the Lambs, p61. The International Critical Commentary, p3. E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p203. C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical, p245. I:1 , 2.—A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester (3Series), p225. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p127. W. G. Pearce, Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, pp1 , 17. E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p209. I:1-3.—M. R. Vincent, Gates Into the Psalm Country, p3. I:1-4. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p127. I:1-6.—C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p316.

A Tree Planted By Rivers of Water

Psalm 1:3

I. The happy man of this Psalm is none other than the man who presents his body a living sacrifice unto God, and is not fashioned according to this world's pattern and device, but is transformed by the renewing of his mind through an earnest pondering of God's thoughts, and who thereby proves by a daily experience what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Wherein, then, does his happiness consist? Blessed is this Psalm 1:3

Every delineation of the righteous is in the end a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of Him alone. God has somewhat against all His saints, against their own righteousness. None of them is righteous completely except in the righteousness of the Redeemer. The application of this principle gives a new life and power and message to the book of the Psalm. We take for an example the first Psalm. It is true in its integrity of one soul at least, and of none but one. Multitudes through grace have come near it. It blessedly recalls them, but for its full meaning we must look at the Name that burns behind the porcelain sheath and see Jesus, and Jesus only.

I. In Christ there was no scorn, no contempt, no insolence, no taunting. He did not despise our world. He did not despise our nature. He did not despise the meanest of His creatures. Nor did He despair of any human soul.

II. His life was nourished on the law. His delight was in the law of the Lord, and on His law did He meditate day and night. It was of Him alone that it could be said that He was utterly obedient.

III. This life, the life of the righteous, was beautiful and fruitful, He lived that life of true peace which is not fugitive but everlasting. His was a life of fruit. Every righteous life must end in fruit. The greenness and the beauty are but a form of promise. The inexorable condition on which life is given is that it should reach forward to fruit-bearing. He bore His fruit—in due season God fixed, and He still fixes the season.

—W. Robertson Nicoll, The Garden of Nuts, p111.

References.—I:3.—C. Perren, Revival Sermons, p316. International Critical Commentary, p3. G. Orme, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lx. p334. E. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx. p347. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, pp79 , 122. H. P. Liddon, Old Testament Outlines, p100. Homiletic Magazine, vol. vii. p73. I:3 , 4.—H. Macmillan, Two Worlds are Ours, p203. A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country, p313. I:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. lv. No280. John Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, vol. iii. p127. I:4 , 5.—A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No767. I:4 , 6.—M. R. Vincent, Gates Into the Palm Country, p21.