The Prosperity of the Blessed Man (Psalm 1:3-4)

Jim Osman explores the prosperity of the blessed in Psalm 1:3-4, contrasting the righteous with the wicked. He examines how those who delight in God's Word are like fruitful trees planted by streams, while the wicked are like chaff blown away. Osman emphasizes that the prosperity of the blessed is not merely material but includes spiritual fruitfulness, permanence, and, ultimately, eternal blessing through Christ.

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Host

Jim Osman

Pastor-Teacher, Kootenai Community Church

What is Kootenai Church: The Psalms?

This series explores selected Psalms, starting with an introduction to the book of Psalms and its theological significance. It focuses primarily on Psalms 1, 2, 37, and 49, while also touching on imprecatory elements found in these and other Psalms. The series aims to help listeners understand the Psalms' relevance for Christian life and worship today.

We've looked at the first of three contrasts in Psalm 1, the path, contrasting the path of the wicked and the path of the righteous or the blessed man. We saw last week that the blessed man avoids the instruction of sinners. He does not walk in the way of the ungodly, the wicked. He does not stand in the path of sinners, and he doesn't sit in the seat of scoffers. That is to say, he is not swayed by them, he does not stand with them, and he does not seduce with them. Those are two or three different degrees of involvement in relationship to evil. Instead, the righteous man or the blessed man delights himself in Yahweh's instruction, which is an entirely different path than the path of the wicked. The righteous man is informed by the Word of God, by His righteousness, and by His truth, which is found in the instruction of Yahweh. So that kind of summarizes what we covered last week in verses 1–2.
And I want to offer just a note of clarification before we move on. This is not the path of the legalist, verses 1–2. It's not the path of the legalist. The legalist is somebody who delights in his use or abuse of the law of God as a means for his own righteousness or a measure of his own righteousness. The legalist uses the law of God to show how righteous he is in his own eyes and holds other people up to that sort of man-made standard. That's what a legalist does.
But the righteous man or the blessed man who delights himself in the law of the Lord is not delighting in the law because it condemns him. He's not delighting in the law because he cannot achieve the standards of the law. Even though the law condemns all of us, the righteous delight in it because we see, even in that thing that condemns us, we see something that is holy and good and righteous and true, and we delight in that. We delight in the righteousness that is revealed in the law, the instruction of the Lord. We delight in the God who is revealed in the Scriptures and in the righteousness that is revealed in the Scriptures. We don't delight in the law in some sadistic sense where we think we have achieved the standards of the law and we have kept its perfect standards of righteousness because we can't and we don't. But instead, the righteous one delights in the God who is revealed in that Word and in the instruction that Yahweh gives to us in that law.
So the blessed man receives all kinds of different blessings, a variety of blessings. He is blessed in a variety of ways. He can look at his life and say that he is blessed by God because of God's goodness and grace to him. He is blessed in salvation. He is blessed in the fruit of that salvation, and he is blessed in ways that the wicked cannot even perceive or even understand. So here at the outset of the Psalms, in Psalm 1, we have this question: Are we the righteous man described in this psalm or are we the wicked that is described in this psalm? And before we even enter into worshipping God in and through the Psalms, the Psalter, that's the question that confronts us. Which one are we?
Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm that calls us to consider two paths, two products, and two outcomes. And we see in this psalm the way of blessedness. So the outline that we're using to work our way through the psalm—in verses 1–2, we see contrasted there two paths, and we've called verses 1–2 the path of the blessed man. Verses 3–4 we're looking at today. This describes the prosperity of the blessed man. And then verses 5–6, the prize of the blessed man, that the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked, or the path of the wicked, will perish.
And here is a second contrast, the prosperity of the blessed man. The righteous and the wicked are contrasted with these two agricultural similes. You'll notice it. Let's read together verses 3–4. Actually, let's back up and just start at verse 1 again. We can read the whole psalm; it's not that long.
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!
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
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.
4 The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Ps. 1:1–6 NASB)
Verses 3–4 are our texts for this morning. We're going to notice there, with each of the phrases in verse 3, a different kind, a distinct kind, of blessing. And this gives us some idea of what the author means when he talks about the blessedness or the blessings-ness of the righteous man in verse 1. We'll notice in each of those phrases a different and distinct blessing. The first one, we notice his provision; he's “like a tree firmly planted by streams of water” (v. 3). Then we'll see his produce or product; it “yields its fruit in its season” (v. 3). And then we’ll notice his permanence; “its leaf does not wither” (v. 3). And then finally, his prosperity; “in whatever he does, he prospers” (v. 3). We'll break those down, spend most of our time in verse 3 because verse 4 is simply the negated contrast of that—“The wicked are not so”—and then just a brief description of the wicked. So we'll spend our time in verse 3 so we can see what it is that really is the blessing of the righteous. And then we can just simply say all of that for the wicked, not so. None of that is true of the wicked person in verse 4.
Let's notice first of all his provision. Psalm 1:3: “He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water.” Again, this is a simile. And there's a simile in verse 3 and a simile in verse 4. Verse 3 says the blessed man is like a tree, and verse 4 the wicked is like chaff. And these two similes, agricultural similes, are intended to contrast these two men and their prosperity or the, we would say, product or produce of their life. The imagery used here of a tree flourishing by streams of water is one that's used frequently in the Old Testament, and it's really used to picture here a flourishing and fruitful life under the blessing of God.
And I want you to notice something in verse 3 that probably flies under your radar as you just read over the verse. Notice that he is describing here a tree that is planted. It is a planted tree, not a wild tree. It's a planted tree. Those are two entirely different images in Old Testament Scripture, a planted tree and a wild tree. A wild tree pops up next to a river of water. Its seed is planted by the dung of a bird or just by accident or happenstance or the wind blows the seed in next to a stream. A wild tree is there by accident or by chance. It springs up on its own. But the author is not describing a wild tree. He's not describing a tree that just so happened to pop up next to an undefined stream of water out somewhere in the wilderness. Instead, he is indicating here by calling this a planted tree, a tree that is chosen with intention and care and design and then is intentionally and specifically by God's providence planted where it is by the grower, a tree that is cared for by the husbandman who plants the tree with intention and purpose. In other words, in this picture, God Himself is the farmer, and He chooses the tree, He chooses the place in which the tree is planted, and then He cares for that tree. He tends it. He plants it. The blessed man is a man who is attended by God's providence, and as a planted tree, he is the special object of that special divine providence to not only choose the tree but also choose the place where it is planted.
This last spring, I went to a local nursery and I bought two trees, a Honeycrisp apple tree and an apricot tree. When I show up at the nursery, of course I find the section that has the specific tree that I want, and then I don't just grab any tree. You guess which tree I pick. I pick the best tree that is there. Now that's not what God did when He chose you and I, but every analogy breaks down a little bit. But follow me here. I choose the tree. I select a tree that is green and lush. It looks healthy. It's got lots of leaves on it. It's got lots of new shoots that year, maybe even has some blossoms or some fruits starting to form on it. It's taller. It looks like something that I can shape and mold as I prune it over the years. I bring that home with great care, and I know exactly on my lot where I want to plant it, in direct sun in a place that sort of catches the eye and is specific to the landscaping, whatever landscaping I have in my yard. And I plant the tree specifically there, and I fertilize it, I dig the hole, I put the food in there, a little shot of some liquid, whatever it is that's supposed to make it sort of take root, and then I water it over the course of the summer. And these two trees, I put wire cages up around them to protect them from the deer, and then I'm observing them not just for their health and their vitality but also eventually for their fruit-bearing quality, and I watch them, I guard them, and I protect them.
Now that's a lot different from just a tree that's planted out in the wilderness that I could care nothing about. Spurgeon says this:
It is the peculiar characteristic of the Christian man [and woman], that he is like “a tree planted.” That is to say, there is a special providence exercised in his position. . . . You all know the difference between a tree that is planted and a tree that is self-sown. The tree that is planted in the garden is visited by the husbandman. He digs about it; he [fertilizes] it; he trims it, prunes it, and looks for its fruit. It is an object of property and of special care. The wild tree in the forest, the tree which is self-sown upon the plain, no one owns, no one watches over it; no heart will sigh if the lightning flash shall shiver it; no tear will be wept if the blast should light upon it and all its leaves should wither. It is no man's property. It shelters no man's roof. No man [cares] for it.
That's the difference between a cultivated tree and a wild tree. The blessed man is like a tree that is planted, which means that you, believer, are by God's choice and by God's providence the special object of His care. That's the imagery that is used here. Not a wild tree out in the middle of the wilderness that you could care less about but a specific tree chosen and planted and watched over that you would be fruitful and flourish.
Now the tree symbolism is a rich symbolism and it’s used throughout the Old Testament and obviously into the New Testament. Israel was an agrarian land with a lot of agrarian culture and so we see these types of agrarian similes and metaphors and pictures used all the way through our Scriptures. The first episode or the first incident of this type of imagery, and it's in a literal place, a literal time—that's in the garden of Eden in Genesis 2. So this picture occurs early. Genesis 2:8:
8 The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
9 Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. (Gen. 2:8–10 NASB)
So here early in Genesis, you have a tree that is planted at a place where there are four rivers that water that lush garden. And in that garden, God walked with man in his innocence before the fall. God walked with man, and there was consummate provision there. Everything that Adam and Eve could have needed, everything they could have desired, was provided for them by God, and they had God to walk with and commune with.
It's also the same picture that we see at the end of our Scriptures in Revelation 22, and Ezekiel 47 describes the same thing in the restored creation. Here's how Ezekiel describes it: “By the river on its bank, on one side and on the other, will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail. They will bear every month because their water flows from the sanctuary, and their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing” (v. 12). And then Revelation 22 says,
1 Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb,
2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Rev. 22:1–2 NASB)
So we have at the beginning of God's revelation the tree of life planted by rivers in the garden, where everything was provided and men walked with God in communion and fellowship with Him. And then we have at the end of God's revelation the tree of life planted by the river which flows from the throne of God, where abundance is provided for all God's people and He walks with us just like He did with Adam and Eve in the garden beforehand. That's the imagery that is used here, a tree that is planted that is flourishing, and it is well watered, and it is lavish in its fruitfulness.
The imagery of the tree also reminds us of judgments that were promised, as sometimes the opposite of the flourishing tree becomes the specific point of the metaphor. When the nation of Israel forsook the law of God and turned from Yahweh's instruction, then Scripture likens that nation to a tree that withers and dries up. Isaiah 1:30—judgment upon Israel is described in these terms: “For you will be like an oak whose leaf fades away or as a garden that has no water.” Isaiah 34:1–4 describes the judgment of God upon all the nations at the end of time, and listen to how the judgment upon the nations for their rebellion and their turning away from the law of God is described. Isaiah 34:1–4:
1 Draw near, O nations, to hear; and listen, O peoples! Let the earth and all it contains hear, and the world and all that springs from it.
2 For the Lord's indignation is against all the nations, and His wrath against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to slaughter.
3 So their slain will be thrown out, and their corpses will give off their stench, and the mountains will be drenched with their blood.
4 And all the hosts of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll; all their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine, or as one withers from the fig tree. (NASB)
So here's the summary of the Old Testament imagery. The man of God, the blessed man, is like a tree that is firmly planted by multiple streams of water that nourish it and cause it to grow. And that tree ends up producing fruit because that man meditates on the Word of God day and night. Scripture becomes his source of sustenance and food and nourishment, and because he is nourished by the Word of God, he flourishes like a tree that is firmly and intentionally planted right next to multiple streams of water.
And the streams in the analogy is the instruction of Yahweh that is mentioned in verses 1–2. We are to not walk in the path or the instruction of the ungodly but instead in the instruction of Yahweh. And when one does that, he becomes like this tree planted by the streams. The streams are the Word of God, which nourishes and feeds the soul of the blessed man.
Second, I want you to notice his produce. That's his provision in the first phrase. Next, notice the blessed man's produce, verse 3, second phrase, “which yields its fruit in its season” (Ps. 1:3). He's like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season. This tree is a fruitful tree. It yields fruit. In fact, the reason the tree is planted is so that it would bear fruit. And so one may expect that if it is nourished by the streams or by the Word of God it is going to bear fruit that is in keeping with the nourishment that it receives. You plant a tree that's to bear fruit and you expect it to bear fruit.
Now, I have in my yard one fruit tree that does not bear fruit. I planted this ten years ago. I planted it in my yard because it came from my mom's Italian plum tree, which came from my great-grandmother's Italian plum tree, which I wanted to have sort of that in my yard. I thought that would be cool. Someday my grandkids or great-grandkids will take a little shoot off this. I planted it ten years ago. It has never produced a single plum or a single blossom or a single sprout that shoots up. It looks beautiful. It's flourishing. But I tell you right now, it's a dead tree standing because this fall, it's coming up. It's coming down out of there. If it does not bear fruit, it goes to the fire. That's biblical. The vine that does not bear fruit is going to be cut off and burned. So that's what I'm going to do with this fruitless tree. There's another fruitless tree in my yard, which is my wife's Canadian maple tree. Because I love my wife like Christ loved the church, I allowed one tree in my yard that I will mow around and weed eat around that does not give me something to eat.
So which fruit is it that is intended that the righteous man or the blessed man produces? You'll notice the text doesn't say. The text doesn't say it produces the fruit of this or the fruit of that. It just says that it produces each fruit in its season. When the season is right and when the season is ripe, this tree produces fruit. I think that the author does not describe the fruit or name the fruit because I think that there are varieties of fruits that the blessed man produces in his life. It's not just one fruit, patience or thankfulness or kindness, but it is a whole bunch of virtues. So that in times of plenty there is produced by this blessed man generosity and thankfulness and graciousness. In times of privation, in seasons of drought, there is produced thankfulness and hope. In times of affliction or seasons of suffering, he produces patience and long-suffering. In times of grief and sorrow, he produces faith and trust. In seasons of turmoil, peace. In seasons of temptation, prayer and obedience. When he is wronged, the blessed man produces forgiveness and mercy and gentleness. Those are the fruits that are produced in the blessed man. And when the Word of God is at work in the heart of a believer and he is nourished by the Word of God, whatever season it is that God has brought into his life, he will produce the fruits that are in keeping with that season. Multitudes of fruits, all kinds of varieties of fruitfulness. The work of the Word is seen in the fruit that is born in the lives of those who are planted by the streams of water. And if you starve yourself of God's Word and cut yourself off from that, then do not be surprised to see your spiritual fruit begin to fade and wither and even fall off.
Notice that it says that it produces this in its season. That can take time. It can take time. The tree doesn't bear fruit overnight. There has to be growth and nourishment and maturing and development and ripening. In the case of my plum tree, it's had ten years. That's more than sufficient. That's why it deserves to be burned, and I'm going to do that. It is only a fool who says, “You know, I tried reading Scripture, meditating on the Word of God for a whole month, and I didn't see any difference. Nothing happened. I tried daily devotions for a couple of weeks, and I didn't see any magic pill.” This is not a magic pill. Seasons are seasons. They're long periods of time. It takes a while for a tree to develop over years, and sometimes the growth of fruit can be imperceptible to the naked eye when you try and observe it. I can stand outside in my yard and watch my apples or my peaches or my apricots or my cherries, and I can stare at them from dawn till dusk and I will not notice any growth whatsoever. None. But I promise you they have grown because if I do it week by week, then I will notice growth. Week-to-week or month-to-month. Fruit takes sometimes a long time to develop and to grow and to mature. The growth of a tree can sometimes be entirely imperceptible. You don't notice it day-to-day, hour-to-hour, but you do year-to-year.
I told you about the Canadian maple tree that my wife convinced me to plant. When we planted it, it was one of the smallest trees in our yard, just a small little sprig. And now, that was twenty-some years ago, I think. It's at least twenty years old. And I was just driving up to my house this last week, and I noticed that it dwarfs every other tree in my yard. And I thought to myself, “We need to cut this thing down. It is way too big. It’s all that I see now driving up here.” But at no point in any one day did I think, “Oh, I've noticed how big it has grown since yesterday.” It takes a while. The fruit is born in its season.
Third, I want you to notice his permanence. Verse 3 again. “Its leaf does not wither.” This is an evergreen tree. It's odd because it's an evergreen tree that is always producing fruit. We have evergreens around here, but they don't produce fruit in this sense. This is a tree that is constantly nourished by the Word of God, it never runs dry, and the imagery here is very simple and powerful. In an arid region like Israel, you can imagine trees that would be planted by these canals of water that the farmers would bring onto their piece of land to irrigate all of their trees and their plants, and you would have a dry season in which the ground would dry up and even crack, and yet the tree would be green and flourishing and even bearing fruit. Its leaf does not wither. You might look at the landscape around it and say, “This is dry and it is parched and everything here is going to die, and yet this tree has roots that go down deep into the soil, and it is nourished and it is fed and it is sustained by something that you cannot see on the surface of the ground.” That's the imagery here. This is an evergreen tree that is vibrant, it is flourishing, it is fruitful because it is nourished by things that the average person, that other people, do not see. The wicked do not observe what it is that nourishes these trees. These trees are nourished by things that are out of sight, by deep roots.
Fourth, I want you to notice his prosperity, and that's the fourth phrase of verse 3: “And in whatever he does, he prospers.” Let's read all of verse 3 again: “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.” Now here is where the simile can be abused and where we can misunderstand what the author is intending. It is helpful for us to consider what he is not promising and what he does mean here. The word that is translated “prosper” can describe something that is profitable, something that is prosperous, something successful or completed, or even something brought to its ordained end. In other words, it is brought to completion. So now the question is, what kind of prosperity is it that the author is describing? And what is he saying that is being prospered? Notice that it is he who is prospered in whatever it is that he undertakes.
Now, prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen and Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland, they love verses like this because these verses seem to suggest that they will have a life of unending prosperity and wealth and health and happiness and that nothing that they ever do will fail. They will never be involved in a business venture that will go south. They'll never lose their job. They'll never have a building project that never gets completed. They'll never fail at anything. That everything that they touch will turn to gold like Midas. They'll never lose money. Their house will never burn down. They'll never get sick or ill or have a child die or a car that breaks down. That's how the promise of prosperity is often abused and used in our day.
But that's not what the author is describing here. Because you will notice that sometimes the wicked do prosper as well, right? In those terms, the wicked do. In fact, that's the whole crux of the issue that is at the heart of Psalm 73 and Psalm 37, which we're going to get to. And we're going to deal with some of these Old Testament statements that seem to promise prosperity and abundance to the people who are righteous when we get into Psalm 37 because there in that entire psalm, all forty of those verses, that question is really taken up and addressed at length. So we're going to leave sort of a wrestling through how you understand those passages for later on when we get into that psalm, but I want you to understand here at this point that the fact that sinners can sometimes be prosperous is no malignancy upon promises like what we find here in this phrase.
In fact, in Psalm 37, to give you an example of how sometimes the wicked do prosper—in fact, let me back up for a second. It is obvious sometimes that the prosperity seems unbalanced on the side of the wicked, does it not? That causes us real angst. Because while we, as righteous, God-fearing people, do enjoy a level of comfort and abundance and provision that most of the world does not—in fact, most of humanity has never enjoyed the things that we enjoy—the wicked seem to enjoy those things in a greater abundance than we do all told, when taken as a whole. And yet the issue that is raised in Psalm 73 about what about the wicked and why is it that the wicked prosper, it is answered in Psalm 73 this way, verses 18–20: “Surely You [that is, God] set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.” The prosperity that the wicked enjoy is a preparation of their judgment. God is fattening the wicked up for destruction by abundantly giving to them this world's goods. That's the teaching of Psalm 73 and Psalm 37.
The success or the good that is promised to the righteous in this passage and in other passages like it is a good or a blessing, a success, that is described throughout wisdom literature in the Psalms and in Proverbs, and it encompasses more than mere material prosperity. If we think that prosperity begins and ends with wealth, business, success in this life, ease and comfort and temporary and temporal blessings, if that's what we think prosperity is, then we will miss the point of wisdom literature because true prosperity is far more than that. Let me ask you this question. Is it better to have barns that are filled with plenty or a soul that is filled with God's goodness and grace? Which one is better? Is it better to have all the world could offer you and your soul shrivel, or would it be better to have none of this world's goods and yet to have a soul that is fat and flourishing and fruitful? Obviously, the latter is better. And it is the latter that is incorporated into the idea of prosperity and blessing in this psalm and in other places. The blessedness, happiness, peace, joy, and delight that is the lot of the righteous is something that is enjoyed without any reference to material or financial prosperity. Now, material blessings and abundance may be involved in God's blessing to us in this life, but it is not necessary.
In fact, we have to think of that blessing that God gives to the blessed man or the righteous in terms of not just the soul flourishing in this life and the fruitfulness in this life but also of the ultimate prosperity, which is the end that both the righteous and the wicked will be at when it is all said and done. And when you zoom out, you say in terms of the righteous and the wicked, the end result is not similar at all. In fact, it is entirely different. And that is really where the prosperity of the righteous can be seen. And that's in Psalm 37, and we'll get to that more when we get there.
There are limits. Notice the fourth phrase of verse 3. It says, “In whatever he does, he prospers.” I think there are limits pronounced on that by the text itself. In other words, the righteous does not prosper in his sin. The blessed man does not prosper in endeavors that leave God out or in pride or presumption or any endeavor that he undertakes. The limitations are on the endeavors or the things that he does that are in keeping with his meditation upon the law or the instruction of Yahweh. So the “whatever” is to include the things that spring out of a life that is lived in obedience to the law, to the Word of God, in which he delights day and night. It's not every single thing he does that is promised to succeed or to prosper. It is the things that he does that are in keeping with the meditation on the law of Yahweh.
So a blessed man may have a business failure. A blessed man's house may burn down. A blessed person's spouse may get sick and die. The car may break down. He may lose his business. He might lose his job. Bad things will happen to the righteous. But here is the promise of Scripture. Everything that that man does that is in obedience to and in keeping with the law of God in which he meditates day and night, every one of those things will be brought to its God-ordained, God-appointed end and will result in the prospering of his soul. Your every act of obedience, your every act of service, your every act of sacrifice will have its God-ordained completed end, and that end will prosper you. It will be for your good and for your soul's blessedness. In other words, the ultimate outcome of the blessed man's obedience to the instruction of God is his temporal and eternal good. In all that God appoints for the blessed man, He accomplishes the blessed man's good. He ordains his ultimate joy and good, and everything the Lord does for this man of Psalm 1 is guaranteed to produce his ultimate and eternal happiness and joy. Catch that. Everything that God appoints for the blessed man of Psalm 1 is intended for your ultimate and eternal blessing and joy.
That includes your suffering and affliction. You say, how does that work? How does it work that I can suffer and be afflicted and yet prosper? Because one thing we do not understand in our context and we need to wrestle through is the reality that our affliction and our suffering can actually result in the prospering of our soul. The Lord chastens those whom He loves. He brings to us affliction and suffering and trials and temptations and difficulties all because in meditating on the law of God day and night, God intends the good for that child of His to whom He has brought those things. He intends our good and the flourishing of our soul, and He knows exactly how to use those things in order to accomplish that God-ordained end in the life of His child. Spurgeon said this: It is often for the soul's health that we would be poor, bereaved, and persecuted. . . . The trials of the saint are a divine husbandry, by which he grows and brings forth abundant fruit.” In all things, even your affliction, God intends your good. In all things, even your suffering and your trials and your difficulties, God is working for the good of your soul and for your eternal joy and your eternal prospering.
Now how is it possible that we could speak of somebody's affliction and somebody's blessing? Well, who is the blessed man of Psalm 1:1–2? Who is the one who never walked in the counsel of the ungodly, never sat in the seat of scoffers, and never stood in the way of the transgressor? Who is that one? There's only one person who has never done that, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ, correct? He's the only one. And yet here is what Isaiah 53, the chapter that talks about the suffering of the suffering Servant—here's what Isaiah 53 says. Listen, verse 10: “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.” Same word, prosper. The suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ is described as—the result of that—as the good pleasure of the Lord prospering in His hand.
So here's my question to you. If you could go back to the original first Good Friday on that Passover weekend almost two thousand years ago and walk into the city of Jerusalem and walk past those three men hanging on the cross, and you were to look at the Man on the middle cross, would you have said to yourself, “That is the blessed man of Psalm 1”? Would you have said that? You would never say that. “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal. 3:13)—that's what you would have said. Not “Blessed is He on the middle cross. Here is the King of the Jews.” You would have never considered Him a blessed man, and yet He is the blessed man of Psalm 1. Why? Because through His affliction, the Lord has caused the good pleasure of Yahweh to prosper in His hand, meaning He has paid the price for all His people, and He will gather in all His people and accomplish everything that Yahweh sent Him to do. He will receive the kingdom, and He will turn it over to us in that final day, prospering all those for whom He has died. The good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. The man of Psalm 1 is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the man of Psalm 1 hung on a cross. And as a result of that affliction, the Lord has caused all the sin of His people to fall upon Him, and the good pleasure of the Lord is prospered in His hand.
Now verse 4, very brief—“not so the wicked!” (NKJV) In fact, there are manuscripts of this passage that have a double negative here so that it says, “Not so the wicked, not so.” In other words, the author is intending here the starkest of contrasts. Everything we've said about the blessed man, the wicked enjoys none of that. None of those things apply to him. So whatever we think blessing means in terms of the righteous or the blessed man in verse 3—whatever we think the wicked enjoy in terms of blessing, that is not what is being described in verse 3. It is a different kind of blessedness entirely. Do the righteous and the wicked both enjoy material prosperity? They do. For the righteous it is God's blessing. For the wicked it is God's curse. It is the exact same filthy lucre that God intends for His child one way and for the wicked another way. But this blessing that is described in verse 3 is something entirely different. Everything about the wicked is opposite of the blessed man or the righteous.
In this life that is not as evident as it will be in the life that is to come. In this life it seems like the difference between the righteous and the wicked is kind of one of degrees. We live in the same houses. We drive the same kind of cars. We eat the same food, we enjoy the same restaurants, we dress the same, we visit the same place, we work at the same places. There's a lot of similarities between the righteous and the wicked. But in the eternal measurement, in the eternal perspective, the difference could not be more contrast. Not so the wicked.
And notice how the wicked are described. “They are like chaff which the wind drives away” (v. 4). Again, an agricultural simile. James Boice in his commentary says this,
The picture here is of a threshing floor at the time of the grain harvest. The threshing floors of Israel are on hills that catch the best breezes. Grain is brought to them, is crushed by animals or by threshing instruments that are drawn over it, then it is pitched high into the air where the wind blows the chaff away. The heavier grain falls back to the threshing floor and is collected. The chaff is scattered or burned.
To use the picture of chaff to describe the wicked—“the wicked is like chaff which the wind drives away”—it describes two things, their uselessness and their judgment. Uselessness and judgment. The wicked produce no righteousness and no true eternal and everlasting goodness. While they may serve some temporally, humanly speaking good purposes in this life—they invent things that we enjoy, they design pleasures that we get to enjoy as well. The wicked do a few things here in terms of temporally on this planet, but they have no eternal value. When we measure them with eternal standards and by eternal weights, the wicked are worthless and light and have no substance. They are driven away by the breeze. They have no substance whatsoever.
Not like the tree that is firmly planted. A tree firmly planted will see the blast of the wind. The wind will come. The wind will blow, and the tree might move, but it is not taken over. It's not turned over. It's not destroyed. Whereas the chaff are so useless and light and of no substance that immediately when the wind blows, the chaff are blown away with it, and they are gone and forgotten just as fast as you can say, “The wicked are like chaff which the wind blows away.” That quickly they are forgotten. They have no root, they produce no fruit, they're light and insignificant, useless to the farmer, have no value, and they're blown away and quickly forgotten. Nobody measures the success of their crop or the success of their harvest by the amount of chaff that they took off it. Nobody does that.
John the Baptist described the judgment that is coming upon the world this way, executed by the Lord Jesus, by the way, in Matthew 3:12: “His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” It's a picture of God's judgment, the chaff. At the time of Christ's return to establish His kingdom, all the nations of the earth will be destroyed.
And here's how Daniel 2, at the end of that vision of all the kingdoms, where you have the rock that is cut out without hands and it comes and it crushes all the kingdoms—here's what Daniel 2:35 says of the coming judgment that Jesus will bring: “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” You hear that? All of the nations are chaff. And when that stone rolls in and destroys all of the kingdoms of this world and it fills the entire world, it is going to bring destruction and the wicked will be blown away like the wind blows away the chaff.
How inconsequential are the wicked? Notice that they just get one phrase to describe them—chaff. Chaff which the wind blows away. Notice the contrast between verse 3. Verse 3 says the righteous are like the tree, and you get their fruitfulness, you get a description of their leaves, you get a description of their activities and the prosperity that comes to them, and then the wicked, “chaff which the wind drives away.” Even the brevity of the description is intended to demonstrate the contrast between the righteous, the blessed man, and the wicked.
And notice also that the blessed man is described as a singular, and the chaff are described all together. The blessed man, each and every single blessed man, is like a tree firmly planted by rivers of water. Every one of them brings forth its fruit. Every one of them is firmly planted. Every one of them has leaves that never fade or wither. Every one of them is prospered by God and by His providential hand in the accomplishment of all that Yahweh sets out for him to do. Every one of them is like that. So if you have a collection of godly and blessed men together, it's like having a forest or an orchard full of such trees that are firmly planted by streams of water. One blessed man is like a tree. Take all of the wicked, pile them all together, and what are they like? Chaff. That's their value. Add them all together, that's the value of the wicked in the eternal scale, in the eternal sense.
So here's the application. Why would you pursue their counsel? That's the point of the psalm. Why would you stand with them? Why would you identify with them? Why would you try and seduce others to join their path? Why would you not be like the man who delights himself in the law of God day and night and meditates upon it? Why wouldn't you be like that person, given that the wicked are going to receive that kind of an end?
Do not be influenced by chaff. Do not be swayed by them. However strong sinners may seem now, however entrenched in their positions of power and influence, and however weighty their opinions may sound, however immovable and unconquerable the wicked appear in all of their evil and in all of their power and in all of their positions, keep in mind that they in the end are going to be driven by the wind of God's wrath that comes out of His nostrils like chaff from the threshing floor, and it will be piled up, and it will be burned with unquenchable fire. That is what Scripture promises.
There's going to come a time, I don't know, ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand years from now, when we're all sitting around in the kingdom, and we're going to say to each other, “Remember that day we were all worried about the 2024 election? Remember that?” See how goofy that seems now in perspective? We've forgotten the Nancy Pelosis, forgotten the Kamala Harrises and the Joe Bidens, forgotten the congressmen and the Supreme Court justices, because all of them that did not delight in the law of the Lord will be driven away like chaff. And not to be sadistic, but we will rejoice in God's judgment when that day comes. If God is going to rejoice in that righteous work, His people will rejoice in that righteous work as well. They will be driven away like the chaff. Psalm 35:5: “Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord driving them on.”
So which one are you, whose counsel do you follow, and what will be your end?