Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither,
whatever they do prospers.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. Psalm 1 (NIV)
I grew up with godly parents who attended an amazing church in Southern California that taught the Word of God clearly and effectively. I had excellent male Christian role models, some of whom personally discipled me as a youth and as a young man. As a result, I felt prepared to attend a leading secular university – the University of California at Los Angeles. I chose to attend a secular institution instead of a Christian college because I knew God was calling me into ministry and I realized that I needed to be able to defend my faith in the secular market place of ideas.
It was an exhilarating time for me spiritually. I had the opportunity to witness to many of my professors and fellow students. I’ll never forget my ancient history professor, a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD from Harvard, admitting to me that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ was actually very good. On another occasion, my philosophy professor told me, “Herb, philosophy has no answers.” At one point, I was invited to talk about Christianity in a nearby synagogue that my Hebrew professor attended. And after talking with my psychology professor about the Lord, she stated, “I’ve never heard it explained this way before.”
I didn’t “walk, sit or stand” in the godless, materialistic philosophy that permeated all of UCLA. Instead, because I had been prepared with some excellent teaching and training, the Lord enabled me to bring the intellectual battle to them and “strike a blow for Jesus Christ.”
What I was not prepared for, however, was life after college and graduate school. I must say, it was much easier for me to resist the overt and explicit anti-God, anti-Christian sentiment at UCLA than the much more subversive and seductive general American culture we live in today. The materialism extolled in advertising, the sexual immorality celebrated in entertainment, the violence that headlines local news, the lack of a moral compass in politics, the liberalism and syncretism of churches, the dissolution of marriages and families, all of this has formed a tsunami of cultural godlessness and chaos that is sweeping Christians away from their roots in Christian truth, which is the Word of God. Sometimes I myself feel like I’m hanging on for dear life.
Fortunately, the Bible itself gives us a solution to this torrent of cultural flotsam, and it is found in one word: “meditate.” No, it’s not talking about eastern meditation. Rather, it’s referring to the process of thinking Biblically: knowing what the Bible says, incorporating it into one’s thought processes, ruminating on it’s meaning and applying it to one’s circumstances on a consistent basis.
Psalm 1 describes it this way: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and he meditates on his law day and night.” The term “day and night” simply means “all the time”. “Meditate” means “to think deeply, to draw out the meaning of.” The psalmist is saying that the only way to avoid “walking, standing, or sitting” in our godless culture today is to delight in the Word of God by thinking about it deeply all the time.
And you know what, it works. People talk about being “brain washed,” but I like to think in terms of actively “washing my brain.” After a particularly heavy dose of godless Americana, I sit back and allow what I know about Scripture to cleanse my thought processes and return my mind to right thinking. It doesn’t take long, but it is a conscious process that takes effort. It’s not easy to not walk, stand or sit these days, It never really has been.
But it is possible.
Discussion Questions
- How does the psalmist describe the results of meditating on the Word of God constantly?
- What is “bearing fruit” and does it happen instantaneously when we meditate on the Word of God?
- Contrast the righteous man who meditates on God’s Word with the wicked.
- Do we hide our Christianity at work in order to fit in?
- Do we critically evaluate the secular messages that come through mass media?
- As Christians, what positive values can we add to our work environment and to our community?