Psalms 1:2

One learns to be bound by the law through continuous meditation so that one shapes himself by it.

When we sing, "Blessed is the one who shall meditate on the law of the Lord day and night," let us reject useless occupations, stinging jests, idle and wicked conversations, as the poison of the devil. Let us frequently read over and over again the …

There is no doubt then that, as this instance proves, the undutiful (or ungodly) must be distinguished from the sinner. And, indeed, general opinion agrees to call those men ungodly who scorn to search for the knowledge of God, who in their irreverent mind take for granted that there is no Creator of the world, who assert that it arrived at the order and beauty which we see by chance movements, who, in order to deprive their Creator of all power to pass judgment on a life lived rightly or in sin, will have it that man comes into being and passes out of it again by the simple operation of a law of nature. Thus, all the counsel of these men is wavering, unsteady, and vague, and wanders about in the same familiar paths and over the same familiar ground, never finding a resting-place, for it fails to reach any definite decision. They have never in their system risen to the doctrine of a Creator of the world, for instead of answering our questions as to the cause, beginning, and duration of the world, whether the world is for man, or man for the world, the reason of death, its extent and nature, they press in ceaseless motion round the circle of this godless argument and find no rest in these imaginings. There are, besides, other counsels of the ungodly, i.e., of those who have fallen into heresy, unrestrained by the laws of either the New Testament or the Old. Their reasoning ever takes the course of a vicious circle; without grasp or foothold to stay them they tread their interminable round of endless indecision. Their ungodliness consists in measuring God, not by His own revelation, but by a standard of their choosing; they forget that it is as godless to make a God as to deny Him; if you ask them what effect these opinions have on their faith and hope, they are perplexed and confused, they wander from the point and wilfully avoid the real issue of the debate. […]

But then sometimes the will needs supplementing; and the mere desire for perfect happiness does not win it, unless performance wait upon intention. The Psalm, you remember, goes on: And in His Law will he meditate day and night. The man achieves the perfection of happiness by unbroken and unwearied meditation in the Law. Now it may be objected that this is impossible owing to the conditions of human infirmity, which require time for repose, for sleep, for food: so that our bodily circumstances preclude us from the hope of attaining happiness, inasmuch as we are distracted by the interruption of our bodily needs from our meditation by day and night. Parallel to this passage are the words of the Apostle, Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) As though we were bound to set at naught our bodily requirements and to continue praying without any interruption! Meditation in the Law, therefore, does not lie in reading its words, but in pious performance of its injunctions; not in a mere perusal of the books and writings, but in a practical meditation and exercise in their respective contents, and in a fulfilment of the Law by the works we do by night and day, as the Apostle says: Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31) The way to secure uninterrupted prayer is for every devout man to make his life one long prayer by works acceptable to God and always done to His glory: thus a life lived according to the Law by night and day will in itself become a nightly and daily meditation in the Law. But now that the man has found perfect happiness by keeping aloof from the counsel of the ungodly and the way of sinners and the seat of pestilence, and by gladly meditating in the Law of God by day and by night, we are next to be shown the rich fruit that this happiness he has won will yield him. […]

Now the words which stand at the beginning of the Psalm are quite unsuited to the Person and Dignity of the Son, while the whole contents are in themselves a condemnation of the careless haste that would use them to extol Him. For when it is said, and his will has been in the Law of the Lord, how (seeing that the Law was given by the Son of God) can a happiness which depends on his will being in the Law of the Lord be attributed to Him Who is Himself Lord of the Law? That the Law is His He Himself declares in the seventy-seventh Psalm, where He says: Hear My Law, O My people: incline your ears unto the words of My mouth. I will open My mouth in a parable. And the Evangelist Matthew further asserts that these words were spoken by the Son, when he says For this cause spoke He in parables that the saying might be fulfilled: I will open My mouth in parables. Matthew 13:35 The Lord then gave fulfilment in act to His own prophecy, speaking in the parables in which He had promised that He would speak. But how can the sentence, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rills of water,— wherein growth in happiness is set forth in a figure— be possibly applied to His Person, and a tree be said to be more happy than the Son of God, and the cause of His happiness, which would be the case if an analogy were established between Him and it in respect of growth towards happiness? Again, since according to Wisdom Proverbs 8:22 and the Apostle, He is both before the ages and before times eternal, and is the First-born of every creature; and since in Him and through Him all things were created, how can He be happy by becoming like objects created by Himself? […]

The memory of the law of God overtakes [the blessed person's] own will. And day and night he models his behavior through meditation on divine law so that the life that Adam destroyed by his contempt, he himself may find by guarding it, remaining deep …

Meditation during the day is, of course, good, but that at night is better. During the day, there is the clamor of our many cares, the mental distraction of our occupations. A double preoccupation divides our attention. The quiet and solitude of the night make …

And in his law he shall meditate day and night. He named three things which he ought not to do: not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, and not to stand in the way of sinners, and not to sit in the seat of pestilence. He named three things which we ought not to do: he names two things which we ought to do. For it is not enough for us to flee evils, unless we attain to goods. But his will is in the law of the Lord. He did not say "fear," but "will": for many act out of fear, but the fear of the one acting has no reward. But his will is in the law of the Lord, that he may wish to do what the Lord has commanded. And in his law he shall meditate day and night. Speech cannot unfold how much the mind conceives. But his will is in the law of the Lord. Someone may say: Behold, I wish to do the law of God, therefore I am blessed because I wish it. But see what follows: it is not enough to will the law of God, but to meditate in his law day and night. He shall meditate day and night. Someone may say: This human nature does not bear; for one must walk, and drink, and eat, and sleep, and the things necessary for life must be procured. How then shall he meditate on the law of God day and night, especially since the apostle says: 'Praying without ceasing'? Can I pray at the time when I am sleeping? Meditation on the law, then, is not in reading, but in doing. Indeed it is said in another place: 'Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord.' If I hold out alms, I meditate on the law of God: if I visit the sick, my feet meditate on the law of God: if I do the things that are commanded, what others meditate with the mouth, I meditate with the body. The Jews, therefore, meditate with the mouth: our meditation is work. […]

The splendid brilliance of God's grace never suffers an eclipse. No, it is always at hand to enlighten the inner thoughts of those who really want it. Great good comes to people who, enlightened by the grace of God, make it their habit to apply the truths of holy Scripture to their lives. They receive just such a blessing as the psalmist describes.… Those blessings come because the person who accepts God's grace is not illumined by mere physical light from the sun, the moon or even the whole host of stars.

Hence, meditation on the Law is supremely necessary. The Psalm reads: Happy the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked, but delights in the Law of the Lord. He is like a tree planted near running water. And Ecclesiasticus: The things that God …

Let us too do this, meditating continuously on the things of God, and by means of the Lord's law, let our wills be grafted on to him.

Now the blessedness of man is in God. Ps. 143: "Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord," etc. The right process toward blessedness is therefore, first, that we submit ourselves to God, and this in two ways. First through the will, by obeying …

When the psalmist undertakes to describe a blessed man, he describes a good man; for, after all, those only are happy, truly happy, that are holy, truly holy; and we are more concerned to know the way to blessedness than to know wherein that blessedness will consist. Nay, goodness and holiness are not only the way to happiness ( Rev. xxii.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — unbalanced-parens

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,....

Blessed— see how this Book of Psalms opens with a benediction, even as did the famous Sermon of our Lord upon the Mount! The word translated "blessed" is a very expressive one. The original word is plural, and it is a controverted matter whether it is an adjective or a substantive. Hence we may learn the multiplicity of the blessings which shall rest upon the man whom God hath justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness he shall enjoy. We might read it, "Oh, the blessednesses!"

Blessed— see how this Book of Psalms opens with a benediction, even as did the famous Sermon of our Lord upon the Mount! The word translated "blessed" is a very expressive one. The original word is plural, and it is a controverted matter whether it is an adjective or a substantive. Hence we may learn the multiplicity of the blessings which shall rest upon the man whom God hath justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness he shall enjoy. We might read it, "Oh, the blessednesses!" and we may well regard it (as Ainsworth does) as a joyful acclamation of the gracious man's felicity. May the like benediction rest on us! Here the gracious man is described both negatively (verse 1) and positively (verse 2). He is a man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. He takes wiser counsel, and walks in the commandments of the Lord his God. To him the ways of piety are paths of peace and pleasantness. His footsteps are ordered by the Word of God, and not by the cunning and wicked devices of carnal men. It is a rich sign of inward grace when the outward walk is changed, and when ungodliness is put far from our actions. Note next, he standeth not in the way of sinners. His company is of a choicer sort than it was. Although a sinner himself, he is now a blood-washed sinner, quickened by the Holy Spirit, and renewed in heart. Standing by the rich grace of God in the congregation of the righteous, he dares not herd with the multitude that do evil. Again it is said, "nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." He finds no rest in the atheist's scoffings. Let others make a mock of sin, of eternity, of hell and heaven, and of the Eternal God; this man has learned better philosophy than that of the infidel, and has too much sense of God's presence to endure to hear His name blasphemed.

IT is an old saying and possibly a true one, that every man is seeking after happiness. If it is so, then every man should read this Psalm, for this directs us where happiness is to be found in its highest degree and purest form! "Blessed," says David, "is such-and-such a man," and the word which he uses is, in the original, exceedingly expressive.

IT is an old saying and possibly a true one, that every man is seeking after happiness. If it is so, then every man should read this Psalm, for this directs us where happiness is to be found in its highest degree and purest form! "Blessed," says David, "is such-and-such a man," and the word which he uses is, in the original, exceedingly expressive. It implies a sort of plurality of blessedness—"Blessednesses are to the man" and it is scarcely known whether the word is an adjective or a noun, as if the blessedness qualified the whole of life and was, in itself, better even than life itself! The very highest degree of happiness is blessedness, "these blessednesses,'' as Ainsworth says, "heaped up, one upon the other." Surely this is the very highest to which the human heart can aspire! Let us then, this evening, come with attentive hearts to consider in the Light of Revelation, the character of the blessed man. We will begin by considering— I. WHO THE "BLESSED MAN" IS. The description given of him is simply this, that he is a man. There are moral qualities given, but the only thing said of him, in the first place, is that he is a man. Here is something very suggestive, for he is a person subject to the common sorrows of humanity. If we hear of a person greatly blessed by the sense of Christ's Presence and so enabled to walk in holiness and much usefulness, we cherish the delusion that he must have been better than the ordinary run of men, certainly not such an one as ourselves! Ah, but how great is the mistake! God fashions all hearts alike and if there are distinctions, they are of Divine Grace, not of being better by nature! The most blessed man is still a man.

But his delight - His pleasure; his happiness. Instead of finding his happiness in the society and the occupations of the wicked, he finds it in the truth of God. The law or truth of God is not distasteful to him, but he so delights in it as to desire to become more and more acquainted with it, and to have its truths impressed more and more on his heart. In the law of the Lord - The law of Yahweh - the small capitals in the translation indicating here as elsewhere that the original word is Yahweh. The word law in the Scriptures is used in a considerable variety of significations. The Hebrew word תורה tôrâh, properly means instruction, precept; and then, an injunction, command, law, in the usual sense of the word. It was applied particularly to the Pentateuch, or law of Moses (compare the notes at Luk 24:44), as containing the first written and recorded laws of God; and then the word came, in a more general sense, to be applied to all the books of the Old Testament, as being an exposition and application of the law. Here the word undoubtedly refers to the written revelation of the will of God as far as it was then made known. On the same principle, however, the declaration here made would apply to any part of a divine revelation; and hence, the sentiment is, that a truly pious man finds his highest delight in the revealed truths of God. This is often referred to as characteristic of true piety. Compare Psa 19:10; Psa 119:97, Psa 119:99. And in his law - On his law, or his truth. “He doth meditate.” The word used here, הגה hâgâh, means properly to complain, to mutter; then, to speak; then, to utter in a low complaining voice, as is often done by a person in deep meditation; hence, in the usual sense, to meditate on anything; to think of it. […]

The Psalmist tells us to delight ourselves in the law of Lord and to meditate on it day and night.