The Happy Life
- Strength For Life
- 12 minutes ago
- 8 min read
The theme of Psalm 1 in one word is “happiness.” By happiness I mean blessedness. In the simplest terms, Psalm 1 prescribes the life that brings deep-seated joy. When we engage in surface conversation with each others, we often communicate that we wish happiness on them. We say things like, “Have a great day!” At the holiday time we say, “Merry Christmas.” That is, a happy, joy-filled Christmas to you and your family. Shortly after that, we tell people “Happy New Year.” If you love alliteration the way I do, you might wish others a Marvelous Monday or a Tremendous Thursday.
While these expressions are often trite, we have a genuine desire for those we love, like our family, to be truly happy. If one of the members of my family of five is unhappy, it affects my spirit. Likewise, if my wife or my sons see me displeased or discouraged, it affects their happiness. I want my family to be happy with our lunch choice, or with the activity we have chosen.
As a pastor, I want the people of NorthStone to be happy. I want things to be well with them, and I want them to find joy as I minister to them through sermons and lead our church in ministry and fellowship. Specific to this psalm, I want our people to understand the path to happiness communicated in Psalm 1.
Where does the happiness described in Psalm 1 originate? This deep seated joy the psalmist describes in directly correlated to find contentment in the character of God. Sometimes we lack joy because we desire something from God’s hand that He does not give us. The details of God’s provision vary among God’s people; some seem to receive more good from Him than others, especially over a limited period of time. However, something that all God’s people have access to is also something that does not change: His character. We universally benefit from His immutable, unchangeable character of God. Understanding this is the key to a happy life, and it is the content of Psalm 1.
Stop Looking in the Wrong Places
The psalmist begins his explanation of the happy life with a negative. The truly happy man “walketh not…nor standeth…nor sitteth” in certain places. Why begin with a negative? The psalmist knows where people typically go to find happiness. Our carnal propensity is to look for joy in the counsel of the ungodly, the way of sinners, or the seat of the scornful. After all, there is pleasure to be had in sin, but it is only for a season (Heb. 11:25).
You are probably familiar with the progression of behavior in verse 1, but it still bears repeating. There is a sinful descent when we look in all the wrong places. There is walking in ungodly counsel. Then we regress to standing in the way of sinners. Finally, we become so comfortable looking in all the wrong places for happiness that we sit in the scorner’s seat. You become comfortable seeking help among the people of the world, and in the carnal ideologies they propound. Stop before your search takes you down that road.
Likewise, stop looking for your happiness in the possessions of this world. To clarify, our possessions are gifts from God, and we should steward them as unto Him. However, don’t be a person who places his hopes and dreams in his possessions. After all, one day this earth, and everything in it, will “melt with a fervent heat” (2 Pet. 3:10). Any happiness we find in the people or possessions of this world is only temporal. Worldly happiness leads only to emptiness, or as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, it is “work that is wrought under the sun” (Eccl. 2:17). What Solomon means is an attitude that thinks only horizontally; they fail to connect the things of this world to our Creator.
You may enjoy going to the water. Our family visits the Gulf a few times a year, and we enjoy it. However, finding gladness in the Gulf water while ignoring the God who made it is to do its beauty injustice. The things God entrusts to our stewardship should always be connected back to Him. Everything under the sun with Him is “vanity of vanities” (Eccl. 1:2). Solomon describes the vanity of looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places as laboring for the wind (Eccl. 5:16). You’ll never catch the wind, and you’ll never find happiness in the wrong place.
Start Delighting in All the Right Things
Just avoiding the ungodly, the sinners, and the scornful is not enough. The psalmist further explains the happy life by describing the right thing, namely, the law of the Lord. Verse 2 says that the delight of the happy man “is in the law of the LORD, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”
When we think of law, often we think first of a courtroom, a violation, a criminal. Those who think along the biblical track might consider first the 10 commandments, or maybe even the entire Pentateuch. However, the scope is greater than either of these options. The law refers to the entire body of God’s instruction. We should delight in all that God has entrusted to us in His revealed Word, commands and promises alike. All of the 66 books, each of the 1,189 chapters, and every one of the 788,000 words are important to God. They ought also to be important to us; as Jesus declared to Satan during the temptation, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
So, is Scripture your delight? Delight correlates to appetite, and appetites both physical and spiritual can be cultivated. As an example, you can cultivate an appetite for healthy foods that fuel your body well, or you can develop an appetite for junk food. This principle is also true for the influences all around us. You can feed the appetites of the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—and make the desire for those things stronger, or you can feed the appetites of the indwelling Spirit of God.
Are you cultivating an appetite for the Word? We choose which tastes we develop and which we allow to diminish. Again on a physical level, some of our food tastes are a part of our personality, and some are copied from our parents. However, as we grow, we develop the palate of an adult. Adults should crave different foods than children desire; it is a mark of maturity. Similarly, a growing, purposely cultivated desire for God’s Word is evidence we are maturing spiritually, and that we are looking for happiness in the right places.
Enjoy the Strength of a Happy Life
God’s character is connected to His Word. God’s character does not change, and His Word does not change. We are to delight in God’s character, but we can only understand Him through His Word. Delighting in God’s Word, then, leads us to delight in and draw strength from God Himself. It leads us to the happy life.
The theme of delight and strength, contrasted with fear and weakness, is what we see in the last half of Psalm 1. Verse 3 uses the image of a tree to illustrate the point. The blessed man, who centers his life in the Law of the LORD by meditating on it day and night, “shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.” This is strength! Contrast “the chaff which the wind driveth away” (v. 4). This is weakness and fleeting health, far away from the joy of the happy life.
Notice the rest of the tree’s description in verse 3. This strong tree “bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doth shall prosper.” This tree is fruitful. The strength of a blessed life is likewise fruitful. An important caution, however, is to define fruitfulness properly. This is not the materialistic fruitfulness of the prosperity gospel, or the accumulation of earthly acclaim. Rather, it is success as God describes it.
Success is only mentioned once in our King James Bibles. Joshua 1:8 promises prosperity and fruitfulness—both words describing success—to those obeying a certain command. This command is for “the book of the law” not to depart out of our mouths, but rather to “meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.” This is exactly what Psalm 1 tells us will bring about the happy life.
In addition to being a successful, fruitful, prosperous life, the happy life is one that experiences personal intimacy with God. What a humbling and inspiring possibility it is to know God in that way! Verse 6 says that “the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous.” The Lord knows. He knows you: He knows the path you are choosing, and He knows your current situation.
The fact that God knows you is strong motivation not to be moved by the fears of life. In Matthew 10:28, Jesus instructs His hearers not to fear “them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.” However, the primary reason for not fearing is given as the passage unfolds. Verses 29-30 describe the intimate relationship between God and His children. He knows us so intimately that He numbers the hairs on our head. Sparrows are far less valuable than humans, yet Jesus describes how our Father is aware when one bird falls to the ground. How much more care does God take for His own children! We have nothing to fear in this life.
One of my favorite verses also describes the careful concern God takes for His children. Psalms 139:17-18 describes how God’s thoughts of us “are more in number than the sand.” What an incredible and precious truth.
Often when I am praying I thank the Lord that, while He is our Creator and Sustainer, He turns His ear to the voice of His children. Amid the activity of managing the universe, the Lord is thinking of us so often that his thoughts are more numerous than the grains of sand. This intimacy with God is the highest joy of the blessed life. The intimacy is also something we can lean on when times are tough. He knows when we have been betrayed. He knows our heartache and heart-break.
A final aspect of the happy life is that it has direction to it. “The LORD knoweth the way of the righteous,” verse 6 says. The other way, the ungodly way, perishes because it departs from the Lord. Without God, the ungodly man is doomed to destruction.
The contrast in Psalms 1 between the righteous and the ungodly is a contrast of worldviews. While a sociologist might say there are many ways to approach the world, our psalm corrects that view. There are only two ways: a man-centered, unrighteous worldview (of which kind there are many), and a righteous, God-centered worldview. There is the Biblical worldview, and there are all the rest. Ultimately, those other worldviews lead their adherents to perish. Only God’s way leads to happiness and life—the happy life.
The above article was written by James C. Johnson. He is the pastor of NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.
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