What gives a life true stability when circumstances change? Drawing from the powerful imagery of Psalm 1, part 2 explores the difference between a life that remains joyful even in difficult circumstances and one that is easily blown away. If you’ve ever wondered why some people remain steady and fruitful no matter the season, this episode will draw you in and leave you wanting to listen closely.

Checkout these other Family Fortress Ministries Podcasts:

TIME FOR THREE daily couples devotional: https://time-for-three.captivate.fm/listen

FORTIFYING YOUR FAMILY: https://fortifying-your-family.captivate.fm/listen

Donate: https://familyfortress.org/donate

Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

Now we could spend a whole other message on this thing of meditation, but let me just make a few statements here this morning.

I love what Matthew Henry gives us as a definition of meditation and listen to it carefully.

To meditate in God's Word is to discourse with ourselves concerning the great things contained in it with a close application of mind, a fixedness of thought, till we be suitably affected with those things and experience the savor power of them in our hearts.

What a great phrase that is.

Charles Persian had many definitions, but one he said is very short.

He said, reading the word reaps the wheat, meditation threshes it, grinds it, and makes it into bread.

I like that.

This man doesn't just listen, folks.

He doesn't just delight in in the Word of God.

He meditates upon it.

He doesn't just read it.

He gets and meditates upon the Word of God in his heart continually, day and night.

But also notice that this happy man is not just meditating on the Word of God.

He's doing it, as I said, day and night.

He is doing it continually until it speaks to him, until it speaks to his heart, until.

Until it bears fruit in his life, until he sees where it can change him and where he needs to change.

Till he sees something about God where he can adore God and he can praise God.

Till he sees something about himself that he needs to confess that might be sinful in his life, that he might get closer to God through the reading of the Word of God.

So God is saying in this psalm that to have lasting happiness, you must be on the right path.

A path of righteousness where you're not walking, standing or sitting with the ungodly.

You must have the right pleasure where you're taking so much pleasure in the law of the Lord that it leads you to meditate in it continually, both day and night, and lastly to have lasting happiness.

And I'll spend a little bit more time on this one.

You must be planted in the right place.

You must be planted in the right place.

The next verse tells us this man can delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night because he is planted in the right location or he is planted in the right place.

Look at it in Verse three.

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

He shall be.

Here's a metaphor.

This man, this blessed man, this happy man, he will be like a tree planted by rivers of water.

This man who is blessed, this man who is happy is compared to a tree who is planted by a riverbank of continual flowing water.

But.

But it's important, I think, when I read this and I began to think on this.

It's important to understand that this man who is soaking up this living water and delighting in it, did not plant himself beside the river.

I don't know if you've ever thought about it if you read this psalm.

He didn't plant himself there.

He didn't.

We don't plant ourselves.

He had to be planted by the rivers of water by someone outside of himself.

Reminded of what Paul says in Romans, chapter three.

In verse 11, he says, There is none that seeketh after God.

If you're a Christian and you're here today, and you're in this auditorium here this morning, you're like this tree planted by the rivers of water.

And you're planted there solely by the grace of God.

You didn't plant yourself.

You didn't make yourself a Christian.

You became a Christian when you by faith.

And God gave you the faith to believe that Jesus is the Son of God who came to take your place as a sacrifice for your sins on the cross at Calvary.

That he came and he died for your sins.

He rose again on the third day so that you could have victory over death.

I could have victory over death, hell and the grave.

Why did he do all that?

So that we could become like this tree who's planted by the rivers of water.

He did this so we could claim the promise.

I love this in Psalm 104.

104.

That says in verse 16.

The trees of the Lord are full of SAP.

The cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted.

Now listen.

According to Jeremiah 31:3, in the New Covenant, when you trust in Christ as your savior, praise God.

He writes the law.

Where?

In your heart.

He writes the law in your heart.

And because he has written the law in your heart, he causes you through his spirit, to delight in it, to hunger for it, to thirst for it, and to want, to desire, to meditate in it day and night.

And because this happy man is planted by the rivers of water, by the grace of God, it says that he is like a tree that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Listen, the trees in my yard at home, the trees over at Mission Point.

If you drive over there and look at them, you know this.

They're subject to every season of the year.

Whether it's spring or whether it's summer, fall or winter.

They're subject to the season that they're in.

Therefore, they're not always fruitful, they're not always blossom.

I've got cherry trees in my front yard.

And for about a matter of several weeks they blossom.

And they're very, very beautiful.

I wish it blossom all year round.

But those blossoms are blown away by the wind.

And the blossoms leave the tree.

They come and go.

They're subject to the seasons, they're subject to winter.

They're subject to drought, the dryness of the summer and even famine, Drought in some places.

Therefore, they're not always looking green, they're not always looking wonderful.

They're not always bearing fruit.

But let me just say this.

But God.

But this particular tree mentioned in verse 3 is unlike other trees because it's been planted on a divine riverbank.

And its roots have access to endless rivers of living water.

With which in this picture represents, in this metaphor, that God's giving to us.

In these verses, it represents.

These rivers of living water represent the law of God or the Word of God.

And listen, folks, the tree is not just a pipe where the water comes in and the water goes out.

The tree is a living organism that feeds off the living water.

The result is that the tree bears fruit and the tree has leaves that never, ever wither.

This happy man is soaking up into himself the water of the Word and is being radically changed by it as he meditates on it both day and night.

So that even when the heat comes, the.

When the drought comes, the tree continues to thrive.

So what is God saying to us?

I believe he's saying that we're making a major mistake in our lives.

When we allow our happiness to be dictated or determined by our circumstances.

The seasons of life that we may be in or that we might be experiencing should not dictate our happiness.

Because we're planted by a river, Brooklyn, by a river on the riverbank of God.

Then we are feasting and can feast off the richness of the waters of the Word of God.

If you seek happiness in your circumstances, it will elude you.

Because real happiness is only found in being planted by God's river where you are rooted in Him.

Perhaps you've heard the illustration.

Two men looked up from prison bars One saw mud and one saw stars.

You ever heard that before?

Two men looked up from prison bars.

One saw mud, one saw stars.

What's the difference between these two men?

Their circumstances are the same.

Their circumstances are identical.

They have the same bars.

They're in the same prison.

So what's the difference?

The difference is in the man.

A Christian, listen, folks, is someone who's been planted and rooted into someone beside himself or herself.

That's why it says in Second Peter.

It says that we are made partakers of the what?

Divine nature.

Something has been planted into us from the outside of us.

We're planted by the rivers of water and rooted and grounded into the love of God in Jesus Christ.

This is what we're drawing from, and this is where our happiness comes from.

This tree by the rivers of water, still experiences all the storms and drought.

It still goes through times of suffering.

It's affected by the seasons and by the weather around it.

Yet it keeps bearing fruit and it keeps having leaves that never wither.

Why?

Because the more severe the weather gets, the tree roots go deeper and deeper down into the water of that river and begin to soak up more of the water of that river into itself so that the fruit does not quit coming out and the leaves do not quit being green and they do not wither.

If you're a Christian, listen, and you're going through a time of suffering, a time of trial, time of tribulation, you'll put your roots down deeper into him in a way that maybe you ever did, never did before.

Even though you're experiencing pain and suffering, you can still have a joy.

You can still have a happiness, a lasting happiness within you that the world knows nothing of.

Because the world is not planted like this tree on the riverbanks of living water.

Listen, folks, this is an amazing tree.

This tree represents you.

It represents myself, those of us who have trusted in Christ as our Lord and Savior.

And by the grace of God, he has made us children of God, and we have become accepted in the Beloved.

And he has, even as he is picturing in this wonderful picture in Psalm 1, he.

He has planted us by the river of living waters.

But notice that in verse four, it contrasts this tree that's planted by rivers of water to something else, something called chaff.

The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

Now, listen, the psalmist doesn't say, the godly are like a great oak tree and the ungodly are like a little dogwood tree.

That's not what it says.

It says the blessed man, the happy man, is like a tree planted by rivers of water.

And it says the ungodly man is like chaff.

So what is God picturing here?

Well, to understand that, we need to understand what chaff is.

In that day and time in that culture, when they harvested, they would take the grain and they would throw it up in the air, and they would do that.

Because when they did, the kernel inside the.

That grain that is heavier would drop to the ground that.

That they wanted to keep.

Yet that shale on the outside that would be light is called chaff.

That husk there, the wind would just take it and blow it away and it would disappear.

God is picturing that the chaff represents a life which has no anchor, a life that is empty, a life that is easily blown away.

Away by the winds of public opinion, by the winds of fleshly desires, by the winds of selfishness, by the winds of greed, by the winds of suffering.

Why?

Because it has no roots.

It has nothing to keep itself from being blown away.

A life of chaff is a life of instability, a life of hopelessness.

A life that's a facade.

It's a life of hollowness.

Just like this shell is hollow and has nothing inside of it.

It's a life of despair.

It's not a life of happiness like this tree that is planted by the rivers of water.

We're given a very similar picture of this in Jeremiah chapter 17 and verse 5.

Turn there with me for just a minute.

Jeremiah, chapter 17 and verse 5.

It's a very similar picture of what the psalmist is giving us.

In Psalm chapter 1, in Jeremiah 17 and verse 5, it says, Thus saith the Lord.

Cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord.

For he shall be like the heath in the desert.

The heath there it's talking about is a little like a tumbleweed, like a scrub bush that is blown about the desert.

He shall be like a heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit.

Look at where he inhabits the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land and not inhabited.

But look at verse seven.

Blessed or happy is a man that trusteth in the Lord, whose hope the Lord is for he shall be like a tree here it is planted by the waters and that spreadeth out her roots by the river and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green and shall not be careful or affected.

What that means in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

Wow.

Again, God paints this picture of the ungodly person who wants nothing to do with God and says, that's a cursed man.

He's like a tumbleweed in the desert that's blown about the desert by the wind.

Or in Psalm 1, he's like the chaff that's blown by the wind away.

But this godly man, again, even as he says in Jeremiah, here is a man who is planted by the rivers of water, God's rivers, God's word.

And this man, because he is planted there by God, by the grace of God, can soak up that living word that can meditate upon that word day and night.

No matter what season he's going through, no matter what pain he's going through, no matter what hardship he may be going through, he is feasting on the word of God.

He can dig a little bit deeper and deeper so that he can have true and lasting happiness.

Even in the midst of whatever season that he might be in, he can still bear fruit and he can still have leaves that are green on his tree.

Praise the Lord.

What causes a life of chaff?

The Bible says the answer is ungodliness.

He is a man, even as it says here in Jeremiah, that trusts in man whose heart is turned away from God.

This ungodly or cursed man has no roots.

He is like chaff.

Or he's like this tumbleweed, as I said, that is blown about by the wind.

Since the happiness of the ungodly is totally dependent upon his circumstances, he has no lasting happiness except that which is superficial, that which is temporal in this world.

What a picture, folks, here today, of the person who does not know Christ, the person in the world, the person who is not rooted in God, who does not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the person who is not planted by this river of waters on the riverbank, the divine riverbank of God, who cannot, in those seasons, in life, in whatever circumstances they may be facing, can, cannot draw from the word of God, cannot draw from his Word and meditate on it day and night, where that they can be, maintain the leaves on their tree.

They can maintain and not wither away and not die.

But the other picture of the ungodly is a sad picture.

It's a very sad picture because they get blown about by whatever wind hits them.

They have no stability in life.

People all around us are looking for the answer to that question, how can I be happy?

Where can I find happiness?

Friends, we have the answer, and the answer is certainly through a relationship.

In Jesus Christ, what happens to the ungodly, the one who is like chaff?

Look at verse five and six as I close Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

God says that the ungodly will not stand in the judgment because they're dead in their sin.

And because they're dead in their sin, they will eventually perish.

They'll come before God and God would have to say to them, depart from me, for I never.

Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast, and if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.

Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.