Transcript
Planted by the Water
First Baptist Richmond, July 12, 2026
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Psalm 1
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.
Have you ever heard a sermon that changed your life? I hope so. I mean, I work really hard week after week, searching through scripture for the kind of truth that will set you free. And today’s text is one of those that has the potential to do that. But when I think about my own answer to that question it’s not a sermon that comes to mind, but a TED talk. Or maybe it was a sermon, because it was delivered by a Benedictine monk named David Steindl-Rast who looked like Jesus might have looked if he had lived into his eighties. He stepped onto the stage in his monk’s robe and sandaled feet and said, essentially, “Even without knowing you, I know something about you, and that is that you want to be happy.”i
He said that all of us want to be happy, that it is central to the human experience. He said we may have different ways of imagining what happiness will look like, but we all have this in common, that we want to be happy. And then he shared what he believed was the secret of happiness, and for him it was gratefulness.
I heard that presentation in 2013 and it is no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. I started praying differently. For decades I’ve been getting up at five o’clock in the morning, going downstairs, putting on the coffee, and saying my prayers, but the morning after I watched that TED talk I said, “Father in heaven, thank you for this new day. Let me receive it as a gift and open it like a present.”
I’ve been doing it ever since.
After that opening line I say, “Yesterday was a gift…” and I try to remember why it was. I name a few things that happened that day for which I can be grateful. And then I say, “Today is a gift…” and I try to think of a few things that are on that day’s agenda that I can be grateful for, even if it’s only that first cup of coffee.
I would recommend that practice to you. Or the practice my wife, Christy, has adopted. Those of you who have read her children’s bookii may remember that first page, where she says, “I roll out of bed, my feet hit the floor, I name three things I’m thankful for.” That works for her in the same way my prayers work for me. We may not be the happiest people in the world. I don’t know. But I think both of us would say, along with David Steindl-Rast, “If you want to be happy, be grateful.” And as we’ve talked about “Good Psalms for Hard Times” in this sermon series I would say that even in hard times you can find something to be grateful for. Try it. Do it tomorrow morning when your feet hit the floor. See if it doesn’t change the way you look at the world.
But in that presentation Steindl-Rast was talking about happiness in the here and now. What about happiness in the here and after? How do we find that? Well, that’s where the Book of Psalms comes in, and, believe it or not, the entire book begins with this question:
“Do you want to be happy?”
Maybe that’s not how your Bible translates Psalm 1:1, but that’s what it means. The New Revised Standard Version reads,
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers.
Psalm 1 assumes that you want to be happy, but it doesn’t begin by telling you what to do; it begins by telling you what not to do.
1. Don’t follow the advice of the wicked. And I need to say: I have trouble with that word. I don’t make it a habit to divide the world into the righteous and the wicked, the sheep and the goats. That’s not my job. And I believe every person has the capacity for both good and evil, but if a person does only evil continually you might call that a wicked person in the same way that a person who does only good continually might be called righteous. And that’s what the psalmist seems to have in mind. “Don’t follow the advice of the wicked,” he says. The Hebrew word is sometimes translated as “criminal,” “convicted felon,” “someone who is guilty of sin,” or even “hostile to God.” Don’t take advice from them, the psalmist might say. Don’t listen to the man in the orange jumpsuit who sits on the other side of the bulletproof glass at the maximum security prison saying, “Now, here’s how you rob a bank…”
2. Don’t take the path that sinners tread. Again, I have trouble with the word sinner. In the Bible, the most common word for sin in both Hebrew and Greek means simply, “to miss the mark,” and that’s not so bad. I think about someone with a bow and arrow, shooting at a target. OK, so she missed the bullseye, but does that make her a bad person? She was aiming for it! But the word the psalmist uses can be translated as sinful, that is, someone who is full of sin, who is characterized by sinful behavior. “Don’t follow that example,” the psalmist says. The person who leers at you with an evil grin and says, “Hey, come with me!” is probably not taking you down the path that leads to life.
3. Don’t sit in the seat of scoffers. Oh boy. Don’t get me started on this one. The Hebrew word for scoffing can also be translated as “to scorn,” “to talk
arrogantly,” “to boast,” “to mock,” “to deride,” “to be inflated.” If you separate those definitions by category you can see that on one side you boast, you talk arrogantly, you puff yourself up, while on the other you mock, you scorn, you deride. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book—at least as old as Psalm 1—building yourself up by putting others down. And if I could expand on that I might say putting everything down, pointing out what’s wrong with that new restaurant, or that new preacher’s sermon, rather than looking for the one thing that might be right. “Don’t sit in the seat of scoffers,” the psalmist says. “That’s one of the surest ways to make yourself unhappy.”
So, what do you do if you want to be happy, not only in the here and now but also in the here and after? According to the psalmist it’s this: “Delight yourself in the law of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night.” Which, at first hearing, may not sound like the recipe for happiness. Delight yourself in the law of the Lord? “Oh, look. It’s the Book of Leviticus. Yay.” But what if the psalmist is talking about the law of the Lord in a way we’ve never thought of it before?
I watched an Instagram reel recently where a woman was talking about how she used to read the Bible. She said that in her earlier days she was always looking for instructions about what to do and what not to do. But then she went to seminary, where a wise professor taught her how to read the Bible relationally, as if it were a love letter from God rather than the owner’s manual for a new dishwasher, and that changed everything. She looked at those words on the page and thought, “Here is the one who made me and loves me sharing his heart, telling me what he wants most in this world.” Can you imagine that woman delighting in the law of the Lord (you might even say “the way of the Lord”), and meditating on it day and night? And can you imagine that it might actually make her happy?
The people who do this “are like trees planted by streams of water,” the psalmist says, which means they have everything they need to live an abundant life. “They yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.” Really? In all that they do? Well, no, maybe not. But think about their roots going down into well-watered soil, where they can absorb all the nutrients they need. Think about their limbs lifted up toward heaven and their leaves unfurled to catch every drop of rain and sunshine. They may be subject to all the harsh realities of life—to heat, and drought, and desiccating winds—but they are planted by the water. They continue to yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.
“The wicked are not so,” says the psalmist in verse 4, and there’s that word again. I don’t like to think of people as wicked. But last week I got a text message from a church member who said, “If you know of anyone selling a car, please let me know. Our yard guy’s car got stolen Friday night while he was delivering for Door Dash. The police are involved now as they found his car, but it had gun shell casings inside, and they think it was connected to a shooting. Also, the car was stripped.” As I said, I don’t like to think of people as wicked, but someone who would steal another person’s car while he was making a Door Dash delivery (that is, while he was working a second job so he could feed his family), and then use that car in a drive-by shooting, and then strip it of all its useful parts, and then leave it somewhere by the side of the road, that seems kind of…wicked, doesn’t it?
People like that are not like trees planted by the water, the psalmist says. “They are like chaff that the wind drives away.” In other words they are not rooted in the way of the Lord, they are not grounded by his Word. They are rootless, weightless, blown about by the gentlest breeze, drifting from one self-serving act to the next, always looking for a way to get ahead, and often at someone else’s expense. “Therefore the
wicked will not stand in the judgment,” the psalmist says, and I don’t think he means that they will not be judged; I think he means that they won’t even make it to the judgment, that, like chaff, they will be blown away long before that. And sinners won’t stand “in the congregation of the righteous.” They won’t be found among those steadfast, immoveable trees planted by the water. When the hurricane of God’s judgment comes through they will be swept away like so many dead leaves. “For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,” the psalmist says, “but the way of the wicked will perish.”
And there’s that word again: righteous. As I said, I don’t like to divide the world into the righteous and the wicked. But I remember watching a television show called Shtisel, about Orthodox Jews living in Jerusalem, and every once in a while someone would say about someone else, “He’s a righteous man.” They said it in just the way you or I would say about someone, “He’s a good man.” They didn’t mean he was self-righteous. They didn’t mean he walked around with his nose in the air all the time, thinking he was better than everybody else. No, they simply meant that he was a good man, a righteous man, a humble human being who tried to live his life in the right way, to do and say the right things.
That’s the kind of man I want to be. And how do I get there? According to the psalmist, by “delighting in the law of the Lord”—or, as I suggested earlier, the way of the Lord, the way of justice and truth, mercy and love—by delighting in that and meditating on it day and night. Apparently that’s not only how you become a righteous person, it’s how you become a happy person, not only in the here and now, but also in the here and after.
But it sounds hard, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’m going to have to get up tomorrow morning and read the Book of Leviticus while the coffee brews. But maybe not. If you
look at Psalm 1 relationally you see that it isn’t really about gritting your teeth. It’s about delight. The righteous man delights in the law of the Lord. Something beautiful has captured his imagination. He’s become the kind of person who wants a different life. And that reminds me of one of my favorite moments in the movie, As Good as It Gets.
Have you seen it?
Jack Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, a brilliant novelist who is also one of the most unpleasant people you could ever meet. He’s sarcastic, racist, homophobic, obsessive-compulsive, and almost impossible to like. Helen Hunt plays Carol, a waitress who is one of the few people willing to tolerate him, and even she has her limits.
As the story unfolds, Melvin slowly, reluctantly begins to care about Carol. One evening, over dinner, he tries to tell her what she means to him. She braces herself for another awkward compliment. Instead he says quietly, “You make me want to be a better man.” It’s one of those lines that everybody remembers because it names something profoundly true. Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “I’ve decided to become a better man.” He doesn’t say, “I’ve written down a list of self-improvement goals.” He says, “You make me want to be a better man.”
Love has awakened desire. A relationship has accomplished something that willpower never could. Someone has come into his life whose goodness, kindness, and beauty make him dissatisfied with the person he has been. For the first time, he wants to change—not because someone is threatening him, but because someone has captured his heart. Isn’t that what Psalm 1 is describing?
The righteous person doesn’t merely obey God’s commandments out of fear or obligation. The psalm says, “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” Somewhere along the way, he has discovered that life with God is so beautiful, so wise, so life-giving, that he actually wants to become the sort of person God created him to be. In this short psalm
(only five verses), the psalmist tries to describe what that kind of life looks like, and it isn’t about following rules. It’s about falling in love. And of all the things that can happen to us in this life, that may be the thing that has the greatest chance of making us truly happy.
—Jim Somerville © 2026
