Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 19 of 19

Track: #19

Year:

Dictation Name: 19 Authority and Life

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we come into Thy presence hungering and thirsting after righteousness, after Thy justice. Oh lord the heathen rage and take council together against Thee, and they seek to destroy Thy kingdom and Thy saints. We come to Thee oh Lord beseeching Thee to work in our time, in our midst, in and through us, to accomplish Thy purpose, to bring forth Thy justice, and to make known Thy so great salvation. Bless us this day by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, that day by day we may move in Thee and to Thy purpose, to do Thy will oh Lord. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the Psalms, the first Psalm. Our subject authority and life, authority and life, Psalm one.

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

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

5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” 

Psalm one is to little appreciated in our antinomian age. It gives the temper to all the Psalms, and it sets forth a fundamental fact, namely that submission to God’s authority means life, while rejection of God and His law means death. Its promises are very clear, that anyone whose delight is in the law of the Lord who meditates in the law day and night is going to be like a tree planted in rivers of water that bringeth forth His fruit in a season. We are promised that if this fits us whatsoever we do shall prosper. Well people don’t like things that plain. Today to many things are programmed for defeat, they go through the scriptures to find all the texts that deal with defeat, and it’s true that there is warfare with this world, that the world is at war against God and therefore will be at war against all who are Godly. But the fact is, it is an uneven war. The forces of ungodliness, of rebellion, are not going to triumph. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. But people prefer to turn the moral universe upside down and are unwilling to say that God has said “whatsoever he (the Godly man) who delights in the law of the Lord shall do, shall prosper.

Well this Psalm makes known how serious our predicament is today. Some commentaries which profess to believe the Bible from cover to cover have actually held that this Psalm gives, and I quote “a distorted statement of the nature of true happiness.” Now that’s rebellion against God, to despise His word. Because the law is praised in this Psalm, hence many commentators insist this Psalm is alien to the Spirit of the New Testament. One writer however says it’s a good Psalm, but doesn’t apply today. It looks ahead to the millennium, and it’s a picture of the ideal man in the millennium. Dewey Morgan, a British writer, writes quite elegantly about Psalm 1 as one, and quote, “in which the distant poles of God and man merge into a splendid orb and man becomes one with his creator.” But never once does he refer to the law, or to the fact that these blessings are promised to those who obey God’s law and who are faithful to the authority of God. After you read page after page of Dewey Morgan you wonder what Bible he is using because it is not recognizably the Psalm one that we encounter in our Bible. 

Now this not to say that all the commentators have done this. Spurgeon and Joseph Addison, Alexander and others have seen the meaning very clearly. It is interesting that unlike many another Psalm no author is listed for this. So we don’t know whether it was Asaph’s or David’s or whose Psalm. In a sense however it is the very word of God, as are all the Psalms, because we encounter these words elsewhere. We encounter them in Jeremiah 17:5-8 in essence the same thing where this Psalm is referred to, and we are told,

“5 Thus saith the Lord; cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

8 For he shall be as a tree 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 in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” 

What does God tell us through Jeremiah? Simple that the ungodly man has put his roots into a desert where there is no water, where there is only salt which will kill any growing thing, where he is cursed because he has departed from the Lord. But the man who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by waters, who does not feel the heat of oppression, has no need to be careful in the year of draught because the waters there will flow continually and shall not cease from yielding fruit. I submit that the scripture from beginning to end tells us in a hundred and one ways what Psalm one summarizes, why are we afraid to claim the promises of this Psalm? Why do men run it down, see it as Old Testament? As though God could only be good to primitive people you know, the Hebrews, but now we’re too sophisticated in the age of grace to have blessings. That’s in effect what they are saying, and I believe it is blasphemous. 

When we compare Psalm one and Ezekiel [I think he meant Jeremiah] 17:5-8 what we are told is very clear. To trust in the Lord is to obey His covenant law. Belief in God’s law is the way of life, of blessedness. And second, to delight in the law of God is to delight in life, and to reject God’s law is to choose death. The beginning of this century one commentator, an English scholar Kilpatrick, made the statement and I quote “divine knowledge cannot be abstract, nor ineffectual.” We cannot know God and hold abstract knowledge. Our God is a living fire, and there’s nothing abstract about fire. Our God is the supreme and ultimate person, and there is nothing abstract about a person.

Our Lord makes very clear the essential unity of faith, obedience, and doctrine. In John 7 verses 16 & 17 our Lord says “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. 17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” In other words the way to know the blessings of Psalm one is to move in terms of them, to delight in God’s law, to obey God’s law, to put ourselves under God’s authority, then we can have the blessings, because the knowledge of God cannot be abstract, it is a living thing. We can no more separate faith, works, and knowledge, then we can separate a man’s head from his body and from his feet and expect all three to be alive, it’s sure death. And so those that talk about a head knowledge and a heart knowledge of the Lord and who want to separate love and justice, faith and works, grace and law, are trying to dissect what cannot be dissected.

Man we are told by this Psalm, the Godly man, is like a tree planted by rivers of water. Note the Psalm does not say planted by a river, by rivers of water. The imagery is purposefully in the plural. There are waters without end, sustenance without end, for those who believe and obey the Lord. Moreover notice it is a planted tree, or very literally the connotation here is a transplanted tree, and the word is very often used to indicate something transplanted. So we who believe in the Lord, we who are saved, are transplanted out of the dry and dessert place into a place of rivers of water, and we are there protected. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. This Psalm is giving us an equation. Equations are something we have in mathematics. Now what this Psalm is telling us; if we believe and obey God, if we submit to His authority, this equal life; if we do not believe in God, if we despise His word, this equals death. And I submit when God makes and equation like that it has all the weight and authority of 2+2= 4 and then some. 

God means what He says, this is the way that it is. He doesn’t say there aren’t problems in this world, He doesn’t say that the ungodly rage against us, and that isn’t true, He says “yes these things happen, but here, this is the fundamental equation. All these things happen, the world is full of storms, the world is full of the wrath of the ungodly, but basically this is the fact. Here and now, not just in the world to come, the Godly are blessed in the face of all their trials and all their persecution. They have productivity, they endure in the time of judgment, and they come forth in victory. Godliness equals life, Godliness is obedience and a delight in the law of the Lord. 

On the other hand the ungodly are scorn