Nobody Mourns the Wicked

      Wicked – the true story of the Wicked Witch of the West.

      I waded through the book.  But I loved the play – the wonderful interplay on stage between the bouncy blond Galinda and the grim, green Elphabah. 

      They certainly get off to a rocky start.  They proclaim their absolute loathing for each other – their face, their voice, their hair, and their clothes.  But eventually Galinda and Elphaba become good friends. And as a friend, Galinda is determined to give Elphabah the greatest gift she has to bestow – the gift of popularity. 

       Play “Popular”

       That’s more than just a fun song. It touches that junior high and high school part of us that would give anything to be in the in crowd.  It also touches the adult part that hopefully realizes that there is a whole lot more to the living a good life than popularity. 

       So if you are still in school, let me implore you not to let your high school career become the high point of your life. God has a lot more in store for you than that.  He has a life in mind for you that takes you somewhere worth going and gives you a life that will bear fruit. That’s the theme of Psalm 1.

      Read Psalm 1

       We are looking at the Life of David and also some of the Psalms of David and those who followed – a blending of poetry and prose.  And I think it’s great that many centuries ago the Jewish editors looked at this Psalm and said, “This is the one that belongs in first place out of the whole 150 in the collection.  Psalm 1 declares the theme of the entire book.  Psalm 1 gives us the bottom-line truth that there is a way of life that finally works and a way that ultimately doesn’t work – even if it seems to pay-off for a while.  It tells us that there is a way of life God honors and a way of life that God will finally destroy. 

       Since this is true, this means that that we need to be careful about the messages we take in about what really counts in life – the songs we listen to.  So the first thing Psalm 1 tells us is that we need to be very careful about whose advice we buy into.  For the person is blessed or “on the right track” who does not walk in the “counsel of the ungodly.”   . 

       Randy Nichols, a Professor at Princeton, tells a true story in his book Building the Word about a Greek sailor who deserted his ship in New York harbor. This sailor simply wanted to see the Big Apple.

       But he didn’t know any English.  He was found walking the streets of New York without a dime in his pocket.  For some reason a policeman tried to talk to him and got back nothing but excited Greek. The sailor had no identification that would connect him to his ship.  He didn’t have a passport. So the policeman took him to a hospital and had him admitted.  I don’t know why – that’s just what he did.

      Well nobody at the hospital could understand him either. They didn’t want to put him in a sick bed.  So they put him for safe keeping in a ward for the mentally deranged. The doctors there tried to talk to him too.  But they couldn’t understand him either. So he just stayed.

      But after a few weeks in the ward, he began to pick up English. When he had enough English to communicate, the doctors interviewed him.  That’s when they discovered that the sailor really did belong in the mental ward – that he actually was schizophrenic. So they treated him as a schizophrenic.

      He stayed in that ward for about two years.  But finally a doctor came to the hospital who was a native Greek.  One of the doctors from the mental ward decided it would be good for the sailor to converse in his native language.  So he brought this doctor down to meet his patient.   The visiting doctor talked to the sailor for awhile.  Then he came back and told the other doctors: “That man doesn’t belong in here. He’s sane.”

       What they found out as they studied the case was that this Greek sailor had come in and spent all his time talking with schizophrenics on the ward.  That’s where he learned English. So he naturally sounded like all the other patients.  The doctors were therefore convinced that he was also schizophrenic.  He was sane in Greek but Schizophrenic in English.

      This warns us that we really have to be careful whom we listen to, where we learn our language, what we sound like.  For what we hear shapes what we think. And what we think shapes our lives. According to one authority, for every word in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, one hundred and twenty-five lives were lost in World War II. Words and whose words we listen to make a tremendous difference.  Be careful where you take advice.  Psalm 1 warns us, “be careful who you copy. Be careful about the priorities you adopt.”

      The Bible describes the way we live as a “walk” -- the personal and moral movement of our lives. And as we walk, we can know we are on the right path by the people who aren’t on that same path with us. In fact, the Bible says that we should recognize that we are in danger if we find ourselves walking next to three types of people.

      Psalm 1 gives us three warnings.

      First, “Don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked.”

      The Bible says that wise people take wise counsel.  But they close their ears to people who tell them that they can cut moral corners without paying the price --those who say: “God is being unfair” or “There isn’t really any right or wrong except the right or wrong you accept.”

       Some messages are easy to recognize and reject. 

       But there are other words of counsel that are not so obviously wicked but are equally ungodly. They are words that grow out of the wisdom of the world – what Paul calls the world system. They are the verbal expression of life lived without God.  These words aren’t obviously evil.   They may even sound nice. But they also will send us off in a direction that takes us away from the call of God.  So God’s people don’t get their marching orders from people and groups with secular, materialistic values.  They listen to the people who look at life God’s way. 

       The Psalmist then warns us: “Don’t stand in the path of sinners”

       This doesn’t mean that they will run you down in their SUVs f you get in their way.  Sinners might run you down.  But that’s not what this means. It means that the righteous man or woman doesn’t associate with sinners in such a way as to gradually and progressively become one with them -- like the sailor who learned English in the mental ward.

        A book written for teenagers some years ago observes that “most of us want to be good enough to be okay but bad enough to be interesting.”  That may especially be true for teenage guys who quickly discover that girls like the bad boy and that nice guys finish last.

        So it’s tempting to flirt with sin and see how close we can get without being burned. But it’s dangerous.  If you orient your life to a community of men and women who do not love Jesus Christ you will have trouble.   As Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Bad company corrupts good morals.”

        That’s one reason Jesus gave us the church – to bring His people together with His people. To some people religious freedom means the choice of which church they stay away from. But that will not do for the one who wants to follow God.

       The third and final warning is “Don’t take a seat with the scornful.” Don’t take part in the gatherings of those who, when they hang out, mock things that are sacred. Scoffers ridicule both God and his people.

        If you take a seat in an atmosphere of scoffing, you will find yourself growing cynical about the things of the Lord.  But the Psalmist says that the one who is blessed is the one who “delights” in the teaching of God.

       “Delight”, in Hebrew “haypeas”, does not just men mere mental approval. The word “delight” portrays a strong, personal, emotional involvement with God’s word.  There is more to being blessed than just knowing what you should do. A truly happy person is one who “delights” in God’s word. This is not just avoiding a negative lifestyle. Blessing or happiness does not come just through obedience. It comes from a conscious decision to enjoy being obedient to the Lord -- to take joy in our relationship with God and live in thankfulness for all He has done.

       But the person who is blessed does not just feel an emotional response to the word.  Psalm 1 says that he or she meditates on it.  You place God’s word in your mind so God can remind you of it the going gets hard.

       The result of all this, the Psalm tells us, is that we will be like healthy trees – trees that thrive and truly fulfill the purpose we were made for. Unlike other trees that suffer from the summer drought, our leaf doesn’t wither --because God has transplanted us --not beside a dry desert arroyo but beside a river filled year round with life giving water. We can withstand the hot blast of the desert wind because of where we are.  We also produce fruit -- not something artificial or waxed but our fruit -- the natural product of our own health in God. This fruit is produced in its own season. It isn’t forced, but according to natural timing.      

       To be blessed is to have a sense of connectedness to God and to others. It is to have a sense of completeness in ourselves -- a sense of fulfillment and productivity. All of this comes because of the great resources available to the one who serves God -- planted by rivers of waters.

       Now other Psalms such as Psalm 73 we will look at in a few weeks will point out that the wicked, rather than the righteous, may seem to be the people of substance. But here the Psalmist characterizes the life of the ungodly as being ultimately meaningless and worthless. He describes them as mere chaff which the wind drives away. 

       That’s a great image in the psalm.  When the harvest has been gathered in, the sheaves are spread out on the threshing floor, an elevated and wind-swept spot outside the village. Heavy instruments are dragged over them, so that the grains become detached from the heads. The farmer then tosses the mixture into the air with the winnowing fork. The heavy grains fall to the ground, but the straw which has been squashed and become chaff, together with the empty husks of the heads, is blown away by the wind.

       Through the pressures of life all of us are winnowed. We are all tossed up into the air.  We all have places of pain. We all get threshed.  The difference is that those anchored in God are not blown away by the wind but drop safely into the place God has prepared for us.

        In contrast to our safety, the Psalmist declares that the wicked will not stand in the judgment. Now certainly they will come to the judgment but they will not stand. For they will not have Christ Jesus who, Paul writes, is able to make us stand. They will come to the judgment with no one to support them and they will fall flat.

       We have heard a lot in recent years about near death experiences. It is interesting to see the uniformity of the accounts…a long tunnel with a light at the end, smiling relatives and indescribable joy. I’m sure you’ve read some of these.

     But the March, 1985 issue of OMNI magazine reported a study by Dr. Maurice Rawlings, Cardiologist and Professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga . He and his emergency room colleagues are constantly treating such cases.

       It is now standard that those who have near death experiences speak of having experiences of light, lush green meadows, rows of smiling relatives and tremendous peace. However, in his study, also reported in his book Beyond Death’s Door, Dr. Rawlings obtained new information by interviewing patients immediately after resuscitation while they are still too shaken to deny where they have been. Nearly fifty percent of the group of three hundred interviewed reported scenes and experiences much more characteristic of hell.

       Rawlings says they later change their stories because most people are simply ashamed to admit they’ve been to Hell.  They won’t even admit it to their own families. Finally they won’t admit it to themselves. Concludes Dr. Rawlings: “Just listening to these patients has changed my whole life. Rawlings became a Christian.  He said, I learned “there is a life after death, and if I don’t know where I’m going, it’s not safe to die.”

       That’s so true.  The Psalmist writes that anything that is done apart from God is bound to perish. Not just the ungodly will perish but their way will perish. A time will come when sin will be no more.

        For this Psalm declares that righteousness and ungodliness each have their own natural and certain ends in the purposes of God. And that we do well to live by the direction of God in order to find natural fulfillment in this world and, in the world to come, eternal fulfillment through Jesus Christ our Lord where our life horizons just keep getting wider and wider.

       That’s even better than popular.