Pastor Tim continues our series from Psalm 1, looking at what it means to be a “tree planted by streams of water.” It tells us more about God’s care than we might think at first!
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be here with you again tonight as we continue our series, Delighted in God. What does it mean to delight in God? What does it mean to live a Psalm 1 life where we live in that delight? Well, we’re going to think more about how that looks in everyday life and how it doesn’t look tonight. And as we do that, let’s come before our God and ask for His guidance, for He is the one that provides for us and delights in us. Would you join me in prayer, please?
Father, thank you for being with us. Lord, as we think about what it means to delight in you, would you constantly remind us that you are with us, that you are the one who provides for us, that you are the one who delights in us even when we don’t deserve any delight at all. Lord, would you guide us tonight that we might be reminded of these things and strengthened by them tonight and every day forward. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’ve been sort of fascinated over the years by the phenomena of Bitcoin, this thing that’s sort of money but isn’t really; it’s just created by a computer. I remember reading about it when it first came out in 2009. As I read about it, very few people were talking about it at the time. I thought, well, that would be kind of fun, I should install the program and see what it does. And I didn’t because I thought, well, it’s really kind of silly. It’s not really worth anything. And so I didn’t. At the time you could have generated something like 50 Bitcoins in a day. And I really wish now I had, because I think every Bitcoin is worth something like $40,000 on the market today, but I didn’t. Well, another man did. He actually was involved in the early development, Laszlo Hania, and he helped tweak some of the software. He was actually the very first person to ever make a purchase with Bitcoin. He says he doesn’t regret that purchase, but looking back, it’s sort of remarkable what he decided to do.
You see, one day Hania was hungry. He wanted pizza, and he’s become known as the Bitcoin pizza guy because here, well, here’s a second time he purchased pizza via Bitcoin, but the very first transaction ever to take place on Bitcoin was these pizzas that he bought using 10,000 Bitcoins back when they were worth hardly any money. At the time, it was maybe equivalent to $40 to give 10,000 of them away. Today, if he still had those Bitcoins that bought those two Papa John’s pizzas, he’d have about $450 million. He says he doesn’t regret it. Someone had to start the trend. And yeah, I can’t help but look at this and think for those two pizzas, yes, pizza is delicious, but for two pizzas, he gave away what would become, only 10 years later, $450 million.
Is there anything that you’ve ever done where you didn’t think something was going to amount to something, some project wasn’t going to mean anything and you backed out of it or you gave it away only to later regret it? Well, if you have a funny story about that, please share it in the comments. We can share these things together because all of us have experienced those sorts of times where we traded something that was a value, but didn’t seem like it, for something that felt like it was of immediate value. We’re hungry. We want that pizza. You’re going to smell it. And so you hand over those Bitcoins only to realize later on they were worth far more than those pizzas. We often misjudge value, especially when there’s something that promises a more immediate return. And so we run after that and we trade things that are of greater value.
We do that time and again, when it comes to God’s word where we see something that seems to promise great value in the moment, but like those two pizzas will be long gone when what we could be hanging onto in the truth of God’s word lasts and lasts far more and is worth far more than any number of Bitcoins or any number of anything that’s ever of value. And we read more about that value that God gives us in His word. As we continue into verse three of Psalm one, where we read about who the blessed person is, what he looks like or she looks like. Take a look at verse three.
It says that he, the blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; in all that he does, he prospers. Like a tree planted by streams of water. It sounds like a beautiful picture, something we’d put up on the wall, but it’s something more than that. It’s not just a scenic place that we go and see this beautiful tree in the stream. The way that the Psalmist phrases that phrase, what he’s referring to is an irrigation system. Someone who’s carved out a little artificial stream to bring water to that tree that’s been planted. Some farmer who wanted the fruit of the tree and the tree was going to wither and die in the arid temperatures and the just unpleasantness of much of the Middle East for growing.
And yet here was this water that was going to come up to this tree. So it’s much more than simply that a tree that just happens to have a good location. This is a tree that has had water brought to it. So it survives so that inside of it, even if it’s out in a desert-like condition, inside, it has water, has life. That’s what we see that God offers us. He offers us that living water inside of us.
But we want something concrete to delight in. We want those pizzas that we can have in the moment and not something that will sit there and have value someday in the future that we can’t taste and touch right now. And I think this Psalm challenges us to think about what those pizzas in our lives are. What are those things that we’d eagerly give up the truth of God’s word, that we give up the blessing that He gives us because we want to feel it. We want to have it right now.
I think in many times in any different examples, so many different things that we do, it really boils down to the fact that we want to be comfortable. I think that’s the first pizza we confront tonight: this desire for comfort. You see, as we read about this tree that’s planted next to streams of water, we’re not seeing a promise that the blessed man, the blessed woman, is someone who’s planted in a lush forest where everything is good and everything is wonderful to experience. Instead, we see the promise of one who is planted with what he or she needs for survival in a very difficult setting.
God doesn’t promise that the blessed person is one who is in a place of comfort all the time, a place of great success, a place where there aren’t any adversaries, that there aren’t any challenges, but rather that in those places, those environments that He puts us in, that He will provide life to us. Very different thing. And we see this develop more with the very same image in Jeremiah 17. Let’s go ahead and take a look there.
Jeremiah says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. He does not fear when heat comes, for his leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” You see, Jeremiah lists here the various sorts of things we experience in life. We experience those times of summer heat. We experience droughts in life where things seem to just not be going well at all.
But what’s true of a tree that’s planted by an irrigation stream, not just a stream that might dry up in that summer heat, not a stream that when water is scarce that it will dry up either because this stream is intentionally supplied with water as part of the irrigation system. This tree, even in those times, can still bear fruit, can still grow, can still move towards its purpose because the farmer is tending to it. And that’s what God promises to us: that He is tending to us even when we face adversity, not in spite of that adversity, but taking that adversity and actually using it to show glory to Himself because we can grow even in those moments.
It shows something that I think we often overlook in those times. I overlook it in those times, which is that God shows His love intentionally to us. You see, a tree that happens to have a seed dropped and it sprouts right next to a wonderful stream, it’s a beautiful thing and it can create lovely shade and we can enjoy it, but it doesn’t say anything about the farmer.
But what does it say when a plant is right there by an irrigation system that’s been provided for that plant? It shows that the farmer cares for it, that the farmer is going to provide its needs. That’s what we see in God’s love as He provides for us.
Consider if you have some plants that can’t weather our harsh winters here. I have a number of plants that every year I put outside and they grow in the spring and the summer. A number of them, over the years at times, I’ve just stuck out in the backyard and they sit there and the rains fall and it waters them and they do fine. I have a fern that’s been out for a number of summers and sometimes doesn’t really get much water that’s intentional during those summers. It just sits out there in the shade of the backyard and then it goes inside in the winter because it wouldn’t survive. I bring it in.
And that’s when the intentionality shows up. When things are going well and the environment is conducive to its growth, there isn’t a lot of intentionality needed. But if it’s going to be inside the basement, it’s only going to survive if I intentionally water it. If I forget about it, it’ll die. If I don’t put it by a window, it will die. If I leave it outside, it will die. So the very fact that it can come out again the next spring speaks of the intentionality that I have watered it and cared for it. How much more so God cares for us.
When we are in those basements of life, when we are facing the cold winters of life, God brings us into shelter. He provides us with water. It doesn’t mean though that it is easy. No plant wants to be in a dark basement getting water once a week. That’s not ideal. And yet by providing that water for it, by bringing it inside, I’m preparing it for the time that it again returns to its place that is meant to be. They can be outside again and growing normally again.
Likewise, when God brings us through those times of adversity, it doesn’t mean that those times are going to be ideal. We may not see our full growth in those times. And yet God brings us by those irrigation channels so that even when we’re faced with those droughts, we don’t wither and fade. And as we keep our eyes on Him and we look down at that stream that He’s providing for us, we may still feel the scorching heat of the sun. And yet we know we’re not alone. It’s hard sometimes to do that.
But if we can remember that God is intentional in those times, it makes a world of difference. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8:28, one of my very favorite verses. He says, “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”
Paul doesn’t say all things are going to be good. He says all things will be worked by God for our good. So all those horrible times we go through, God uses them. All the good times we go through, God uses them. But the thing that we know clearly in those moments is that God is using them for His purposes. So there’s an intentionality to what God brings us through. And there is our opportunity for delight.
Do we delight in the fact that God is watering us in all those times, in those times that life feels uncertain, that He is there with us, that the setting may be dry and anything but ideal? God is with us. It’s a struggle sometimes. I don’t necessarily want to delight in those moments. I want the comfort of everything going smoothly.
I think about even what we’re doing here with Little Hills and how several years ago when we started planning it, it seemed like all the pieces were coming together. We’d be launched soon. We’d have people sitting together, having meals together, having worship services together in person. I never would have fathomed that we’d end up instead in a situation where we’d have a pandemic and almost a year after we were supposed to launch, we’d be doing this on live stream instead.
And in those moments where I get really focused on the challenges and difficulties, that can really feel discouraging. But then what do I see if I look at the intentionality of what God is doing? I look at all the opportunities and how God has allowed me to connect with so many people. Maybe someone who’s watching tonight, maybe you, that I never would have gotten to share in studying God’s word with.
Whether you’re here in town, whether you’re across the globe, we may never actually be shoulder to shoulder in a worship service, but God has used this time so that we can encourage each other. Some of the other ministry I’ve gotten to do, such as the Bible studies, we’ve had people that never would have been together studying God’s word together but for the pandemic. And so we see these things. We don’t rejoice in hardship, but we rejoice in God’s intentionality that He takes these things that are hard, these things that aren’t the way that we would hope, that He’s going to guide things. And yet in this fallen, broken world, God takes those things and He uses them for His good, for His glory, for His purposes.
We look down in those scorching hot summer suns and we see that stream that the Lord has actually dug over to us so that we have our roots in His life-giving water. And we know that He is working good.
Well, that brings us to our second pizza though, the thing that we will trade what is good for. And that’s really as we wrestle with this question of what’s He doing, how’s God working? And we say, okay, He is working for my good, for His glory, but when’s He going to do it? We start to feel impatient and we want immediate success. Our second pizza is we want it to happen now.
And I don’t have to tell you, this is not a surprise, but it doesn’t happen that way. Not everything is fast or easy. Just because we are faithful, even our most faithful, even if we can be perfectly faithful, not everything will happen in the moment in our timing. But we have confidence that the one who dug that irrigation channel to us is the one who is still working His purposes for us, that as we are called to have a purpose in life and to bear fruit, that God will not forget that, that He is going to be with us and continue to supply that water as He moves us towards that goal.
If we think back to that verse three that we started with in Psalm one, He says that the fruit is born in its season. It doesn’t say that God brings the water and immediately the tree is just bearing fruit like mad, and it’s like a fruit machine where the fruit is just falling off of it, knocking the farmer in the head because there’s just so much fruit coming off constantly throughout the year. What does it say? He brings fruit in the season.
There’s a season for fruit. Sometimes we’re in the falls of life. Sometimes we’re in the winters of life. Sometimes we’re in the spring anticipating the next moment that we will bear fruit in that beautiful, fruitful, wonderful summer. We may go back and forth between those seasons just like a tree. Sometimes the tree is in a season and sometimes it’s out of season, but we have confidence in God’s care through those times. Trees have winters and trees have springs and then trees have their seasons of harvest. And so do we.
I love wonderful, juicy Calhoun County peaches. If you haven’t been to Calhoun County, Illinois this summer, you should go. They have the best peaches you could ever taste, so much other great produce too. I think most of us look forward to when we can have fresh fruits and vegetables and how wonderful they taste. What does it take? What does it take to get to the point that I can go over and buy a box of peaches? What does it take the farmer going through to get to that point?
It takes great care of that tree. That tree is going to go through hardships, close calls with frost, insects that are going to attack it, and the farmer has to deal with those. If we have our own plants, maybe you go and you get some tomatoes and peppers and different things and you put them out on your patio in April, and then we have one of those late frosts. What do we do in those sorts of times? We might take those plants inside, or we might cover them because we’re caring for them. We’re getting them through to that time where they will reach their season and bear their fruit. That’s what God does for us too.
But it takes patience. It takes patience to raise the plants that you may plant to the point where they do what they were meant to do. And it takes patience for the farmer who provides us with those wonderful vegetables and fruits too. So what do we need to do? How do we get to that point? Well, we turn to the true farmer’s almanac, the almanac of our lives. We turn to God’s word.
That’s what Psalm 1 says is that the blessed man is the one who delights in the law of the Lord and God’s word. And as we look to His word, He reminds us of why we can have patient expectation of the fruit that He’s going to bring out in our lives in the future.
Take a look at James chapter five. James says, “Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient; establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
James says things are going to be tough at times, and he confronts a lot of really tough issues in his book. But what should we do? We should be patient because the Lord is returning. Jesus is coming again and all the things that don’t even get wrapped up by the end of our lives will eventually be resolved. Jesus will restore us and He will restore this earth. And so we have reason for patient expectation, even as we’re in those winters, in those springs, even as we’re in the falls and we can see the winter coming. We know it’s going to be a while again before we feel fruitful. We can be patient because we know that we are patient with expectation. We look down at the ground and we see that continuing life-giving water coming towards us.
And even when we see that hot scorching sun and we see the drought killing off the plants around us and we feel hopeless and desperate, we know that there’s still that intentional farmer who loves us and is with us. When we face those difficulties, our calling is to watch for the spring.
When things aren’t going well at work, when things aren’t going well with our families, when things aren’t going well with our friends, when things aren’t going well in our churches, when our dreams feel like they’re coming apart, what do we do? We wait with expectation because the spring will come again. Sometimes we see that spring in our lifetime. Sometimes we don’t. But we know that God will do it.
That the very fact that He has sustained us to this point is a promise of what He will do in the future. And this is hard. I know it sounds like here’s this thing that He’s saying. It sounds really easy, but it’s really hard. “If Tim only understood, you have to know what I’m going through.” And we’re all going to have those moments where you think, well, if only you knew what I was going through, that’s not that easy. But the Psalm doesn’t say it’s easy. It’s not easy for the tree to be in the scorching summer sun or to face a drought.
But we can face it with confidence when we recognize that God is intentionally with us, even in those moments. That’s not a break in God’s plan. It’s not something that God didn’t foresee. He’s dug that irrigation ditch, in fact, to get us through those times so that we can go to the times that are fruitful again.
And so as we look at that expectation and as we embrace that expectation, then we go to something else we have to do. And this one isn’t easy either, but we’re called to also be willing to be pruned.
I don’t know what it’d be like to be a tree, but I’d imagine that trees probably wouldn’t enjoy being pruned, at least not in the moment. But listen to what the author of Hebrews says in chapter 12. He says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
You see, if you’re a farmer and you prune your orchard or even us who like to pretend to be farmers, I might have to prune the plants that I’m growing so they will succeed in life. They’ll be able to be fruitful. And in the moment, they might look not quite as healthy afterwards. They look like they’ve been cut up. But if you do it right, if you know what you’re doing, it’s allowing that plant to flourish.
None of us like to be disciplined. And likewise the author of Hebrews acknowledges that. He says we don’t like to be pruned. We don’t like to face discipline. But what does discipline remind us? It reminds us that we’re not forgotten by God.
If you’ve ever driven by an old tree nursery that’s been closed, I remember there was one down the road years ago and you could drive by it and all those trees that had been cared for had been forgotten and they’d all twisted and grown into each other and none of them could ever be easily dug up and taken and planted in a yard and enjoyed. They’d never have tree swings coming down from them with kids playing in them. They’d never provide beautiful foliage that someone would enjoy in their yard. They’d never do all those things that might have fulfilled their purpose. No one would ever pick their fruit. They ultimately were plowed in because they hadn’t been cared for. They needed to be pruned. They needed to be disciplined, so to speak.
And likewise, God sometimes corrects us. Sometimes we go through challenges because we have strayed and God’s redirecting us. But in that, we’re called to see that as a blessing. It’s not much like what we imagine blessings are going to be. When we read that blessed is the man who walks in the way of the Lord, we don’t think, “Oh, it’s going to be tough because God’s going to be correcting us.” But the author of Hebrews says, recognize that when God corrects us, when He’s redirecting us, when the challenges we face aren’t from the fallen world but God correcting the fallen world’s impact on our heart, our own corruption inside of ourselves, that in itself is a blessing because it testifies to the God who loves us, that He actually cares enough to redirect us and turn us back towards Him.
And we can have confidence in this. We can have comfort in this because He’s providing for us even through it. And it’s more than what any tree ever receives through that irrigation stream. As beautiful as that picture is in Psalm 1, we get an even more beautiful picture of what God does for us in John chapter 15.
Take a look at what Jesus says to His disciples on the night that He was betrayed. He says, “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
You see, a tree can have an irrigation system or today maybe it wouldn’t be a canal, but it would be some kind of host system that’s actually piping water to it so that it can grow and flourish. And that’s a wonderful thing. But how much better is it that we’re told that we’re not merely being irrigated with life-giving waters, but rather we are attached to the author of life Himself.
Jesus doesn’t say, “I am the irrigation system for your vines.” He says, “I am the vine. You’re a branch off of me.” You’re not just being nourished by me indirectly as I put water in the ground near you. You’re actually directly feeding off of my strength. I am with you.
That’s what we experience in the Holy Spirit, as Jesus sends His Spirit to us that we can be not just indirectly trying to pick up some nutrients on the ground, but He actually nourishes our hearts by coming into our heart. That’s what we see in the Lord’s Supper. That’s what we see when we come to God’s word. In every way that we come before God, He nourishes us directly as the vine that gives life to the branches.
And yet when life gets hard, we start to yearn for those pizzas. And those pizzas might nourish us in a moment, but they don’t nourish us for a life. And I think all of us need to ask, what are the pizzas in my life? And in other words, where am I trading true delight for momentary results? Where is it hard for me to recognize what God’s word’s calling me to do? Where is it hard for me to set aside time to come before the Lord and to have a relationship with Him and to grow in Him because I’m looking for what will momentarily provide what I want, the comfort, the security, the immediate results?
And yet when we turn and we’re rooted in God’s word, He strengthens us and grows us just as Jesus said, we don’t store up treasures on this earth that moth and rust destroy, but we’re called to store up treasures in heaven where our heavenly Father is waiting to fully restore us in the time to come. That’s our hope. And that is how we live a life of delight.
Would you join me in prayer? Father, would you help us? Help us to delight in the times that we are weary. Help us to delight when we feel like we’re facing a drought and nothing seems to be going right. Help us to delight when we’re in winter and it’s cold and we’re in a basement in the dark, that we would recognize that you are watering us, that you are attending to us, that you are strengthening us, that you would bring us out and that we would be fruitful again in spring. Help us not to see the blessings that you give us as incidental things, but rather your testimony of your care that you were with us each and every day. Help us to then be fruitful because we know that you were with us in the good times and the bad. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I do hope that you’ll join me again next week. As we wrap up this series, we’re going to be thinking about what we’re going to be doing next week. We’re going to be thinking about the opposite of this. What does it mean not to be in God’s word? What does it mean not to be the blessed person? Because the Bible clearly lays out both what it looks like to be blessed, to engage in God’s word, and to experience His blessing even in the hard times. And it also says what it’s like not to. And so we’re going to turn to that to wrap up Psalm 1 next week. I hope that you’ll join me for that.
Also, on Friday, we’re going to actually be looking at one of the verses I talked about tonight. We’re going to be looking at Romans chapter 8, verses 26 to 28, as part of a faith tree service that we’re doing with some other local churches. It’ll be a great time on Friday night. I hope that you’ll join us for that at 7 p.m. It’ll be a time of praising God through song and prayer and coming to His word. It’d be great to see you there on Friday night for that.
If there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, please do feel free to shoot me an email. I love hearing from you. I love getting to pray for you. It’s a way that we encourage each other to see that life-giving water that God’s giving us.
And if this message tonight and some of the other things we’re doing are an encouragement to you, please consider sharing them and giving them a like. You can help us to get out the life-giving water of God’s promises simply by sharing it with those around you.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. It’s been a delight to be with you, and I will delight to be with you again next week. I’ll see you then.