Create in Me a Clean Heart: The 40-Day Challenge (Psalms)Sample

Don’t Walk in the Counsel of the Wicked

Psalm 1

“You are who you hang out with.” Just one in a group of folk proverbs that talk about the influence of the environment on our lives. Although we often do not choose either people or circumstances in life, the writer of the first psalm tells us that despite all circumstances, we always have the option of choosing. He ‘speaks’ through the song about the two paths we can take - either following the wisdom of God, or following the counsel of the wicked. In the text for the wicked, he says: “They are like chaff that the wind drives away… For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

Chaff refers to the small residue from grain that first serves to protect the grain from external influences, but is eventually discarded and has no use. In this text, wickedness is associated with chaff. In the beginning it is hidden, but when harvest time comes, it shows its nothingness, remains scattered on the ground, carried by the wind - and does not even benefit animals. In the same way, human wickedness ends. It entangles and interferes, and then retreats as if carried by the wind. It simply disappears, and all participants in the ‘game’ wash their hands of it.

The way of chaff is opposed to the way of righteousness. The righteous “delights in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” The view from God’s height exposes all the false splendor of the counsels, ways and assemblies of the wicked, sinners and scoffers. Then, instead of the impermanence depicted by the chaff, man becomes “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season.”

To not fall into the traps of fickleness, detours, and scoffers, but rather, like the ‘righteous’, to be in good company, sharing both good and bad with others - that was, and still remains a challenge for everyone!