Singing Through The Struggles

Psalm 1 says, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

The title of my message is Singing Through the Struggles. Most of us have gone through some kind of struggle in our lives. Maybe you’re going through one presently. But there are so many that they vary. There are struggles with the car, struggles with the kids, struggles with the wife, husband or family members. There are cleaning up messes you didn’t make. There are struggles in communication, struggles making the house payment and struggles with health issues. There are burdens with bills and broken hearts and broken homes. There is substance abuse that some struggle with. And on and on.

Certainly there are some who are struggling right now. You have your struggles. There is something going on that you never imagined would. Maybe someone has disappointed you. Maybe you got a pink slip at the job. Maybe it’s a health issue. Those can come up suddenly.

Even in the midst of struggles, God wants us to be singing. Something happens—to every one of us to a certain extent—when we gather at church to sing and worship the Lord and focus on Him. There is a little lifting. There is something about coming together. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1). There is something about singing praise to God that lifts the weight for a few moments.

God loves us to sing. In fact, the Bible says in Psalm 22:3, “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” And because of His goodness and grace, our hearts are set to singing.

I like music. And I like it loud. My wife, not so much. I like the guy pulling up next to me with loud music; it’s a heart massage for me—and I’ve got heart issues. It helps; it keeps it in beat.

I’m excited about heaven for many reasons, and one of them is that there is music in heaven. A lot of the other arts will be left on earth, but there is music in heaven. Another thing I’m excited about in heaven is that the music is loud. How do I know that? Because every time you read about the scene in heaven in the Bible, there is shouting and cymbals. And cymbals aren’t quiet; they clash and are noisy. So I know there’s going to be some serious, crankin’ music in heaven. We’ll be singing and shouting praises to God for His goodness, grace and mercy. And we’ll finally be there with Him at home in glory.

So we are to be those who are practicing for heaven right now. How do I know that? Because we are repeatedly seeing in the Scriptures like Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And if you didn’t catch it the first time, he says, “Again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). In Ephesians 5:19-20, it says, “singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So we are to sing, worship and praise. The Lord delights when He hears His people giving Him praise. We are created for that very purpose and reason.

And God’s intention is to bless us. God loves to bless us as His children. When we are singing and praising Him, we’re blessing Him, and He’ll never be our debtor, so He is going to bless us. In 3 John 2, in the New Living Translation, it says, “Dear Friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit.”

I also like to bless my children. Don’t you? I have five children. And when they were growing up there was nothing more exciting to me when Christmas came or their birthdays came to bless them with something they really wanted. And now I’ve got 16 grandchildren—that’s what happens when you have five children—and I still love to bless them. But I’m going to have to take out a second on my house when Christmas comes. God loves to bless us as we love to bless our children.

Here in Psalm 1, we have the writer telling us how it is that we as believers can bless God and experience His blessings. Don’t you want to be blessed? Of course you do. So how is it that we as believers can sing through our struggles, blessing the Lord and worshipping Him and experience His blessings in our lives?

He tells us here in this psalm. It starts out with “Blessed is the man.” In the Greek, “blessed” is “happy, fortunate, to be envied” is the man or woman “who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.” He is telling us here how to sing through the struggles by saying that there are some things you should not do. Whenever God tells us to stop doing something, He then tells us what we should do.

So the psalm first starts out saying that if you want to be blessed, you cannot walk “in the counsel of the ungodly…stand in the path of sinners…[sit] in the seat of the scornful.” The psalmist describes three people here. I’ll call them the sceptic, the sinner and the scoffer.

The first person, the sceptic, “walks not in the counsel….” They are not seeking godly counsel. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a relationship with the ungodly, with unbelievers. We need to have relationship with them, because if we don’t, we won’t be able to reach them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is essential. That is a priority for us as the church. The great commission is, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). And “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). That’s what we’re called to do. So we can invite unbelievers to dinner, show them the love of Jesus Christ and help them out with things.

What the writer is saying—and my first point is—that we can’t walk “in the counsel of the ungodly.” In other words, when you are seeking wisdom, or you have a situation in which you need help when it comes to your life morally and spiritually and with relationships, you are not to walk “in the counsel of the ungodly.” And then the writer defines the ungodly.

So stay away from bad company. Don’t follow the advice of bad company. What does bad company look like? There is the skeptic. He is ungodly. But it’s not that he doesn’t believe there is a God; he’s not anti-God. He’s the kind of person who says, “I believe there is somebody up there over the rainbow. And I’m a fairly good person.” They may even have some morality. But they don’t have room for God or God’s Word specifically. So they aren’t anti-God. They don’t go around hating God; they’re just ungodly.

In fact, most people believe in the existence of God. According to statistics, 92% of people surveyed said they believe there is a God. But only 64% are convinced. That’s not a good statistic. So they believe there is a God, but they live as though there is no God. That’s what the skeptic is like. He’s not intellectually a complete atheist, but he practices atheism; he lives like there is no God.

So if we are going to keep singing through the struggles, we are not to walk in step with the wicked or pursue their lifestyle.

Then we move from the skeptic to the sinner. We are not to stand “in the path of sinners.” While the skeptic is ungodly and has no room for God, the sinner is unholy. God is not on his radar anywhere. He lives as if there is no God, knows he or she lives that way but it doesn’t bother them. They don’t care. That person can be described by what I would call “the Hollywood mentality.” Not only do they flaunt premarital, extramarital, same-sex and sex, adhering to an “anything goes” lifestyle, but they have no morals. It’s do whatever you feel like doing. That’s the mentality of the sinner. He’s unholy both in lifestyle and in practice. He or she is one who just brags about doing things that we as Christians would say are sin or wrong.

The “Hollywood mentality” is described in Proverbs 30:20. “This is the way of an adulterous woman…” or man “…she eats and wipes her mouth, and says, ‘I have done no wickedness.’” In other words, go have sex with whoever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. So what? That’s their mentality. The Message puts Proverbs 30:20 this way: “Here’s how a prostitute operates: she has sex with her client, takes a bath, then asks, ‘Who’s next?’” That’s the kind of mentality a sinner has. They have no shame. They act like it’s nothing! It’s so nonchalant.

In fact, if you say it’s sin, it’s wrong, you are thought to be out of step with the times. You are categorized as a hater. Taylor Swift says, “A hater is going to hate, hate, hate, hate. Shake it off!” They mock us as believers.

So you have the skeptic, who is ungodly and the sinner who is unholy. And now we come to the scoffer. This person is rowdy. This man or woman is not only a skeptic who is ungodly and a sinner who is unholy, but they mock God. They mock the concept of anyone being God or considered God or anything godly. They make fun of us as believers. “What a boring, horrible life you guys lead! What are you doing on Sunday?”

“Going to church.”

“Aw! What do you do?”

“We sing some songs and listen to somebody teach God’s Word.”

“Oh, man! My head’s about to suck in from the boredom!”

That’s what they think. They mock us and laugh at us. They say, “You idiots! You’re so stupid!” That’s the mocker’s attitude. Proverbs 14:9 says, “Fools mock at sin.” The New Living Translation says, “Fools make fun of guilt, but the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.” Mockers make fun of the fact that we’re doing what we’re doing. They make fun of the fact that when we do something wrong, we say, “Man, I really messed up! I’m sorry.” But mockers feel no guilt, or at least they act like they feel no guilt.

When you feel guilty, you better thank God that you feel guilty. If you can disobey God and you can sin without feeling guilty, there is something seriously wrong with you. Guilt is a good thing. You say, “Pastor, I don’t like to feel guilty.” That’s right.

So what happens is that fools make fun of us for feeling guilty for the things they just do flagrantly. But the Bible says that “the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.” This is a great thing: we feel guilty and God has put His Holy Spirit inside us to cause that in order to drive us to the foot of the Cross, the place where Jesus hung on that Cross, shed His blood and died there. Poured out on Him was the wrath of God that you and I deserved. Poured out on Him was the guilt of sin that we might be forgiven when we go to the foot of the Cross. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that we’re all guilty. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the good news is that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). So we don’t have to live under the guilt of our sin, because God has provided a way for our sin to be removed, through the Cross of Jesus Christ.

You want to be successful and sing through the struggles? Then you have to stay away from hanging with and engaging in the values and practices of bad company. Again, the psalmist is not saying that we shouldn’t sit down and eat a meal with them; it means you can’t heed their counsel. We’ve got to turn a deaf ear to the counsel of this world.

We’re living today in a therapeutic age. We go to our therapist or psychiatrist. We take a drug for our anxiety and anger. We have a pill for everything. This kind of worldly counsel is not somewhere we should go to when it comes to our relationships with one another and God, when it comes to what’s right and what’s wrong. We as believers should not go to our therapist; we should go to Jesus.
Isaiah is a song that is in the Christmas musical, Messiah; Handel put the Scriptures to music. “His Name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). So where do we go for counsel? We have a great Counselor. Why would we go anywhere else? It’s Jesus. He’s not only great when it comes to counseling and provides the kind of counseling that we as Christians need, but He is a Mighty God. Are you looking for power? Do you need help? Not only counsel that tells you what’s right and what’s wrong and how to deal with it, but do you need help in doing it? He’s a Mighty God.

Maybe your dad messed you up. Maybe you don’t have a good father. Maybe your father image is shot. But He’s an Everlasting Father. He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). He’s there for you. If you want to know what a father should look like, as a Christian you’ve got an Everlasting Father who displays it perfectly. Any other father is going to be flawed. And if you want peace, He is the Prince of Peace.

So everything is all wrapped up in Jesus. Going to the world for counsel? I’m not saying that there aren’t times when you might need some help. Maybe you’re not sleeping, and you’re getting a little psychotic. Get something to help you sleep so you can function and receive Biblical counsel. Go get Biblical counsel. I’m not villainizing psychiatrists and therapists; I believe there are well-meaning people who are really trying to help but don’t know Jesus and don’t know His counsel, because they haven’t inquired of the great Counselor. But going to the world for counseling—you’d be better off getting advice on brain surgery from an automobile mechanic than you would listening to the world’s advice.

I rarely give advice. People come up to me after church and say, “Pastor, I need some advice, your opinion on something.”

I say, “Well, you really don’t want to know my opinion. My opinions are not always godly. You don’t need my opinions; you need God’s Word.” Somebody who loves you and wants to help you, as a fellow believer, is going to give you the Word of God when it comes to counsel. Not somebody’s opinion. Why would any of us listen to a psychiatrist who is divorced on how to fix our marriage? It just doesn’t make sense.

So Psalm 1 tells us not to listen to counsel that is worldly or ungodly or hang around with them. It’s a downward progression. It starts with a walk, then your walk slows and you’re standing with them and then the next thing is you’re seated with them. If you listen to the wrong crowd, you’ll hang around with the wrong crowd and you’ll start acting like the wrong crowd. You’ll join in with the scoffers. First you accept the world’s advice, and then you imitate their actions and adopt their attitudes.

That’s the way the enemy works. He entices you. “Oh, come on! Relax, man. Throw off your religious, Christian thing in Jesus’ stuff and hang out with us.” So they engage you, and the next thing you know they embrace you. “Hey, you’re one of us!” It’s a slow path downward. So stay away from bad company, if you want to sing through the struggles.

So what do we do against this worldly pressure? We should study God’s Word diligently. Again, whenever God tells you not to do something—He just told us—He then tells you what to do instead. “Here’s how you replace it. Here’s what you do.” It’s not like you’re left with, “Good luck!” Rather it’s, “Don’t do this, but do this in its place.”

Verse 2 says, “But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” Study God’s Word diligently. If you want success, if you want to be blessed with the kind of blessing that will last, if you want the peace that God provides, if you want the power that God gives to enable you to change, you’re not going to get it from studying the stock market, the Wall Street Journal, Money magazine or Forbes magazine.

A lot of people think that having stuff is the key to success. That success doesn’t outlive you; that success dies when you die. Do you want a success that outlives you, a success that keeps you singing through the difficulty? If that’s what you desire—and I know that’s what God desires—then it says, “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” This word “delight” literally means “pleasure.”

I believe that when you’re close to God, when you’re right with Him, nothing will give you more pleasure than worshipping Him and reading the Word of God. It’s my hope today that as you woke up this morning, you said, “Let’s go to church, man, and worship the Lord and hear God’s Word!” It’s pleasing. It’s something that you enjoy. It’s one of the things that I pray for anyone who is lacking. Even in my own life, it’s to keep me delighting in Him. “May I be one who delights in Your Word.” I pray that for my own life, for my family, for the church corporately. I pray that we would have a growing hunger and dependency on God’s Word.

King David, who wrote many of the psalms, had a passion for God’s Word. Psalm 119 shows us the heart of David, a man who delighted in the Word of God. Verses 9-10 in the New Living Translation say, “How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your word. I have tried hard…” it’s not been easy “…to find you—don’t let me wander from your commands.”

Are you diligent in digging into God’s Word? Are you hard at it, or do you just casually glance at God’s Word? There’s a difference. There’s a difference in your receiving as a result of that.

Verses 11-13 say, “I have hidden your word in my heart…” Why did David do that? “…that I might not sin against you. I praise you, O Lord; teach me your decrees….I have rejoiced in your laws as much as in riches.”

Are you rejoicing more in the law of God than in the idea that you might win the lottery? I hope you’re not doing the lottery thing.

Verses 15-16 say, “I will study your commandments and reflect on your ways. I will delight in your decrees and not forget your word.” And verse 72 says, “Your instructions are more valuable to me than millions in gold and silver.”

Is that your heart? You can say, “Oh, yeah!” But does your lifestyle reflect that?

Verse 97: “Oh, how I love your instructions! I think about them all day long.” Is that what you think about all day long? The law of God, the Word of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God towards you?

Verse 100 says, “I am even wiser than my elders…” What makes you wise? It’s not just what you know. It says, “…for I have kept your commandments.” It’s what you show. What does your action look like?

Verses 103-104: “How sweet your words taste to me; they are sweeter than honey. Your commandments give me understanding; no wonder I hate every false way of life.” The Message paraphrase of verse 103 is “Your words are so choice, so tasty; I prefer them to the best home cooking.” Is that the way you’re feeling about now? “Come on, Pastor; it’s getting near lunchtime.”

Do we prefer the Word of God? Verse 131 says, “I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your Commandments.” Let’s be honest; do we have that same preference, that same desire, that same dedication and devotion to the Word of God?

I think too much we delight in the preacher of God’s Word rather than in God’s Word that the preacher preaches. Be careful. We’re hearing some people say, “Oh, man; I don’t know if I’m going to walk with the Lord anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because the preacher stumbled. The preacher failed.” Tony Evans and another guy failed. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that “The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17). So whenever I see a pastor go down the wrong way, I say, “Oh, God, help me! God, help me not to do anything stupid, because I’m fully capable.” And if you think you’re not; you’re wrong. It should cause us to go into prayer and not into judgmentalism. “Look at that guy! Do you believe he did that?!” Be careful. How the mighty have fallen.

We need to make sure we are not looking at a man and keep a man on a pedestal, because we all have clay feet and we sin just like you do. Yes; I sin just like you do. I struggle. I thought by now, at 72 years old, that I’d be able to say, “I’m not sinning anymore. I made it! I’ve arrived!” I’m here to tell you right now that the battle is real, and the battle doesn’t grow easier with age. If anything, it grows tougher, because the enemy wants to take you down. And the closer you get to the end of your life and leave behind a good legacy, the more he wants to take you down.

David didn’t fall when he was young. David fell when he was 50. Watch out! Be careful that you don’t put a preacher up on a pedestal and depend on him. You need to keep God in His rightful place. He says in Psalm 1:2, “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates say and night.”

There is more to the Bible than just reading it or even studying it. We are told in verse 2 to meditate on it. Of course, you have to read it first and study it to get the context, but we need to be those who are meditating on it. To “meditate” in the Greek means to “hum.”
Have you ever heard a commercial that you just couldn’t get out of your head? It’s that kind of thing. Just keep the Word of God in your head like a commercial. If you have children and grandchildren, you’ve probably heard the Baby Shark song. Don’t you wish you could unhear it? I do. Especially when they come over to the house. What a mindless song! But you can’t get it out of your head!

The Word of God—the strength of singing hymns that are Scriptural—we can meditate on it, because we know the Scripture, because we know the words, because we know the hymn. And there is something about it when you put it to music it makes it easy to remember. So that’s what we are to give ourselves to.

As a young Christian, I had a problem with complaining. So a pastor friend of mine said, “Why don’t you memorize the Word of God. That will help you deal with that problem. Go to Philippians 2:14-16 and memorize it. So I memorized, “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.” I was 23 years old when I put that to memory. It’s still there; thank God.

When I worked in an Alpha-Beta bakery on the donut line in Brea, they came by me on a conveyor belt, and the boxes too, I had to put six in each box and it gets sealed down the line. It’s all automated. Picking up donuts and putting them in a box for eight hours does not take a lot of intelligence. So that verse in memorization and meditation stuck while on the donut line.

What is that complaining thing? I’m supposed to “do all things without complaining.” Why? That I may be “blameless and harmless” and not be rebuked “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” The sign of “a crooked and perverse generation” in God’s economy is murmuring and complaining.

How many of you did it on the way to church? God, help us! Blameless and harmless…holding fast the word of life.” In other words, it’s a bad witness to complain. “Holding fast the word of life.” Why? “That I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.” You run the race as a Christian, you labor as a Christian, and if you do so, make sure you do so without complaining. Why? Because if you complain—and we can do that. “I gotta get up this morning and help out in Sunday School. I have to help out in the ministry; they’re doing an outreach somewhere. I’m gonna quit!”

Every time you complain, no matter how noble and good the thing is that you’re doing, when Jesus returns, you “run in vain or labored in vain.” All that you did while complaining—no reward. And I want rewards, because when I am before the Lord, I want to take all my crowns and rewards and give them to Him as a gift to God.

So we are to be “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in [our] heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19). Be singing and giving thanks. We should be constantly humming the tune of God’s Word, so that we can meditate on it day and night, like a song you can’t get out of your head. That’s what we should be spending our time doing.

And not only are we to stay away from bad company and study God’s Word diligently, delighting in it, that will enable us to do point number three. Stand for what is right tenaciously. As a result of delighting in His Law, and meditating day and night, “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”

Why did the psalmist use a tree here to compare singing and successful people to? Think about it. A tree is not something that is portable. Once planted, a tree stays in one spot. If it has water coming to it, a tree stands firm against the wind, against the waves; against whatever may come against that tree, it tends to stand firm. Why? Because it was planted by God. The picture is the tree was “planted by the rivers of water,” by “the washing of the water of the Word.” The water is the Word of God, the truth of God.

If you are planted like a tree there, you are unshakeable, unwavering in what you believe and how you behave. That is key. We are to abide in the Word of God. We as Christians are not to take our ques from the world. We are not to follow the latest fads and public-opinion polls. When it comes to what we’re doing and how we’re living, we need to go to the Word of God to find out what’s right and what’s wrong, to find out how to get right and how to stay right. When you stand on the Word of God, it doesn’t matter what anybody else says or what everybody else believes. Righteous people are not guided by polls, pundits or public opinion. They are guided by the principles and teaching based on the Word of God. That’s so important, people.

If you study history, you’ll find that people who have truly moved this world have been those who the world could not move. Are you one? Where would we be today without the Martin Luthers, without the Charles Wesleys, without the Spurgeons, the Hudson Taylors, the Billy Grahams, the Moodys, the E.V. Hills? Where would we be today without these men standing? They were men who stood on the Word of God and would not be moved.

Like many today, tragically in the church, we need to be careful of this whole woke mentality that gets into the place. “Has God indeed said?” (Genesis 3:1). That is what the devil said to Eve. “Are you sure He didn’t mean that you could have a same-sex relationship in marriage and be blessed by God? Did He really mean what He said when he said that homosexuality is a sin?”

Same-sex marriage is not a marriage. Marriage defined by the Word of God is between a man born a man—we have to say that today. We didn’t used to have to say that, because that was the only way they were born. But today, because of the woke thing, we say that marriage is between a man born a man in a relationship and married to a woman born a woman. That is the definition of marriage.

We have to stand firm, planted in the Word of God, knowing what we believe. We need to do it lovingly, but we need to stand. A tree stands firm; that’s why the psalmist likens us to a tree. And a tree also bears fruit, which “brings forth its fruit in its season.”
Every life is a fruit-bearing tree. What kind of fruit is coming forth from your life? “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). When it comes to fruit, we are to be trees, the kind of people that people can climb on and go to and grab some refreshing fruit from, the kind of people who provide shade.

Every one of us, as believers, ought to be a tree that when a brother or sister or family member—somebody—goes through a tough time, we should be the kind of person that they would come to and say, “Man, I need help! I’m struggling in my relationship with the Lord. I need some counsel on this.” We can then give them the fruit, show them the love of Jesus, be patient and kind and longsuffering with them, listening to them and then bringing some refreshment by way of providing the Scriptures, sharing with them from the Word of God what God says, making sure they know God loves them but showing them how to deal with the situation. We should be able to shade them from the heat of the battle. There are fiery trials we all go through. We should be able to provide shade.

Are you that kind of Christian? Am I that kind of Christian? When somebody is struggling and going through a difficult time, maybe with some sin, with some situation in their life, can they find in you a tree, somebody who is going to give them firm, solid counsel, going to love on them—sometimes it’s just by being quiet and listening to them—hearing them out and then opening God’s Word to them, encouraging them, as well as exhorting them?

That’s what God wants from us. That’s the way we should be. So if we are going to experience that, we need to be those who stay away from bad company. God wants to bless you so that you can be a blessing to others. He didn’t bless us so we could hold it all to ourselves. “Okay God, I’ve got all these blessings!”

Remember the parable of the talents? The guy who hid the talent because he was afraid he’d lose it got into trouble. We need to invest in people’s lives the blessings that God has blessed us with. Love one another. Be those trees that are planted firmly, that yield fruit, that don’t dry up and wither, and whatever we do, God will bless. Why? Because what we are doing is in align with, in accordance with His work and His will in His Word.

God, help us to pay attention; that we might be those who live with the intention of blessing God and being a blessing to others.