In the sermon 'Happy People Don't Do This' by Scott Brown, the focus is on Psalm 1 and its teachings about happiness and spiritual fulfillment. Brown emphasizes how Psalm 1 illustrates a 'continental divide' in our lives, determining the direction of our spiritual journey. The sermon discusses the importance of removing influences that diminish happiness and stresses that true joy is found in delighting in and meditating on the law of the Lord. Brown warns against the negative impact of media and entertainment, which often leads people away from godly influences. The sermon highlights that happiness is contingent on both what we avoid and what we choose to embrace. Brown underscores the significance of Psalm 1 as a guide to understanding one's spiritual path and the dichotomy between the blessed and the wicked. The overarching message is that delighting in God's word leads to a fulfilling and joyful life.

Well, please open your Bibles to Psalm chapter 1. It was remarkable to me to sit here and listen to the preaching in the first session, and where Mike asked, you know, how is your future shaping your present? But I couldn't get away from the idea that this text really asks how is your present shaping your future. And It really is about removing everything from your life that will cause you to have a diminished happiness, a diminished delight. It's a great passage.

This psalm, remember this is a psalm, and psalms speak of everything that will ever cause you sorrow. That's one of the beauties of the psalms. Some kinds of Psalms draw you out of your despondency and into praise and into thanksgiving. They're so valuable. Some Psalms draw you into confession because you need to confess your sin.

Some psalms draw you into lamentation because you need to lament. It's real life. Hard things happen. Lamentation is a legitimate option in certain situations. Some Psalms draw you into imprecation.

Some Psalms draw you into crying out that God would destroy the wicked. That's often needful and God engages you in that through the Psalms. Some Psalms deliver instruction for living. Psalm 1 is like that. It instructs you about getting pulled into a world of happiness.

That's God's intention for His people. By the way, we should never forget, whenever we read the word blessed or happiness, don't forget this. The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of everlasting joy. That's what God's doing in the world. He wants you to move away from everything that will steal your joy.

Isn't that wonderful? Well, that's God. Let's read the text. Now the first verse is kind of startling because it tells you that happiness depends on what you don't do. 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." And then in verse 2 We learn that what you delight in depends on whether you're happy or not.

And that's why we read, 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 rivers of water that brings forth fruit in its season, whose leaf does not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but they are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment." In other words, the ungodly won't stand. They'll get blown away in the judgment of God.

Just blown away. They can't stand. Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. In other words, they don't get to enjoy the blessings of the loving kindnesses of the kingdom of heaven and his church and all of his laws. And then Verse 6, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

So this psalm identifies a great divide. There are things that you do and it causes a division and you go a certain direction in your life. That's the way God wired the world. I have some friends And I have a relative. These are people who have contemplated, you know, walking the 3, 100 mile trail along the Continental Divide.

And the Continental Divide, of course, is in the Rocky Mountains, and you can, it is the dividing line between the flow of water between the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. And the water flows to the Pacific Ocean or down into the Gulf of Mexico and mingles, And you go from 4, 000 feet to 14, 000 feet on this trail. But the water goes in one direction or another depending on what side of that divide you're on. Psalm 1 is very much like that. It shows the continental divide of your life because whichever way you go, you're going to go that way a long way and you're going to end up somewhere.

That's what Psalm 1 makes very, very clear. Now the Psalms are written to move you. The Psalms have been designed to take you from one place to another, take you from where you are to where you need to be, and where you need to be is in happiness. They change your attitude, they are a blessing. This is one of the chief functions of the Psalms.

It's very important that we recognize that God doesn't just want us to be educated. He doesn't want us just to know the doctrine. He wants us to know the doctrine, but he wants to move us. He wants to change our lives. He wants to move our attitudes.

He wants to move our actions. He really wants to cause a divide in our spirit that takes us to the highway of holiness and to every manifestation of happiness in his kingdom. It's good to understand things, but if you understand things but aren't changed, then nothing really has happened in terms of kingdom living. And the Psalms help us to move. They're like earthquakes of the soul that cause us to move away.

They cause a great divide, a cleavage to move us in one direction or another. The very first word in the psalm is blessed, happy. The meaning of the psalm can be known, I believe, by six words. By six words, blessed, delight, meditation, a tree, planted, chaff, and perish. So just some technical scholarship on this psalm.

This psalm is a summary of all the other psalms. It's a gateway to all the rest of the psalms. It's interesting that the psalm begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the psalm ends with the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That's by design. The psalm begins with blessing and it ends with perishing.

There's the divide. There are only two ways you can be going in your life, and the psalm helps you to understand what that looks like and how you know where you're going. The psalm will tell you where you're going. You say, well, I don't know where I'm at in my life. This song will nail where you're at and help you to understand it.

It should also cause us to ask, why should I perish? Why would anyone want to perish? No one really wants to perish. And God brings His lovingkindness to us by bringing an argument for why you shouldn't perish. Don't perish.

Don't go that way. Be a tree planted by rivers of living water, but don't perish. God is so kind to call out to us like that. The central theme of this psalm is the happiness that comes from friendship with God, the God who makes a covenant with sinners. And David, he's explaining what are the fundamental advantages of knowing God.

It's important to say, too, that this promise is an exclusive promise. It's not for everybody. The promise that's here is exclusively for those who love, who delight in the truth of God. If you don't love the truth of God, happiness will always elude you. That's what the Bible says.

So The whole message is how to be happy in the midst of a fallen world. You see things falling apart all around you, and you'll see when you read the Psalms, things are falling apart all around the writers of the Psalms. How do you keep your wits about you when things are unraveling all around you? The Psalms teach you how to do it in every possible circumstance that you'll ever experience. So there are only two kinds of people in this psalm.

It's the great divide. There is the blessed flourishing and there the cursed wicked. But this morning or this afternoon I really want to encourage you to just see the blessings of God and just to remind us all to remove anything that's stealing any of your happiness and to do the things that actually promote what God desires in your life. And as I've been reading this myself, I've just been praying, Lord, have mercy on me and increase my delight, make my delight more than it's ever been. That's what I want more than anything.

And the result is there, the promise is there for happiness. God wired the whole world for happiness and he's telling us how he has wired the world. Here's the bottom line, delighting in the word of God brings happiness. So let's look at verse 1. 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.

David starts with negatives. A man is blessed—now be very careful to hear this—a man is blessed, a man is made happy, first of all by what he does not do, what he doesn't do. In other words, there are things you just shouldn't do. Happiness depends on who you spend your time with and who you delight in, who you're hanging out with. And let's be very clear, there are two kinds of hanging out in this world.

You can actually hang out with real people in this world, kind of like what we're doing today. But most of the hanging out that goes on today is hanging out with entertainers in movies, listening to songs, hanging out after a couple of clicks on the internet. You're hanging out with those people. That's where most people are hanging out. They're hanging out with a lot of people that aren't in the room with them.

And there are people to be with and not be with. Now, when you're watching a film or you're listening to a song, be really careful to understand this. This is the truth. You are always hanging out with those people. And are these people the kind of people that are listed here?

Are they ungodly? Are they sinners? Are they scornful? Solomon said it a different way one time, bad company corrupts good morals. Well, it's worse than that.

Bad company will steal your happiness. That's what David's saying here in this psalm. When you're in the media world, you're almost always with the wicked. You are always with them, if that's where you're at. And you have to be very, very careful in this world.

Don't set your children to have a relationship with the wicked. In almost every film that ever came out of Hollywood, there's no God and there's no law of God. Those things simply are not there. They are absent. Even in the seemingly most happy movies you've ever watched, the ones that are okay.

God's not there. And we have to recognize that there is a way that you hang out with the wicked is more common than anything else we do, and we should be very, very careful with it. Appreciating apostates, Celebrating celebrities, socializing with scoffers is the issue that David is addressing in verse 1. And he's saying that you're blessed by what you don't do. And he's saying don't hang with those people.

David said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. David in Psalm 101 3 says, I hate the work of those who fall away. I hate the work of those who fall away. To fall away. I think that applies to every ungodly entertainer.

David did. You know, I was on an airplane yesterday and in front of me a person had this big iPad screen and there was this remarkable film on it. It was so compelling. It was so graphically rich and wicked. And I was looking at it and I thought, every minute that I look at that screen, my happiness is being stolen.

I'm being ripped off. But it was my eyes that were gravitating toward it. And I was being defrauded. Of what? Happiness.

That's it. Stealing my happiness right in front of my own eyes. This brings up what is one of the most important things to understand. There are many ways that we have misplaced our delights and they diminish our happiness. And I want to ask, are the entertainers consuming our time?

What are our eyes resting on? And are the things that our eyes resting on sources of true happiness for our lives? Now you note the progression here. You start exposing yourself to the counsel of the ungodly, and it keeps and it accelerates. It progresses.

You know, you walk in the counsel of the ungodly. In other words, you're coming under their counsel. They're counseling you. They're talking to you. They're in the room with you on a screen or maybe that maybe they are physical but most Christians aren't hanging around with extremely ungodly people physically, but they do virtually.

So they're counseling you, they're talking to you, they're bringing their worldview to you, and then you're standing with them. You stand in the path of sinners. You kind of like being there, standing there. You're willing to stand there with them. And next, you begin to scoff along with them, and you start scoffing about the holy people who love holy things and that's the progression.

But it begins with this gentle exposure but it ends up with you being in the same place that they are, you're scoffing against holy things. And you mock those people who have holy desires. That's the progression that David is bringing out here. As long as we believe that anything in this world can bring us happiness, we will fail. And we will never be happy, and we cannot be like a tree, we'll become like Jaff." As long as you think there's some goodness from the entertainers and the celebrities, you'll never find the happiness that God desires.

If you feel that there's goodness from Hollywood for your children, There are four disasters you'll bring on your family. Are you ready? There are four. I'm just gonna list four. Maybe there are more.

First of all, you'll be stealing profitable investments from them for their minds and their souls. Because no matter what you do, there's something you're not doing. And that's why he starts out with the negative. Blessed are those who do not do this. See, you first have to be delivered from the things that you are doing.

You have to stop doing those things. But if you don't stop, you're stealing from yourself and maybe even your children by exposing them to things that are stealing from them. Secondly, you are injecting a godless worldview into their souls. And thirdly, you are growing godless affections in their consciences. And fourthly, you are deceiving them about true happiness.

So be so careful about this. Now parents are given the responsibility to shape the affections of their children. Train up a child in the way he should go. Teach them diligently when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. Direct them with the commands.

Teach them righteousness and justice and holiness. That's what parents are supposed to do. But it's so easy because of the entertainments in this world, which are so available to end up harming our children by the people that we're hanging out with in the media. Just to go back to the message of Verse 1, what you do not do is a source of happiness. Misplaced delights always misplace happiness.

So don't take it lightly if your children find more delight in singing Disney songs than they do songs of the Lord. Don't take it lightly. The celebrities have gotten to them in their soul. Is that what you want coming out of them? Well, whatever comes out of the mouth came from the heart.

So it's very, very important. Spurgeon has recorded prayers. I read them from time to time. Last week I read this in one of his prayers. Lord, remove everything that diminishes the brightness of Thy grace.

That's exactly what David is talking about in this psalm. Remove everything that diminishes the brightness of grace. All of this depends on whatever you think is delightful. If you tell me what is delightful to you and what you meditate on the most or think about the most, I can tell you whether you're going to be happy or not. That's verse one.

And It depends on what you don't do. That's the first part of this. Now, the second verse addresses the other side. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law He meditates day and night. So now David shifts from what you shouldn't do to what you should do.

Now there are two things that are the hinge points on your happiness. Delight and meditation. That's very important. Delight and meditation. And The question is, what is the focus of the happy person's delight in meditation?

Well, it's the law of the Lord. His delight is in the law of the Lord. The happy person has a delight in the law, And then that delight leads the person to meditation, to the desire to meditate on the law of the Lord. Now this term law of the Lord can be used in different ways. There's a narrow way to think about the law of the Lord and there's a broad way.

The most narrowly it can be thought of as their Ten Commandments. A little bit more broadly, the term the law of the Lord is used for the Pentateuch, the law, the Moses law, the five books of Moses. Even more broadly, it can refer to the entire testimony of God and His Word, the 66 books of the Bible. I think that's what David's talking about. He's talking about everything that God has said That forms the substance of his laws for mankind.

So I take it broadly, that's why the Apostle Paul said, he says, for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. He loved it. He loved every part of it. One of the things that's really clear here is that everything hinges, Everything divides on that continental divide of your soul, on what you delight in. That's the heart of the matter.

Now, if you delight in the Word of God, If you take pleasure in the law of God, if it is sweet to you and you love it and you want it, then that changes everything. Now, He's talking about the law of God. Here's a reality that everybody who's a Christian understands, and that's this. The Bible will keep you from spending time on evil influences, or spending time with evil influences will keep you from the Bible. There you have it.

Every Christian knows that. David Is asking us to consider the way we live and the things that we delight in Because your happiness depends upon it So is the law your delight do you want it? Do you have pleasure in it? And I'm not I'm not asking the question. Do you have family worship?

I'm not asking the question do they preach the word of God in your church? This is not the question The question is do you delight in it? Do you hunger for it? Do you long for it? Is it sweet to you that you want to go to it and you spend your time there do you have a sense of blessing from it does it help you does it move you This is not the same thing as saying, well, we have family devotions.

That's not what this is talking about. He's talking about your heart personally and individually gravitating toward God because you delight in it. And because you delight in it, you meditate on it, and because you meditate on it, you're the happiest person in the room. We do so many things in this world. Some of them give a bountiful return in joy.

Some give a mediocre return. And some give a terrible return. Here's the will of God for us, a bountiful return. He wants a great return of joy in our hearts by the things that we delight in. So we should all be asking, where is my delight placed?

What makes me delighted? But here's the reality. You might delight in something a lot, but it gives you a mediocre return, or it might give you a poor return. Some delights will destroy you. Other delights will just lull you to sleep, and they won't make you happy, they'll just make you sleepy.

Or they'll just give you enough buzz to get by to the next time. Delight like this is a little bit like drugs. You know, drugs will bring you up and make you high for a minute and then they'll throw you to the ground and wreck everything in your life. So we should ask, Of the things that I meditate on, is it a diminishing of my happiness or an increase of my happiness? All of This speaks about the pleasure in the heart of a person to meditate on God and His Word, not just to read it and move on, but to delight in it, to settle into it, and to find it working in your soul.

This is the whole subject of communion with God. Because we're so bent on information, learning things, We listen to sermons all day long and things like that, but do we meditate on them? Do we just go from one thing after another and not meditate on it? And so David is really calling us to slow down, delight and meditate. Take the time, because we'll have a good return and the return will be in the place you want it, and that's in happiness.

John Flavel said that saints on earth have real communion with God, and that this communion is the joy of their hearts, the life of their life, and their relief under all pressures and troubles in this life, is a truth so firmly sealed upon their hearts by experience, that there can remain no doubt about it among those who have any saving acquaintance with the life and the power of Jesus Christ." John Gill said, communion with God is the top of all the saints' experiences in this life. It is the height of experiential religion and powerful godliness. This whole passage is about experiencing a God who makes you happy. And it comes through two means, by what you don't do and what you delight in. Those two things.

That's the continental divide of your soul. That's the continental divide of all of your attitudes. That's the continental divide of all your relationships and the effect you have on people around you. It's the dividing line of how you do your work. It's the dividing line on how you function in a church of Jesus Christ.

And by the way, God wants a happy church. And this is how he gets it, is when people delight in the law of the Lord, and that's really all they care about. So that when they come into the fellowship of the saints, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for God, because they delight in God. So you will be happy because of what you do not do and what you delight in.

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." That's a person who has a high view of God, a high appreciation for God, And so he seeks God in his Word, the place where he reveals himself. Now next time we come into Psalm 1, my plan is to speak more carefully about verse 2, delight. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for your wonderful intentions for us, how you're so desiring to take us out of ourselves and into the kingdom of the Son of your love.

We are so grateful for you, Lord. I pray that you would help us to discern the moments when our joys are being diminished by the things that we delight in, the things that give us such a poor return. Lord, I pray that there would be a bumper crop of happiness in all of our hearts. Amen.