“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
– Psalm 1:1–2
What an incredible opening to a book full of 150 chapters, songs, prayers, laments, that are all worthy of meditation. It’s not Psalm 1:1–2, the whole Bible is worthy of meditation. That’s the key word here. This is the man or woman who is blessed, the one who meditates on the law of the Lord, on the word of God. It’s interesting, when you look through scripture, even more than you hear commands to read the word or to study the word, you actually hear commands to meditate on the word. Which means don’t just hear it, don’t just understand it, but internalize it. Let it soak into your mind and to your heart. Let it transform you. Give it time to do that. Which is why this Psalm says meditate on it day and night. All day, all night.
Let us be a people who mediate on God’s Word day and night that we may revel in the inexhaustible truths of the glory of God.
This Verse Reminds Us To Think About God’s Law
So the idea is Psalm 1:1–2, for example, you hear that at the beginning of your day, and then you just think about it all day long in a Deuteronomy 6 kind of way. Maybe even you write it down and you put it up at different places so you’re constantly thinking about it, so you’re constantly focused on it all the way until that night. You lay down your head on your pillow at night and you’re thinking, “Blessed is the man or woman who delights in the law of Lord.” You just meditate on that, think about it. You internalize it, all day long. What does it mean to delight in God’s law? Not to walk in the counsel of the wicked, not to stand in the way of sinners, not to sit in the seat of scoffers, but to delight in God’s law, to live according to it, to walk according to it.
Psalm 1:1–2 Prays For Meditation Day and Night
So we pray, from the beginning of a journey through the Psalms. God, help us to meditate on your word day and night. God, help us not just to read through the Bible like we’re checking off a box. Help us not just to get through some words on a page so that we can pat ourselves on the back or say we’ve done this or that. So God, deliver us from that kind of Bible intake. We pray for deep, true, continual, all day long meditation on your word in our lives, and delight in it, love for it.
God, increase, even as we go through part of the Psalms in this Pray the Word podcast. So God, help us to grow in our delight in your law. We trust, oh God, that as we meditate on your word. We will experience your blessing, that blessing will come, not in following the ways of this world, but in delighting in your word and soaking it in all day long. God, may that be a characteristic in every one of our lives. So that we delight in your law and we meditate on it day and night. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
