The Man Who Is Blessed.
By T.
BLESSED is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers: but his delight is in the law of Jehovah; and on His law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also doth not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.'' The foregoing words are the first part of the first Psalm. There is a whole mine of inexhaustible wealth in those statements and promises of our heavenly Father. It is not said that the man shall be blessed, but the man "is" blessed who walks not in the counsels, nor in the ways of the wicked. God has established the law, and it always operates to bring a blessing to the man that will walk in the ways of Jehovah. The blessing comes as the fruitage of the walking in the way of the Lord. But observe the class of walking in God's ways that the psalmist is talking about. The man who is following in the way that the inspired poet has before his mind is one of whom it may truthfully be said, "His delight is in the law of Jehovah; and on His law doth he meditate day and night." Then this person is one who has persisted in the ways of the Lord until it has become a "delight" to him to do right. This person who is thus walking in the way of the Lord "shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also doth not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." This is a wonderful statement of a wonderful fact. But you may say that you are seeking to walk in the way of the Lord and you are having very hard reverses. But the very reverses that you are having are for the purpose of laying a strong foundation for the prosperity that the Lord has already planned for you. These reverses are to fill your soul with courage and with faith and with knowledge and with ability, so that you can walk firmly in the great path of progress and prosperity that the Lord has marked out for every Christian. We lose so much of the promises of God thru our shortsightedness. We try to make them apply according to our ideas of what we think they should be. We fail to see that sometimes we must take the promise as a seed of truth into the mind, and wait for the fruitage that will not come till by and by. So, then, we should seize the promises of God with the firm grasp of faith, and as we do this we will find that our divine Father has placed a living power in the sacred word. The promises become a literal reality, and they are literally fulfilled to us as soon as we accept them in the way in which the Lord has told us that we should.