Sunday Devotional: Psalm 1:4

⁴ Not so the wicked, but rather [they are] like the chaff which the wind scatters.

Last week we read how the blessed man, the one who is righteous in God’s sight, is fruitful. His life is marked by a desire to do God’s will, and he receives the blessings that flow from being dedicated to following after God, and not counting himself among the wicked. As we noted, this blessedness is not necessarily material, though material blessing may come as a result of being the Lord’s. The spiritual rewards–forgiveness of sin, redemption, communion with the Lord–are far more valuable than any fleeting material blessing.

In stark contrast to the godly are the wicked. The Hebrew makes the distinction between the two types of men by saying, “not so… but rather.” In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, made sometime in the two centuries before Christ, the translation is even more emphatic: “The ungodly are not this way, not this way”—or perhaps “not this way, no not at all!” The difference between the wicked and the godly are as night and day. And perhaps you’ve felt that difference, when you see the lifestyles of the godless, or you hear their conversation, and you cannot conceive how anyone could live or think in that way.

The righteous man is prosperous and profitable for God and His Kingdom.  But what are the wicked, those people we met in verse one, good for?  The psalmist says that they are like chaff. When wheat was threshed on the threshing floor, the farmer would separate wheat from chaff by throwing the wheat in the air. The the useful wheat is heavy enough to fall to the ground.  The useless chaff is light, and would be carried off on the wind. That’s quite a vivid image of the wicked! They may think themselves powerful; they may think the world revolves around them. But in truth, when the wheat is threshed at the Lord’s harvest, who is it that will remain? The righteous are the wheat, those that bear fruit unto the Lord and of use to Him. The wicked are simply scattered on the wind.  Again, the Greek version makes the point even more forcefully: “they are like chaff which the wind drives from the face of the earth.”

It can sometimes seem very discouraging when we see the wicked prosper, and the godly put down. When the world scorns us, or when our beliefs and values set us apart in a way that denies us advantages that are offered to those who don’t share our worldview. We might be tempted to ask, “why bother?” The psalmist reminds us that we live to honor God, and we do so not for the praise of men, or for temporal reward, but for the glory of God and His good pleasure. The godless will one day find that all they considered valuable is, in fact, meaningless. Though they might have thought themselves the center of the world, they will find that they are, in fact, no more important than the chaff that has no use but to be scattered on the wind.

Next week, we’ll look at the last two verses of this psalm. Have a blessed week!