Nowhere Man?
Bible Study
A Psalm for Every Sigh
Finding Your Song in God's Word
Object:
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. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. in all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will 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 wicked will perish.
-- Psalm 1
In Greek, psalm means "twanging upon the strings." In Hebrew, it means "a poem set to notes" or "to strike the strings." Sometimes the psalms are called "the Book of Shining Forth."
Actually, the psalms are the hymn and prayer book of Israel. Jesus was familiar with the book, quoting from it with frequency, and at least once, after the Last Supper, he sang from it with his disciples (Matthew 26:30).
In the Bible, almighty God is saying, "Here I am! Look at me! This is what I'm like, how I think, what I do. Turn to me and live abundantly forever!" The psalms are man's response to such a God.
When I was younger and read the psalms, I thought to myself, "What's this fellow groaning about so much?" Now that I am older, however, I read the psalms and marvel at how articulately he expresses my own feelings to God.
It's been said, "There is a psalm for every sigh," and indeed there are. Some psalms share feelings of failure, depression, fear of enemies, and doubt. Others are about victory, joy, gratitude, worship, and war.
Today we hear the Top 40 "Hit Parade" on the radio. The psalms are 150 of Israel's best worship songs over the centuries and Psalm 1 is number one on their hit parade. Being the introductory song, Psalm 1 is the key to understanding the entire book. Basically, it describes two different types of people -- horizontal people and vertical people.
Horizontal People
Let's look at the horizontal man first. You may recall a popular Beatles song from the 1970s titled, "Nowhere Man." The words may be found online. It speaks of a person without plans and without a point of reference for his life. He is lost. This represents many in today's world.
The horizontal man is such a nowhere man. The psalm describes him as a slave to peer pressure who does little more than follow the crowd and hang around with sinners.
First off, Psalm 1 says this sort of man never asks God anything. He, instead, "Walks in the counsel of the ungodly." The Hebrew word for "ungodly" actually means "loud" or "noisy." This man simply follows the clamor of society. The voice that shouts the loudest to him is the truest. For many of these people today, that is the voice of television, radio, fads, magazines, and "with it" advice columnists.
Some newspapers today carry a column called "Straight Up" by Stephen the Bartender. In it, the columnist responds to questions of sex, finances, employment, marriage, or whatever. I know a preacher who, counseling with a middle-aged housewife, was told, "Desperate Housewives is my favorite soap opera. I watch it every day because the leading lady's problem is the same as mine. I keep thinking that she'll show me some solutions."
The horizontal person, according to the text, also "stands in the way of sinners." He not only listens to their counsel and walks in it; he stands for what they do, votes with them, and encourages others to do so as well. Last year, I went to visit a young student who had been living with a group of peers. A near-fatal drug overdose landed him in the hospital. We talked long and freely about purpose in life, drugs, and God. I asked him if he needed anything. "No," he assured me, he'd be just fine. But as I turned to go, he said, "Stephen, there is one thing I need. When I get out of here I'm going to need a whole new set of friends."
The psalm goes on to say that this horizontal person not only walks in ungodly counsel and stands with them; he also "sits in the seat of scoffers." In other words, he makes light of values, tradition, morals, scripture, godly leadership, and the like!
At a university, an unusual experiment was conducted recently. Ten people were asked to wear a pair of reverse-lens glasses for two weeks. When put on, the spectacles turned the world upside down. The floor was the ceiling and vice versa. For fourteen days, the participants tried to function in a topsy-turvy world. Afterward they sat down to evaluate, and on one point they all agreed. How quickly they adjusted!
"Scoffers," the horizontal people the psalm describes, see the world through a kind of reverse-lens morality. To them a policeman is a "pig," a "pimp" and "pusher" are friends, the bartender is their priest, the preacher is a bore, and Mom and Dad are enemies.
Be careful to notice in the text how the nowhere man gets progressively comfortable with sin. He begins by walking in the counsel of the ungodly. Soon he is standing in the way of sinners. Finally he is sitting with scoffers. Do you see the gradualism there? Little by little, his life loses momentum until he is one of the noisy crowd.
I like the story of a man who was going bald. It seemed that everybody around him knew it but him. Every morning he'd wake up and there on his pillow would be dozens of his hairs. But it didn't bother him. He'd go shampoo his scalp, blow his hair dry, and comb it carefully. This went on for several years. Each morning there were more hairs on his pillow and fewer hairs on his head, until he had only three hairs left. Still, the man got up, shampooed his three hairs, blew them dry, and combed them down carefully as he'd always done. Then one day it happened. He woke up and there were his last three hairs on his pillow. Nevertheless, he went into the shower, shampooed, blew his scalp dry, took his brush in hand, and stepped over to the mirror to comb his hair. A look of utter surprise crossed his face, and he exclaimed, "It can't be! I'm going bald!"
One by one we give up our values in ways that aren't very noticeable. Little by little the changes overtake us. The months turn into years and we, who once walked vertically before God, now live entirely horizontally, even sitting comfortably in the seat of scoffers -- and "how quickly we adjusted."
Where does following the noise lead? Where will peer pressure and horizontal living take you? The text gives the result in verse 4. "The wicked ... are like chaff which the wind drives away."
The picture is of a farmer who has harvested his wheat. He leaves it to dry in the sunshine, then on a windy day takes his crop to the top of a hill. With a winnowing fork, he takes a shovelful of the wheat and tosses it into the air. The wind blows the lightweight husk away while the heavier and edible grain falls back to the ground. This is repeated until the husk is gone and nothing but fine grain remains. Psalm 1 is saying that this process is going on right now in this world. God is sifting or winnowing all people, separating the wheat from the chaff.
When I was younger in ministry, I used to come home perplexed with some people's foolishness. They skipped every opportunity to learn from God, chaffed under every authority, and violated themselves against every moral principle of Christ. "What happens to people like that?" I'd often ask my wife. Now that I am older I no longer ask. The suicides, prison sentences, alcoholism, cancer, and death tell the answer all too clearly. Sinners do not endure. They, like chaff, get blown away to nowhere with the winds of time.
This part of the text actually prefigures the ministry of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist said of Jesus, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12).
So, the wicked shall not endure. When the grain falls, the chaff gets blown away like so much rubbish to be burned. When Christians are gathered to God, the wicked will perish. The latter portion of the psalm spells their doom:
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will 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 wicked will perish.
-- Psalm 1:4-6
The Vertical Man
That is the lifestyle and end of the horizontal man. Now there is this -- the lifestyle and fate of the vertical man.
Clearly, the vertical man does not walk, stand, sit, or otherwise hang around with sinners. He doesn't care what people say so much as he cares what God says. He is anxious to absorb God's word not the world's fads.
The psalm says, "His delight is in the law of the Lord." The Hebrew word for "delight" means to crave, to seek after with pleasure. There is a picture of this in Proverbs 2:1-15. There the vertical man "cries out for insight, raises his voice for understanding, seeks it like silver, searches for it as for hidden treasure."
Notice also the psalm says this type of person also "meditates" on God's word. Here, the Hebrew for "meditate" means "to murmur, to ponder, to chew over and over again as the cow chews his cud until it is completely digested." This means we think God's thoughts after him, we narrow our way of thinking about life to God's way of thinking.
The text goes on to say that the vertical man delights and meditates on God's word both "day and night" not just on Sundays -- weekdays and Saturdays, summers, too, along with holidays. For him, his religion is not just something to be put on and taken off with his Sunday coat. It is an every hour and every day consuming delight murmured in his dreams, hummed under his breath, discussed around the supper table, and shouted aloud in his business deals.
What is the result of such a vertical lifestyle? The text says, "He is like a tree." But not just any kind of tree. The psalm says he is "planted." This means he is not a wild tree, growing at random in a chance spot, uncultivated. He is planted by God in a specific spot for a purpose.
In May of 2007, I bought a red maple tree and carefully planted it where it'd get plenty of sunshine and where I could see it from my favorite chair. The Bible is saying here that God plants us where he wants us, where we can do the most good. So, take heart! The job you find yourself in, the neighborhood, the circumstances, whatever, are not accidental because you are a vertical person who delights and meditates on God's word day and night. You are like a tree God will plant where he wants.
Continue with the psalm and notice where God plants his trees. They are not in the salt flats of some barren desert, nor on some hard rock, but "planted by streams of water."
For a fascinating study of all this, take time to look up the various things the Bible says about God's streams and rivers. Psalm 46:4 says, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high." Psalm 36:8-9 teaches that God "gives them drink from the river of thy delights. For with thee is the fountain of life." The prophet Ezekiel saw this same river, and in chapter 47 describes it as flowing out of the temple of God, getting ever deeper and deeper, and bringing life to all along its banks. In John's gospel, Jesus identifies with this river by making the Samaritan woman abandon her water pot (John 4), by making the pool of healing at Bethesda unnecessary (John 5), by walking on water (John 6), and finally in John 7:37 by proclaiming himself a river of life: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink."
When we live vertically, we watch with whom we walk, stand, and sit with. We delight in God and meditate on his words day and night. The result is to be planted where God wants us in Jesus Christ, to have our roots in an extraordinary river of life.
Now this: We bear "fruit in its season." This fruit is not only personal character as mentioned in Galatians 5:22: "love, joy, peace, patience," and the like. It is also the fruit of ministry, the fruit of good deeds, among the people who live around us. Jesus said, "Abide in me ... by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:1-9).
Over the years, I have known some people to bear fruit and then go barren. Good things fall from their lives to others for a season, and then nothing. It's as if they are all bloomed out. But the text says this doesn't happen to the believer who has his roots in the river. He "yields his fruit in its season." That means regularly, year after year, you can count on good fruit to fall from this man's life.
"And its leaf does not wither," the psalm says. So many Christians live life like a maple tree -- one day they are sap-filled and green, the next colorful, and the next barren. They are up and down like a yo-yo, in and out of ministry -- on-again-off-again obeyers. One never knows if they're going to be effective or depressed, available or quitters, loving or indifferent. Yet, the vertical man in Christ, whose roots are in the river, is evergreen. While everyone about him is changing, decaying, and coming to life again, he is evergreen, always steadfast and on the grow.
Finally the text says, "In all that he does he prospers." The Hebrew word for "prosper" means "to push forward, to advance." This doesn't mean you'll necessarily get a million dollars, drive a Cadillac, and live in a palace. It means that in all you do you'll advance in God. I don't have a Swiss bank account, a yacht, or fifty servants, but God is pushing me forward into his wisdom. He's given me a house with love in it, plenty to eat, quality friends in fellowship, and meaningful work to perform. In every sense I am rich. I prosper in that my life is balanced with every good thing and I am closer to heaven than I have ever been before! All this God has done for me!
Conclusion
The horizontal man starts off walking and ends up sitting. He makes no progress. His life is at a standstill. Like chaff he gets blown away with the rubbish to nowhere. He won't stand in the judgment.
The vertical man's way is known and prospered by God. He not only has enough for himself, he has plenty for others just like a fruit tree.
You can see the vertical man pictured in Revelation.
There he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
-- Revelation 22:1-2
See here how God says he plants us like trees along every street? We bear twelve different types of fruit, a different one each month. The leaves that fall from us are for the healing of the nations. The books we loan, advice we give, sermons we preach, letters we write, phone calls we make, and children we rear, all fall like leaves from our lives and bring healing to others.
I find it thrilling that the first word in the book of Psalms is the word "blessed." It comes from the Hebrew which means "to cause to bow down." The picture behind it is that of a camel that kneels down so it can be loaded. This is what God wants to do for us. He wills us to bow before him in worship so he can load us down with every delight and through us bless those around us. This same idea is in Psalm 68:19: "Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits" (KJV).
Which type of person are you? Are you a vertical person or a horizontal person? Are you a nowhere man or a somewhere man? Are you moving toward heaven with God or sitting with scoffers? Are you a prosperous evergreen with your roots in the river or a sickly sage bush with your roots in parched soil? Are your limbs laden with different kinds of fruit and healing leaves, or full of rubbish, thorns, bad counsel, and mockery?
The prophet Jeremiah sums up life going on around us and the two different types of people living it.
Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
-- Jeremiah 17:5-8
Which lifestyle will you choose?
Suggested Prayer
O, Lord Jesus Christ, I choose you! I have time for you; I choose to think your thoughts, to obey you, to bear your fruit. Amen.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will 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 wicked will perish.
-- Psalm 1
In Greek, psalm means "twanging upon the strings." In Hebrew, it means "a poem set to notes" or "to strike the strings." Sometimes the psalms are called "the Book of Shining Forth."
Actually, the psalms are the hymn and prayer book of Israel. Jesus was familiar with the book, quoting from it with frequency, and at least once, after the Last Supper, he sang from it with his disciples (Matthew 26:30).
In the Bible, almighty God is saying, "Here I am! Look at me! This is what I'm like, how I think, what I do. Turn to me and live abundantly forever!" The psalms are man's response to such a God.
When I was younger and read the psalms, I thought to myself, "What's this fellow groaning about so much?" Now that I am older, however, I read the psalms and marvel at how articulately he expresses my own feelings to God.
It's been said, "There is a psalm for every sigh," and indeed there are. Some psalms share feelings of failure, depression, fear of enemies, and doubt. Others are about victory, joy, gratitude, worship, and war.
Today we hear the Top 40 "Hit Parade" on the radio. The psalms are 150 of Israel's best worship songs over the centuries and Psalm 1 is number one on their hit parade. Being the introductory song, Psalm 1 is the key to understanding the entire book. Basically, it describes two different types of people -- horizontal people and vertical people.
Horizontal People
Let's look at the horizontal man first. You may recall a popular Beatles song from the 1970s titled, "Nowhere Man." The words may be found online. It speaks of a person without plans and without a point of reference for his life. He is lost. This represents many in today's world.
The horizontal man is such a nowhere man. The psalm describes him as a slave to peer pressure who does little more than follow the crowd and hang around with sinners.
First off, Psalm 1 says this sort of man never asks God anything. He, instead, "Walks in the counsel of the ungodly." The Hebrew word for "ungodly" actually means "loud" or "noisy." This man simply follows the clamor of society. The voice that shouts the loudest to him is the truest. For many of these people today, that is the voice of television, radio, fads, magazines, and "with it" advice columnists.
Some newspapers today carry a column called "Straight Up" by Stephen the Bartender. In it, the columnist responds to questions of sex, finances, employment, marriage, or whatever. I know a preacher who, counseling with a middle-aged housewife, was told, "Desperate Housewives is my favorite soap opera. I watch it every day because the leading lady's problem is the same as mine. I keep thinking that she'll show me some solutions."
The horizontal person, according to the text, also "stands in the way of sinners." He not only listens to their counsel and walks in it; he stands for what they do, votes with them, and encourages others to do so as well. Last year, I went to visit a young student who had been living with a group of peers. A near-fatal drug overdose landed him in the hospital. We talked long and freely about purpose in life, drugs, and God. I asked him if he needed anything. "No," he assured me, he'd be just fine. But as I turned to go, he said, "Stephen, there is one thing I need. When I get out of here I'm going to need a whole new set of friends."
The psalm goes on to say that this horizontal person not only walks in ungodly counsel and stands with them; he also "sits in the seat of scoffers." In other words, he makes light of values, tradition, morals, scripture, godly leadership, and the like!
At a university, an unusual experiment was conducted recently. Ten people were asked to wear a pair of reverse-lens glasses for two weeks. When put on, the spectacles turned the world upside down. The floor was the ceiling and vice versa. For fourteen days, the participants tried to function in a topsy-turvy world. Afterward they sat down to evaluate, and on one point they all agreed. How quickly they adjusted!
"Scoffers," the horizontal people the psalm describes, see the world through a kind of reverse-lens morality. To them a policeman is a "pig," a "pimp" and "pusher" are friends, the bartender is their priest, the preacher is a bore, and Mom and Dad are enemies.
Be careful to notice in the text how the nowhere man gets progressively comfortable with sin. He begins by walking in the counsel of the ungodly. Soon he is standing in the way of sinners. Finally he is sitting with scoffers. Do you see the gradualism there? Little by little, his life loses momentum until he is one of the noisy crowd.
I like the story of a man who was going bald. It seemed that everybody around him knew it but him. Every morning he'd wake up and there on his pillow would be dozens of his hairs. But it didn't bother him. He'd go shampoo his scalp, blow his hair dry, and comb it carefully. This went on for several years. Each morning there were more hairs on his pillow and fewer hairs on his head, until he had only three hairs left. Still, the man got up, shampooed his three hairs, blew them dry, and combed them down carefully as he'd always done. Then one day it happened. He woke up and there were his last three hairs on his pillow. Nevertheless, he went into the shower, shampooed, blew his scalp dry, took his brush in hand, and stepped over to the mirror to comb his hair. A look of utter surprise crossed his face, and he exclaimed, "It can't be! I'm going bald!"
One by one we give up our values in ways that aren't very noticeable. Little by little the changes overtake us. The months turn into years and we, who once walked vertically before God, now live entirely horizontally, even sitting comfortably in the seat of scoffers -- and "how quickly we adjusted."
Where does following the noise lead? Where will peer pressure and horizontal living take you? The text gives the result in verse 4. "The wicked ... are like chaff which the wind drives away."
The picture is of a farmer who has harvested his wheat. He leaves it to dry in the sunshine, then on a windy day takes his crop to the top of a hill. With a winnowing fork, he takes a shovelful of the wheat and tosses it into the air. The wind blows the lightweight husk away while the heavier and edible grain falls back to the ground. This is repeated until the husk is gone and nothing but fine grain remains. Psalm 1 is saying that this process is going on right now in this world. God is sifting or winnowing all people, separating the wheat from the chaff.
When I was younger in ministry, I used to come home perplexed with some people's foolishness. They skipped every opportunity to learn from God, chaffed under every authority, and violated themselves against every moral principle of Christ. "What happens to people like that?" I'd often ask my wife. Now that I am older I no longer ask. The suicides, prison sentences, alcoholism, cancer, and death tell the answer all too clearly. Sinners do not endure. They, like chaff, get blown away to nowhere with the winds of time.
This part of the text actually prefigures the ministry of Jesus Christ. John the Baptist said of Jesus, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matthew 3:12).
So, the wicked shall not endure. When the grain falls, the chaff gets blown away like so much rubbish to be burned. When Christians are gathered to God, the wicked will perish. The latter portion of the psalm spells their doom:
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will 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 wicked will perish.
-- Psalm 1:4-6
The Vertical Man
That is the lifestyle and end of the horizontal man. Now there is this -- the lifestyle and fate of the vertical man.
Clearly, the vertical man does not walk, stand, sit, or otherwise hang around with sinners. He doesn't care what people say so much as he cares what God says. He is anxious to absorb God's word not the world's fads.
The psalm says, "His delight is in the law of the Lord." The Hebrew word for "delight" means to crave, to seek after with pleasure. There is a picture of this in Proverbs 2:1-15. There the vertical man "cries out for insight, raises his voice for understanding, seeks it like silver, searches for it as for hidden treasure."
Notice also the psalm says this type of person also "meditates" on God's word. Here, the Hebrew for "meditate" means "to murmur, to ponder, to chew over and over again as the cow chews his cud until it is completely digested." This means we think God's thoughts after him, we narrow our way of thinking about life to God's way of thinking.
The text goes on to say that the vertical man delights and meditates on God's word both "day and night" not just on Sundays -- weekdays and Saturdays, summers, too, along with holidays. For him, his religion is not just something to be put on and taken off with his Sunday coat. It is an every hour and every day consuming delight murmured in his dreams, hummed under his breath, discussed around the supper table, and shouted aloud in his business deals.
What is the result of such a vertical lifestyle? The text says, "He is like a tree." But not just any kind of tree. The psalm says he is "planted." This means he is not a wild tree, growing at random in a chance spot, uncultivated. He is planted by God in a specific spot for a purpose.
In May of 2007, I bought a red maple tree and carefully planted it where it'd get plenty of sunshine and where I could see it from my favorite chair. The Bible is saying here that God plants us where he wants us, where we can do the most good. So, take heart! The job you find yourself in, the neighborhood, the circumstances, whatever, are not accidental because you are a vertical person who delights and meditates on God's word day and night. You are like a tree God will plant where he wants.
Continue with the psalm and notice where God plants his trees. They are not in the salt flats of some barren desert, nor on some hard rock, but "planted by streams of water."
For a fascinating study of all this, take time to look up the various things the Bible says about God's streams and rivers. Psalm 46:4 says, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high." Psalm 36:8-9 teaches that God "gives them drink from the river of thy delights. For with thee is the fountain of life." The prophet Ezekiel saw this same river, and in chapter 47 describes it as flowing out of the temple of God, getting ever deeper and deeper, and bringing life to all along its banks. In John's gospel, Jesus identifies with this river by making the Samaritan woman abandon her water pot (John 4), by making the pool of healing at Bethesda unnecessary (John 5), by walking on water (John 6), and finally in John 7:37 by proclaiming himself a river of life: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink."
When we live vertically, we watch with whom we walk, stand, and sit with. We delight in God and meditate on his words day and night. The result is to be planted where God wants us in Jesus Christ, to have our roots in an extraordinary river of life.
Now this: We bear "fruit in its season." This fruit is not only personal character as mentioned in Galatians 5:22: "love, joy, peace, patience," and the like. It is also the fruit of ministry, the fruit of good deeds, among the people who live around us. Jesus said, "Abide in me ... by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:1-9).
Over the years, I have known some people to bear fruit and then go barren. Good things fall from their lives to others for a season, and then nothing. It's as if they are all bloomed out. But the text says this doesn't happen to the believer who has his roots in the river. He "yields his fruit in its season." That means regularly, year after year, you can count on good fruit to fall from this man's life.
"And its leaf does not wither," the psalm says. So many Christians live life like a maple tree -- one day they are sap-filled and green, the next colorful, and the next barren. They are up and down like a yo-yo, in and out of ministry -- on-again-off-again obeyers. One never knows if they're going to be effective or depressed, available or quitters, loving or indifferent. Yet, the vertical man in Christ, whose roots are in the river, is evergreen. While everyone about him is changing, decaying, and coming to life again, he is evergreen, always steadfast and on the grow.
Finally the text says, "In all that he does he prospers." The Hebrew word for "prosper" means "to push forward, to advance." This doesn't mean you'll necessarily get a million dollars, drive a Cadillac, and live in a palace. It means that in all you do you'll advance in God. I don't have a Swiss bank account, a yacht, or fifty servants, but God is pushing me forward into his wisdom. He's given me a house with love in it, plenty to eat, quality friends in fellowship, and meaningful work to perform. In every sense I am rich. I prosper in that my life is balanced with every good thing and I am closer to heaven than I have ever been before! All this God has done for me!
Conclusion
The horizontal man starts off walking and ends up sitting. He makes no progress. His life is at a standstill. Like chaff he gets blown away with the rubbish to nowhere. He won't stand in the judgment.
The vertical man's way is known and prospered by God. He not only has enough for himself, he has plenty for others just like a fruit tree.
You can see the vertical man pictured in Revelation.
There he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
-- Revelation 22:1-2
See here how God says he plants us like trees along every street? We bear twelve different types of fruit, a different one each month. The leaves that fall from us are for the healing of the nations. The books we loan, advice we give, sermons we preach, letters we write, phone calls we make, and children we rear, all fall like leaves from our lives and bring healing to others.
I find it thrilling that the first word in the book of Psalms is the word "blessed." It comes from the Hebrew which means "to cause to bow down." The picture behind it is that of a camel that kneels down so it can be loaded. This is what God wants to do for us. He wills us to bow before him in worship so he can load us down with every delight and through us bless those around us. This same idea is in Psalm 68:19: "Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits" (KJV).
Which type of person are you? Are you a vertical person or a horizontal person? Are you a nowhere man or a somewhere man? Are you moving toward heaven with God or sitting with scoffers? Are you a prosperous evergreen with your roots in the river or a sickly sage bush with your roots in parched soil? Are your limbs laden with different kinds of fruit and healing leaves, or full of rubbish, thorns, bad counsel, and mockery?
The prophet Jeremiah sums up life going on around us and the two different types of people living it.
Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
-- Jeremiah 17:5-8
Which lifestyle will you choose?
Suggested Prayer
O, Lord Jesus Christ, I choose you! I have time for you; I choose to think your thoughts, to obey you, to bear your fruit. Amen.
