Psalm 1 - In Christ or In Adam

I’m amazed how God used people to give us the greatest Book in human history and that we have no idea who some of them are. The songs, praises and prayers that make up the Book of Psalms were written by different people over the course of many centuries. We know that David wrote about 73 of the Psalms and we have the names of many of the other authors that we read in the preface of their Psalm. But we can only speculate who might have put all the Psalms together into one book. We know that Psalms as a whole, is and always has been considered to be a part the inspired Scriptures. God is the Divine Author of the Book of Psalms, but He did use the different writers to pen it for us. We believe that God also miraculously preserved His Word and divinely guided those who put it together into one book we call the Holy Bible. The unity of the 66 books of the Bible testify of their divine inspiration. The New Testament writers believed that Psalms was divine Scripture as they quoted from it some 400 different times. Jesus often quoted from the Psalms. After His resurrection when He was in the upper room with His disciples He said: "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me. And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:44-45) I said all that to say this. The very first Psalm, placed here by “someone”, gives us a major theme for the whole book. Psalm 1 points the way to blessing and warns about divine judgment. These are frequent themes throughout The Psalms. The images in this psalm would remind the reader of earlier teachings in the Old Testament. In Genesis, you find people walking with God (5:21, 24; 6:9; 17:1), the life-giving river (2:10-14), and trees and fruit (2:8-10). The law of the Lord (v. 2), connects the psalm with Exodus through Deuteronomy. Finding success by meditating on that law and obeying it reminds us of Joshua 1:8. The psalm presents two ways—the way of blessing and the way of judgment—which was the choice Israel had to make (Deut. 30:15, 19). Jesus used a similar image (Matt. 7:13-14). Bible history seems to be built around the concept of "two men": the "first Adam" and the "last Adam" (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15:45)—Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, David and Saul—and Bible history culminates in Christ and Antichrist. Two men, two ways, two destinies. God sees but two persons in this world: the godly, who are "in Christ", and the ungodly, who are "in Adam" (1 Cor. 15:22, 49). The godly person is the “blessed” person because they have repented of their sins and received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The moment they did this the Holy Spirit baptized, put them into, Jesus Christ! “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Paul put it this way in Romans 6:3, “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Today, you are either in Christ or in Adam. You are either saved or you are lost. You are either on your way to heaven or you are on your way to hell. Jesus said, “Broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that are on it. Narrow is the gate that leads to life and few there be that find it.” Jesus is that gate, that door, the only way to forgiveness of sins and eternal life. In John 10:9-10 Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”