Never reduce Christianity to a system of demands and resolutions and willpower.

Christianity has to do with what we delight in, not just what we grit our teeth and will to accomplish.

So how does someone reveal the prominent place that delight has in Christianity?

That's the question John Piper answers in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on July 21, 1980.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly 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 will be like a tree planted by streams of water that brings forth its fruit in its season.

Its leaf will not wither, and in everything 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 sinners will perish.

Now there's an argument in that Psalm, and I want to sum it up for you, and then look at the main point together with one other observation.

Lots of things in the Psalm, one of the frustrating things about preaching, by the way, like on that text this morning, which was very long,

is that there are so many things you have to skip in preaching.

Because if you said everything in the text, you'd have to preach on just three or four words at a time,

which of course everybody would get frustrated with.

Well, I'm going to leave out a lot, and we'll come back to Psalm 1 someday.

So don't fret if I leave out your favorite part.

Here's the argument as I see it.

The psalmist places the reader at the outset of this collection before two alternatives.

You can either be a wicked person or a righteous person, verse 6.

...