Advance in this critical season

We’ve begun a new series at our church, preaching through the Psalms. It’s a good time to come and get in on the ground floor. Last Sunday we walked through Psalm 1 and found it speaking to our current situation.

The Psalm describes the worshiper of God, who delights in God’s Word. He is compared to a healthy, well-watered tree that bears fruit in its season and never withers. The ungodly, by contrast, walk contrary to the commandments and dry up and blow away.

OK, great. That’s all right on the surface. Any reader will get that the first time they encounter Psalm 1.

What we don’t get automatically, because we don’t live where the Bible was written, is that the “season” in which the good tree bears fruit is a critical, often deadly (to crops anyway) dry season in the Mediterranean. In that day, the agricultural year was marked by two short, rainy periods, which you might hear called the “early” and the “latter” rains. Crops and fruit trees matured between these rainy days, or at least that was the hope. If the dry season lasted too long; if the latter rains were delayed, the harvest you were hoping for was probably not going to make it. A fruit tree that had blossomed and budded early needed that final soaking to cross the finish line with mature fruit on its branches.

What this means, summed up, is that the most critical time in the life of the fruit tree was simultaneously the most dangerous and the most needful. It held the threat of barrenness and even death. But it also held great potential.

You’ve got no imagination if you miss the application to ourselves. Al Mohler, a respected, modern theologian, has said recently, “We are living in one of the great epochs of human transitions, and most of us are aware that the civilization our grandchildren will inherit may bear little resemblance to the civilization we now know, or once knew.”

We’re in that critical “season” mentioned in Psalm 1:3. The whole world is in that season. Sure, we all go through rough patches, but we are uniquely in this one together.

Here’s how I put it to our congregation: God doesn’t want you to wither and be destroyed in this season. But he also doesn’t want you to survive it. He wants you to go on to bear more fruit; to advance; to take new ground.

The key is that the well-watered tree, the fruitful one, is the person who “delights” in God’s word (v.2). Sure, I’d love to be able to make people read 10 chapters a day from Scripture. But the issue is much deeper than a daily reading plan. The issue is, what causes your heart to delight?

Christian, what has gone wrong for you, that you’d have to admit you have no delight in the Word? Whose voice has stolen your affection? Why do all of your opinions sound like Fox News, or CNN, and not like the prophets?

Whatever the answer, the good news is, if we will return to God, he will return to us, and we will live to rejoice in the latter rain.

Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:

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