The Great Divorce: Chaff and Wheat Text: Psalm 1:4-6
Introduction: Two Ways, Two Destinies
The first Psalm is the gateway to the entire Psalter. It sets the stage for everything that follows. It is a psalm of stark, unblinking contrast. There are two ways to live, and only two. There is the way of the righteous, which we looked at in the first three verses, and there is the way of the wicked. There is no third way, no middle ground, no demilitarized zone. You are either a tree planted by rivers of water, or you are chaff that the wind drives away. You are either known by God, or you perish. This is not complicated, but it is deeply offensive to the modern mind.
Our entire culture is built on the sandy foundation of "nuance," which is often just a high-sounding word for compromise and a refusal to draw necessary lines. We are told that life is a spectrum of gray, that sharp distinctions are unsophisticated and judgmental. But God, the author of reality, is a God of glorious distinctions. He separated light from darkness, and land from sea. And here, He separates the righteous from the wicked. This is not a bug; it is a feature of the divine economy. To blur this line is to rebel against the created order. To say there are more than two ways is to tell God He doesn't know how to count.
The first half of this psalm described the positive blessedness of the righteous man. He is stable, fruitful, and prosperous in the things that matter. His life is defined by what he delights in: the law of the Lord. Now, the psalmist turns his camera, so to speak, to show us the other side. He defines the wicked not by what they are in themselves, but by what they are not. The wicked are a negative image. They are the inverse of the righteous. Their destiny is not a mirror image of blessing, but rather its complete and utter absence. And this contrast is essential, because you cannot truly appreciate the stability of the tree until you have seen the utter futility of the chaff.
The Text
The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not rise in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.
(Psalm 1:4-6)
The Negative Image (v. 4)
We begin with verse 4, which is a masterpiece of divine understatement.
"The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind drives away." (Psalm 1:4)
The first clause is simple: "The wicked are not so." Not so what? Not like the tree. They are not planted. They are not stable. They are not by the water. They do not bear fruit in season. Their leaf does not wither, because they have no leaf to begin with. They are not prosperous in the things of God. Everything that defines the righteous man is absent in the wicked. Their existence is a negation. They are defined by a lack, a void.
And then the psalmist gives us the positive image of their negative reality. They are "like chaff." What is chaff? Chaff is the husk, the worthless, weightless, useless outer layer of a grain of wheat. It looks, for a time, like it is part of the harvest. It grows in the same field. It is cut down with the same scythe. It is brought to the same threshing floor. But it has no substance. It is all show and no kernel. This is a perfect picture of the ungodly. They live among the righteous. They may even look like the righteous for a season. They are part of the visible crop. But they lack the essential thing: the life of God, the kernel of true faith.
And what happens to this chaff? "The wind drives away." The threshing floor was typically on a high place where the wind would blow. The farmer would toss the threshed grain into the air. The heavy, valuable wheat would fall straight down, while the worthless chaff would be caught by the wind and blown away into nothingness. The wind here is a picture of God's discriminating judgment. It can be the wind of trial, the wind of persecution, or the final wind of God's Spirit at the last day. When that wind blows, the insubstantial are revealed for what they are. They have no root, no weight, no anchor. They are utterly transient, blown about by every wind of doctrine, every cultural fad, every pressure of the moment. Their lives are characterized by instability, and their end is dispersal.
The Inevitable Separation (v. 5)
Verse 5 draws out the logical and eschatological conclusion of being chaff.
"Therefore the wicked will not rise in the judgment, Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." (Psalm 1:5)
The word "therefore" connects the nature of the wicked to their destiny. Because they are chaff, they cannot endure the wind of judgment. "The wicked will not rise in the judgment." The Hebrew word for "rise" here is qum, which can also mean "stand." They will not be able to stand up under the scrutiny of a holy God. When God calls the court to session, they will have no case. They will be utterly undone, with nothing to say for themselves. All their bluster, all their pride, all their sophisticated arguments against God will be blown away like the chaff they are. They will collapse.
This has a present application and a final one. In this life, when the pressure is on, the way of the wicked is shown to be unsustainable. Their philosophies collapse, their civilizations crumble, their personal lives unravel. But the ultimate fulfillment is at the final judgment. Before the throne of God, they will not stand. They will be prostrate, exposed, and condemned.
The second clause makes the result of this judgment plain: "Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." The final state is one of permanent, settled separation. Here on the threshing floor of history, wheat and chaff are mixed together. The visible church contains both true believers and pretenders. But the final harvest will involve a perfect separation. The "congregation of the righteous" is the true, invisible church, the bride of Christ, the assembly of the saints in glory. And into that assembly, no sinner, no one who is still in their rebellion, will be able to enter. The separation will be absolute and eternal. There will be no more mixing. The great divorce between the righteous and the wicked will be finalized.
The Divine Foundation (v. 6)
The final verse gives us the ultimate reason for these two destinies. It all comes down to God's relationship with each group.
"For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish." (Genesis 1:6)
Here is the bedrock of it all. "For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous." The word "knows" here is not about mere intellectual awareness. God is omniscient; He knows about the way of the wicked too. This is the Hebrew yada, which implies intimate, personal, covenantal relationship. It is the word used for a husband knowing his wife. God knows the righteous in a saving, loving, protective way. He is involved with them. He walks with them. He watches over their path. Their way is His way. This is the ultimate security of the believer. We are not a tree because of our own inherent strength; we are a tree because God has planted us and knows us.
Jesus picks up this very theme in the Sermon on the Mount. He speaks of those who did many mighty works in His name, but to whom He will say, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matthew 7:23). They were not known by Him in that intimate, saving way.
And the contrast is final and stark. "But the way of the wicked will perish." Notice it does not say that Yahweh will destroy the way of the wicked, though that is true. It says their way will perish. It is inherently self-destructive. It is a dead-end street. It is a path that leads off a cliff. Sin, by its very nature, carries the seeds of its own destruction. It is a fool's errand, a chasing after the wind that ends in ruin. The path itself disintegrates. It leads to oblivion because it is a path away from the God who is life.
The Gospel in the Two Ways
As we stand back and look at this psalm, we must ask ourselves a crucial question. Who is the truly righteous man? Who is the perfect tree? Who has never walked in the counsel of the wicked, or stood in the way of sinners, or sat in the seat of scoffers? Who has perfectly delighted in the law of the Lord and meditated on it day and night? The answer is that only one man has ever done this, and His name is Jesus Christ.
He is the ultimate righteous man. He is the tree of life. And on the cross, He took upon Himself the curse of the chaff. He was driven by the wind of God's judgment. He was cast out. He perished, so that we who were chaff by nature might be made righteous in Him. He was cut down so that we might be planted.
Therefore, the dividing line between the two ways is not, ultimately, our own moral performance. The dividing line is faith in Christ. By nature, we are all chaff. We are all weightless, worthless, and headed for judgment. We have all walked, stood, and sat in the wrong places. But in the gospel, God takes us, the worthless chaff, and through the blood of His Son, He miraculously transforms us into wheat. He gives us the righteousness of Christ. He plants us in Him. He gives us a new delight in His law.
So the call of this psalm is not to try harder to be a tree. The call is to repent of being chaff and to cling by faith to the one true Tree, the Lord Jesus. When we are united to Him by faith, then and only then does God begin to know our way. He watches over us, He cultivates us, and He guarantees that we will bear fruit and stand in the judgment. The way of the wicked perishes, but the way of the righteous, which is Jesus Christ Himself, is the way everlasting.