One of the best-known pictures used by Jesus is that of the two ways, the broad road that leads to destruction and the narrow road that leads to life (Matt 7:13-14). This idea that there are two ways of living goes back long before him right to this psalm. Instead of using the language of two ways the Psalmist writes about the two kinds of people who go along them. 
We start off with the people who do what is right. They don't take the advice of wicked people and become fellow-travellers with the people who scorn what is right. Rather they find happiness in what God says and they think about it continually. The result is that their lives have an inner source of strength and they achieve success and prosperity.
Then we get a picture of the wicked. We are not told (but can guess) what they do but what happens to them. Like the useless chaff that is blown away from the valuable grain, the wicked will have no place with the righteous, and in the end God will ensure that they perish, but he will protect the righteous.
Two types of people; two types of conduct; and two ultimate ends to their journeys through life.
Perhaps a majority of people today don't really believe this is true. We are surrounded by large numbers of people who are wicked. Criminals have become more and more sophisticated, and as a result vast sums of money are spent in trying to prevent crime. Some people become wrongdoers because it is exciting to take risks and see how far you can go without getting caught. Others do it to get what they want. To a very great extent it is true that crime, like terrorism pays. Sadly it is not the meek who inherit the earth but the pushers. And maybe it is only because we are Christians that we don't go down this path, not because we really believe in the Christian way, but with a sneaking envy of those who are not Christians.
I say that this is the common belief, and that it is wrong. But how can we persuade ourselves that it is wrong? Well, I can give you some basic tenets of Christian belief.
1. God has declared this way of life to be wrong. He upholds a way of life that is righteous, compassionate and unselfish. Whatever the immediate results of wrongdoing may be, this way of life is wrong because it is immoral. It goes against the rules laid down by God. There are still plenty of situations in life (such as in sport) where it is agreed that rules must be kept. In the same way there are rules for life which God has made, and they are to be kept.
2. God will bring the wicked to judgment. We shall all stand before the judge to answer for our lives, and God will then vindicate righteousness and condemn evil and those who practice it. There is an ultimate reckoning, and ultimately failing to keep the rules will lead to disaster. God will uphold his laws, and the wicked will perish. It is a tragedy that so often the churches today have sold the message short and spoken too much about God's love and mercy and too little about his judgment and his righteousness. If our God takes the side of those who suffer unjustly, then it is obvious that he will stand against those who cause them to suffer.
3. Even now in this world, wickedness leads to suffering for the community as a whole. Individuals may do well out of evil, but the total corporate effects are bad. For all the people who abandon their married partners, there are the wives or husbands left with the family to bring up often on an inadequate income. For all the people who make money out of cheating, there are the poor who suffer. For all the people who win battles, there are the vast millions of people who suffer deprivation as a result. There are also plenty of cases where wickedness leads to disaster for the wicked themselves. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword is broadly true, even if there are lots of exceptions.
The trouble is that people don't believe these facts. They deny that there is a God or that there are absolute moral standards to be kept or that we have any obligation to think of anybody's interests except our own individual ones or those of our group.
So what is needed? The answer is ongoing conversion. To become a Christian means turning from unbelief to commitment to Christ as our Saviour. But conversion must go much further than this. Conversion must affect not just our believing but also our thinking and our values. This is what the psalmist has already discovered. He describes the happiness of those who search out and follow what God wants them to do in his law. Such people have changed their goals and find their happiness in something different from the world at large. This is what the psalmist means by prospering. There is a popular view that Christians and people who serve God will do well materially in the world, and sometimes this is true. But I do not believe in the so-called prosperity gospel which says that if we serve God truly he will make us rich in a worldly sense. Rather we shall prosper in other ways; we shall learn to do good and we shall find new sources of joy and happiness in the good that we do for others. that weren't there before. One of the things that will fill our minds will be God himself. We shall find joy in serving him, in praise and prayer.
So what this psalm is asking us today is whether our conversion was real, whether it has led to a new mind, to a new way of understanding happiness. If it hasn't, we'd better get back to the cross, and think of One who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, not despising the shame, who gave himself to save others, who died that we might live. He calls us to follow his example and walk in his steps along the narrow way that leads to true happiness.
Howard Marshall is a retired university professor in Aberdeen where he is an active member of the Methodist Church. He was formerly Chair of the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research, the President of the British New Testament Society and the Chair of the Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians
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