Psalm 52
turn in your copy of the scriptures
to Psalm 52. Our study tonight is the Psalm in
its entirety. I’m going to read from a different
translation than usual tonight. This is a new devotional translation
by the Old Testament scholar, Alec Motier. And I think you’ll
find his translation very interesting. So you may want to read along
in your copy of God’s word. And you’ll see some of the differences,
not differences necessarily theologically or biblically, just different
words that maybe open the scripture up. So this is Psalm 52, beginning
at verse one, how you make your boast and evil big fellow. The
committed love of the transcendent God is all the day. Total destruction
is what your tongue plans, sharpened like a razor, you worker of deceit. You have loved evil rather than
good, falsehood rather than speaking righteous. You have loved all
the words of annihilation, you tongue of deceit. There is also
the transcendent God. He will demolish you perpetually.
He will scoop you up. He will drag you away without
a tent and he will uproot you out of the land of the living
and the righteous will see and fear. They will laugh over him. Behold, the fellow who does not
make God his fortress and who trust in the abundance of his
wealth is strong in his destructiveness. And as for me, I am an olive
tree flourishing in the house of God. I put my trust in the
committed love of God forever and ever. I will thank you forever
because you have acted and in the presence of your beloved
ones, I will await your name because it is good. This is God’s word and may he
bless it. Uh, this Psalm is a, is a contrast
and it reminds us of some of the other contrast and some of
the other Psalms. For example, we remember Psalm
1 a little over a year ago in our study. Blessed is the one
who does not sit, walk, or stand in the company of the wicked,
but the one who is righteous is like a tree planted by streams
of living water. In his season, he does prosper. And so the Bible, the wisdom
literature, the Psalms, present to us a contrast of the wicked
and the righteous, of their ways and their end. So here’s a Psalm
that contrasts a bully and then a godly person, a wicked person
and a God fearing person. And what’s the story behind the
story? We don’t get too many specifics in a lot of the Psalms,
but this one is very specific. If you read your title of Psalm
52, it says it’s a psalm of David. It belongs to the worship leader. It’s a song of David. When Doeg
the Edomite came and declared to Saul and said to him, David
came to the house of Abimelech. So what’s the story? Well, you
can read it in first Samuel chapter 22. Remember David had been anointed
king. He had been chosen king over
Saul. He had made his way towards of
the palace and he was in service to Saul. Saul hated his guts.
Saul wanted him dead. David made a covenant with Jonathan,
a covenant of love and friendship and support. God was with David. Saul was angry. Saul was bitter.
Saul was pursuing David. David was the hottest fugitive
in the world at the time. And so David was fleeing from
city to city, cave to cave in the land of the Philistines at
time and in all kinds of places. And in this specific story, David
is hiding in a cave, the cave of Abdullon. He’s been to Nob,
a little city where there is a cohort of priests. Ahimelech,
the priest, gives David the showbread, the bread of presence that was
put out every day in the temple of the Lord. David takes it for
his provisions. Ahimelech also inquires of the
Lord for David and provides him with a word from God. And he
also gives him Goliath’s sword. the sword which David captured
after he slew Goliath sometime back. And so David has provisions. He has bread, he has the word
of God, and he has a weapon. Well, it just so happened that
Doeg, the Edomite, who doesn’t sound like a very good character
to begin with, just that name, Doeg, doesn’t sound too friendly. He was present in Nob. He sees
David. He takes note of David and when
he’s back in the presence of Saul, which is some war encampment
in a field somewhere not far away, he takes advantage of the
opportunity to tell Saul, I have seen David and I saw a Himalek
give him a word, a weapon and provisions. And so he tattles
on him. And so Doeg the Edomite was present. He saw and he tattled. Now, When
Saul finds out about this, he’s angry. He’s livid. He’s hot. He’s ready to murder. And so he calls Ahimelech, the
priest, into his presence and says, what is this you’ve done?
And Ahimelech takes the high ground. He says, I’ve done what
is right. David is your faithful servant.
David loves you. David serves you. David is God’s
man. And David has never been unfaithful
to you. And anytime he has come and inquired
of the Lord through me, I have served him.” Well, Saul can’t
take this. And he asked his servants who
were all standing by to take the man’s life, put him to death.
You shall die for helping a traitor. Well, remember Saul’s really
the traitor in this case. And none of the men will touch
a man of God. They won’t touch God’s anointed.
And so Doeg, the Edomite, find out a little bit about him in
just a moment. He’s a boastful, wicked, evil man. He ain’t got
a problem with taking the priest’s life. And so he kills a Himelech
and he kills 85 priests of the Lord, their wives, their children,
and their livestock. He slaughters them. What an awful
and wicked thing it was for him to do. And so David writes this
psalm as he reflects on the character of Doeg the Edomite. So what does it tell us about
Doeg? What does it tell us about this
Edomite who appears in the story of the tales of Israel and its
kingdom? It tells us about Doeg as a bully. And bully is not a strong enough
word. It’s a very common word we use nowadays. There’s an epidemic
of bullying in our culture. But verses one through four tell
us about this bully, Doeg. He’s a self-satisfied boaster. He’s an opportunist. He’s probably
insecure and uses his boasting and his wickedness and his meanness
just like we maybe experienced in middle school when there was
a bully. It’s usually their insecurity,
their lack of something that makes them have to feel better
about themselves by doing others. They’re little people usually,
but they’re allowed. They build themselves up by tearing
others down. They’re self-centered. They’re
intimidating. And it says a couple of things about him. He boasts
of evil. I mean, that’s a phrase you could
pass over very quickly, but he killed 85 priests of God. Okay,
that’s bad. That is wicked. I watched recently,
maybe a couple weeks ago, the movie The American Sniper. What was he? A Navy SEAL. And
he has something like 165 kills to his name. in order to protect his troops
who were entering various cities in Iraq. He took out those who
would set off bombs or who would hurt the American military. He
has 166 or five or something like that kills to his name.
Why is he not a wicked man? Sometimes it’s just to take life.
But in the case of Doeg, what a wicked thing he did, not only
taking life, but taking the life of God’s servants who faithfully
interceded on behalf of God’s people and stood as mediators
between God’s people and God himself. He’s a boaster. He boasts
of this murderous act of this wickedness. I can’t imagine taking
part in that. But this one man was that wicked
that he did such a thing. He’s a boaster. He’s a lover
of evil. And if you notice, if you read
through first Samuel 22, Saul’s immediate servants, the ones
who did his bidding, the ones who did his warring, the ones
who protected him, they would not touch the lives of the priest. They knew, they knew the wickedness
of, of Saul. Maybe think of his maniacal ways,
like, uh, is it Kim Jong or rocket man? We like to call him. over
in North Korea. That’s how crazy Saul was. And his men who were around him
would not touch the priest. They were willing to disobey
this crazy maniac and say, no, we won’t do it. There was Doeg.
He was a lover of evil. He did it. He promoted himself. He tattled on David, God’s righteous
one. He destroyed David and his priest.
Compare him to Ahimelech. Ahimelech was a righteous man.
He was willing to stand toe to toe with Saul and say, I will
do the right thing. And I will stand up for others
who do the right thing, even if my neck is on the line. So Doeg is a boaster. He’s a
lover of evil, but he also has a wicked tongue. His tongue is
evil. It is wicked. His words are amazing. Just read through verses one
through four. I have the odd translation. But it says how
you make your boast in evil. Total destruction is what your
tongue plans. Your tongue is sharpened like
a razor. You’re a worker of deceit. You’ve loved evil rather than
good. Falsehood rather than speaking righteousness. You’ve loved all
the words of annihilation. Your tongue is a tongue of deceit. And so there’s doe egg. Then
there’s judgment. A lot of these Psalms, when they
speak of the contrast of the wicked and the righteous, they
have a component where they speak about justice. And so we find
in verses five, six, and seven, God’s justice. There is the transcendent
God. He’ll demolish you perpetually.
He’ll scoop you up. He’ll drag you away without a
tent. He’ll uproot you out of the land of the living. The righteous
will see and fear, but they will also laugh over him. They’ll
say, behold, the fellow who does not make God his fortress, who
trust in the abundance of his wealth is strong in his destructiveness. We have to understand God’s judgment.
There’s temporal judgment, and then there’s ultimate judgment.
And you may say of this temporal judgment, it’s incomplete in
this life. It’s not yet. The bully is still
bully. And very often the bully still win and the righteous are
in prison in Turkey. or the righteous are put to death
in this world for their faith. The righteous endure hardships
and trouble and never see justice. And that may be the case, but God will have his way. God
will get justice. Even if temporally or in this
world, it may seem unfair. God will ultimately get justice.
So verse five, and this translation I have says, there’s the transcendent
God. There’s, there’s doe egg. Big,
nasty fella, wicked, but there’s the transcendent God, the God
who is above all things. There’s a picture in these verses.
There’s a picture of a tree that has been uprooted and turned
over. Back in May, one of our neighbors had one of their giant
oak trees. It just toppled right over. And
it laid there for about two, three weeks. And it was a big,
beautiful tree. And when it went down, Mandy
thinks she heard it in the night. We woke up the next morning,
we opened our windows, and we noticed there was more sunlight.
Because this tree was big, and it was majestic, and it was beautiful.
It was a fixture of our neighborhood. But it was down. It was uprooted. Something went wrong. The wind
blew. The roots failed. Something went wrong. And that’s
what God says he’ll do of folks like Doeg. I’ll uproot you. I’ll
demolish you perpetually. There’s another picture that
he gives. It’s a tent. I can remember camping
as a kid. We called it the C word. We didn’t
stay in hotels. We camped. We camped our way
through Virginia and Pennsylvania. I think we camped in New York
and Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine. We camped everywhere.
The boys loved it. The girls hated it. But there
was one night we were younger and it started raining and you
know what? The tent collapsed. And there’s nothing more humiliating
than being in a tent that collapses when it’s raining and cold and
your children are little. It is just utterly humiliating.
And that’s what, that’s what God will do to the wicked like
Like doe egg, I’ll collapse your tent. I’ll uproot your tree.
I’ll make your life miserable. You’ll boast of evil. You’ll
love of evil. You’ll have a wicked tongue, but I’ll uproot your
tree. I’ll collapse your tent. I’ll bring you down. I’ll snatch
you up. I’ll tear you up. I’ll uproot
you from the land. See, those are all words that
are opposite of God’s blessing of the righteous. He does not
uproot us. He plants us. He does not snatch
us up. but he carries us in his arms. He does not tear us up, but he
makes us whole. He does not bring us down, but
he exalts us and lifts us up. And so there’s this judgment,
it’s temporal, but it’s also ultimate, it’s eternal. And the
righteous see and they fear and they laugh. What do we see? We see God at work on behalf
of his people. We see God at work against the
evil of this world. We see God at work and we see
a mighty man like Doeg fall flat on his face and we laugh. I remember when Saddam Hussein was hanged. Do you remember that? It was
eerie. It was one morning, maybe about midnight our time, if I
remember. And there’s one death you can rejoice in. What a terrible
man. And maybe someday we’ll see the
same with the man across the ocean in North Korea. I don’t
know. Or how about some years ago, Osama bin Laden? It’s a
big announcement. A man who perpetrated so much
wickedness on our nation and on our people and on our military.
The cost has come to us for us to evade what is taking place
so often over in Europe with terror. We’ve kept it at bay
because we fought. We’ve stood up for ourselves.
But when those deaths were announced, didn’t you feel some sort of laughter? Not in a funny, comical
way, but these men have gotten their due. They’ve done what
they’ve done. They boasted of what they’ve done. They put themselves
on TV. They’ve enriched themselves from
their evil. And yet God has judged them. So there’s a little of doe egg
of God’s justice. And finally, the Psalm ends in
verses eight and nine with a picture of the righteous. David says,
as for me, I am an olive tree flourishing in the house of God.
I put my trust in the committed love, the steadfast love of God
forever and ever. I’ll thank you forever because
you have acted. And in the presence of your beloved
ones, I’ll await your name because God is good. There’s another
wonderful picture here. It’s an olive tree. An olive
tree in ancient Israel was like a modern day annuity. Maybe some
of you have one of those. You paid a little money in a
while ago and it is now like clockwork, popping a little money
in your bank account. That’s what an olive tree is
like. Olive trees grow old and they produce. and they grow old
and they produce. And so it’s a, maybe an agricultural
sort of annuity. They’re old, they’re lasting.
They continue to produce their crop. And you see echoes of Psalm
1 here. The righteous is like a tree
planted by the streams of living water. We’re not the uprooted
tree that has fallen over like dough egg. Here, the picture
is an olive tree flourishing in the house of God. Now this
is David early on. Last week, as we studied Psalm
51, that was David. settled in Jerusalem. That was
David with expanded borders and with people to do his bidding.
Remember, he was not out at war with his men like he should have
been. He was at home on the deck, lying in the sun. But this is
early David. This is David when he’s still
working for a living. This is David when he’s just
out of the fields, shepherding his father’s flocks. This is
David shortly after being called and anointed by Samuel, this
is David now on the run for righteousness sake. He’s not yet caught up
in so many sins and the sins of being a great king and detaching
himself from dependence on Almighty God. And it’s a good reminder
to us that in this little bit of prosperity, in this little
bit of blessing, we better be very careful. because we are
still absolutely capable of the sin David will later commit and
has to repent of in Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. And we are just
as capable of being doe egg. We are just as capable of boasting,
of loving evil, and of being so wicked. And so what does the
righteous person do? flourish in the house of God.
We put our trust in the steadfast love of God. We thank the Lord
for his goodness and we wait on him. But how do we live in
the midst of an unfair world? How do we live in the midst of
a world where there are bullies? How do we live in the world where
the unrighteous seem to flourish? What does this passage seem to
teach us, this Psalm? Well, it tells us to sit tight
and to wait on the Lord. Yes, there’s dough egg. But there
is the transcendent God who sees and who knows. And all we must
do is be righteous. Think of a Himalaya. He stood
toe to toe and face to face with Saul. One of the most maniacal,
wicked men of Bible times, maybe of history. And he was righteous. He was steadfast. He did the
right things. God’s character and ours will
shine forth. How about we pray together? Our
great God and Heavenly Father, we pray that you would help us
be more like Christ, to be more like a Himalaya, to be more like
David, to trust in you and to be olive trees that flourish
in your house. We pray that we would not be
tugged towards evil, that we would not be tugged towards those
who do evil and plot evil and plan evil. And we pray that evil,
when we see it, would be a horror to us. But most of all, we pray
that You, the transcendent God, would instill fear into our minds
and hearts in order that we would fear you and do righteous and
live. We thank you that you’re the
judge of the earth. You see all things, you know all things,
and you will avenge all things. And we thank you for Christ.
We thank you for his example that we can follow and pray that
you give us the grace to live righteously and to flourish in
your house forever and ever. And we ask for your grace and
help in this in Christ’s name. Amen.