Psalm 10
All right, let’s hear from God’s
word, Psalm 10, beginning at one, and it goes through verse
18, and it says, this is of King David, it says, why, O Lord,
do you stand afar off? Why do you hide yourself in times
of trouble? In arrogance, the wicked hotly
pursue the poor. Let them be caught in the schemes
that they have devised. For the wicked boast of the desires
of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces
the Lord. In the pride of his face, the
wicked does not seek him. All his thoughts are, there is
no God. His ways prosper at all times.
Your judgments are on high. Out of his sight, as far as his
foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, I shall
not be moved. Throughout all generations, I
shall not meet adversity. His mouth is filled with cursing
and deceit and oppression, and under his tongue are mischief
and iniquity. He sets an ambush in the villages.
In his hiding places, he murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily
watch for the helpless. He lurks in ambush like a lion
in his thicket. He lurks that he may seize the
poor. He seizes the poor when he draws him into his net. The
helpless are crushed. They sink down and fall by his
might. He says in his heart, God has forgotten. He has hidden
his face, and he will never see it. Arise, O Lord, O God, lift
up your hand. Forget not the afflicted. Why
does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, you will
not call to account? But you do see, for you note
mischief and vexation. that you may take it into your
hands. To you, the helpless commits himself. You have been the helper
of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and
evildoer. Call his wickedness to account till you find none.
The Lord is king forever and ever. The nations perish from
his land. O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You
will strengthen their heart and you will incline your ear to
do justice to the fatherless and to the oppressed. so that
the man of earth may strike terror no more. Amen. This is God’s
holy word for us. How many of you know the word
theodicy? Okay, and I don’t mean the poem
by Homer, right? That’s theodicy. Or maybe as
some of you know it, as a vehicle made by Honda. No, this is theodicy,
T-H-E-O, like God, theos, and then O, or D-I-C-Y, theodicy. It’s just a fancy word that means,
well, what does it mean? Why do bad things happen to good
people? Right, that’s the million dollar
question that a lot of Christians have. Why do bad things happen
to good people? Well, this psalm asks a little
bit of that in its questions. Second thing for us to think
about as we approach this psalm is remember last week we said
psalm nine and 10 may have gone together and that together they
make up an A, B, C, D, EFG type psalm and acrostic psalm where
each stanza begins with a letter of the alphabet But that would
be of the Hebrew alphabet And so from A to Z in psalm 9 and
10 minus a few letters and a few switched up and out of order
You have between psalm 9 and 10 and acrostic psalm. There’s
a third thing that will help you understand this psalm And
that’s something you need to really put on your thinking caps
to understand. And it’s this, who are the evil
people in Psalm 10? Well, our first answer is always
outsiders, right? It’s the wicked, not us, but
the wicked. Now this Psalm actually speaks
of in the camp of Israel, in the nation of Israel, there are
wicked people. So when we read tonight of these
things in Psalm 10, these characteristics of people, It is speaking of
people within Israel, or in our case, we could be speaking of
those inside the church. Now, how do we understand that? Here’s a fourth thing to consider.
Remember that when we read the Psalms 1 through 150, they are
not disjointed verses. and disconnected from one another.
We have to read one Psalm in light of the other Psalms. Sometimes
we read them in light of the ones that are surrounding them,
but we have to read them in light of the whole. Remember we said
that the Psalms, the book of Psalms, is like a bouquet, a
flower arrangement, and it is carefully arranged and set so
that its beauty is evident in its arrangement. And so how do
we understand Psalm 10 and the wickedness Well, remember in
Psalm 1, God contrasts for us the way of the wicked and the
way of the righteous. Remember that? And then in Psalm
2, the way of the wicked against the way of the Son or the Messiah. And so we always have to keep
in mind when we come to a Psalm, how are the themes in it connected
to the others? And so how is God going to take
care of business against the wicked that we find in Psalm
10? Okay, there’s a fifth thing for us to consider. And that
is the very opening words, which are the question. Why? Why, oh Lord? Why is a question
that pops up in several Psalms. It came up in Psalm 2. Remember,
why did the nations rage and the people’s plot in vain? We’ll
see other questions of why in other Psalms. But that is an
appropriate question for Christians to ask. Why, oh Lord? Another
one will be how long, oh Lord? But why? It’s a big question.
Okay, and the last thing we need to consider as we approach the
Psalm is this. What happens to those who reject
the covenant way? What happens to those who say,
God can’t be right, he can’t be trusted? Well, we’ve seen
how that worked with Adam and Eve. They were thrown out of
the garden. We’ve seen how that works with
the people of God and Israel, they were exiled to Babylon.
So rejecting the covenant way is a very dangerous position
to put yourself in. Okay, so let’s take a look at
Psalm 10 and a handful of the themes that are in it. Okay,
let’s start by considering this. You would never say as a Christian,
there is no God, correct? You would never in your right
mind say there is no God, because why? That is atheism. That is
denying God, that is denying our creator, the one who made
us and takes care of it. But have you ever said very boastfully,
and maybe you have even today as you think about the week ahead,
this week I am going to do this. And like James, the half brother
of Jesus says, you forgot to include God in your plans. Remember
James says, we say, Lord willing, if God wills, we will do this
or that. Never say that I will go to this and such a town and
do trade. I think he says, no, we should
always temper our plans with the Lord willing. Now it’s good
to plan, it’s good to lay a plan and get after it, but to include
God in it. But we would never say there
is no God, but how often do we say what we will do and it never
includes God? And so we have a passage of scripture
tonight that tells us what that looks like when we begin as members
of the covenant community to detach ourselves from God the
God of the universe. You may not be an atheist, but
you may be acting like one. And wouldn’t it be gracious of
God to say, just quit now and submit your plans to the Lord.
Now there’s another little area of maybe a more modern twist
on this that we might think of. And I know some of you have been
reading up on this and talking about it, but this whole idea
of the Christian church in America producing moralistic therapeutic
deism. Now what do we mean by that?
This person is deistic. They believe that God is there,
that he exists, and if you must need him, he’s a 911 phone call
away. You know the old saying when
the husband and wife sit down to pray and the husband says,
I guess it’s come to this, right? It’s a last resort in their mind,
but God is there, he exists, and if we need him, he’s there.
Then there’s the moralistic part. You be good, you be nice, you
be fair, and by golly, you’ll get to heaven. And then there’s
the therapeutic part. You need to feel good. You need
to be happy. Your feelings need to be caressed and fed. Be sure to get that extra manicure
and pedicure. whatever else it is you need
to feel good about yourself. And so what happens when the
church is full of people who are practical atheists? What
happens when the people of God are infiltrated, so to speak,
with the moralistic, therapeutic deism of our day? Well, we then
have a generation of people who can’t articulate their faith
in God. And so what is the solution to
that? We need the word. We need discipleship. We need
to read our and study our Bibles. We need good resources. And we
need to be discerning of what we hear and where we are hearing
it from. Just this past week, I was sent
a list by email of books that a church was getting rid of.
And it was a gracious offer. Anytime a pastor gets offer of
books, somebody, I mean, somebody knows you well, I got this long
list of books and I went through this long list of books and guess
what? I was glad that church was getting rid of them, and
I couldn’t say it like this, but I wanted to say, those all
need to go in the dumpster. I don’t want them, and nobody
needs them. It’s that bad. But we, it really was, this is
my diagnosis. Yeah, there’s a sucker out there,
I know. No, you don’t need them either.
I don’t want you, I’ll have to repair you if you read some of these
books. No. I think we’re going to be reading
about you in just a minute. But we need to be discerning,
we need to be growing, and we need to be learning, and we need
to be more and more attaching ourselves to God instead of detaching
ourselves from Him. We need to live a Godward life.
and not make up a religion of our own. You know, if you could
criticize the modern American church for one or two things,
maybe one of the great things we should criticize for them
is the church is making up a new religion and passing it on as
the religion of the God of our fathers. And so people have become
inoculated to think that their moralistic, therapeutic, atheistic
deism is the true religion of Jesus. And it’s really not. So what do we see when we look
around the covenant community? Or maybe the question for us
tonight is what does David see when he looks around the covenant
community? Why does it alarm him? And maybe we should see
with some of the same eyes and look around. But verses two to
four tell us. that the mark of an atheist is
arrogance. That’s the first mark we see.
Notice how he puts it. He says, in arrogance, the wicked
hotly pursue the poor. Let them be caught in the schemes
they have devised. For the wicked boast of the desires
of a soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces
the Lord. In the pride of his face, the
wicked does not seek him. All his thoughts are, there is
no God. And so here you have an arrogant
person, they’re a schemer, they are catching others in their
traps, they are exploiting, they are boastful, full of pride,
they curse others, they renounce others, and all their thoughts
are there is no God. And sometimes that’s masked with
religion. We might bump into a real bonafide atheist out in
the world and we just see their arrogance and pride. But in the
church, it can be under the surface a bit. But we need to be watchful
of that arrogance. The second thing it speaks of
this person is prosperous. So the atheist, the practical
atheist is arrogant, but he’s also prosperous. Verse five tells
us, his way prospers at all times. Your judgments are on high out
of his sight. And as for all his foes, he puffs
at them. You know, sometimes we look at
those who prosper and say, they’ve got what they don’t deserve.
Why do they get that? And they’re wicked and I don’t
have that. That’s sometimes what we think. They are wicked and
yet they’re blessed. But what does the passage of
scripture tell us about them? They are haughty, they are arrogant.
Other places in scripture when it speaks of the unrighteous,
it says they’re fat and they are sleek. They just look good,
smell good, and look good doing all they do when they do it.
This person is self-confident, he is strong, he is successful. at least from our perspective.
But guess what this person thinks in his heart? I have made myself. It’s from my strength, it’s from
my ingenuity, it’s from my hard work, it’s from me and I bless
myself. And so not only is there arrogance,
there is pride. But it gets worse and worse and
it builds. And as you make your way to verse
six, you’ll see that this person, has a sense of security. It’s
a false sense. But notice in verse six, he says,
this person says in his heart, I shall not be moved throughout
all generations. I shall not meet adversity. Have you ever watched somebody
build something or they achieve a great end only to maybe shortly
after they’re dead? And they’re gone. And what does
Solomon, what does King Solomon say in Ecclesiastes and Proverbs
about that? You build and you build and you
build only to go to the grave and somebody else after you will
enjoy all your hard labors. It’s sort of a Shakespearean
way of showing the irony of life. This person says, I’m good to
go. I’ve got the world in my hands and whatever I do will
have success. Well, guess what? Until God shows
up. And God does have a sense of
humor. God does have a way of showing up. Remember with the
Tower of Babel? The language of the Tower of Babel is God
looked down from heaven to see their great big tall tower. They
thought they were building up, up, up, and he looked down to
see it. And then it says he went down to see what the children
of man were doing. And it was almost as if God was scoffing
at their arrogance. He was scoffing at their pride.
He was scoffing at their security. Think about King Saul, the handsome,
tall, King from the tribe of Benjamin, where do we find him
at the end of his life? He’s hanging from a tree, disgraced
and dead. And that happens. Think also
about Satan. Where is Satan? He’s chained,
he’s defeated, he’s angry, he’s livid and his doom as Martin
Luther’s great hymn is sure. And so there’s pride and arrogance.
There’s a false sense of security. And you move to verse seven,
you see their speech is vile. It says, his mouth is filled
with cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue are mischief
and iniquity. Have you ever been around somebody who’s prideful
and boastful and arrogant? They’re the loudest person. ♪
O Lord, why do you send me ♪ And stay so far away? And why do you conceal yourself
from us, Indra? ♪ Against the sound that we have
torn ♪ ♪ Let there be calm in spirit today ♪ ♪ In our sadness
secure ♪ ♪ He speaks about the prayings of His heart ♪ ♪ And
the slow birth ♪ He praises people filled with
grief while he revives the Lord. The wicked does not see the Lord. His heart is made and proud,
with heart he His wings will always water the
stripes of our deep homes. He keeps his distance from your
thoughts, he stares at all his thoughts. He fortifies himself
and says, no threat will bring me down. Arise, Lord God, lift up your
head. Do not forget the poor. Bright as the wicked, say of
God, I cannot be ignored. But you, Lord God, you see such
wrong. for all the The heathen nations of the world
will perish from this land. Oh Lord, the needy ones desire
You answer from on high You strengthen them within their hearts and
listen to their prayers those who are oppressed. So,
Lord, your men shall taste the woe of the first day of the year.