Welcome to Delight in Grace, Rich Powell. One of the most common objections to biblical Christianity today is the permanence of God's judgment.
Really? You say God is a loving God and yet those who would not serve Him for a brief 70-80 years will be judged by Him for eternity? Those who would raise that objection are forgetting two very, very important things. Number one is that they forget the unfathomable love that God has demonstrated in Jesus Christ. Secondly, they forget that there is comfort in judgment. There is comfort in judgment. Would you want to worship a God who did not oppose and judge evil?
Of course not. Because we all crave justice. We crave justice because we are made in God's image.
Our text today begins in verse 10. In just a little while the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at His place, He will not be there.
What is that? That is judgment. That is the just judgment of a holy God. Here's the problem. Not only do we crave justice, but we also crave autonomy. We want to be a law unto ourselves. And here's the problem. While we crave justice, we also crave autonomy and those two are at odds.
And that scenario is acutely playing itself out in the current tyranny of political correctness. So when verse 10 says in just a little while the wicked will be no more, that word wicked is the word that means guilty. The guilty.
The guilty are those who counter God. This is His universe. He created it. He brought us into it. This is His universe. We exist because of Him and we exist for Him.
The Bible makes that abundantly clear. And the wicked are those who would counter God. Now you can counter God in two ways.
You can counter Him actively or you can counter Him passively. Those who counter God actively, we would put in that category. For example, oppressive tyrants. And certain names and faces come to mind from history, don't they? Oppressive tyrants whose homes are now museums and their statues have been toppled. Verse 12, it says the wicked plot against the righteous and gnashes his teeth. These are the oppressive tyrants. These are the ones who would say to others, you are in my way. You are in the way of my agenda and I will oppress you.
I will push you down. For example, I grew up in Colombia, South America, and for many years beginning in the 70s, that nation was ruled by the drug cartel. And I knew personally a pastor who pastored a church.
My father married him and his wife. And he pastored a small village in the mountains of Colombia and he would not support the drug cartel and they took his life. That's wickedness. That's tyranny. But it says also, look at verse 14, the wicked draw the sword and bend the bow as they bring down the poor and the needy to slay those whose way is upright. In other words, they elevate self by pushing others down. It's oppression. That's what wickedness does. Wickedness is oppressive. We can see that playing out in many different places, not just in the oppressive tyrants, but you can see it, for example, in your local high school. Bullying. It doesn't have to be high school. It can be elementary, too. Bullying or mean girls, right?
What is that? That's tyranny in the heart of the individual. Wickedness in the heart of the individual.
You see that that brings it home a little closer to home, doesn't it? You see, there is a natural human craving for autonomy and self exaltation. That's what I call self preeminence. It's the problem that you were born with. Man elevates himself by cutting others down. It is a natural tendency. And that is very, very different from God who exalts the humble by bringing them up to himself.
But we need to feel important, don't we? As do the wicked. The wicked calculate and manipulate life in their favor to build their own kingdom. The wicked are the guilty. And I ask this question, which of us is not guilty? And you might say, well, I'm not as guilty as those tyrants you were talking about.
That's not the question. Which of us is not guilty? What does this text have to say about the guilty?
It's pretty straightforward, isn't it? There are those who oppose God actively and we feel the brunt of that often as we who follow God, we feel their opposition to God and to his people. Can we not also oppose God passively?
Indeed we can. One is guilty by simply ignoring God. One is guilty by simply ignoring God.
By marginalizing him, we counter him. One can essentially say to God, the creator of the universe, I know better than you. That's self preeminence. That's the problem that we're all born with.
Yes, I had nothing to do with my existence and I can't even keep my heart beating to stay alive. But frankly, I know what's better for me than you do, God. It just makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it? And yet that sentiment is in every one of our hearts. We have to admit that that tyrant is there.
He shows his ugly head when I don't get what I expect or when something of value is taken away from me, my autonomy has been violated and the tyrant shows himself. Here's another factor in our humanness that can make faith hard. We're talking about living by faith as we study Psalm 37. And many would admit, you know, faith is sometimes hard. Well, what is it that makes faith hard? First of all, it's a misunderstanding of it. But here's here's another thing that makes faith hard. It's in the form of passively countering God.
Let me give you an example of it. I expect a long, healthy and successful life under the sun because we were designed for life, weren't we? And I expect that. In other words, I believe I deserve that.
A long, healthy, successful life under the sun. If I or someone I care about doesn't get that, then I need God to explain why. Really? Did you forget that this is a broken world?
It is a broken universe. I ought to get 90 or so years out of this existence under the sun. I ought to. I deserve that.
Right? We believe that in our hearts, don't we? We wouldn't admit it out loud, but it's what we believe. And in our self-preeminence, we inherently believe we deserve these many years as if the highest good in this transient existence under the sun is the most days in it as possible.
Is that the highest good? Not only time, but pleasures and comforts. We believe we deserve. We are owed these things. And if we don't get them, we demand an explanation. If we don't get what we believe we deserve, then the tyrant in us foments outrage and in demand for explanation.
What is this? This is passively countering God. It's a problem in every one of our hearts. And the thing about it is there are messages that come at us all the time that simply reinforce that. What are the things that you choose to occupy your mind? For many of us, one of the things that occupies our minds throughout much of the day is music. Tom Jacobs writes an article from You're So Vain to I'm So Great in the Pacific Standard. This is what he writes. A new study reports self-regard, self-promotion and plain old bragging are far more prominent in pop music than they were a quarter century ago. The hit songs we listen to represent the increasing individualistic, narcissistic tendencies in the culture, but also further convey that promoting oneself through bragging, demands for respect and self-focus is acceptable. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in Him. The one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
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