Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem.
We clearly live in a world where something has gone terribly wrong. Where do we find security when surrounded by so much uncertainty? Well, one whose life is built upon God, who banks it all on the truths of His Word, will find himself anchored and secure. Let's listen to this message titled, Living by Faith, Security.
So our text for today is Psalm 37 verses 32 to 34, Living by Faith. You know my lovely wife. She likes to shop in craft stores. Oftentimes those craft stores have pillows. She likes pillows, little pillows with things written on them. She has an interesting sense of humor. We were walking through one one time and she said, Hey, Rich, look at this. And the little pillow is about that size. It says we've been through a lot together and most of it's your fault.
And I'm thinking, who in their right mind would buy something like that? Well, it ended up on our bed. The interesting thing is, though that's her sense of humor, it was true. Many of the difficulties in a relationship, as I look back on them, I had to admit were as a result of my insecurity. Because I needed that affirmation of importance. I was this insecure person and I was anxious on high alert watching out for my own importance.
That's insecurity. We're talking about living by faith. Living by faith is many things and it manifests itself in many ways. It produces many things in a person's life. Living by faith is contentment.
We started out in Psalm 37. It is faithfulness. Living by faith is trust. It is quietness.
It manifests in meekness, in satisfaction and generosity and goodness and wisdom. Living by faith is also security. Security. Security means that you are rescued.
You are rescued from the sense of living anxiously on high alert for your own protection and your own importance. Living by faith means security for the believer. But as we look at the text today, look at it with me. Verse 32, Psalm 37, 32. The wicked watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death. The Lord will not abandon him to his power or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial.
Wait for the Lord and keep his way and he will exalt you to inherit the land you will look on when the wicked are cut off. What we glean from the text today is the answer to this question. How are we, if we are living by faith, how are we rescued from living in anxiety and on high alert in a world where something has gone horribly wrong?
Because it has, hasn't it? Things are not as they ought to be. And sometimes we really find difficulty with that when we understand that God is good, he is benevolent and he is sovereign and yet things are not as they ought to be. Look, for example, in here it says the wicked watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death. Who are the wicked? Who are the wicked? The wicked are those who counter God. As we've studied through this Psalm, the wicked are those who counter God. There's two ways you can counter God. You can counter him passively by marginalizing him, just ignoring him, turning the other way and said, God, I don't need you. I can do life on my own.
Thank you very much. Go away. That's countering God. The other way is actively countering God by actively, violently, sometimes pushing back against God and his people. That's who's referred to in the Psalm in verse 32. But who is the righteous?
Because it says the wicked watches for the righteous and seeks to put him to death. The righteous is the one whose life is built upon God. Faith has an object.
Trust has an object. And when God is the object of my trust, my faith, my life is built upon him, that is righteous. And it's not my righteousness. It's the righteousness of Christ that's been given to me.
That's how I build my life upon him. So what we glean from verse 32 is this fact, that there is real brokenness in the world today. Things are not as they ought to be. That is not right, what he's describing there. It's not okay.
Something has gone wrong. And here it is, the reality of self preeminence in each person leads people to dehumanize others. When I want to get rid of somebody, I tend to, in my self preeminence, I will dehumanize them and then justify in my own being my hatred for them, my desire for them to disappear. That's very human behavior.
It's natural human behavior. And all too often, good seems to be swallowed up by evil, doesn't it? And that's what he's describing in verse 32.
Good seems to be swallowed up by evil. Jesus says something to this effect in John chapter 15. He says, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you are of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Now the world there is what Jesus is not saying is that everyone who is an unbeliever violently hates you because you're a Christian.
That's not factually true. But what he's referring to in the world is a system that refuses to acknowledge God. And that system is represented by many people. But it is a system that refuses to acknowledge God and that world hates you. And a lot of people in today's world and throughout history have felt the blunt end of that hatred. But it's not because they hate us first, it's because they hated Christ. And the whole point is that they, that truth in Christ and his gospel is a threat to their way of life.
Here's one example of it. An Iranian young woman, her name is Rashin. Rashin's father was a Christian leader in Iran. When Rashin was 13 years old, her father was hanged by the Islamic authorities. Why was he hanged?
Because he was a Christian leader, therefore he was a threat to the state. Can you imagine being 13 years old and your dad is hanged just because he's a Christian leader? That is utterly foreign to us, isn't it?
And yet it's a reality in today's world. What is the promise of verse 33? Look at it with me. The Lord will not abandon him to his power or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial. The Lord will not abandon the righteous to the power of the wicked or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial.
That's the promise. Now let's first of all consider the immediate context of this verse. The immediate context is that it is in the Old Testament. Old Testament means Old Covenant. That's the law of Moses. And under that law, God promised that if you follow and trust me, there will be blessing and protection. But he says, if you ignore me and disobey me, there will be curse and there will be abandonment. I will abandon you to your enemies because you're looking to somebody else to protect you. You're looking to something else for your security.
So I'm going to abandon you to that and see how that works for you. What we need to understand is that this Old Covenant was a specific law for a specific people for a specific time. Christ has redeemed us from this law. We need to understand that. So though that is the immediate context of what is written here, there is also a broader context to it. So let's consider that broader context.
And first of all, the broader context is in world history. So as I just told you about Rasheen's father, when he was hanged by Islamic authorities when she was 13 years old, and then you read Psalm 37-33, the Lord will not abandon him to his power or let him be condemned when he is brought to trial. You're like, okay, something's not matching up there.
This isn't working. Some might go so far as to say, well, God's let me down. God didn't come through.
What's going on here? You look in history and you could ask, well, how about the apostles of Jesus Christ? Every one of them was martyred with the exception of one. Every one of them died a brutal death because they were followers of Jesus Christ. What happened to Psalm 37-33? How about all the martyrs of Christian history, those who have died for their faith?
How about Jesus Christ, for example? Wasn't he perfectly doing God's will and yet he died a brutal, excruciating death on the cross. What happened to Psalm 37-33, you might say? The monitoring group Open Doors says that last year, one in nine Christians experienced serious persecution.
How do we understand this? Let's look at what Jesus prayed in John 17-15. It was the night of his betrayal, the night before his crucifixion. Jesus was praying to the Father and he asked this. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. Jesus doesn't want to just take us out of the world to rescue us. It's like, oh, we come to faith in Christ and boom, all of a sudden we're in heaven. No, we're here.
Why? Because we have a mission. That's why we're here. What becomes clear from the New Testament is that we are called to share in Christ's sufferings. We share in Christ's sufferings. Paul makes that clear in Romans 8-17 and Peter makes it clear in 1 Peter 4, verse 13. We are called to share in Christ's sufferings.
Let me just interject this for a moment. If your theological framework is one that leads you to believe that if you are a follower of Christ, your life ought to be rosy and healthy and wealthy, you are following a lie. It is a brutal lie. Jesus told us, promised us that we would suffer. We are called to share in his sufferings. Meanwhile, the Lord says this through the apostle, Romans 8-33. Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
So this is true of us. We need to recognize, as Carly's pointed out in the scripture from Ephesians 2 this morning, we need to recognize who we are in Christ. What is our identity? What is our position in Christ? And how does that inform us as we are in this temporal, brutal reality of today? 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 10am. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10am. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10am.
