Morning everybody. If you will,
let's turn to Psalm 58. Psalm 58. Sometimes you read the scriptures
and it just seems so dark and heavy, and I've been on this
psalm for quite a while until we can see the good news in it,
until it's a comfort and an encouragement to us, as it ought to be. Psalm
58, I've titled this the Judgment in the Earth. What had happened
here before David had wrote this, Psalm 58, David had been watching
all the corruption and the injustice of Saul and all the judges that
Saul had appointed over the land. It was against David and it was
against everything. In some translations, these judges
were called politicians. Politicians. I don't have a political standpoint
or agenda to drive from a pulpit. That's nonsense. But we all have
experienced this. We think it's something new,
we think this is the worst it's ever been, and it's been going
on David's time. This isn't something new, this
is longstanding. But this can be applied to us,
we can enter into some of these things. Abuse of authority, fraud
taking place, injury that was caused to the people of Israel
in finances, in education. public works, you name it, there
was a problem, wasn't there? And it seems that everything
was actively working and designed by Satan to undermine exactly
what the Lord had given us. The two institutions the Lord
gave us to picture Him and His bride throughout time was a local
assembly where a man got up and preached the gospel of Christ
and Him crucified in our homes. where a man was ahead of his
house and he commanded it and brought his children up in the
admonition of the Lord. And it seems that everything
in David's time was actively going against that. Has anything
changed? I could tell you stories from
that high school right down the road that would curl your hair
back. What's actively going on in our nation right now. But
it ain't nothing new. It ain't nothing new. It's a
bad thing. It has to be dealt with. But
there's comfort in this. If we look there at the end of
verse 11, Psalm 58, here's the comfort. Verily, he is a God
that judgeth in the earth. It says he's a God that judges
in the earth. That means everything's coming to pass as the Lord sees
fit for it to come to pass. He hasn't left his throne. No
one's getting won over on him. This isn't happening. Remember
Pharaoh? Pharaoh was risen up and all those horrible things
and his heart kept getting hardened. And the Lord said, I've raised
you up just for my glory. I did this. He was, he was stealing
elections. No, he wasn't. God put him there.
Do we forget that he's on his throne? We do, don't we? Swift, read
Psalm 58, be reminded. We have to. The injustice of
mankind, and it is unjust. What we call a court system and
legal system in this nation is becoming a joke and probably
the downfall of this nation, what we call America. What we
call justice is the exact opposite. But thanks be to God, the injustice
of mankind will not overrule the justice of God. Judgment's
coming, and they'll be partially in this earth. I told my son
that a man was very rude to him and I said, the Lord will deal
with that. We may never see it, never know it. He had a little
fender bender and that man got on his high horse and was just
berating us. And the next day I got a phone
call and he said, my wife's car got totaled. Nobody even left
a note. They wrecked it in the parking lot. Well, the Lord will
deal with it. We may not know, but either now
or in time to come. But the injustice of man will
not overrule the justice of God. This isn't a popular psalm. And
there's some people that believe that you should only sing out
of the psalms. And they took this psalm out
of their hymnal, even though it's in the Lord's, because it
wasn't very Christian. Maybe they ought to find out
what a Christian is first. But this is an Al-Tashka Psalm. That means thou must not destroy. Thou must not destroy. What's
this Psalm about? Mercy. Huh? It is, yes. And it's a mixed hymn. You know
what that one means? Engraved in gold. This is lasting. This is golden. This is a golden
Psalm. That's what the heading is. of
David. This is for our comfort and it
is for our learning to teach us something and miraculously. This is just, this is a miracle
to me. The Lord used Psalms like this
to save his people. Preaching of this Psalm and seeing
who we are and who he is and how a man could be just before
God. The Lord will use that, not just
to comfort those He's already saved, not just to condemn those
that refuse it, but to save those that are His that you don't yet
know Him. That's amazing to me. That's amazing. We read this
Psalm, it's like a court of law, I like them courtroom dramas.
And the charges are brought up and the case is presented from
verses one through five. Let's read it. Do ye indeed speak
righteousness, O congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons
of men? Yea, in heart ye work wickedness,
ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked
are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison
of a serpent. They are like the deaf adder
that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to the voice
of charmers, charming never so wisely. And here's the punishment
that's assigned, verses six through nine. Break their teeth, O God,
in their mouth. Break out the great teeth of
the young lions, O Lord. Let them melt away as waters
which run continually. When they bendeth his bow to
shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces, as a snail
which melteth. Let every one of them pass away,
like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. Before your pots can feel the
thorns, he shall take them away as a whirlwind, both living and
in his wrath. And then finally, the celebration
of this judgment, the celebration of this trial being concluded.
Verse 10 and 11. The righteous shall rejoice when
he seeth the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the
blood of the wicked, so that a man shall say, Verily, there
is a reward for the righteous. Verily, he is a God that judgeth
in earth. Look back here at verse one.
It says, Do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation?
Congregation is those that's been made silent. It's the first
time it's used. Do you indeed speak righteousness,
O congregation that's gathered together? Do you judge uprightly,
O ye sons of men? Physically, these judges, they
were saying one thing and doing another. I'm going to do this,
and then they didn't do that. Or they would say, you have to
do this, and then they would do the opposite. That's putting
people under the law, and then they just did what they wanted.
Lord spoke to the Pharisees on that, didn't he? He said, you
hold people to Moses, but you don't even hear him. You put
everybody else underneath the thumb, but you don't even do
that yourself. You don't even know it. And one
of those Pharisees said, no, if they give out laws and rules,
you follow them, but don't you do the works they do. Our politicians
do the same thing in our day, don't they? They say one thing
to another, they make you do something, but they got their
own plans, their own retirements, or health care, or whatever.
Pick some. Ain't nothing different. But you know this isn't, the
Lord ain't giving us a class in government. This is all of
mankind. That's who this is speaking of.
Turn over to Romans chapter two, if you want, leave a marker there.
We'll be in the first couple chapters of Romans. Romans chapter
two. I believe Paul was reading Psalm
58 that morning whenever he went to go write this part of Romans,
that letter to Rome. I think you'll see that too. Those that considered themselves
judges, those that had the wisdom to make the call, I would never,
oh really? You ought to be, you should,
and cast in their judgments, don't they? Who would do such,
a believer would never do such a thing. They're making themselves
judges, and that's wrong. The Lord has to convict us. Look
here, Romans 2, verse 1. Therefore thou art inexcusable,
O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest
another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou hast judged, doest the
same things. but we are sure that the judgment
of God is according to truth against them which commit such
things." Anytime we judge someone, we're guilty of the same thing. How far can we take that? Far
enough where I start getting condemned, that's how far we
can take it. I don't understand some of those things. How can
I judge someone and say, that's blatantly wrong, something I've never done
or ever wanted to do or considered doing, and be guilty of it? I'm
guilty of judging. I'm guilty of judging. You know,
that's something, people can be mad over things. If the Lord's
gave us a new heart and convicted us of our sin, and we hear this
gospel preached, how mad are you at anybody else? If he shows
us what we are, I can't think less of someone else. I can't
be mad at him, because this is one-on-one. And if he's been
gracious to me and he's forgiven me, how could I not be gracious
and forgiven of him? But he judges right, we judge
wrong. We judge wrong, he judges right, says verse two. For we
are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth. He
that is truth speaks truth and he judges in truth against them
which commit such things. Righteous judgment, righteous
judgment. And he's saying, are you righteous?
Have you judged righteously? Guilty. Does that shut us up? Shuts me up. Am I gonna tell
God all the good things I've done and all the good decisions
I've made? No. No. Right off the bat, we're
in this courtroom. It got quiet. I got quiet. I got quiet. Now leave a mark
there if you'd like. Look back here in Psalm 58 verse 2. Verse 1 says, Do ye indeed speak
righteousness, O congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons
of men? Not sons of God, sons of men. This is all mankind, isn't it?
It says in verse 2, Yea, in heart ye work wickedness. You weigh
the violence of your hands in the earth. In our flesh, we think
we can just weigh out all the correct proportions. I think
I know how long my trials ought to last, or how severe they ought
to be, or how less severe they ought to be. We weigh out how
much wickedness, how much violence. You know, a gentleman, people
say, well, someone's a gentleman. The old term of that, that means
they're a man. That's the first priority. That means they have
the capacity for violence, yet they have the ability to be gentle.
We're all gentlemen. We all have the capacity for
violence. And we weigh that out, and we
think we do so good. We're judging ourselves to be
wonderful and righteous. Well, I didn't say that, and
I didn't do that. I do that all the time. I didn't do those things. But
that's a wicked heart working, isn't it? We are not the ones
that own the scales. that we judge and we weigh all
these things, that's judging. We don't own the scales. That's
where Daniel 5 said, thou art weighed in the balances and are
found wanting. That's what he told that king, wasn't it? Telal. He said, you've been weighed
in the balances. You found wanting. The Lord weighs
the dust of the earth in a scale. It's his scales. He's the only judge, isn't it?
When did those judges, back in David's time, and our judges
in our time, and all of us born of Adam, that are born judges,
when did we become that way? I just said it, didn't I? Look
at verse three. The wicked are estranged from the womb. They
go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Did you
know babies lie? They come from the womb, speaking
lies. A lying baby, they don't need changed, they don't need
any milk, they're not hungry, and they'll cry just so mom will
come pick them up, and then they quit crying. And you put them
down, they start crying again. They just want you to do something,
so they tell you something's wrong, so you'll come pick them up.
What parent taught their child how to do that? What parent ever
taught their child how to hide things, and to lie, and to be
deceitful? We come from the womb that way. That's our nature,
isn't it? That's our instinct. It says
in verse four, their poison is like the poison of a serpent.
You know, a poison of snake, from the time it comes out of
that egg, it's a poison of snake until it dies. It always is. They might be a little one and
it might be a big one, but they're poison of snakes, ain't they?
And a snake that has poison, where does it come from? Does
it go to the getting store and get poison? It comes from within. It comes from within. It generates
it all by itself. I believe Paul had been reading
this Psalm. Look here in Romans 3 again. Romans chapter 3, verse 12. They are all gone out of the
way. A-double-L. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good.
No, not one. Their throat's an open sepulcher.
Their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asp is
under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. That's all
of us. We're the guilty ones. Everybody
puts the Lord on trial, or the gospel on trial, or the preacher
on trial. We're the ones on trial. God has to deal with us in that
and show us that, and He has. Before, it's going to happen.
We'll see next hour. We might be doing this for 17 years. It's
going to have to happen again. But our mouth's full of cursing
and bitterness, not that white milk of the gospel of grace and
peace, those sons of thunder. James and John come out there,
and the people didn't bow to the Lord, and they said, let's
call down fire and brimstone and kill them. That's judgment,
isn't it? That's what they got coming to
them. I'll give you that. But the Lord didn't say, go ahead,
that's good. You're a good soldier. He said,
you don't know what spirit you are. That's a judging spirit,
and that's wrong. That's his business. Not to have
pity on them, as the Lord's had pity on us. Ought to go preach
the gospel to them, as the Lord sent a preacher to preach the
gospel to us. And our feet are so swift to shed blood. Back
to Psalm 58. Stay there in Romans 3 too, we'll
be right back. Psalm 58 verse four, their poison is like the
poison of a serpent. They're all deaf. They are like
the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. They say some of those,
I'll never know. I can tell you that right now.
I don't want to get close enough to see, but when they try to
charm in those snakes and stuff there in India, them big old
cobras, some of those things, I guess they can hear and they'll
put their head to the ground and take their tail and try to
cover it up, roll it up over their ear. They don't want to
hear the music. They don't want to be charmed. says, which will
not hearken unto the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. Charming never so wisely. We're
supposed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, aren't
we? And throughout time and throughout writing and throughout preaching
and throughout this country right now and other countries, there
are men that skillfully, preach the gospel skillfully, with intent. They commit themselves to the
word to prove themselves faithful and they labor day in and day
out and pray and study and pray and study and practice and study
and pray. And that's their life. And they
stand up and they say, here's what man is. Don't forget, don't
forget we're all grass. Behold your God. Look at him,
and people won't hear it. They won't. Poor young fella
stopped me in my driveway yesterday and said, we want to help people
study the Bible. Would you be willing to have
a free Bible study course? And I took my headphone out and
I said, I'm listening to a message right now. I showed him my phone.
I said, do you want a Bible study course? And he said, no. He didn't
want nothing of it. They had their own program, a
suit of them that was comfortable for them. That's the way they
liked it. Don't matter if I like it, here's what God says. Mankind
won't hear it. And people can be in the right
church and agree that that's the correct doctrines and not
hear it. I did for a long time, almost
20 years. About 16, 17, 18 years, I did. Agreed with everything that they
said. And I didn't hear it. I didn't hear it. Back there
in Romans 3. I hear it now. You hear it now.
Some of you do. Romans three verse nine. What
then, are we better than they? No. in no wise, for we have before
proved both Jews and Gentiles that all are under sin. As it
is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that
understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. Did I
finally get it and I finally decided that this was right?
I remember whenever I was seeking God and I was reading the scriptures
every day, looking for God, no, I was not. I stuck my ear up, I took my
tail and tried to cover it. I might have been looking for
a God. I might have been looking for something to give me a warm
fuzzy because I had a little bit of guilt by nature. But I
wasn't seeking God out. He sought me out. He wasn't lost.
I was the one that was lost. The Lord said in John 5, He said,
You will not come to me that you might have life. That's all
mankind by nature. That's those mean old judges,
the mean old politicians back then that was corrupt, the corrupt
politicians then and the corrupt politicians now, and this corrupt
politician. That's out for number one. That's
all of us. Turn over Matthew 11. Matthew
11. Verse 15. Matthew 11, 15. Speaking of that adder that had
closed its ear, He said, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. I need ears. I need to hear. There has to be a message to
be heard and I have to have ears to hear it. He said, but where
unto shall I lock in this generation? It's like in the children sitting
in the market and calling unto their fellows, saying, we've
piped unto you and you've not danced. We've mourned unto you
and you've not lamented. For John came neither eating
nor drinking. And they said, he's got a devil.
John the Baptist came and he was fasting because he couldn't
eat because he had a job to do. I'll eat later. I got preaching
to do. And they said, well, that man's possessed. I ain't seen
him eat in three days. He's got a devil. And the son
of man came eating and drinking. Christ came, and he ate food,
and he drank, and they said, behold, a man of gluttonous,
and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, but wisdom
is justified of her children. He said, here I come. They were
sitting in judgment, and they wouldn't hear. They wouldn't
hear John the Baptist, and he was made in sheep's, camel's
hair, and a leather girdle that was durable, dressed like them.
He said, I'm a sinner just like you, buddy. I ain't nobody special. They wouldn't have him. Here
comes the son of God, God himself in human flesh. And he said,
I'm like you all eat and drink. I'm a man, but I'm your representative.
And they wouldn't have him. They wouldn't have him. What's
the punishment of those wicked judges, those that will not hear?
Look at verse six, Psalm 58. Psalm 58 verse six. David's praying here, but this
is a prayer of our Lord as well. Break their teeth, O God, in
their mouth. Break out the great teeth of
the young lines, O Lord. Why break their teeth out? They
can't bite no more. They can't do no harm. I assure
you those lines in there with Daniel had well-equipped teeth.
They weren't drugged and they didn't have their teeth removed.
But he says, break their teeth, Lord, that they can bite no more,
that they can wound no more, that they can tear and gnash
no more. But you know, the nature there
didn't change. The heart didn't change, just the teeth, just
its capacity. And I was thinking of the Lord
whenever he cast out all them demons, they went into his legion,
right? Thousands and thousands. And wasn't all that the demons
say, well, there's one God, and they trembled. You're the holy
one of Israel. You're the judge. Are you come
to torment us? You're the one that we're going
to be tormented by. Not once has it recorded one
of them demons cry, Lord, would you have mercy on me? Mercy. Just kept fighting. And so he's
praying that their teeth be gone. their means of wounding. Verse
7 says, let them melt away as waters which run continually.
When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let him be as cutting
pieces. Before they're able even to get
an arrow out, remove their teeth, cut them in half. Before they
can fire an accusation, before they can wound one of your people,
cut them down. Think of all this imagery that
David's using, this visualization. I thought this was a sweet one.
I saw one here, a snail. We have snails here sometimes,
especially after this rain. Verse eight says, as a snail
which melteth, let every one of them pass away. You know,
behind a snail is a trail, isn't it? Of mucus. And here in these
hot deserts, I saw one going, I said, you ain't gonna make
it across that parking lot. I know that. But the snail doesn't
know that. And the trail that it's leaving
is consuming itself. And David's praying here, and
the Lord says, for his enemies, just let them go on. And now
what he said to those Pharisees is, leave them alone. Leave them
alone. He said, dust your coat off,
so the kingdom of God is benign to you. Let them keep doing what
they're doing. He said, like the untimely birth
of a woman, that they may not see a son, like a miscarriage,
like a child that dies in childbirth, that they never saw the son.
He said, you know what the Lord said? It'd be better for you,
you was never born, than to willfully refuse this. Before your pots
can fill the thorns, he shall take them away as a whirlwind,
both living and in his wrath. What a judgment. What a judgment
for those that refuse him outside of Christ. But look at verse
10. The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.
This is the Lord's vengeance. This is the Lord who is the judge,
who judges in truth. If he does it, it's right. He
doesn't do what's right. What he does is right. That's
a powerful statement. I don't know what he's doing.
I don't know what he's doing either, but it's right. Just because I don't see
it. This is vengeance that the Lord's
speaking for nine verses. There's condemnation and vengeance,
and a bunch of it. We get two verses of good. But
it says, the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.
Well, how can that be? I think of that, I might be getting
them out of order, but that final day of judgment, and there'll
be people that I care for and I love, or my family or something,
and I'm gonna see it, the Lord's gonna cast them out. because
they refused him. And it won't be that I loved
him so much and I'm heartbroken. That won't happen, because I
love him in perfection. And it won't be that they've
lost. And people I like, I like to see them win. Don't you like
to see your team win? You like to see your family win,
your friends win? They lost. But I won't mourn because they
lost. I'll rejoice because he's the victor. That's so. And I know it, but I don't yet
understand it. We can know that's what's gonna
happen, but we ain't entered into that yet. I'm not without
sin. And while I'm here, I pity, and pray, and have faith, and
ask the Lord to do these things. But that day will come, and we'll
rejoice. We'll rejoice. What a day that'll
be. But how can that be? Because
I thought we read that there's none righteous, there's none that
seeketh after God. None of those things, right? Those righteous
are going to rejoice because we are guilty all nine verses,
amen. All their sin and their trespass. I said that on purpose
for the next hour. Their sin, singular, their trespass,
singular. It's been put away. All that
punishment that had to take place has already been executed. It's
already been done. Well, who's these righteous that
he's talking about? Said there's none righteous, who's that righteous?
For he hath made him, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, sin
for us. All that we were, all that willful
disobedience, all that rejecting Christ, rejecting his word, rejecting
his sovereignty, the ignorance to it and willful bliss of the
ignorance to it, all that guilt, that's me, that not believing
him, not trusting him, he was made that. that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him. When I see I'm the guilty one
and that he came and he bore my sin and his body on a tree
and was made a curse for me that I earned and in that he made
me righteous, that gonna make you happy? That's one of the
most glorious and horrible things that ever took place. The Lord
said, weep not for me. This had to happen. And he's
the king. And it's right. And I'm thankful. It just breaks
you to know what he had to go through to save us, to make us
righteous. But I'm glad he did it. To be made like him, I rejoice
in that. I rejoice in that. Said the righteous
shall rejoice, verse 10, when he seeth the vengeance, he shall
wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. The one that was made sin were
washed in him. But in Revelation 14, it speaks
of that harvest of the earth. And it says the wine press was
trodden without the city and the blood came out of the wine
press, even to the horse's bridles. It was deep. It was deep. That's in the harvesting of the
earth. That's when this earth is judged. and either mankind
will tread his winepress by himself and be crushed, or Christ has
already tread that winepress alone for us. We rejoice in those
things. If we were crushed in Christ,
we were punished in Him and found acceptable in Him, we rejoice. Verse 10, the righteous shall
rejoice when he seeth the vengeance, he shall wash his feet in the
blood of the wicked, so that a man shall say, Verily, there
is a reward for the righteous. There's a reward. What's the
reward of our, is that rewards in heaven? I've been a believer
for 72 years longer than somebody else and I'm gonna have a little
bit higher mansion. No. What did God tell Abraham? I'm your reward. I'm your reward. Verily, there's a reward for
the righteous. There's Christ our reward sitting on his throne
right now. He's made us righteous. Verily, now with all that, That's
eternal things. This ain't just a creed, this
isn't just a theological dissertation for a day that we can say, that
was nice, let's go to Applebee's. These are eternal matters. Eternal
life and death, not just life and death. Eternal life and death.
Remember them politicians we started out with? I quit watching
the news years ago, but if I turn it back on, I bet my blood pressure
go up. Remember those? We got to worry about them. Verily,
he's a God that judgeth in the earth. Those earthly things taken
care of. Don't worry about it. That and
then the saving of his people to to be found guilty and to
be found. He's all of our righteousness
while we're here. That's called salvation. That's
called the Lord dealing with somebody. And that's a good thing. That's real good. We rejoice
in that. And he can take care of it. He knows when to save
his people, when not to, when to wait. He knows what He's doing. He'll do just right. He'll do
just right. Makes it a little bit better
when we turn the news on, doesn't it? Makes it a little bit better
when we see our sin that He's doing right. When we see Him. All right, let's pray together. Father, thank You for these golden
Psalms. Thank You for Your precious Word. It seems so mysterious
and dark to us sometimes. For those around us, it seems
mysterious and dark concerning ourselves. But when our Redeemer is revealed,
it's precious and it's right and it's true. Lord, calm us
as this year goes on and make us steady. Give us the faith
to look to Christ in all things and to remember he's on his throne. The judge of this earth does
right. He does right. Lord, forgive us our sin. Forgive
us our unbelief. How prone we are to wonder. Lord, take our hearts and seal
it for your courts above. Be with our brethren that aren't
with us and those that are suffering the trials that you send them,
Lord, give us a comforting word for them and make us an encouragement. It's because of Christ we ask
it. Amen. All right, we'll meet back at
1030.