Now if you'll return in your
Bibles to the 49th Psalm. I don't remember ever preaching
from this Psalm, and I have referred to it only in verse 8. For the ransom
for a life is costly. No payment is ever enough. And
that's all that I can recall that I have ever mentioned from
this psalm. But I read it a day or so ago. And it's good. Of course, they're all good.
But I mean, there's some very clear things spelled out in here. With clarity it describes the
ungodly and with clarity it describes
our experience but more importantly it describes the Lord's experience
among the ungodly. There are two statements poem, in this psalm, that I hear coming from the Lord. That is, this would have been
the kind of thing that He would have
said in His own heart if not out loud to others. And what we have learned as we
have studied the scriptures is this, whatever is true of Christ
is true of us. We may not be able to lay hold
of it with the strength that he did. We may not be able to
believe it with the purity of faith that he did. We may not
be able to live our lives as faithfully to these principles. Nonetheless, they apply to us. And these statements are found
in verse 5, why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked
deceivers surround me? And then over in verse 15, but
God will redeem my life from the
grave. He will surely take me to himself." Now, most of what's written around
those verses just provides the context in which those verses
make the most sense and speak with the most power. That's all
the rest of it is about. And so let's notice what is said
in those verses to give us the proper context in which to appreciate
these couple of statements. First of all, the things which
are to be spoken are not those things that the natural man can
ever arrive at by his own natural thinking, because he says here,
Verse 3, my mouth will speak words of wisdom. The utterance
from my heart will give understanding. I will turn my ear to a proverb. With the harp, I will expound
a riddle. I've always liked riddles. I
mean, to me, they're just fun. And I see a lot of them go by
Facebook. And over the years, I've learned
if you want to solve a riddle, Look for what they want you to
look at and notice and then look somewhere else. Because the answer
is always in something that they are trying to hide. It's just
like the magician who uses misdirection so you don't see the things he's
doing to make his so-called magic tricks happen. And with riddles,
they misdirect. But here is a riddle that really
does not involve misdirection. That is, it does not involve
misdirection on the part of the psalmist here. The world does. The world is puzzled. The world
is puzzled. because, and we know it's puzzled
about this, because they will not confront the truth of it
and do anything about it. Generation after generation follows
according to the same plan, which has always proven to be an utter
failure. Now that in itself is kind of
a riddle. And you know, you'd figure man
would learn from previous generations, but he doesn't. And so, The riddle concerns the
end of the ungodly and the end of the godly, and how things
change so much at death, and how men, ever since sin entered
the world, have sought to lay hold of those things that they
believe assure them of a peaceful eternity, and yet it never works. He says in verse 5, Why should
I fear when evil days come, when the wicked deceivers surround
me? And then he describes what these wicked deceivers are, those
who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches. Now, That is true if we just
take it literally. And there are those who amass
fortunes. And they hold them dear. And
it's amazing, some of them who have the most money hang on to
it the tightest because they feel more afraid of losing it
than people who don't have much. And they trust in it and they
hoard it. And they do so as though whoever
dies with the most money wins. No, whoever dies with the most
money dies. Just like those without money.
And the same thing can be said with regard to any kind of wealth. You can have the wealth in money.
You might just have the wealth of power. People grasp power. We all want some. We want to
be able to control the things around us and, if necessary,
control the people around us for our own benefit. Some have a wealth of celebrity. But these who trust in those
things, they boast of them They find their joy, their peace,
and their satisfaction in them. They can never, with those things,
redeem their lives. They still die. Death is the end of everybody
regardless of what kind of life they lived, regardless of whether
they were able to achieve what the world would count as great
things or if they achieved nothing. Whether they live for two minutes
or 20 years or 100 years, it doesn't matter. The end is the
same. There is nothing that a man can
obtain in this life which is sufficient to redeem his life
from the grave? Nothing. There's one other group
that this applies to, and that's those who are rich in self-righteousness. Now normally when we think of
self-righteousness we automatically think of it in terms of of pride,
and certainly pride's involved, but we're thinking of that kind
of irritating and nauseating attitude of people who really
think they're better than other people, and who look down their
nose, you know, and certainly those people are self-righteous,
but they're not the only ones who are self-righteous. That
person who puts on airs of humility and modesty, that one who speaks
lowly of himself, It says, oh, I'm such a sinner.
God couldn't save a man like me. So that's not self-righteousness. Yes, it is. For one thing, it's self-righteousness.
Do you think you're so bad God can't save you? God can do anything. Do you think you can out-sin
God? That is, out-sin His grace? Do you think that if He wanted
to save you, He'd just have to throw up His hand and say, well,
I can't deal with a problem like that. You're thinking pretty
big of yourself if you think your sin is too big for God to
handle. Now, he may not handle it, he
may not deal with it in grace and mercy, but it won't be because
he can't. And most people who confess their
sins after that fashion are trying to impress those around them
with their humility or maybe even impress God. I'm just showing God how bad
I feel for my sin, because if I do that, eventually, you know,
he'll be good to me. He'll really like that. No, he
won't. Nothing that a natural man can
do is pleasing to God in the least. And he may climb up the
ranks of his religion to where he gets to wear special clothes,
and gets carted around in his own vehicle, and crowds gather
around him and want to kiss his ring. And for all that wealth, he cannot
redeem his own life, much less the lives of those who crowd
around him. We need to learn that the wicked
don't always look wicked. In fact, the worst wicked quite
often look the most righteous. Remember who it was that fomented
the people so that they rose up and said, crucify him, crucify
him. It wasn't the drunks and the
harlots. It wasn't the ne'er-do-wells.
It was the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the priests, the lawyers. That's who did it. The ones that
people, when they would see them, would be impressed. They were
the wicked ones. No man can redeem the life of
another or give to God a ransom for him. That's verse seven. The ransom for a life is costly. Now, why must a life be ransomed?
Because it was forfeited through sin. It's gotta be bought back. Every one of us came into this
world and our lives were already forfeited, already given up. Who can pay to get it back? This past week, I was looking
at a list of the 25 wealthiest people in the world. One of them
has $183 billion. I can't even think of having
that much. I don't think you could count
to 183 if you, if even one of these younger ones started right
now counting, I don't think they'd get to 183 billion before they
die. That's how big that number is. They got that much money.
If they took all of it, they could not redeem their own life
or the life of anyone else. The ransom for a life. is costly. It's precious. What is the ransom
for a life? A life. The only way that we can get
our lives back is for someone else to give up their life. No payment's ever enough. that
he should live on forever and not decay. Now this knocks down
that whole idea that when you die you go to a middle ground
somewhere between heaven and hell. It's a bad place, it's
a place of punishment but it's not eternal because you're there
until you pay off your debt. Well that's what hell is. You're
in hell until you pay off your debt. Problem is you'll never
get your debt paid off. No payment is ever enough. No
matter how many charitable works you do, no matter how many good
hymns you sing, no matter how many gospel sermons you preach or listen to, no matter how much you give to
the church, no matter how much you do that people count good,
no payment will ever be enough. And when you die, You will die
in your sins, die under the wrath of God, and you will pay, and
you will pay, and you will pay, and it will never be enough. Never be enough that you could
escape that place and live forever in a body that never knows decay. Here's the proof of it, verse
10, all can see that wise men die together with the foolish
and the senseless. That word senseless, I like that,
it just means simply brutish, like animals. There are some
people who God has given them over to their sinful way of thinking
so much that they're hardly distinguishable from animals in the way they
preserve life. pursue life. They may be more intelligent,
but still they're given over to the same thing as animals
are, their various appetites. And that's how animals live.
When they're hungry, they go look for food. When they're cold,
they go look for a warm place. When they're hot, they look for
a cool place. And all the various appetites
of the flesh, that's what they're given over to. And there are
people who live like that. foolish. And when the Bible says
foolish, particularly in the Old Testament, the word not only
indicates someone who doesn't know things, it also talks about
a foolish way of living. They perish. And they leave their
wealth, whatever it was, whatever form it came in, they leave it
to others. And it says of them in verse
11, their tombs will remain their houses forever, their dwellings
for endless generations, though they had named lands after themselves. Now, as I mentioned before, Hebrew
can be difficult to translate, and Hebrew poetry can be even
more difficult than Hebrew prose. This could also be translated.
That word they translated, tombs, all it means is inner. doesn't say inner what, it just
says inner. And so to translate it you have
to kind of do some interpretation and say well what is he talking
about or has been talking about that might be associated with
the word inner. Well a tomb would be one thing,
especially when you're thinking of the rich because you know
the wealthy Generally speaking, the wealthy in death, they're
not dealt with exactly like the poor are. You know, the poor,
they dig a hole and put them in it. The wealthy may build
a structure, a tomb, or such as with Joseph of Arimathea,
who had carved a cave into the rock and people were buried in
there. That's where our Lord was buried.
And so inner makes sense there. But others, other translations
handled this This way, in their inner thoughts, they think they
will remain forever in their dwellings for endless generations,
even so much that they name lands after themselves. I'm going to live forever. No,
you're not. Go ahead and name a land after
yourself if you want to. And people will remember you
for a while after you die. But the time will come when,
if somebody hadn't written it down, nobody'd know why that
country is named that. People think that they're going
on forever. But man, despite his riches,
verse 12, does not endure, he's like the beasts that perish.
This is the fate, now listen to this, this is such a clear gospel concept,
this is the fate of those who trust in themselves and of their
followers who approve of their sayings. Those who believe that favor
with God can somehow be grasped by the things that they do, by
wealth they acquire, whatever kind of wealth it might be, who think by a wealth of personal
righteousness and religious performance. Those who think that, well, their
fate is to die like beasts that perish. But it's not just them. It's
also the fate of those who follow them and who approve their saying. Now, I get real irritated at
what we call false prophets, false preachers of our day. And
part of my irritation certainly arises, they're misrepresenting
God. But also, it bothers me, they're deceiving people. They're
making merchandise of men's souls. They're trading on eternity. And I feel sorry for those who
are under their spell. Yet, I also know this, they follow
them because they like what they say. The Lord said, my prophets lie,
and the people love to have it so. We preach. We do what we can
in this little church to get the truth out to everybody we
can get it to. And sometimes it breaks the heart
to preach. Maybe somebody comes and hears,
but then it becomes obvious they weren't interested. And you think,
well, who deceived them? It doesn't matter. They left
because they didn't want this. They wanted something else. And
while false prophets will pay for their deception, and God
will require the blood of their followers at their hands, says
the scriptures, he also holds those who follow him accountable
for following them. Like sheep, they're destined
to the grave, verse 14, and death will feed on them. The upright
will rule over them in the morning. Their forms will decay in the
grave, far from their princely mansions. Speaking of eternity,
these people who trust in themselves, their end is the grave. Death
will feed on them. And the upright will rule over
them. That doesn't mean that we rule over them in the sense
of we're going to be in heaven telling the people in hell what
to do. I don't think we'll think about the people in hell at all.
What it means is we, by faith, have triumphed over them. We
live and they die. And it says rule over them in
the morning. What morning? Well, that eternal morning, when
God brings this particular reality to an end and makes a new heaven
and new earth, we're living in the night. We have the light that shines
in darkness. We're thankful for that, but
it's still darkness. This reality is dark. The morning's
coming. They will, it speaks of the ungodly,
their forms will decay in the grave, far from their princely
mansions. Now, in the Old Testament, they
didn't speculate much about what comes afterward, after death. You go to the grave, you're gone. They had the hope of the resurrection
of the dead. But they say that these people,
they decay in their grave, far removed from all that they had
once hoped in. But God will redeem my life from
the grave. He will surely take me to himself. That is the hope, and I don't
mean just the wish. That is the confident expectation
of all who are in Christ. And you wanna know why? Because
that was the confident expectation of Christ himself. Let's go back
over here to verse five. Why should I fear when evil days
come, when wicked deceivers surround me? Let me give that a little
more strict translation, and I'm not saying necessarily it's
better. I just, I always like going back to the words essential
meaning. He says, why should I fear when
evil days come when iniquity is at my heels to surround me? Now that word translated heels
is associated with the name given to Jacob because remember when
Jacob was born he and his brother they were fraternal twins and
Esau came out and he was kind of covered in red hair and he
was the firstborn but as Jacob coming out and I'm supposing
he must have been born breech because he stuck his arm out
and he grabbed Esau's heel. And so he was named essentially
heel grabber. And why would they call him that?
Well, if you want to trip somebody up, every time you grab ahold of
their foot, grab ahold of their heel. Of course, Jacob was known as
a deceiver. So that's why our translation
puts deceiver there. But here's the thing. Our Lord
faced the most evil day there ever was. He faced his own experience
of the wrath of God, and there were wicked heel grabbers all
around him. The wicked gathered round his
heels to trip him up. I'm reminded of that promise
our Lord made after Adam and Eve had sinned. He said, of the
woman. The seed of the serpent shall
strike his heel, but he shall crush their head."
And here's our Lord. This was written a thousand years
ago. It was written by the sons of
Korah, so it might not have been a thousand years, but hundreds
of years before. Speaking of our Lord hanging
there on the tree, and literally, since he's hanging, his heels
are, you know, and they're gathered around his heels, these wicked
ones. And they're mocking him, taunting him. And he says, why
should I fear when this evil day comes, when the wicked are
at my heels, surrounding me? when even this seed of the serpent
strikes at my heel? Why should I fear?" We might
say, well, you should fear because that portends death. You're going
to die. Shouldn't you fear death? Is
there anybody here that doesn't fear death? I've met some people that don't.
I've met some people that don't fear death. But that's because
they've got a false hope. And one of these days they're
going to regret that false hope. I've run into some believers who have
no fear of death. I've run into them that prayed
for it. Brother Mahan, in the last couple
of letters I got from him, both times he says, every night Doris
and I pray, Lord, we don't want to wake up in the morning. There
are some people who have grown in grace, to whom the Lord has
given grace, that they have no fear of death." Sometimes I hear
the stories of the martyrs, and I'm kind of ashamed to read them. Two of them were being marched
off to the stake to be burned alive, and one of them was trembling. And I would be too, I guarantee
you. The other one said, take heart,
we dine with Jesus tonight. Why fear? And brethren, if you
don't have to fear death, you don't have to fear anything.
There are people so horribly frightened by this COVID, and
I'm not trying to make a little of it, but if you're not afraid
of dying, you don't have anything to fear out of that, because
that's the worst it can do to you. Right? The day of persecution may come
upon God's people in this nation. It may come. I don't, well, I
know it will. It always does eventually. But
there'll be no reason for them to fear. Why do we not have to fear? Verse 15, but God will redeem
my life. He will redeem it from the grave.
He will surely take me to himself. Now, everyone in this room, unless
the Lord returns, within somebody's lifetime, everyone in this room,
eventually your body will quit working, you will die, and the
mortician will do his work, and they'll put you in a box, they'll
have a memorial service, they'll dig a hole, and they'll put you
in it. And there your body will remain.
until the resurrection of the dead. And it will go through
the same kind of process that happens if your dog gets run
over and killed and you put him in a grave. If it's there long
enough, of course I realize now, you know, we make these almost
impervious coffins and a concrete vault and all that. But if they
hadn't done all that, the time would come when people, they
could plow right through there and they wouldn't have known
that someone was buried there. That will happen to every one
of us. But God is going to redeem that
body. You say, well, that body, it's
decayed, the molecules, the water's gone through there and they've
been shifted. Believe me, God knows where everything is. If he can make the universe out
of nothing, He can sure enough make you a new body out of whatever
He wants to. He will redeem. We were talking
about redemption in the adult Bible class. And redemption involves
a payment, but it's not just the payment. It's actually taking
possession of that which has been redeemed by the payment. And so it says, He will redeem. my life from the grave. Jesus
Christ is coming someday and he's going to take possession
of the bodies of everyone for whom his body was bruised and
beaten and put to death and laid in a tomb. God will redeem my life from
the grave. I couldn't pay the price, it was too much. Nobody
else could pay the price, it's too much. Couldn't do enough
praying, couldn't do enough doing good works, couldn't do enough
to redeem the life from the grave, to pay the ransom, but God can. Our Lord Jesus Christ did have
the price, the ransom. The ransom of a life, the ransom
of a soul is costly. But Jesus Christ is rich. Oh,
how rich he is. The price is a life, and he is
the life. And he gave that life in ransom
for his people. He says, he will surely take
me to himself. Now, I want you to go back to
the scene at Calvary. Our Lord's pouring out his soul
unto death. He is paying the ransom price
so that our lives will be redeemed, ransomed from the grave. And his last words, Father, into
your hands I commit my spirit. In other words, the Lord was
saying, God will redeem my life from the grave. And he did. Our Lord's suffering put away
the sin that was upon him, and therefore God did not even
allow his body to experience decay. And in three days, He called
him out of the tomb. And the last line here, he will
surely take me to himself. God said to our Lord, or as David
put it, the Lord said to my Lord, sit right here at my right hand
until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Why did Jesus
Christ ascend into heaven? Because God called him there.
He said, come home. And he received the Lord. And all who are in Christ died in Christ. God redeems their
life from the grave as surely as he redeemed Christ's life
from the grave. And he will take us to himself. as surely as he took the Lord
Jesus to himself. Paul gave a description of the
return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead. And it says at the very end, and
so shall we ever be with the Lord. That's the end game. That's where every believer here
is headed. headed to the grave but God's
not going to leave you there. He's going to redeem your life
from the grave and He's going to take you to Himself. And there
you will be with Him and with all the others for whom He did
the same work forever. So, what's the advice to you
and me? Verse 16, do not be overawed
when a man grows rich, when the splendor of his house increases. We're in the flesh and we can
get envious of them. We see them getting richer. We
see things getting easier for them. Don't worry about it. Don't be impressed. There's nothing
impressive there. He will take nothing with him
when he dies. And his splendor, It's not going
down into the grave with him. Though while he lived, he counted
himself blessed. And men praise you when you prosper,
don't they? He will join the generation of
his fathers and he will never see the light. And our translators
added the words of life, because that's likely what he was referring
to, the light of life. So what can you and I say? Why
should I fear when the evil days come? When the wicked surround
me at my heels, God will redeem my life from
the grave. He will surely take me to Himself. Is your hope in Christ? You have
absolutely nothing to be afraid of. There's no good reason for
fear. No good reason for anxiety. That
doesn't mean we won't do it. It just means we do it without
a good reason. Because the thing that lies at the very bottom
of all fear, death, has been handled for us by our Lord Jesus
Christ. And as he said, he that believes
in me shall never die. And he that lives and believes
in me, though he die, yet shall he live. The Lord did not abandon his
Holy One, the Lord Jesus Christ, to corruption. And neither will
he abandon all his holy ones who are in Christ to corruption. He will restore. He's already
given life to us in spirit. He will restore these bodies
and take us to be with himself. Well, I hope that's an encouragement
to you, Eric.