Psalm 58, I want to read through
this Psalm with you, beginning at verse 1. Do you indeed speak
righteousness, O congregation? Do you judge uprightly, O ye
sons of men? Yea, in heart you work wickedness,
you 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. They are like the deaf adder
that stoppeth her ear, Which will not hearken to the voice
of charmers, Charming never so wisely. 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 he 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 with a whirlwind, both living and in his wrath. 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 the earth. All right, now this Psalm is
clearly a description of wicked men. And it describes their wickedness
in the first three verses, actually the first four verses, and then
in verses six through nine, it's a prayer to God to destroy them. And he says there in verse nine,
both living and in his wrath, destroy them in life and then
destroy them after death. So this is a prayer. inspired
by the spirit of God against wicked men, that God would utterly
destroy them. And then in the end of the Psalm,
it says, the righteous shall rejoice when they see the vengeance,
and they shall wash their 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 the earth. All right, so I
have to say that when I read this Psalm, It's difficult at
first to see the gospel in it, because it seems to be a prayer
for the condemnation of God, the death of these wicked men. And I myself find in myself sin,
continuously. And so therefore, I know that
in myself, there's no reason to find hope that God could consider
me and show me any benefit except it
be by grace alone for Christ's sake alone. All right. So let's
go through this Psalm here and see if we can understand a little
bit about what's behind it and why the prayer is as it is. He
says, do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? Now this is a
question. And it is an interrogation question. It's a question that's issued
by David, the psalmist, when he asks it. But it's not a question
that he doesn't know the answer to. It's a question that he's
using to set them up. And he's going to answer the
question as if they are standing before his judgment. And so in
this question and in the answer that follows in verse two, he's
going to judge these men. And if you look at this, he says,
do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? Now the word
congregation here refers to those that God had given a delegated
authority to. They were rulers over the people
of Israel. And yet, or they had a place
in Israel of authority. And yet, they were doing wickedly. And so, the question is put to
them, do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation, as those who
have the delegated authority from God to judge rightly, but
they don't? He asks in the next question,
do you judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Now the word congregation
here is, I'm told, is unique to, a unique word which doesn't
occur anywhere else in the Old Testament, but there is in Psalm
82, there is a similar phrase that says this in verse one of
Psalm 82, God standeth in the congregation of the mighty. So,
and the next part says, this is verse one of Psalm 82, he
judgeth among the gods. Now, the gods he's referring
to here are just men. They're not truly gods, but they're
in a position, a God-given position of authority, and since they're
in a position of authority, they're called here in the scripture,
gods. Because God is the judge, and
God has given judgment to these men in that role. And if you
were to look at Psalm 82 in verse two, he follows up the first
verse which says, God standeth in the congregation of the mighty,
he judgeth among the gods. How long will you judge unjustly
and accept the persons of the wicked? So it turns out that
that particular verse is quoted in the New Testament in John
chapter 10. And John chapter 10 is that chapter
of the New Testament in the book of John that speaks of Jesus
as the great shepherd of the sheep. And in that In that explanation,
Jesus gave of himself being the shepherd of the sheep and his
people being the sheep. It says in verse 24 of John 10,
the Jews then came round about him and said to him, how long
dost thou make us to doubt if thou be the Christ? Tell us plainly. So they were accusing Him of
the reason for their unbelief because He didn't make it clear.
So the Lord Jesus went on, He says in verse 25, this is John
10, verse 25, He says, Jesus answered them, I told you, and
you believe not, the works that I do in My Father's name, they
bear witness of Me. But you believe not, because
you are not of my sheep, as I said unto you." So this is the reason
why they didn't believe they weren't his sheep. He says in
verse 27, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. So from this,
you can see that the Lord Jesus is saying, I am the good shepherd,
I give my life for the sheep, my sheep hear my voice, they
know me, they follow me, I give eternal life to them, they shall
never perish, and no one is able to take them from me. So he's
the savior. He's the keeper of the sheep,
the savior of the sheep, the keeper of the sheep, the one
who brings them into the fold and protects them. Verse twenty
nine. My father, which gave them me is greater than all. No man
is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. So he's making
now the case that not only is he the shepherd, the savior and
the keeper of the sheep, but his father also is the one who
gave the sheep to him, and he's greater than all, and no one
is able to take them from my father." And then he concludes,
I and my father are one. Now the Jews had asked him, they
accused him of making them doubt by not plainly telling them he
was the Christ. Clearly here, he's telling them,
I'm the son of God. So they follow up with this in
verse 31 of John 10. Then the Jews took up stones
again to stone him. Jesus answered them, many good
works have I showed you from my father, for which of those
works do you stone me? The Jews answered him, saying,
for a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because
that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Because he said,
I and my father are one. Jesus answered them, is it not
written in your law? And now he's gonna quote from
Psalm 82, which I just read. And if you remember what it said
there, he said, God standeth in the congregation of the mighty,
he judgeth among the gods. And Jesus says, have you not
written, is it not written in your law? I said, you are gods. That's a quotation from Psalm
82, verse one. And Jesus reasons from there.
Your law says that you are gods. I said, you are gods, the rulers,
the people who were appointed by God to rule over the people.
And Jesus said, if he called them gods unto whom the word
of God came and the scripture cannot be broken, say ye of him
whom the father has sanctified and sent into the world, thou
blasphemous, because I said, I am the son of God. If I do
not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you
believe not me, believe the works, that you may know and believe
that the Father is in me, and I am in him. Okay, so therefore
they sought again to take him, but he escaped out of their hands.
All right. So you see here that the word congregation here that's
used in Psalm 58, do you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation,
refers to men appointed in the place of rulers over the people
and are given the role to judge the people in righteousness.
And these men in John 10 clearly wanted to be They wanted to be listened to
like rulers. They wanted to claim that they
were God's rulers, but they were really hypocrites, just like
the men here in Psalm 58 are hypocrites. Because David now,
in Psalm 58, is questioning them. He's saying, do you indeed speak
righteousness on congregation? In other words, what you're saying,
is it truly righteousness? He goes on, do you judge uprightly,
O ye sons of men? Do you really judge like you're
supposed to, the right judgment? And so he goes on in verse two,
he answers them because he's holding them, he's holding the
judges to judgment. He's judging the judges here.
He says in verse two, yea, in heart you work wickedness, you
weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. They had a name
as the Lord's people. They had a place as a title,
a position over God's people. And when David asked this question,
as the Lord Jesus did in John chapter 10, he's interrogating
them. And in so doing, he's exposing
their hypocrisy. their opposition to God himself,
even though they were in a place where they should have been doing
these things, speaking righteousness and judging righteously. And
so these men with delegated authority over the people of Israel had
failed to fulfill their office, but not only failed to fulfill
it, they had abused it in the worst possible way. Jesus says
in Matthew 23, talking to the Pharisees, woe unto you, woe
unto you, if you remember chapter 23 of Matthew. In verse 14 he
says, you devour widows' houses. Now, the Pharisees, they basically
took from the poorest and the most defenseless people, the
widows. And so apply that here in Psalm
58. Do you indeed speak righteousness?
Do you indeed judge uprightly? Oh, ye sons of men, Now the title,
Sons of Men, it refers to, in scripture, there's two places
where this is used that are helpful. One is in Genesis chapter six,
where it says that the sons of God looked upon the daughters
of men and they took them wives of all that they chose. So clearly
in that text of scripture, those sons of God were those who were
identified with, the believers, like Seth and his son, Enos,
and so on. These who, Enoch and others,
but these men who were in that line had the name of the sons
of God. They saw the daughters of men,
which were unbelievers, and they took wives from among them, and
they corrupted the earth, as you can read about in Genesis.
So the daughters of men is similar to the sons of men here. It refers
to unbelievers. And then in 1 Samuel chapter
26, I believe it is, in verse 19, David, as we read a couple
of chapters back in the Psalms, he said to King Saul, if those
who have testified against me be the children of men, then
cursed be they, because they've chased me out of the Lord's inheritance.
And that's 1 Samuel 26 and verse 19, I'm pretty sure. But the
point is, is that the title Sons of Men is a derogatory term in
that sense. It has nothing to do with a believer,
except in their natural condition, which he says in the next verse
of Psalm 58, the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray
as soon as they be born, speaking lies. So this is a very heavy
charge David is making against these men. And historically,
who were they? Well, they were the same bunch
that were reporting to King Saul and were loyal to King Saul. And they were loyal to King Saul
not because he was a godly man, but because they sought an advantage
over the people. They knew that by getting chummy
with the king, King Saul, even though his purposes were wicked
purposes, by being chums with him, receiving favors from him,
they would be put in a position of authority. They would be given
gifts. They would be given privileges
in comparison to the everyday person. They would be kept from
the hardships of ordinary people. They wouldn't have to worry when
trouble came because they were favored by the king. And King
Saul himself was one of them. He was in a place of authority.
So David now, as one who was being chased and hunted with
his men by King Saul, he asks them, these men who were servants
of Saul, he questions them, do you speak righteousness? O congregation,
and the word congregation not only refers here to that group
of men who were appointed as having authority over the people,
but it also has to do with silence, because they weren't saying what
they should be saying. They were saying, they were agreeing
with a man, Saul, who had a wicked accusation, a false accusation
against David. They weren't speaking in David's
defense. They weren't trying to defend David according to
truth and righteousness. They weren't judging uprightly
with respect to David or to his men who came to David because
they were poor and outcasts. And so David is interrogating
them and he's showing their hypocrisy and he's showing their silence
for not saying what they needed to say and judging righteously. OK, so that's the historical
context. So in this Psalm, David is speaking
of men of this kind in his own day and He's also speaking prophetically
because in the days of Christ, this came to a fever pitch. It became obvious, painfully
obvious, very obvious that the scribes and the Pharisees and
the rulers of the Jews had an envy and an evil intent against
Christ. And there was no sound basis
for it. Jesus said, they hated me without
a cause. OK. And you can read about this
in a number of places in scripture. This is not new. This is not
new. And this psalm fits between these
other psalms that we've been studying and it's repeating the
same situation and shows us that David was praying not only out
of the historical context, but he was praying prophetically
of Christ, what he would suffer unjustly at the hands of wicked
men. These men who claimed to be appointed
and in the place of authority, and God-sponsored, and yet they
did not speak up. They not only did not speak up,
but they judged, they did not judge uprightly, but they judged
against the Lord Jesus Christ. They hounded Him. They were constantly
doing the bidding of those who were like them, accusing Him. slandering him, and it was by
slander that they put him to death under the pretense that
they were doing the will of God. And they went on, Jesus told
his disciples in John chapter 16, that those who kill you will
think they do God's service. This was not new, it didn't stop
with the crucifixion of Christ. And so, in this psalm we see
David in the historical context, Christ in his life, And we see
the wickedness of men who hated Christ, hated his gospel, and
hated his people, who had come to him, fleeing to him for refuge
from their accusers, from their own sin, to be saved by him from
their sins and brought to God. This is not just limited to the
history of David or to Christ, but is also true of the entire
church over all time. All believers. How do believers
stand? Well, in the eyes of the world,
they're nobodies. In the eyes of the kingdom of
Satan, they are to be accused and held to justice. But in the
eyes of God, they're justified in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that angers self-righteous religionists. That angers them. that men would
find all of their righteousness in Christ and boast in Christ
alone. That angers self-righteous men
and that epitomizes what the Pharisees did in the days of
Christ and Saul's men did in David's day and it's experienced
by God's people. And so they accuse God's people
of being against the truth, against clear, good doctrine against
God's law and against so many things, when all they're doing
is as helpless, hopeless sinners in themselves, clinging to Christ
as their all. Okay, so if you see that here
in this context, then you can see, I think, the power of this
prayer. All right, let's go on. It says
in verse four, they're poison, And this is going to run through
verse four and five. He says, I'm sorry, verse four.
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. They are like the
death atter that stop at her ear. Picture a serpent. It can't
hear. A charmer, with his whatever
snake charmers use, some kind of musical instrument, a flute
or something, you see them, these guys in India or somewhere, they
get this snake to do its thing, and they seem to control the
snake. But this is a snake that's poisonous, but deaf. So it doesn't
matter how much charming you do, it's still poisonous, and
it will still bite you. Now the poison here is the poison
of a snake, but in Romans chapter three, this poison is referred
to as what men speak. Let me read that to you. In Romans
chapter three, it comes out of their mouth, out of their throat,
and out of their lips. So in Romans three, he says this,
in verse 13, their throat, is an open sepulcher, a yawning
grave, their throat, because out of them, through their throat,
comes death. He says, with their tongues have
they used deceit. Okay, so deceit comes from the
tongue, what they say. The poison of asps is under their
lips. So it has to do with what they
speak in their mouth, poison, whose mouth is full of cursing,
and bitterness. Okay. And the motive, of course,
is to shed blood. He says in the next one, their
feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in
their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. They have
no fear of God before their eyes. So, this describes a perfect
description of the wicked, which according to Psalm 58, verse
4, is what they say. What they say. It's their words.
And their words are their doctrine. And not only are their words
their doctrine, but their words are their accusation. Their words
are their slander. Their words are holding others
in judgment to a standard they themselves don't meet, and claiming
salvation in a way that God says doesn't save, and they themselves
are not going to be saved by it, which is the way of works
and self-righteousness. So this perfectly describes what
happened in the New Testament. Throughout the New Testament,
if you've read it recently, you will find that most of the engagement
of Christ with his people was always around this, it's almost
like encircled by these wolves who were looking for blood. They were looking for His blood,
and they were happy to kill His disciples in the process. But
they were mainly using the disciples to get at Christ, or using other
people, like the woman taking in adultery, or whatever it was.
Or the man who was healed on the Sabbath day. It was all to
get at Christ. So they were judging, not right
according to God's Word, but they were judging according to
their own self-righteous standards. In other words, according to
Scripture, they were trying, like the Bible denounces, they
were trying to be justified by their works, by their own personal
obedience to the law. And what they had done in doing
that was they made themselves a debtor to keep the whole law.
They had to do everything right in order to receive anything
from God. Romans 4 verse 4, to the one
who works, the reward is not reckoned of grace, but debt.
And Galatians says that if you are circumcised, you're a debtor
to do the whole law. So that's what these men were.
They made themselves obligated to fulfill the law in righteousness
and also to fulfill the law in enduring its curse. They themselves
were claiming in their ignorant and arrogant and stubborn pride
to be able to make themselves worthy of God and to receive
blessing from God by what they were and what they did. And this
is false religion. This is what came out of their
mouth. This is the poison that was under their lips. This is
the yawning grave that came through their throat. And their tongues
were full of bitterness, cursing and bitterness. And this is what
happens in false religion. and it's deadly. It's the gospel,
it's not the gospel is not the right word, but it's the teaching
of Satan. It's the doctrine of Satan is
what it is. Anything that opposes Christ
and his gospel And the way of salvation by him alone is from
the devil, it's not from God. So that's why the words here
are so strong. He said they won't listen to
the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. In verse 6,
now he's going to start asking God to destroy them in the most
egregious way. He says, break their teeth, O
God, in their mouth. Break out the great teeth of
the young lions. Now, it turns out that lions
have really big teeth. If you look at a lion, everyone
knows what a roaring lion sounds like and looks like. If you've
paid attention to all the documentaries and television shows and pictures
and stuff, you have some sense of what the teeth of a lion are
like. It turns out that their biggest teeth are their canine
teeth. Those are the ones on the top of their mouth that look
like these big hooks going downward, and up from the bottom they have
these other hooks. It turns out, I didn't know this
until today, I was studying about this, that the teeth of a lion
are not pointy sharp like the teeth of a house cat. If you
get bit by a house cat, they break your skin because their
teeth are sharp right in the front. Little rascals. Anyway,
but a lion, on the other hand, has blunted points on their teeth
because what they do is when they kill their prey, they either
put their mouth over the nose or upon the windpipe of their
prey and they crush. They suffocate them or they crush
their ability to breathe. And so you can see the analogy
here. The teeth are the way the lion
kills and eats. And so here, the prayer against
these men is, Lord, break their teeth out. Break out the teeth
of the young lions, the strongest. Because when their teeth are
broken, they can't kill. And they have nothing to eat.
They're gonna die. And so this is a prayer to God
to judge these men and to ruin them, to destroy them. Look at
verse seven. Let them melt away as waters
which run continually. Think of a sandy surface. When I was a kid, I was always
amazed. I'd go to the beach and the wave would come up and it
would go out and the water just seemed to disappear in the sand.
As soon as the wave went out, all that water that it brought
with it just went, it was gone. It just went right into the sand.
It melted. It seemed like it. And so he
says here, Let them melt away as waters which run continually.
The water comes up, just melts away. It seems like it just goes
right into the sand. And then he says, when he bendeth
his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.
So this enemy, the wicked, false doctrine, accusing slander of
the haters of Christ and his people, who like Satan and his
kingdom, all of his servants, Their goal is to bring dishonor
upon God because He justifies the ungodly. And they use the
fact that they are sinners as an accusation against God. God
says, it's God that justifies. Shut up, in so many words. In Zechariah chapter three, if
you remember, let me read that to you. It's a very good explanation
of what's going on here in Zechariah. if I can get to it, in chapter
three, he says, he showed me Joshua the high priest standing
before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right
hand to accuse him. It says resist him in the King
James, but it's really accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan,
the Lord rebuke thee, O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen
Jerusalem rebuke thee. Jerusalem refers to all of his
elect. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was
clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel. And
he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying,
Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said,
Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will
clothe thee with a change of raiment. What a beautiful picture. of the accusation of Satan against
God's elect, and God saying, you be quiet, the Lord rebuke
thee, and then turning to his people saying, I have caused
your iniquity to pass away. Take away his filthy garments.
That's a beautiful picture of this. And so he's saying this
here. Let their arrows, their bows and arrows that they use
as an offense, in their offensive weapons against God's people,
break them so that they can't do anything. Let them be cut
in pieces. And then in verse 8, Psalm 58, verse 8, he says,
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.
Now I have a lot of snails in my yard this spring. It seems
like they just covered the yard. They were eating all the plants
and it was making me more and more frustrated and angry at
those snails. I'd pick one up and smash it. I couldn't get rid of them. So
I finally bought some stuff and when they crawl across it and
they try to suck up whatever they're eating, they're crawling
on, it made them shrink and dry up inside. and melted them. And
I was happy. And that's what's happening here
in this prayer. Lord, make them melt like a snail
and like a baby before it's born, before they even see the light.
that a baby sees when it's born, just as they're about to be born,
cut them off so that before they cross the finish line, they never
see light. That's what he's saying here.
This is a serious prayer, isn't it, against them. He goes on,
before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away
as with a whirlwind, both living and in his wrath. Now the picture
here, I was reading about this, it turns out that In the deserts
of Africa and the Arab nations, there's, you know, the men who
live in the deserts or who take care of animals and stuff that
are in the deserts, they build fires because it gets cold and
they don't have much. So they gather these brambles,
thorns or whatever, and they put them in their fire under
their pot that they're going to cook with. And this prayer
is saying, when the thorns begin to flame to heat up the pot,
take away the fire with a whirlwind, both living and in his wrath.
So God is saying here, I think it means that while they're living
and after their death, the second death. So take them away. And then he goes on in verse
10, the righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance, he
shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. All right, let's
draw some lessons from this before we close here, because we're
trying to understand this, but I want you to see some things
here that are truly a blessing as we consider this. The first
thing we want to see here, the first lessons I want to see here
is, and notice here in verse 10, let me start with that, the
righteous. Notice that up to this point,
David was speaking against these men as the wicked. But here he
says, the righteous shall rejoice. So even though the wicked are
estranged from the womb, yet there are those God calls the
righteous. And yet we know that in scripture
there is an unrighteous, no not one. So the only ones who can
possibly be righteous are the ones God gives. Righteousness
to, as it says in Romans 5 17, the gift of righteousness. And what righteousness does God
give? He gives his own righteousness. He says he made him Christ to
be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. That's how God gives us righteousness.
He laid our sins on his son and the Lord Jesus in obedience and
submission to that command of God, that will of God. He finished
that work and fulfilled it and by doing so fulfilled all righteousness
and God gave that righteousness to us. He made us the righteousness
of God in Christ. That's the righteous. There are
no other righteous. He says here, so that's the first
thing to point out, the good news is that the righteous in
the Lord Jesus Christ, those justified by His blood, by His
obedience, by God's grace, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, those freely justified by the grace of God, because
of the redemption in Christ. That's the righteous. And they're
the only ones who are righteous. And the only righteousness they
have is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the only righteousness that can earn life. The only righteousness
that will obtain heaven. That's the only righteousness
we can appear before God in and be accepted. And so that's the
first thing to notice here, the righteous. What a blessing that
is, isn't it? It says in Romans 5, to him that
worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly. The one who does not work is
the one who knows there's nothing I can do that's not sinful. I
have no hope unless God gives me a righteousness and that righteousness
is the one he has spoken of. I didn't dream this up. God said
it in his word. It's in Christ. Of Him are you
in Christ Jesus, of God are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is
made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Everything we need is in Him. So that's the first thing. Second
thing to notice here is that in all trouble, in every trouble,
the one who is speaking in this psalm, which in the historical
context is David, is that he makes his prayer to the Lord. In all of his appeal, he appeals
to God. He doesn't go to a king on earth. He doesn't go to his friends
to get a council together to figure out whether we're on the
right political party. He takes it to the Lord. And
only the Lord can deal with this. Christ alone has power over Satan. The issue we need solved is the
one we have, the issue with God and His justice. So we have to
go to the Lord, don't we? This is the thing. Only God is
able to break the lion, the lion's teeth, and to prevent the bite
of the serpent from killing us, right? And so the Lord Jesus
was the one who did that. You know that he did. And when
he came into the world, he overcame Satan. He went through the temptation
in the wilderness after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights.
And he told Satan, get behind me, Satan. It is written, you
shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
And all the temptations, he kept quoting scripture. And as a man,
he trusted God, and he did the Lord's will. And so Satan, left
him. And then Jesus cast Satan out
of so many. He cast out devils. He had authority
over Satan's kingdom. And he told his disciples to
go preach the gospel. They came back and said, even
the devils are subject to us. He said, I saw Satan fall as
lightning from heaven. And then in Revelation chapter
12, he talks about how there was war in heaven, and he speaks
of Christ as under the name of Michael the archangel. He fought
against the dragon, and the dragon was cast out of heaven. There
was found no place left in heaven for him, the great accuser, and
the deceiver, and the accuser. And he came down to the earth,
and they, the people of God, overcame him by the blood of
the lamb. by the word of their testimony, the gospel, and because
they love not their lives even to death. So again, Satan is
overcome by Christ and God gives us the victory in Christ. So
that's the thing. We go to God in prayer. We look
to Christ. I refer you to that song by Martin
Luther, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. He says, Did we in our
own strength confide? Our striving would be losing.
We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.
Just ask who that may be? Christ Jesus. It is He. Lord
Sabaoth, Lord of hosts, His name from age to age the same, and
he must win the battle. Okay, all right, so that's the
second point here, is that make your appeal to the Lord himself. And the one we pray to is God
through Christ, don't we? We come to God in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ. pleading His blood and His righteousness
and His intercession and His place in everything for us. And
the other lesson we learned here in this psalm is that since the
prayer is made to God and since the prayer to God is against
the wicked, that God would take vengeance on them, and the righteous
would see this and rejoice, we see here that if God is for us,
no one can be against us. It doesn't matter that David
experienced the hatred and hunting wrath of Saul and his men. David
appealed to God. And the Lord answered him and
kept Saul and his men from doing the harm they intended to David.
And in the case of the Lord Jesus, he also prayed and he was delivered,
even though God's will was that at the hand of wicked men, he
would be put to death. God would use his death in order
to save his people from their sins. So it was all in God's
design. Nevertheless, if God is for us,
who can be against us? Not Satan, not his demons, not
life, not death. not the present things, not the
future things, not famine, not persecution, not the condemnation
from God, not the accusation made against us by our enemy
that's made to God because of our sins. God justified us, Christ
died for us, nothing could separate us from the love of God. It's
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can read about that in
Romans 8. God always gives us the victory through Christ. If
God is for us, no one can be against us. It doesn't matter
who is against us, because God is for us, and he will win the
battle. Now, the other thing I want you
to see here is how boldly David spoke against his enemies. Do
you indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? Do you indeed
judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? No, you don't. In your heart,
you work wickedness. In fact, where you should be
judging, you do violence instead. You weigh violence in your hands,
he says. You weigh the violence of your
hands in the earth. It's like on the scale of judgment,
on the scale of justice, what you put there instead of righteousness
and truth, you put your own violence against these people. Instead
of judging for them, you're setting yourself against them. What worse
charge can you make? David was bold in making that
charge. How could David be so bold? Well,
because God was on his side. God had revealed to him the truth
of his own acceptance in Christ. And so what we see here is that
just as David was bold against these wicked accusers who perverted
judgment, so the Lord Jesus Christ was bold against his accusers
and held them held before them God's own word and works and
the work he was sent to finish. So that he knew that God had
justified him. God sent him and God justified
him. He was bold because God was on his side. And so every
believer is bold against our enemies. We're bold against our
enemies because Christ is for us. And you can see this in Ephesians
chapter six. We are strong in the power of
his might. Ephesians 6, verse 10. Not our
own, but in Christ. We're strong in the power of
His might. We put on our loins that sensitive
part of our body, where if it were to be struck with anything,
we put on that truth. and our breastplate, where our
heart is, righteousness. That's what's covering it, righteousness. Our feet are shod with the gospel
of Christ, and our shield is faith in Christ, Christ alone,
through the word of God alone. Our helmet, salvation. and our
sword, the Word of God by the Spirit of God. And what we do
is we're praying always with all supplication in the Spirit,
watching in prayer and supplication with all perseverance, supplications
being made for all the saints. That's what God's people do.
It's a posture of being clothed in the armor of Christ and Him
crucified, isn't it? Righteousness, truth, salvation,
the faith in Christ, the sword of the gospel and supplications
made to Christ for our own salvation and for the salvation of his
people and for the building up of his kingdom. So that's this
third or fourth point is that David was bold because he knew
the Lord was In Christ, he was justified.
All of his people are justified in him. Therefore, he held out
this charge to them. The other thing I want to point
out here, the next lesson I want to point out here is that be
sure you're on the Lord's side. Be sure you're on the Lord's
side. Don't you see the opposite? We're all sinners by nature,
but make sure you're on the Lord's side, because in the Lord Jesus
Christ, all the seed of Israel shall be justified and shall
glory. Their righteousness is of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
of Him. It's not of themselves. So be
sure you're on the Lord's side. Jesus said, he that is not with
me is against me. Are you with Christ? Do you call
to Him? Do we make our supplication to
Him? Do we trust in Him alone? Do we judge uprightly? How do
we do? How do we do this judging uprightly?
Well, here's the thing about that. True judgment, the true
judgment that God has given the rulers over His people to make
is the judgment of the gospel. Do you understand that? If a
man is ruling in the church, it's preaching the gospel. There's
no other way. We don't set out a bunch of rules
for people to follow. We don't go around telling people,
you know, how did that phrase go? Pick up that broom and tote
that bale. You know, we don't do that. That's
not the orders that we give. We're giving the gospel and that's
it. If men are not persuaded by the
gospel, this is the power of God unto salvation. So we're
pointing them to Christ. We preach Christ and Him crucified
to the Jews, a stumbling block, to the Greeks, foolishness, but
to those who are saved, the power of God, the wisdom of God. So
this is the way that God's people rule. These men didn't do that.
They preached themselves, not Christ Jesus the Lord, but the
ones who are given the gospel. They don't preach themselves.
They preach themselves as servants to God's church with the gospel. All right. So and then finally,
I'll just say this last thing here. If God is against us, it
doesn't matter who is for us. There's no one who can who can
save us from the hand of the Lord. Therefore, it's so important
that we're found in Christ. Let us be found in him and not
having our own righteousness, flee to the Lord Jesus Christ,
the rock that is higher than I. OK. And with that, I think
we're just about out of time here, so I'm going to have to
close it. But notice in the last phrase, the last verse, "...so
that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous,
Verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." When we look at
the world, it doesn't seem like God is judging. Wickedness seems
to abound, doesn't it? Perversity seems to increase.
Injustice, I mean crimes seem to go by the wayside, unjudged.
Wars are prevalent, they're everywhere. The poor are suffering, the weak
are suffering, and the strong, the loudest mouth seems to have
the podium. It doesn't matter. The Lord is
judge. He's judging the earth. It's
not that God is silent or not judging. It's just that his judgment
is held now until the time appointed when Christ returns, because
he's the one God has made judge of all. And so that the Lord's
people say, verily there is a God in the earth, there is a reward
for the righteous and that reward is a reward of grace and Christ
is our reward. Let us never forget that. Let's
pray. Lord, we know that we have nothing. to bring to you nothing before
men about which we can boast. We have only one thing to say
to direct people, ourselves and our children and everyone else
to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not only sovereign, but
he's the only savior. And we are exhorted to look to
him, to call on his name and to trust him. And you have promised
that all who do look and call and trust him. shall not be put
to shame, but shall be saved, saved to the uttermost because
they are in him, who is their righteousness, who is their redemption,
who is all their wisdom and all their sanctification. Lord, we
thank you for the gospel. We pray that you would judge
us with it and we would find ourselves having nothing and
find Christ to be everything and be so happy that it is so.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.