David writes here, and we'll
just read each verse as we come to it. I've entitled this message,
The Wicked and the Righteous One. This is a psalm specifically
of David. Most of the psalms, I believe,
were written by David, but there were some psalms written by others.
And it says here that in those old Hebrew manuscripts, I don't
know who it is put them in, but somebody Way back yonder, I decided
to write down at least what tradition says about which ones were written
by David and which ones were written by others. It says, this
one was written by David. It says, an oracle is within
my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear
of God before his eyes. Now this psalm, as with many
others, is the result of inward meditation. You know, it's good
for us to stop our labors and our pleasures to meditate on
those things which pertain to our souls and to God and to matters
of eternity. And this I found out, if we're
ever going to think about those things, that is, give proper
thought to them, we do have to purposefully stop everything
else. It is not in our natural inclination
to think on these things. In fact, I even find when I study,
this may seem unusual to you, but as I study, I have to stop
studying and meditate on what I've discovered before it does
me any good. In fact, sometimes I have to
realize that I've been real busy with study and haven't done a
whole lot about truly coming to an understanding, a heartfelt
understanding, of the things that I have learned. You see,
you can't simply pick this book up and read it and actually know
what's in it. We've got to be kind of like
cows. You know, cows go out and they'll
gobble down a bunch of food, but then what do they do? They
go off and they chew the cud. They burp it back up and chew
on what they've already eaten. And it never does them any good
until it's come up at least once. In fact, Because of that, you
know, animals that do that, and cows aren't the only one, but
animals that do that, they call them ruminants, and they have
therefore, in our English language, they have used that word as a
kind of metaphor for meditation, because they'll say, well, I
just kind of ruminated on that. And that's what we need to do,
is chew the cud. When you come to church like this, you know,
we sit down and I preach and I hope that I preach clearly
enough that you pick up something, you learn something. But you
can't just walk out of the church and think, well, that's all done.
You think about it. While we're not Sabbatarians
in that sense, one of the things or one of the reasons I believe
that God did design the Sabbath for those people of old is that
they'd stop for a little while and think about the truly important
things. And it's good for us to do that.
I suppose that one of Satan's more successful devices is busyness. We are just way too busy, most
of us. Way too busy. We're way too busy
with work. We're way too busy with trying
to get ahead in the world. We're way too busy with pleasures.
And the truth be known, now this is going to sound funny, but
we can get way too busy with church. We can get so busy with
church, we don't ever worship God. We can get so busy with
going through the forms that we never really get down to the
reality of what we're trying to do. In fact, I think that,
you know, I was talking to a lady this past week and I could tell
from the station she had a radio set on that she was a religious
person, so I struck up a conversation. And she says, yes, we go to church
every Sunday. And I, of course, asked them
where. And when I found out where she went, I didn't know anything
about the church, but this was what she thought was good about
it. Well, there's things for the kids to do. They got things
to do. And churches keep people really
busy. I've looked at bulletins and I'm sure you have too. You
look at bulletins from churches and you open them up. There isn't
any room for articles in them. There isn't any room for some
kind of spiritual material in them because it's full of that
week's schedule of activities. They're just church busy. And
I believe that quite often that's Satan's busyness. Because if
he can keep you busy, you'll never stop to think. And if you
don't stop to think, you'll be like those lemmings. You all
remember what lemmings are, those rodents that just, they go in
a big crowd and if they come to the edge of the sea, the first
one will go in and everybody else will follow and they'll
try to swim the Pacific or wherever it is they are. Or they come
to a cliff, they all just go over it. And unfortunately that's
what most of religion is, it's lemming religion, everybody's
following the crowd, everybody's being real busy thinking it's
real good, look at the progress we're making. But David said,
an oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of
the wicked. He stopped to think about it.
Idle hands are sometimes called the devil's workshop, and often
idle hands are, when the mind they are connected to also remains
idle. But busy hands can also be the
devil's workshop, manufacturing the products of covetousness
and corruption, but mostly distracting men from thoughtful consideration
of the essential matters of the soul. Let's stop for a few minutes
and think and meditate on these matters and we'll hopefully continue
to think about them later on. David's thoughts, his meditations
led him to come to some conclusions concerning man and God. And those are the primary issues.
Man and God, who are we and who is he? When Isaiah was given
his message to preach, it consisted of two basic things. All flesh
is grass. That's man. And secondly, behold
your God. And you know, if men ever stop
and consider what they are and what God is, it'll make them
stop some more and ask the question, how can I ever Be just with God. How can I ever be righteous with
God? But if we can keep folks busy, if we can keep them going
to meetings, if we can keep them working on morality and finding
their purpose. We got that book out in all,
The Purpose Driven Life. The sad thing about that is it's
got men looking about the importance of themselves. Well, I've got
a special purpose in this world. I'm somebody special. All religions
got man thinking about how good he is when the scriptures and
common sense will teach us otherwise. Now what did he learn? Well, he learned that man is
wicked. Now there is more to man than to simply say he is
sinful. David knew that. That's just
a matter of doctrine. Every one of us, if I were to
ask you, from the oldest to the youngest, Tell me what's the
essential nature of man, you'd say, sin. And you'd be absolutely
right. But have you ever stopped to
consider just what that means? David said, I meditated on this,
there's an oracle within me. I considered the truth of that.
Now, I don't think that we're supposed to, you know, as someone
says, we'd be these belly button gazers, you know, that just kind
of sit and look within ourselves all the time. You know, we got
a septic tank out in the backyard, and one time we took the lid
off of it because they wanted to suck it out, you know? And
other than that, you keep the lid on. And I tell you, for the
most part, that's the way it is. That's the way we ought to
deal with looking at ourselves. The only reason we'd ever take
the lid off what we are is that we might expose it to Christ
and it'd be cleansed. And yet there is a value in taking
stock of what we really are. Because when we understand what
we are, it may move us to run to God as he is and as he's revealed
himself. David thought on the subject
and was led to understand four things about man's sin. First
of all, what is the root of it? What is the very essence of man's
sin? Secondly, the deceitfulness of
it, how man's sin deceives him. And then what is the fruit of
man's sin? And then also to take notice
of how purposeful man is in his sin. First of all, the root of
man's sin. He says, there is no fear of God before his eyes. Do you know how different this
world would be if everybody had the fear of God in his heart?
You know, when our country, and I thank God for it, I tell you
what a wonderful place to live, at least compared to the other
countries of the world. But when they wrote up that constitution,
a remarkable document, and you and I read it, and if you haven't
ever taken an opportunity to read it, you ought to just read
it, to imagine that an entire nation such as ours could have
been founded on such a small document, and it worked as well
as it has for a couple of hundred years. But you read it, but one
of the framers, and I don't know which one it was, but one of
the framers said concerning that, that that system of government
will work only for a religious people. Now, we normally use
the word religion and religious in a bad sense, but what he was
talking about was that this will work only for people who have
something of the fear of God before their eyes. Because you
see, men who will not restrain themselves inwardly must be restrained
from the outside. And a people can live freely,
will live without the shackles of monarchies and tyrannies and
dictators, they can live that way only if they can be trusted
to rule themselves. And really the only ones who
can really rule themselves are those who have the fear of God
before their eyes. Here's the problem. Man by nature
does not have the fear of God before his eyes. Now what is the fear of God?
Well it is a combination of respect, fear, you know something? In one hand,
as the children of God, we're believers. We don't have to be
afraid of God in Christ. I'll tell you this. Knowing God
to be who He is and what He is, two things ought to make us afraid. One, the thought of being outside
of Christ. That ought to terrify us. God
outside of Christ is nothing but a consuming fire. And there's
another thing, even as believers, it ought to strike fear in our
hearts when we know the fear of God. And that is that we should
be loose, that we should be uncaring about the way we live and flaunt
our corruptions in His face. You know, sometimes I have just
been dumbfounded at myself. When I think of the things I've
done, I think, Joe, what in the world do you think you're doing?
Do you believe God doesn't see? He is your father, yes, but do
you think that a holy God will not react to such wickedness? Even in his own children, that
article by Brother Gary Shepherd is in the bulletin. Take note
of that. There is something legitimate about the fear of the Lord. Now,
I didn't live in terror of my father. Never did. He's a good
dad. And yet I feared to break his
rules. And I was convinced if I did,
he'd find out about it. So I'm pretty well an obedient
son. And it's good for us to understand
that even though he is our father, he has not ceased to be the God
that should make us tremble. Tremble at the thought of spiting
him to his face. The fear of the Lord involves
respect and fear and reverence. Now this fear arises from a knowledge
of God's holiness, His justice, His power and His authority.
I didn't get the time I wanted this morning to spend on that,
but did you notice what those four elders preached? Holy, holy,
holy. Not the four elders, the four
living creatures. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty. The first thing that came out
of their mouths, which you've got to assume is the most important
thing they've got to say. That which the Spirit of God
inspired them is the foundation of everything else they're going
to say. And that is that God is holy. Now this fear of the Lord moves
a man to depart from evil over in Proverbs 16. Take a look at
that. Verse 6. Proverbs 16 verse 6, through
love and faithfulness sin is atoned for. Through the fear
of the Lord a man avoids or departs from evil. Now there is a restraining
influence in the fear of the Lord even in those who don't
trust Him in the sense that we call them believers. That's one
reason really that our nation has prospered as it has. Because
even among the unbelieving in our nation, at least for the
first 150 or so years, there was kind of a general fear of
the Lord. There was a respect and a certain
reverence for the God of the Bible. And that blessed our nation
because it restrained men from evil. Now, I mean, it also made
Himself righteous and all these other things, too. But, hey,
let's face it, a lot of that goes on in this community. Why? Is it that we don't have murders
so much as other areas might? How come not so much violent
crime? How come we don't find all the
stores being broken into on a regular basis? How come it's a safe place
and you can leave your doors unlocked? And as I mentioned
here a week or so ago, leave your car running outside the
store so it'll stay warm. How come you can do that in this
town? Fear the Lord. Even among those that you and
I would probably say, you know, I don't think they really understand
the gospel. But they have understood, they do believe there is a God
and a God to be answered to. And from that fear, it restrains
them from as much evil as they would otherwise do. It restrains
you and me. There are people who say, well,
we shouldn't obey God out of fear. Well, whether or not we
should, we do. There's a lot, isn't there a
lot of that in you? You think of something you'd like to do?
Crosses your mind, I'd like to do that. Better not. The Lord God is a God to be feared. And it makes a man depart from
evil. And when this fear of the Lord is a spiritual fear, not
just a fleshly fear under the law, but the spiritual fear and
reverence of a child for his father, It causes a man to depart
from sin both by atonement and by practice. Isn't it interesting
here that in Proverbs 16, 6 it starts out through love and faithfulness
sin is atoned for. Through the fear of the Lord
a man avoids evil. You can't learn the fear of the Lord any
better than when you learn it at the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There the love and faithfulness of God combine, the mercy and
faithfulness of God combine. to bring about an atonement for
sin. And when we are able to see and
to understand, to perceive God in His holiness and justice,
coupled with His love and faithfulness, all bundled together there at
the cross, that works in us a better sense of the fear of the Lord
than merely the law will do. And that fear will cause a man
to depart from evil. It will put his sin away because
he'll trust in that God and in that atonement. It'll put his
sin away from him and in his heart it'll cause him to walk
away from his sin. It's only as we become forgetful
and don't pay attention to the wonderful truth of God's sovereign
and righteous grace that we become uncaring. about the way we live
and about the character of our lives. But for the natural man,
there is no fear of God in his eyes, not even for the religious
man, for the most part, because the God that is presented to
men in our day, and I know in all days there's been false gospels
and all that, but we just eat up with it in our day. There's
so much religion in this country, it's nauseating. It really is. That's why those stations are
just blocked from my television. I don't even want to flip by
them when I'm looking for something. To see those guys take the name
of Christ on their lips and pollute it like they do, and talk about
God as though He's some kind of pitiful fellow up there that
sure would like to help us, but we won't let Him, and He wants
to make your life good if you'll just do it His way, which of
course involves sending them some money. But if you'll just
do it His way, your life will get better, and you'll be healthy,
and you'll be wealthy. Oh, man. They preach a God to
be pitied, not a God to be worshipped. They preach a God that no man
fears and therefore men don't depart from evil. They preach
a God who they claim is doing everything that He can to save
everybody. And what do they conclude from
that? Well, look, I'll just live like I want, and when I'm good
and ready, I'll make my decision for Jesus. But for right now,
I'm just going to live like I want. I'll take the risk. I can drive
pretty good. I think I can keep myself out of a car accident.
And I keep myself healthy. I don't think I'm going to fall
over a heart attack anytime soon. So really, I don't have to worry
about this right away. And God's doing all He can to
save me. All I've got to do is give Him permission. I wouldn't fear God like that
either. As that one fellow said to the preacher, the preacher
had been preaching to him for years, trying to get him to make
a profession of faith. Finally that preacher came through
town for the last time and he visited that man and he said,
you know, I've been coming here for 40 years, holding a meeting every
year, and I've tried to get you to come, and I've tried to get
you to to trust the Lord Jesus so you won't go to hell, and
you won't come. It's my last time. Why won't you come? And
he said, well, preacher, he says, all these years you've been telling
me that God's trying to take me to heaven, but I won't let
him. I suppose that when he tries to send me to hell, I won't let
him do that either. There's no fear of God before
their eyes because there is no fearful God declared to them. If God were to open the heavens
right now and let us get a glimpse of what He is, I'll tell you
where every one of us would be, right on the floor. We wouldn't
dare to look up. David talked in the bottom of
that pit, in the knowledge of his sin against a holy God, and
he said, my sin is more than the hairs of my head. I cannot
look up. I dare not look up. Man doesn't know God. And what
he does know about God, he rejects. And when God gives his natural
revelation, man invents false gods to explain it. Look over
here, Romans chapter 1. Verse 18 of Romans 1, the wrath
of God. is being revealed from heaven
against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress
the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about
God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities,
that is, His characteristics, His attributes, His eternal power
and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what
has been made, so that men are without excuse." Now, what's
Paul saying? He said, listen, without a Bible
and without a preacher, there's enough evidence in the created
world to hold a man responsible to know that there is a God who
made it, a God of eternal power, a God possessed of all divine
attributes, omnipotence, omniscience, knows everything, omnipresence
is everywhere, holiness. Men know that. I know that there's no such thing
as a man born an atheist. And I'm pretty sure there's not
many that die as an atheist. Some of them spend some of their
years in the middle. Being that I tell you they have got to kid
themselves. They've got to deceive themselves
into that because it is written in the very nature of a man When
he looks into this world to know there's a God that made it But what does he do? Verse 21
Romans 1 for although they knew God they neither glorified him
as God nor gave thanks to him But their thinking became futile
and their foolish hearts were darkened Now man comes into the
world blind, we know that, spiritually blind, yet he can become so stubborn
in his rejection of the truth that even the natural light that's
in him becomes darkness. Says they knew God, there it
was right in front of them, written bold and large in the creation. But they didn't glorify Him as
God, they didn't bow down to Him and worship Him. They didn't
do like those 24 elders when they heard of the living God
and get off their thrones and fall at His feet and cast off
their crowns. Nor did they give Him any thanks
for all He'd done for them, for giving them life and breath and
giving them everything they got. They didn't give God thanks for
anything. But their thinking became futile, and their foolish
hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise,
those Greek philosophers, those Roman statesmen, they became
fools. The fool has said in his heart,
there is no God. In essence, that's what these
fellows did. When a man doesn't glorify God, he's saying there
is no God. When he doesn't give thanks to God, he's saying there
is no God to give thanks to. They exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds
and animals and reptiles. Isn't it interesting to note
that men love this doctrine that says that we, over millions of
years and billions of years, have evolved up from reptiles
and birds and all this kind of stuff. We've evolved up to reach
the glorious status of humanity. And yet, when they do God, well
they start out making him look like a man and then they go to
birds then they go to animals and then they reduce him to a
reptile a creeping thing they devolve God they evolve man and
devolve God neither one of them is true neither one of them God didn't take some almost man
and form him into a man. God made man out of the dust
of the earth. You go out there to the cemetery. Remember the scripture that the
Lord told Adam? He said, you came from the dust
of the earth and you'll go back. If you want to find out what
God made man out of, go dig up a really old grave. You'll find
out exactly what he made man out of. Sometime on the sixth day of
creation, God took some of that mud and formed a man and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul. That's where man came from. And he's doing fine. I don't
know how long this lasted, but he's doing fine until he sinned,
and since then he's been doing nothing but go backward, both
physically and spiritually. Why Adam lived to be 930 years
old? If I lived to be 93, I think
I'll have done something pretty special. Oh, what a mess man he is. But
he thinks he's gotten better. He thinks God's gotten worse. There is no fear of God before
their eyes, and therefore they dare to say that they ascend
while God descends. That they're getting better while
they make God worse. All right, back in Psalm 36.
There is no fear of God before their eyes. And then there's
the deceitfulness of man's sin. Verse 2, For in his own eyes
he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. Well, we know what that means,
don't we? Oh, we love to flatter and be flattered. We love to
praise and be praised. Generally speaking, when we praise
others, it's in the hope that they'll praise us back. And we
flatter ourselves. We're like that Pharisee who
says, I thank you, God, I'm not like other men. I do this and
I do that. And that Pharisee, you know what? He flattered himself
so much in the presence of God, he couldn't even detect his sin,
nor learn to hate it. Now, it's one thing to talk about
Pharisees. Let's turn that gun on us and
see if there's any bullets in it. I so often wonder if we aren't
just as self-righteous in our belief of the truth often. I'm
not saying that it doesn't matter what a man believes, but I will
tell you this. God has not saved us because
we believe the right thing. We believe the right thing because
God saved us. He saved us from the darkness.
He saved us from not fearing Him. He saved us from changing
His glory from the immortal God down to some man or a bird or
animal or a reptile. If we know the truth, it's because
of God. In fact, look down here, verse 9. For with you is the
fountain of life. In your light we see light. Oh, I'm glad we got the truth,
brethren, but we don't have any reason to be proud of it. Our
glory in the truth, but there's no reason for us to glory in
the fact we've got it, because we didn't get it. It was given
to us. We didn't obtain it. It was obtained
for us. It was not only offered to us
in truth, it was forced upon us by God's grace. Were it not
that God came, and without our permission, He implanted His truth within
our hearts and shined His light into our eyes and made us see.
If He hadn't done that, we'd be in as much darkness as anybody
else. Let us not flatter ourselves
over anything because it will blind us to what we are. And
we'll not hate our sin because we'll not even see it. Now here
is the fruit of sin. Verse 3, the words of His mouth
are wicked and deceitful. He has ceased to be wise. and
to do good. You see how there's kind of a
progression here? It just starts out, he doesn't fear God. But from that root, he begins
to flatter himself and hide his sin. Then the words of his mouth
are wicked and deceitful. It doesn't matter what he says,
it's a lie. There's no truth in them. The poison of asps,
says the scripture, is under their tongues. Even when they
got reverend in front of their name, they put on their black
suit and turn their collar around backwards and everybody goes,
ooh, he's a holy man, he's special. No, he's not. He's a deceiver. He's a wicked man. And when he
speaks, it's just like getting bit by the snake. You get poisoned
by what he says. It has all the wisdom of man
in it and none of the wisdom of God. He may not turn his collar
around backwards. He may wear a nice suit with
a tie in it like this. He may have a doctor in front
of his name and a list of books that he's written and are best
sellers. And everybody loves what he's
got to say. But he's a deceiver. He has ceased to be wise. For
the fear of the Lord, says the Scriptures, is the beginning
of wisdom. And he doesn't fear the Lord. He has so little regard
for the Lord, he'll use the Lord's name to make money. And he'll
make trade off the souls of men. And he'll cease to do good, because
he cannot do good with a lie. And in verse four, even on his
bed he plots evil. Remember at the beginning I said,
It is good to stop and meditate on things. Here's what the wicked
man does when he has time to stop. He thinks about evil. Whether he lays on his bed at
night and he spent the whole day cheating and grubbing for
money. And he lays on his bed and he thinks about how tomorrow
he can wake up and cheat somebody else out of their money. Some
of them do that. Or they lay on their bed at night
and they think about how they might Say they are the pastor
of some church with a false gospel and they're coming up with new
programs, new ways to get more people to come in and bring more
within the circle of damnation. And the judgment that they're
preaching, they just collect more and more, they're plotting evil. He commits himself to a sinful
course and does not reject what is wrong. Now having said all
that, I want to make this point. Our translation in verse 1 has
David saying, Oracles within my heart concerning the sinfulness
of the wicked. Now the King James in this case
is a little more strict in the way it translates it. And I'm
no expert in Hebrew. I can't go back and check these
things like maybe I could if it were in Greek. But in the
King James it says it this way, the transgression of the wicked
saith to my heart. What's David saying here? He
didn't say I sat on my bed, or I mean, excuse me, I began to
muse that an oracle was in my heart, and I with a detached
sense meditated on the sinfulness of the wicked. He said the transgression
of the wicked spoke to my heart. He was telling you what's in
His own heart, what He knew in His natural self to be true. Have you ever noticed that the
transgression of the wicked can speak to your heart pretty loud?
Do you ever have those times when
not only is the fear of God not in your heart, it doesn't seem
like it's there anyway, but you wonder if there's a God at all,
let alone whether or not you should fear Him. Do you not notice
how prone you are to flatter yourself and think about how
good you are? Or you can think of some things
you did in the past that were bad, but you're beyond that now.
You've gotten over it, you regret those things, but you are an
ex-sinner. Remember one fellow was preaching
one time. He says, I'm tired of hearing the testimonies of
ex-drunks and ex-sex addicts and ex-this and ex-that. And
he said, it comes down to just their ex-sinners. He said, I'm
not an ex-sinner. I'm still one. Have you ever
noticed how your mouth can spew forth such wickedness? Foul things that should never
be said? Self-righteous religious things
that sound good to everybody but are full of the poison of
the serpent. Have you ever noticed how easy
it is to lie in your bed and plot evil? The times of meditation,
oh, it's much easier to meditate on wickedness than it is good. All we cannot look at the doctrine
of man's sin as some separate thing out there. Friends, the
doctrine of human sin is right in here. We don't need a book.
We don't need to have some kind of systematic description of
the sinfulness of man. We just got to look at ourselves,
and there we'll find it. Verse 5, Your love, O Lord, reaches
to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. With what does God contrast the
wicked man? Does he contrast him to a righteous
man? Does David now turn and say,
but let's take a look at a righteous man? Well, I'd like to, but there
hadn't been one. That's the problem. There's no
righteous man to contrast the wicked man with. If we're going
to contrast a wicked man, we've got to contrast him. And here's
really where the real contrast is. Contrast him with the righteous
God. You see, that's the problem with
men. Men think they're good because they can find other men that
are worse than them. Well, we're comparing ourselves to the wrong
thing. David doesn't call a man wicked because he's worse than
other men. He says we're wicked because
we aren't as good as God. That's why the Scriptures say,
for there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God. How good do you have to be? Do
you have to do the best you can? No, you've got to do the best
God can. If you want to be good, you've got to be good as God.
And so David, now as he turns the page from human wickedness
to contrast it, he turns us to divine righteousness. And I'll
tell you, the way he describes it, it's just a beautiful thing
to behold and something that'll cover up and overwhelm the sense
of our sin and give us peace. Your love, or that word's often
translated mercy, Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the skies, your righteousness is like the
mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O Lord,
you preserve both man and beast, and you preserve a man even when
he acts like a beast. Your love is as high as the heavens.
Why? Because that's where it comes from. Your faithfulness reaches to
the skies, because that's where it'll take me in time to come. Your righteousness is like the
mighty mountains. Unscalable, I can't be that righteous. But like the mighty mountains,
it's unmovable. And your justice is like the great deep. All God's
wisdom and understanding and His judgments, says the Apostle,
are past finding out. You know, we've got some machines
now that they can send down to the lowest depths of the ocean.
You know, when David wrote this, man can get in the water, possibly
go a hundred or so feet deep. It's tough. You know, when you
ain't got scuba gear, you've got to go down and come up pretty
quick. I've read that some of those Polynesian fellas, you
know, they do their dives and stuff and go down for certain
seafood, stuff like that. And those fellas can dive, I
think, with, you know, what they call truly skin diving, no scuba
gear. They'd go down 100 feet, come
back. That's as deep as they could get. Do you know how deep
the ocean gets? In one place it's seven miles
deep. If you were to go down there, it'd kill you. I believe
that'd be about 35,000 feet and you'd get a half pound per square
inch of pressure for every foot you go down. That'd be 17,000
pounds per square inch of pressure. You can't go down there God's
judgments go to the deeps. They are beyond man's ability
to find out. We stand in awe of God, His justice
like the great deep. And yet with these things, with
His love and faithfulness, with His righteousness and justice,
He preserves both man and beast. Now we can apply this spiritually,
but let's take a moment. David wrote this in very natural
terms because that's the easiest way for us to understand it.
Do you ever worry about your provisions from day to day? Don't say no because I know you
do. Everybody worries some about it. One time I was worried about
it. And I suddenly thought to myself,
Joe, do you realize how many billions of creatures God is
feeding every day? Our Lord told us about the sparrows,
and that's just one class of them. I look out my back window,
and there's birds flying everywhere, and they all seem to be pretty
fat. He provides whatever it is that worms eat, and then the
worms, He provides the worms for the birds, and I don't know
who eats the birds, If they're big enough birds, we eat them.
Don't we care if they're goose or pheasant or something like
that? You look at those forests. I
was thinking about over there in Cherokee, you know, and I
know y'all not big on eating squirrels around here. You know,
that's a, someone's, as they pointed out, that's a cute rat.
That's all it is. But, you know, it's big down
there in the southeast. They eat lots of squirrels. Brother
Crow, Sylvester Crow, came over to Tim's house one time. I guess
Sylvester's quite the hunter. And hunt with a pistol. And Tim
mentioned something about he hadn't had any, what was it,
toast and squirrel gravy or something like that, you know. Well, Sylvester,
he said, well, you put it on. You get the gravy going. And
here in a few minutes he comes back with two squirrels. And
I'm thinking two squirrels, and if you've ever seen that forest
over there on the Smoky Mountains, how many millions of squirrels
are out there, and God's feeding every one of them. And He feeds some of them so
that we can be fed. He preserves both man and beast.
How priceless is your unfailing love. I know that we all want stuff.
I won't say that's good or bad, it's just a fact. But what is the most valuable
thing to you? I remember watching this movie,
and it's a movie I'd recommend, it's called Luther. It's about
the story of Martin Luther. There's one scene in there, and
man it just blessed my heart because he hit the nail on the
head of what's in my heart. And Luther there, when he was
living as a monk and had the plain robes on, he was doing
the best he could at it. He'd outstrip them all in his
studies and in his humiliations, they'd call it. It says he'd
take four bushes and beat himself on the back to drive out fleshly
thoughts. And he'd lay on a cold stone
floor, wouldn't allow himself any comfort. And he'd cry, and
he was in terrible fear. And he had an advisor. And the
advisor came into his little room, which looked more like
a dungeon, like a jail cell back then, came in there and he said,
Hart, what do you want? Or something like that. And he
said, I just want to know that God loves me. And that advisor of his, maybe,
you know, there were a few back then in the Catholic church that
knew something of the truth, I don't know. But he said, Words to this
effect. Martin, you go before God and
you tell Him, I am a sinner, but I am yours. And what Martin Luther found,
what God revealed to him, is that God did indeed love him.
And friends, that is the fountain of all our blessings. It began
with God's love. It doesn't matter what you have.
If you don't have His love, you ain't got nothing worth having.
And it doesn't matter what you don't have, you have all if you
have the love of God. How priceless is your unfailing
love. Our love and affection for one
another goes up and down. We may be really warm in our
feelings toward each other one day and then not care a whole
lot about each other the other day. We may on one day be willing
to help and energetic to do all the good we can, the next day
we don't care and say, ah, it's your troubles, you take care
of it. But God's love does not fail. It is an infinite, even
thing. He says, I've loved you with
an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn you. God's love began in the timeless
eternity of His existence. And He set His affections on
His people. And He won't let the least of
them be lost to Him. You that have children, you know
what you'd have done for your kids and what you did. You did
everything you could for them. And you would have saved them
from every trouble and every harm if it had been in your power
to do so. Well, here's one who's able to
save his people and desirous to do so. And he never fails. His love never dries up. His
love never wears out. I love my kids, but I tell you,
they've brought me to the edge a few times. And I suppose I
still love him, but I didn't show a whole lot of love on a
few occasions, because my anger overcame my love, never with
God. Even when David and his sin brought discipline upon his
head, and God dealt with him in harshness, yet it was in a loving
harshness for David's good. both high and low among men find
refuge in the shadow of your wings. God is so great that the
highest men of all can find a refuge below him. There is none so great
that he doesn't need God, and there is none so small that God
wouldn't help him. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1,
you see you're calling an election, brethren, not many mighty, not
many noble, not many strong, not many wise, But as I believe
it was Queen Victoria said at one time, I thank God for the
letter N. And they said, why? And they
said, because if there were not a letter N, it would say, you
see, you're calling an election, brothers, not any noble, not
any. Why? She says, thank God he did
choose some from among the nobility and from the great of the world.
And in humility, she claimed an interest in Christ and was
thankful that while most of God's people come from the offscouring
of the world, God has chosen a few, even from the mighty and
the powerful. For you see, He is so great,
even they find refuge in Him. A little kid sing a chorus, My
God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my
God cannot do. The mighty need a Savior, and
here is a Savior even for the mighty. And the low-born, they
need a Savior too. And here is a Savior who is not
so high and so mighty that he won't reach to the very bottom
of the world's barrel and pull out the dregs of society and
say, He is mine. He has set the beggar, taken
him off the dunghill, and set him with the princess. they feast on the abundance of
your house you give them drink from your river of delights for
with you is the fountain of life in your light we see the light
oh is it not good to drink deep from the fountain of life the
Lord Jesus Christ is it not good to feast on the abundance the
overflowing grace and blessing that is in the house of the Father,
and to enjoy His delights. The people of this world, we
were among them, and in our flesh we're still among them. Oh, how
people go after pleasures and delights, and you know, it just
doesn't matter how delightful it looks, it's never as delightful
as it looked. It never satisfies. We taste
for a minute, and we're hungry again. Blessed are those that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled, satisfied. Well, then there's a prayer.
Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness
to the upright in heart. Is this an implication that God
wouldn't? No, but we pray for those things. that we desire
even if we know they are certain. And so God's love continues toward
us and he is righteous and faithful to those whose hearts have been
made upright by the grace of God. May the foot of the proud
not come against me nor the hand of the wicked drive me away even
if that foot and that hand happen to be connected to this body.
You know I have no greater enemy than myself and I pray God protect
me from myself. See how the evildoers lie fallen,
thrown down, not able to rise. Heavenly Father, how good it
is to be among your people and to hear such blessed words, to
know something of your love that reaches to the heavens and your
faithfulness which reaches to the skies, to delight in your
righteousness which is unattainable by us but as stable as the mountains. and to lose ourselves in the
wonder of the depths of your justice and your judgments and
your wisdom. Lord, you are beyond finding
out. And yet we lose ourselves, Lord,
delightfully lose ourselves in the knowledge of who you are.
Bless this word to our good, Lord. In the name of Christ we
pray. Amen. All right. You're dismissed.