Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Psalm52 starts with this for the choir director, a maskal of David.
[00:00:10] When Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul and said to him, david has come to the house of Ahimelech.
[00:00:19] Now you might remember that story, but it's so integral to this passage, Psalm 52, that we're going to. Before we even look at Psalm 52, we're going to go back and read that story which is from 1 Samuel 21.
[00:00:42] So just listen to this story, then we will come to our passage.
[00:00:48] Psalm 52.
[00:00:52] Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, why are you alone and no one with you?
[00:01:05] David said to Ahimelech the priest, the king has commissioned me with a matter, and has said to me, let no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you, and with which I have commissioned you. And I have directed the young men to a certain place.
[00:01:20] So this was a lie.
[00:01:22] I got to back up even more now in the story and explain. David is running away from King Saul at this point.
[00:01:30] Okay, so continue on.
[00:01:33] David says, now, therefore, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.
[00:01:41] The priest answered David and said, there is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread, if only the young men have kept themselves from women.
[00:01:51] David answered the priests and said to him, surely women have been kept from us, as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey, how much more then today will their vessels be holy?
[00:02:04] So the priest gave him consecrated bread, for there was no bread there, but the bread of the presence, which was removed from before the Lord in order to put hot bread in its place when it was taken away.
[00:02:16] Now, one of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord, and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's shepherds.
[00:02:30] Now if we skip a little ways into the next chapter. First Samuel 22, starting in verse nine, we pick up the story.
[00:02:40] It says, then Doeg the Edomite, who was standing by the servants of Saul, said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub.
[00:02:52] He inquired of the Lord for him, gave him provisions, and gave him the sword of Goliath the Philistine.
[00:03:00] Then the king sent someone to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's household.
[00:03:06] The priests who were in Nob. And all of them came to the king.
[00:03:11] Saul said, listen now, son of Ahitub.
[00:03:16] And he answered, here I am, my lord.
[00:03:20] Saul then said to him, why have you in the Son of Jesse conspired against me in that you have given him bread and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, so that he would rise up against me by lying in ambush, as it is this day?
[00:03:35] Then Ahimelech answered the king and said, and who among all your servants is as faithful as David? Even the king's son in law, who is captain over your guard and is honored in your house? Did I just begin to inquire of God for him today?
[00:03:53] Far be it from me.
[00:03:55] Do not let the king impute anything to his servant or to any of the household of my father, for your servant knows nothing at all of this whole affair.
[00:04:05] But the king said, you shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's household.
[00:04:12] And the king said to the guards who were attending him, turn around and put the priests of the Lord to death, because their hand also is with David, and because they knew that he was fleeing and did not reveal it to me.
[00:04:25] But the servants of the king were not willing to put forth their hands to attack the priests of the Lord.
[00:04:35] Then the king said to Doeg, you turn around and attack the priests.
[00:04:41] And Doeg, the Edomite, turned around and attacked the priests. And he killed that day 85 men who wore the linen Ephod. And he struck Nob, the city of the priests, with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and infants, also oxen, donkeys and sheep. He struck with the edge of the sword.
[00:05:07] It's in that context that we come to Psalm 52.
[00:05:14] There's rarely a worse story recorded for us in Scripture.
[00:05:21] And this is King David's response before he is king.
[00:05:28] Would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Psalm 52.
[00:05:41] Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man?
[00:05:46] The loving kindness of God endures all day long.
[00:05:51] Your tongue devises destruction like a sharp razor. O worker of deceit.
[00:05:57] You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking what is right.
[00:06:03] You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.
[00:06:09] But God will break you down forever.
[00:06:11] He will snatch you up and tear you away from your tent and uproot you from the land of the living. Selah the righteous will see and and fear and will laugh at him, saying, behold the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and was strong in his evil desire.
[00:06:36] But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.
[00:06:43] I trust in the loving kindness of God forever and ever.
[00:06:48] I will give you thanks forever because you have done it. And I will wait on your name, for it is good in the presence of your godly ones.
[00:06:58] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:07:00] You may be seated.
[00:07:10] There are certain things that make our blood boil.
[00:07:15] Reading this story. I hope that you were listening well enough that you could actually enter into the story and think about how you would feel, how you might respond to such wickedness.
[00:07:32] Here, Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub, and all of the priests and their families.
[00:07:40] Innocent.
[00:07:43] Innocent before the Lord, innocent before man.
[00:07:48] But Doeg, Doeg and King Saul, wicked men.
[00:07:59] Doeg prevails.
[00:08:04] He wins.
[00:08:09] He's described as a mighty man here in our passage.
[00:08:16] Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man?
[00:08:20] There's something beyond obedience to what Doeg is doing.
[00:08:28] The king wants to know where David is and where he's been.
[00:08:32] Doeg answers, it's obedience, right? But it's much more than obedience.
[00:08:39] He desires evil. He boasts in it.
[00:08:48] 85 priests murdered, families wiped out. And David, the future king, is unable to stop it, unable to prevent it.
[00:09:03] In fact, his own lie inadvertently set the stage.
[00:09:14] Saul, of course, is insane.
[00:09:17] Saul is driven mad by his fear over the loss, potential loss of his kingdom as he sees it. He's driven mad by the evil spirits that torment him from the Lord.
[00:09:37] He's clearly wicked.
[00:09:42] But Saul's madness was recognized by the soldiers who refused to obey their king's command. They refused to turn around and kill the people, priests of the Lord.
[00:09:59] Doeg is not just willing to say that those priests knew what was going on. He's not just willing to turn over David's former location.
[00:10:15] He's willing to actually take on the murderous work himself.
[00:10:23] Why? What does he get out of it?
[00:10:27] Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man?
[00:10:39] So although Saul is wicked, Doeg is who this psalm is really about.
[00:10:48] There's something even more outrageous about the way that Doeg acts in this story than there is even about crazy, wicked King Saul.
[00:11:07] What David says in this psalm is that Doeg and those mighty men who boast in evil, they love evil more than good. That's why they love evil more than good. And such men exist.
[00:11:30] This is something that we have to wrap our minds around first and believe in our hearts before we can make sense of much of God's word. That evil is truly evil, and that man is given over to it.
[00:11:43] That we actually have within us original sin, a condition that corrupts us, that drives us to, when it reaches its extremes, behavior that is so outrageous that even unbelievers who don't know God can look on with horror at what is being done. And yet there are people, plenty of people, who will gladly do it.
[00:12:15] And normally we turn our minds away from such things. They are not worth even dwelling on, right? Whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful, dwell on such things, right?
[00:12:26] And yet scripture does not shy away from putting before us the reality of evil, the reality of wicked men, both in our own hearts. It will point to us and say, that sin that remains, you must be putting it to death by the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:12:47] And in others, making a division between the righteous and the wicked and saying the wicked are not so contrasting as we see throughout psalms over and over again, between the righteous and the wicked, Even while the righteous.
[00:13:06] In Psalm 51, David is confessing his own sin, right?
[00:13:13] The very next psalm still contrasts between the righteous and the wicked.
[00:13:19] The wicked are in a different category.
[00:13:24] Most of the time in psalms, the emphasis is on those who are most wicked.
[00:13:31] But a lot of the time you also have the simple categories.
[00:13:36] Those who are in the Lord and those who are not in the Lord, and those who are not are the wicked.
[00:13:45] What we see here with Doeg is the extent to which the wickedness can expand.
[00:13:55] We see how wicked wickedness can actually become, And we see when wickedness is prevailing.
[00:14:14] If we look at this text and we read the story and then we read Psalm 52, and we come away thinking, wow, things were crazy back then. We are not being honest with ourselves.
[00:14:36] Within my lifetime, the United States has used wicked men to torture people in multiple continents.
[00:14:44] And it's terribly wicked.
[00:14:50] Abuse of the powerful over the innocent. Or maybe not innocent.
[00:14:57] But regardless, the sin that remains in the world today is just like the sin that we see here with Doeg and Saul. There are people who are crazy and sinful like Saul, and there are people who are purely lovers of evil like Doeg.
[00:15:22] And what do they do?
[00:15:24] Their tongues devise destruction like a sharp razor.
[00:15:36] One time I went and got my hair cut at a barber, and I hadn't shaved for a while.
[00:15:44] The offer was made to shave my face.
[00:15:50] Okay. Yeah.
[00:15:54] And so out came the straight razor, and I began to have second thoughts.
[00:16:01] I'm not sure I trust myself with that thing on my face, let alone you.
[00:16:11] This is a razor.
[00:16:14] One little slip, you're cut, cut, cut.
[00:16:24] A sharp razor.
[00:16:26] Tongues that are sharp like razors.
[00:16:32] Razors don't even hurt. They just slice in such a way that it's just damage, just damage. And then before you realize it, it's a mess.
[00:16:51] Some of us are even tempted with our tongues to harm others.
[00:16:58] The way that this psalm talks about the wicked Christians face temptations that are just like the temptations of the wicked. The wicked give themselves over to it and love it. The Christian also gives himself to it and hates it.
[00:17:19] The Christian, having seen the sharpness of his tongue, repents of it, confesses, apologizes.
[00:17:30] The wicked revels in it.
[00:17:37] Tongues that devise destruction.
[00:17:40] Workers of deceit.
[00:17:44] And deceit is truly destructive.
[00:17:51] Deceit is truly destructive.
[00:17:57] Doeg doesn't say anything untrue exactly in this story.
[00:18:06] And yet David says that he is a worker of deceit.
[00:18:13] Why?
[00:18:15] Because what he leaves unsaid, what he leaves implied, is a lie.
[00:18:22] What he implies is that the priests had conspired with David against Saul.
[00:18:29] Oh, yeah, they've been helping him.
[00:18:34] It's true.
[00:18:36] They had been helping him.
[00:18:38] But Doeg is no fool. He knows precisely the state of King Saul's mind.
[00:18:45] He knows his paranoia, he knows his madness, just like all the rest of the soldiers do.
[00:18:52] He makes use of it so that in his dishonesty, he can bring about destruction.
[00:19:01] When we lie, we bring about destruction.
[00:19:10] You might be thinking, well, what about David's lie?
[00:19:16] But isn't it interesting?
[00:19:21] It clearly is part of this destruction, isn't it?
[00:19:26] Isn't that part of what torments David?
[00:19:29] Isn't that part of what would be driving you nuts if you were in his situation?
[00:19:37] That partly you had caused this and that there was nothing you could do about it, it was too late.
[00:19:50] And yet his goal had been to protect Ahimelech so that Ahimelech wouldn't have to choose between serving the king or serving David. He could simply be serving the king.
[00:20:07] There are people today who, like all of us, face temptation and back away from it.
[00:20:19] Think about the soldiers being told to slaughter Ahimelech and all of his father's family, right?
[00:20:29] And they say no, even though the king is commanding it of them. They say no directly to the king's face. They just all refuse to do what he says.
[00:20:40] That's glorious, isn't it?
[00:20:43] Then trust in the Lord.
[00:20:45] I don't doubt that some of them hadn't, but they all back away from that temptation. But there are others who, when they face that same temptation that we face, they love to Run into it.
[00:20:59] They don't mind doing damage. They delight in the hurt.
[00:21:04] They delight in the fact that it is wicked. They delight in it because they hate God.
[00:21:11] I can't help but think about how it says that Doeg was there for a particular reason.
[00:21:20] It says in 1 Samuel 21:7 now, one of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord.
[00:21:32] His name was Doeg, Detained before the Lord.
[00:21:39] Here's a man who is seemingly inquiring of the Lord for some reason with Ahimelech. He's at the city of the priests for a reason.
[00:21:52] And yet coming out from that, he hates God and he hates God's servants, the priests. What was Doeg told?
[00:22:06] What did the priest say to him? We're not told.
[00:22:10] But isn't there clear vindictiveness in his response?
[00:22:19] And so today, when you see this kind of wickedness, number one, don't be shocked.
[00:22:25] It's not something that existed back then and that, you know, we've evolved out of it. We're better, wiser, stronger, smarter, lovelier people today.
[00:22:33] No, it's wicked the very same degree that it always has been.
[00:22:39] Satan hasn't changed.
[00:22:42] Evil hasn't changed. It's still terrible.
[00:22:47] It still makes you want to throw up. When you read true wickedness today, And if you're at all involved in an actual situation where such wickedness, using half truths to harm others, it's clear it's intentional, using lies and vindictive behaviors in order to benefit yourself in some way.
[00:23:28] That's what's going on with Doeg. He gets in a special position with the king by doing this, doesn't he?
[00:23:37] He benefits.
[00:23:42] Why do you boast in evil, O mighty?
[00:23:52] Well?
[00:23:53] I want to ask you, if you see that, if you experience that, if you've been a part of a situation where that happens, what is your response?
[00:24:05] How would you respond if you were to face this?
[00:24:12] When you see the doe eggs winning, when you see them not just performing wickedness, not just seeking to harm others, but succeeding in it?
[00:24:25] Before we look at David's holy response, we must look at what the other possibilities are.
[00:24:34] What might you do when you face that kind of wickedness?
[00:24:42] The first is you might be tempted to run into it. Proverbs and Psalms are full of this warning to stay away from those who call you, to run with them into violence and wickedness and seeking after treasure.
[00:24:59] Why?
[00:25:01] Why are there so many warnings, especially in Proverbs, against that? Because that is a temptation to us, the very people who read the Bible. Need that warning.
[00:25:12] Don't run after them.
[00:25:16] Don't envy the wicked is the similar warning, right?
[00:25:22] It's not running after them into it, but it's envying the blessing and the benefit that comes out. You see their abundance of riches.
[00:25:32] That's what verse seven describes such men as gaining.
[00:25:41] We may envy their strength.
[00:25:45] Secretly wish that we could be as ruthless as they are just to get ahead.
[00:25:53] We might.
[00:25:56] I'm sort of moving from like what we would say is, you know, worst to best, wrong response. You know, run with them into it. No, I'm not going to do that.
[00:26:08] Envy them in it.
[00:26:09] No, I'm not going to do that. Just be angry at God.
[00:26:14] It's another bad response. It's happened, right?
[00:26:18] God, I can't believe you.
[00:26:22] And so we turn our impotent fury on the one who could have stopped it but didn't.
[00:26:35] And that's true. He could have and he didn't, right?
[00:26:40] It's easy to be angry at God, to accuse God, to fixate on the unfairness of the tragedy and let our hearts grow cold towards our Heavenly Father.
[00:27:01] Next in line after that is despair.
[00:27:05] Despair and cynicism, right?
[00:27:08] You can see I don't want to get angry at God, but this is hopeless. Now, this also is an accusation against God. It is to say that his promises of hope and a future are lies.
[00:27:27] Verse five, David. I'm skipping ahead. You know, God will break you down forever. That's one of our promises that we can cling to regarding the wicked, that God will break them down forever, Right?
[00:27:43] But when we despair and become cynical about evil, about wicked men, about how impossible it is to do anything about it, we are denying the promises of God.
[00:28:01] It is tantamount to an accusation against him.
[00:28:10] If God is checked out, why should I bother checking in?
[00:28:21] And it believes. Ultimately, despair believes that sin is more powerful than God.
[00:28:32] Sin in this way becomes the only real power.
[00:28:41] We can't cry out to God and expect anything because he must be powerless or this wouldn't have happened.
[00:28:49] This is despair.
[00:28:55] I'm still moving in a progression.
[00:28:57] All kinds of bad responses we can have. Right, here's the last.
[00:29:04] Railing and cursing.
[00:29:08] Railing and cursing. Now, the reason that this one's right up at the top of the wrong responses is because there is a way of being angry and sinning, not right.
[00:29:22] Anger at evil is not in and of itself bad, but there is a way of responding with anger that is truly damaging to us and to others.
[00:29:34] It is an anger that again goes forth without control and ultimately is going to be directed at God.
[00:29:43] So I don't want you to feel justified in the best of the wicked responses like, oh, well, you know, it's mostly holy or no, this is still twisting what God has said.
[00:29:58] Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.
[00:30:02] Right.
[00:30:04] It twists what God has said and makes an accusation against him.
[00:30:14] And it is no fruit of the Holy Spirit, but rather a fruit of wickedness for us to give ourselves to railing and cursing.
[00:30:29] The New Testament gives us a little glimpse of the necessity of our anger, being holy and trusting God at the same time.
[00:30:42] When it says that Michael the Archangel, when he fought with Satan over the body of Moses.
[00:30:51] Okay, whoa, right.
[00:30:56] Did not pronounce a railing judgment, but simply said, the Lord rebuke you.
[00:31:07] The Lord rebuke you.
[00:31:12] You can see the anger against wickedness in that response that is holy. And you can see how contrasted it is with railing, cursing, and reviling.
[00:31:26] Giving ourselves over to such anger is not holy.
[00:31:35] Fighting fire, the fire of the devouring tongue with the fire of another devouring tongue will not produce the fruit of righteousness within us.
[00:31:49] So how does David respond?
[00:31:55] He addresses the evil directly. He doesn't ignore it.
[00:32:02] I've already seen that it's not a sin to name evil as evil, to call destruction what it is, to point out that it ought not to be done.
[00:32:14] But immediately, very first verse, immediately he pivots to the loving kindness of God endures all day long.
[00:32:28] Here's what the wicked are. Here's what they are doing. Here's how terrible it is in the first half of the verse, boasting in evil, O mighty man. So they've got the power, the mighty, the ability to do harm. They are doing evil and they are boasting in it. Why don't you know? So immediately our attention is turned away from it to the way that God is, to his character.
[00:33:01] The loving kindness of God endures all day long. Loving kindness is one of those great words if you ever want to do a word study and just look through all the places where you can find it in scripture.
[00:33:13] It's really beautiful.
[00:33:17] Here's one of the things that we're taught about it. It endures all day long, even when the wicked are doing this, Even when the mighty men are doing.
[00:33:25] They're boasting in their evil.
[00:33:29] God's loving kindness hasn't stopped.
[00:33:32] That's the very first part of his response.
[00:33:38] And so when you hear the boast of the wicked, the claims that are truly outrageous, Right.
[00:33:49] You have to remind yourself of the loving kindness of God.
[00:33:54] What are you hearing? Louder.
[00:34:02] What are you hearing?
[00:34:04] Are you hearing the loving kindness of God endures forever?
[00:34:08] Is that what pops into your mind at all?
[00:34:16] The all day boasting of the wicked versus the all day loving kindness of God? Which one wins in your mind?
[00:34:28] But the next thing that David does is he points to the fact that the Lord will actually take vengeance.
[00:34:38] The certainty there. After describing more of what the wicked does, when he comes back to the result, ultimately in verse five, he says, God will break you down forever, wicked man.
[00:34:55] This truth combined with the loving kindness of the Lord is forever. It's all day long, right?
[00:35:01] If you have confidence in those two things, then all of the improper responses that I listed are just automatically off the table.
[00:35:12] You're not going to despair when the loving kindness of the Lord is on your mind.
[00:35:18] You're not going to become cynical.
[00:35:20] You're not going to burst out in anger and railing and cursing and helpless rage.
[00:35:27] You're not going to become angry at God. And you're certainly not going to envy the wicked.
[00:35:32] If you recognize that their ultimate end is that they will be destroyed, you're not going to envy them.
[00:35:45] And so David doesn't need to take the sword himself.
[00:35:54] He trusts that God will uproot the wicked.
[00:35:59] Vengeance is a heavy burden.
[00:36:03] And when man takes it up, it never ends.
[00:36:08] It goes from generation to generation to generation.
[00:36:13] And so David sets it down in God's hands.
[00:36:25] And then in verse 6, he says what the righteous will do when they see the wicked destroyed, when they see the wicked, when the righteous see the wicked snatched up, torn away from their tent, uprooted from the land of the living, broken down forever.
[00:36:49] And what is it that you think you're going to do when you see that?
[00:36:53] You think you're going to cheer, right?
[00:36:56] That's the first response that pops into my mind anyway.
[00:37:00] Yes, finally, yes, God has answered the prayers of the saints. He's vindicated the innocent blood that's poured out in the streets.
[00:37:16] But the first thing that David says is not rejoicing.
[00:37:20] The first thing is the righteous will see and fear.
[00:37:30] Why would that be helpful to us? Why should that be part of our response?
[00:37:36] Well, because remember, we have these same temptations.
[00:37:45] And we have the same temptations not just to do these wicked things, but to respond to wickedness with faithlessness. And so we see God accomplishing his will of justice and righteousness being done right.
[00:38:00] And what do we do first? We see God. And it happens. Anytime you see God, not you, fear.
[00:38:12] When you see his righteousness, you shut your mouth in fear. When you see his holiness, you fear. When you see his glory, you fear.
[00:38:27] And then what?
[00:38:29] And then you laugh.
[00:38:33] That's what it says.
[00:38:34] You laugh not at God, you laugh at the wicked men.
[00:38:41] You laugh because you see. Yes, what a joke.
[00:38:49] They thought they were mighty. They thought they were untouchable. They thought they were powerful. And look what came.
[00:38:55] God came, the one I trust in.
[00:39:03] And so this man, verse 7, who would not make God his refuge, trusted in his riches, strong in his desires.
[00:39:17] What happened to him?
[00:39:19] He's gone.
[00:39:22] Dust.
[00:39:24] God sits on his throne.
[00:39:27] He is truly holy, powerful, mighty, valiant for his people.
[00:39:35] And what about David?
[00:39:37] This is the place where I think it requires the most faith for us.
[00:39:43] The most faith.
[00:39:45] But as for me, verse 8.
[00:39:48] I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.
[00:39:57] Olive tree is a far cry from a mighty man, isn't it?
[00:40:05] Now, we don't make a lot of connection automatically to some of the metaphors that we see in scripture. This is a metaphor.
[00:40:18] Clearly, David is not literally an olive tree. Right? But what does calling himself an olive tree mean? We've lost. We don't. I mean, anybody have an olive tree?
[00:40:31] I think we got one, two, maybe. Okay, got some olive trees.
[00:40:37] But culturally, we don't have any associations for what the olive tree means.
[00:40:44] Right.
[00:40:46] What is the green olive tree? Well, the mighty man is powerful. Powerful to destroy. Right.
[00:40:56] But the olive tree flourishes and provides oil.
[00:41:04] It's peace, it's calm, its blessing. This is the olive tree.
[00:41:15] Can we say that about ourselves?
[00:41:19] Maybe we can say it after we see God accomplish vindication.
[00:41:27] Now I can be an olive tree. But until that day, I'm just stuck being. I don't know what.
[00:41:34] Frustrated, mad, despairing.
[00:41:39] David writes this before he has seen, just based on the promise of the outcome of what will happen to the evil. He says, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.
[00:41:54] Now, in the house of God. I hope you remember from some of my other sermons how big a deal David makes about being in the house of the Lord.
[00:42:04] All of the peace and blessings and the ability to simply be in worship of the Lord is a true joy to David.
[00:42:15] We ought to learn that. We ought to delight to come Sunday morning, truly delight to look forward to it. Not just because we get to hang out with friends, though that is part of the blessing, but because we get. Get to hear the preaching of God's word, because we get to study together, because we get to sing. These are the Actual things that David delights in being in the house of the Lord.
[00:42:40] Even that though he is claiming by faith. Remember, David is on the run.
[00:42:46] Can we say this about ourselves before the wicked have been destroyed? Before we even get to go back to church? Behold, I am like a forever green olive tree in the house of God.
[00:42:58] I trust in the loving kindness of God forever and ever. Now we're back to that loving kindness.
[00:43:04] Remember we started with it.
[00:43:06] The contrast between the mighty man and the loving kindness of God, that's all day long David puts his trust in that loving kindness. That God's loving kindness will never end, that it will just be be there forever.
[00:43:23] Not just be there though, it'll be on us.
[00:43:30] That blessing of God's love, his loving kindness, it'll be on us.
[00:43:36] And so we put our trust in that.
[00:43:39] Though the promise is not yet fulfilled, though the wicked man is not yet destroyed, it's as good as done.
[00:43:47] Though I'm not yet in the household of God with his people worshiping him, though I'm not yet in peace, it's as good as done because I've trusted in his loving kindness.
[00:44:03] And then continuation of that into this final verse. I will give you thanks forever. Can you say I will give you thanks forever? After watching Doeg slaughter the priests of God or finding out about it connected to what you did?
[00:44:25] You see how I say this is the hardest part.
[00:44:29] Doesn't it require such faith to be able to give thanks ahead of time because you have done it, God, because you have done it.
[00:44:42] And I will wait on your name, for it is good in the presence of your godly ones. So this is the, this is what I was talking about, worshipping with his people.
[00:44:59] Can we respond even with thanks at that time?
[00:45:07] So the response from David is beautiful, so strengthening for us. So helpful in turning us away from so many temptations that we have when we see evil.
[00:45:19] The first one being to pretend like it's not real, the last one being anger. Right, The wicked is real.
[00:45:37] What is your refuge?
[00:45:40] Are you trusting in your abundance of riches to protect you from doeg, your own mighty intellect?
[00:45:53] Those are not foundations that are forever and ever.
[00:45:59] Even if we give thanks to God for the blessings that he has given us, we recognize that they also can be taken away.
[00:46:10] Money makes wings and flies.
[00:46:17] I will give thanks forever because you have done it.
[00:46:21] I wait on your name for it is good in the presence of your godly ones.
[00:46:32] A week ago we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every Sunday we get together, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because that's why we meet on Sundays.
[00:46:46] But of course, last Sunday was Easter.
[00:46:49] And what happened?
[00:46:53] Mighty men conspired to murder the Son of God.
[00:46:57] And they boasted in their victory.
[00:47:04] And the deceitful tongue of Judas and the false accusations in front of the Sanhedrin from others thought they had broken down the house of God forever.
[00:47:20] At that moment, can you say what David says?
[00:47:27] I am like a green olive tree.
[00:47:32] I will give thanks forever.
[00:47:35] I trust in the loving kindness of God. I wait on your name in the presence of your godly ones.
[00:47:48] Even if you couldn't have in that day, and I don't think I could have in that day, there weren't too many who did right.
[00:47:59] They responded with fear and all of the bad responses.
[00:48:06] The fact that Christ was raised from the dead ought to give us the confidence to be able to respond like David does. Now, no matter what we're facing, no matter what we see around us, no matter who is being harmed.
[00:48:30] Because Jesus.
[00:48:36] Was raised, we know that we have been made green olive trees that can never be moved.
[00:48:49] So don't blink at evil, don't despair, don't rage.
[00:48:59] Trust God and pray with David.
[00:49:02] Now, this is not David's only prayer in the face of evil. There are many other examples of wonderful responses that we can get, especially in the Psalms, but this one is glorious because of how it leaves us so strong and encouraged, knowing that even when it appears there is no hope, God's loving kindness is forever and ever.
