What Can The Righteous Do?

Well, it's been 56 years now this week, this coming week, since the winner of the 1968

Olympic Marathon in Mexico City crossed the finish line.

And most of us probably weren't alive to see that.

Some of you maybe remember that happening.

But when looking back on that particular moment in history, it's not the Ethiopian gold medalist

named Mamo Waldi that people tend to remember.

Instead, it is the runner from Tanzania.

His name is John Stephen Okwaring.

He finished dead last in that race.

And he is the one that has become an Olympic legend, an inspiration for countless athletes ever since.

And you say, well, how is that possible to get dead last and become such an inspiration to so many people?

Well, I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you.

And Okwari was never favored to win that race.

He was a good runner, obviously.

He was a good runner.

He's participating in the Olympics of his time.

But he was unfortunately caught up in the middle of the race into a collision with a group of other runners.

And he fell.

And when he fell, he did significant injury to both his knee and his shoulder,

even causing a dislocation in that moment.

And while 18 runners with similar or even less significant injuries chose to drop out of the race,

Okwari refused to do so.

He took a few brief moments to get medical attention from the people responsible for it.

And then he resumed the marathon course.

And he finished his race.

By the time he actually made it to the stadium where the finish line was,

you can, if you like the Summer Olympics, you know how this works.

They, the last thing that they do in the marathon is they enter the track and field stadium

and they do a lap around the track and field and then there's the finish line.

And so by the time Okwari actually gets there and he enters the stadium, it's dark outside.

He was, they were having to use, follow him with golf carts or cars or whatever they were using with

headlights that would show him even where to step as he's outside.

He finally makes his way into the stadium.

Most of the people had left at that point.

You can see even in the picture, most of the stands are empty at this point.

The race had been finished for well over an hour.

They had already done the award ceremony and everything.

Gold, silver, bronze medalists, they had finished their race.

They had received their awards.

The national anthem for the Ethiopians had played and everybody went home

except for the few people that remained in the stadium and John Stephen Okwari.

He was determined to finish his race.

And when he did finally finish, someone asked him, a reporter asked him,

why, why were you so willing to risk your health?

I mean, it was a significant risk.

Perhaps he might never run again.

He did end up running again, but he didn't know that that would be the case at that point.

And his response has now become a famous quote.

He said, my country didn't send me 5,000 miles to start the race.

They sent me 5,000 miles so that I could finish the race.

And we find wonderful inspiration in stories like that, don't we?

We love them, these stories of perseverance.

And the reason we love them is because so few of us are actually that determined.

Let me just tell you something.

I've run two marathons.

And they hurt.

They're not fun.

In fact, you get to a point around mile 18, 19, 20, somewhere around in there,

and what's going through my mind with every single step was, why am I doing this?

This is stupid.

Why am I doing this?

I can guarantee you something.

If I collide with somebody in the middle of the race, I hurt my knee and my shoulder,

and I dislocate something in the process of that, Jared ain't finishing that race, right?

We find inspiration in these stories because we're not like John Stephen Ackroy.

And this shows up in all kinds of ways in our lives.

Sometimes it's in really kind of insignificant ways like exercise, right?

The start of the year, every year, we're determined, all right, New Year's resolution.

I'm going to eat good, and I'm going to go to the gym,

or I'm going to get involved in this particular routine.

And we try our best to do it for a few weeks,

but right when the workouts start to get a little more strenuous

or they take us away from things that we would rather do,

the temptation becomes very strong to do what?

Like, sit on the couch with your Cheez-Its and your chocolate chip cookies

or whatever it is and just quit, right?

That's a less significant way.

We do this in more significant ways, though, don't we?

Marriage gets really hard.

The person that you wake up to every morning doesn't seem like the same person

that you fell in love with however many years before,

and now you're wondering, what have I done?

I'm not happy.

I'm not sure if this is going to work.

And the overwhelming temptation then is not to be John Stephen Hawkeye.

The temptation then is to say, well, I'm just going to do what's best for myself,

and I'm going to give up on this.

And we could talk about a million other categories of life

where we feel this temptation.

So finding inspiration in stories of perseverance through trial,

it can be the thing that we need in those moments to push us along.

The example of people like this tend to boost our own resolve to continue.

But what happens?

Where do we find help when the temptation to quit is a spiritual temptation?

When circumstances are so difficult that the impulse is not to abandon an earthly relationship so much,

it's not to quit on our workouts.

The temptation is actually to abandon our faith,

to abandon our trust in God,

to abandon our confidence in the Bible.

Where do we go to?

Where do we find help in those moments?

John Stephen Hawkeye doesn't help us with that.

So how do we get help?

I think Psalm 11 gives us the answers that we need for those questions.

The song, it speaks of a group of counselors

who advise David to essentially find his refuge in something other than the Lord.

And at the heart of their counsel is this question that they submit in verse 3.

They say, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

David, what more can you do?

Nothing's working.

This following God's heart thing, this is not working anymore.

We've got to do something different now.

The wicked had grown so strong that David's advisors believed his best course of action at this point

was to abandon his faith and abdicate his responsibility as Israel's king,

especially their spiritual leader.

And fortunately for us, David refused to heed their counsel.

But he doesn't use the psalm to turn our attention to himself.

He doesn't want the reader or the hearer of this to persevere by looking at his example.

Instead, what does he do in the second part of the psalm?

He turns our attention to God's unchanging character, to God's unfailing promises.

And he explained how the Lord is the source of his resolve.

And he wrote it all in this song so that God's people will sing it and meditate on it

when they too are tempted to doubt God and his promises and to turn away from faith in him and his word.

There's two main sections to the psalm that we want to deal with.

First, we want to look at the temptation to quit in verses 1 through 3.

And then we'll move on to David's resolve to continue in verses 4 through 7.

But first, the temptation to quit.

Look with me again at verses 1 through 3.

In the Lord I take refuge.

How can you say to my soul?

And here's what the advisors were saying.

Here's the quote.

David, flee like a bird to your mountain.

Run and hide.

For behold, the wicked, they bend the bow.

They've fitted their arrow to the stream to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart.

And if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

So David's counselors, they present two circumstances here.

First, they say the wicked had grown strong in their war against the righteous.

Having prepared their weapons, they took direct aim at the king.

And anyone who was following after his pattern of uprightness and of faithfulness to the Lord.

And to make matters worse, the enemy was firing from the shadows.

Making it difficult to see when the attacks were coming.

Now there could be a very physical component to this and what's happening in David's life.

I think probably we're meant to see this as spiritual imagery though.

Sometimes you don't know where the attack is coming from.

Sometimes it's from the least expected places that you begin to be confronted and challenged in your faithfulness to the Lord.

So that's the first thing they say.

They say the wicked has grown strong.

They have readied their bow.

They're shooting from the shadows.

But then they say there's a second problem here.

And that is that the moral fabric of society had degraded to the point that any effort to right the ship seems hopeless.

That's what they say in verse 3.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

So David's counselors declared there's nothing more that the righteous can do.

And in the interest of self-preservation, they urged David to flee like a bird to the mountains.

To run and hide.

To find refuge in some other place than what he has up to this point.

That's the essence of the temptation David was facing in Psalm 11.

And it's not unlike our own situation.

Faithful Christians have no lack for enemies who are prepared to fire their arrows to deal a deadly blow to the influence of our convictions.

Some places the war is not even a battle of ideas.

It's a literal attempt to destroy the lives of those who follow God and his word.

Martyrdom is not a thing of the past.

It's as common and prevalent today as it's ever been.

It's just not something we deal with in our direct context quite so often.

You know, I'm thankful for ministries like Voice of the Martyrs that keep in front of us the reality of the persecuted church around the world.

In our world and in our context, this is often a battle of ideas.

But for many people and many Christians around the world, it is much more than that.

It's much more significant than that.

It's also true that the moral decline of our society shows no signs of reversing itself anytime soon, does it?

The foundations have been obliterated.

It doesn't seem like there's anything that we can do about it anymore.

Even the so-called conservatives have proven that they're not actually very righteous.

That whatever so-called moral ground they stand on is as faulty as anyone else is.

So when you know the wicked are anticipating your fall and working towards it,

and that there's no longer an effective influence of righteousness on society,

what is the temptation that we face?

Is it not to step back and to think, well, maybe we're the ones that's wrong?

Maybe we can't trust the Bible.

Maybe God has abandoned us at this point.

Maybe we need to just give up and give in.

I think that's generally the context of what's happening here in Psalm 11.

Other than running away, flee like a bird to your mountain.

It doesn't tell us a whole lot about what the practical actions were that David's counselors wanted him to take, does it?

It's poetic language, isn't it?

So we don't know exactly what was happening and what they intended for him to do.

But it's David's opening affirmation in verse 1 that sets the context of the advice.

Notice what he says.

He makes an affirmation from the very beginning.

In the Lord I take refuge, he declares.

Whatever he was being urged to do, David understood it was fundamentally an abandonment of the Lord as his refuge and strength.

The advice meant that he would have to doubt God's character and promises, ultimately finding shelter in some other place or some other person.

If you study through the Old Testament, particularly the narratives in the Kings and Chronicles books,

you'll find that this was a common occurrence, even as you read in the prophets,

that there would be times that Israel's kings, they would be overwhelmed.

And rather than trust the Lord and to trust the promises of God, they would go outside of Israel to try to find their help.

They would take comfort and shelter in Egypt.

Or they would take comfort and shelter in the Assyrians.

Or whatever it was, whoever it was that might come to their aid in those moments.

And oftentimes the judgment that they faced was because of that.

Their judgment was a correction, a punishment from God because they did not trust him and rely on him in those moments.

Perhaps that's something similar to the temptation that David has faced here.

Whatever it was, at the heart of it is the idea that it would force him to take refuge in something other than the Lord.

So the issue at hand here is not what actions should be taken when we're in a similar situation as David.

That's not really the issue.

The issue is what's at the heart of those actions.

Are we acting in trust and in faith?

Believing God?

Trusting him?

Or are our actions a reflection of an abandonment of trust in the Lord and his promises?

Your life choice is grounded in faith.

Or do you tend to take matters into your own hands?

Decidedly abandoning the Lord as your true refuge and strength.

This truth is so important for us to grasp.

Because the right response to difficulties will vary from situation to situation.

Let's say that what David's dealing with here is physical.

Well, we know that there were times in David's life where a retreat was the right thing to do.

He did it with Saul.

He did it with Absalom.

He did it in other situations.

There were some times where the right thing for David to do was to actually run and to get out of Dodge and to get out of the way.

And he was trusting God to preserve him in that.

But if that's the case here, he's determined that to take that action now would be to abandon my faith.

It would be to abandon trust in the Lord and what he's commanded me to do as Israel's king.

It may not have been physical.

It may have been something else.

That's irrelevant.

What matters is that whatever it was he was being tempted to do would have worked against what God had told him to do.

There's times when the right thing to do is speak up.

There's times when the right thing to do is to be silent.

There's times when the right thing to do is to be present.

Other times it's best to be absent.

But any action that results from abandoning our hope and trust in God will inevitably produce far greater consequences than those posed by the original threat.

That was a hard lesson that Israel learned over and over and over.

And let's be honest.

It's one that we haven't really very faithfully learned ourselves.

Loved ones, if we are going to be faithful Christians, we've got to learn to filter our lives through this lens.

All of our life.

Is any action you're considering right now or any belief that you are adopting or about to espouse,

is it fundamentally an abandonment of the Lord and his promises?

Have you weighed your counsel against the scripture to determine if you're engaging in sin with your actions and perspectives?

All of our thoughts and deeds must be grounded in this opening affirmation.

The Lord is my refuge.

He is the one I will trust.

But let's look a little closer at the counsel itself.

In the Psalms, the wicked refers to men and women who set themselves and their whole direction of life against God.

It's a designation that we should interpret in light of the introductory Psalms of Psalm 1 and 2 that we studied several weeks ago.

There, the wicked set themselves against the Lord, and they are ultimately judged by the Lord, right?

We can't forget Psalms 1 and 2.

They are the gateway into the Psalter.

We interpret the Psalms through the introduction that we are given in Psalms 1 and 2.

And that's what we're presented with there.

There are these two groups.

There is the wicked, who is represented as those whose direction of life is really set against God and His Word.

And they take their aim at the upright in heart.

The righteous.

Those whose direction and determination is to, according to Psalm 1 and 2,

delight in the law of the Lord and to meditate on it day and night.

So we have two categories.

The Bible often does this.

It gives us really two categories of people or two categories of destinations,

two roads to walk, two gates to enter in.

This happens a lot in the Scriptures.

So the Psalms are really dealing with these giant categories.

Here is the wicked who generally their lives, not everything that they do is evil.

That's not what that means.

But it means that generally their perspective, their life, their direction of life and of thought and of heart

is set against God and His Word.

Rather, they are walking in their own way.

Choosing to live life their way rather than according to God's plan.

And then there's this second category of the righteous or the upright.

Those who are determined to delight in the law of the Lord.

Not to spurn it, to delight in it, to meditate on it day and night.

To be like Jesus who is that tree planted by the rivers of water whose leaf does not wither.

Those are the categories here.

In Psalm 11, the wicked have grown powerful so that the foundations are nearly destroyed.

But what does he mean by foundations?

What is that really about?

This is where I think Christopher Ashe has a great little paragraph that summarizes it better than what I could.

And here's what he says.

When Bible poetry speaks of the foundations, it means the moral foundations of society.

What theologians sometimes call creation order.

It's the pillars upon which the moral order of the world rests.

The bulwarks protecting mankind from chaos, evil, disorder, and death.

These foundations are summed up in the Ten Commandments.

And all around David, these good commandments, the law that's celebrated in Psalm 1, are being trashed.

In his attempt to be God's king, David feels like a man trying to shore up a collapsing building in the midst of an earthquake.

Isn't that helpful?

What does David mean by the foundations or his counselors mean by the foundations being destroyed?

They're looking at the world around them.

They're looking at their society around them and they're saying,

This all has fallen apart.

This whole way of life and way of thinking and worldview that we've been trying to cling to and build up,

it's all falling apart, David.

What can you do now?

What can you do but either run from faithfulness, just abandon this whole idea,

or maintain it and die from the arrows that are readied by the wicked who are against us?

It's a demoralizing feeling, isn't it?

It's a demoralizing feeling of hopelessness that's presented here by David's counselors.

And again, it's not unfamiliar to us.

The moral foundations of our society, those essential ordinances instituted by God at creation and expanded on in God's law,

they continue to erode.

And remaining faithful to the Lord is going to set you squarely in the crosshairs of those whose God is moral progressivism or expressive individualism,

what they call progress.

It's not hard to see it.

Everything God instituted at creation is attacked.

And it has been.

It continues to be.

We're redefining marriage to accommodate perversion.

We've seen God-given roles for men and women reversed.

We're even now bringing into question the very truth of gender.

What is that?

The foundations are eroding.

The morality of our society is falling apart.

It has been.

There's a continued diminishing of the value of human life.

If you like politics, and to be honest with you, I don't like them.

I follow them because I feel like I need to follow them.

Because I know how to engage in an intellectual conversation with somebody.

But let's be honest.

There is not a political platform that exists in the United States now that is truly righteous and moral.

There's not one.

There's not one.

Even the conservative platform has capitulated to abortion.

No longer is the right to life really that important.

Is the institution of marriage and the family and the protection of it really that important?

It's been removed.

There's evident corruption everywhere we look.

Every sphere of society has it.

It's in government.

It's in schools.

It's in churches.

It's in churches.

It's in our homes.

It's everywhere.

As a society, we tend to call what's evil good and what's good evil.

Church, we see this all the time.

Look around.

David's counselors saw this.

It may not have been the same situation.

It certainly wasn't the same exact thing that we face now.

But whatever they understood to be those moral foundations were eroding.

And they looked around and they look at David and they say, this is hopeless.

Why are we continuing in this?

We are the ones who are on the outside now.

What can we actually do anymore but run?

Give up.

Give up on this, David.

Fearing the shots of the wicked.

The shots of the wicked, fretting over the degradation of righteousness will inevitably lead to being tempted to question God's commands.

is he really right maybe the society's right it'll lead us to doubt his promises

will he really judge because it doesn't seem like he's doing it right now

it'll tempt us to abandon the faith

David's counselors asked what can the righteous do well let me tell you what the righteous must not do

don't give in

don't give up

do as David did

return to the scriptures

return to prayer

let the Lord renew your hope in his goodness and in his promises

this is the resolve that David maintained and he explains the source of his resolve

in the second part of the psalm let's move on to that resolve to continue look at verse four

the Lord is in his holy temple this is David's response to that council the Lord's in his holy

temple the Lord's throne is in heaven his eyes see his eyelids test the children of man the Lord

tests the righteous but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence let him rain coals

on the wicked fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup for the Lord is

righteous he loves righteous deeds and the upright shall behold his face the upright shall behold his face

David's explanation for continuing to trust the Lord is basically this God has not changed so I will not run

the Lord is not abdicated his throne so I will not question his sovereign rule

he is righteous in all that he does so I will not doubt his future judgment

the Lord's promises are faithful and true and I know I will enjoy his presence in the end

all of David's hope here all of it it rested on God's unchanging character and his unfailing promises

let's consider three affirmations that he communicates here first the Lord is on his throne

the Lord's on his throne verse four the Lord is in his holy temple the Lord's throne is in heaven

his eyes see his eyelids test the children of man in Psalm 10 we noted that there is an attitude that marks

the wicked and the attitude is either a denial of God's existence or a claim that he does not see

and will not judge you can go back and read Psalm 10 you can go forward to Psalm 73 and you'll see the

same idea presented there that there is this attitude that marks the wicked that's being characterized here

and that is they just kind of either ignore God's existence or they are complacent towards it or they say

he's not really active in anything that we're doing and what often produces that attitude is the apparent

success of those who follow their own way as opposed to following God's way if you go back and read Psalm 10

you'll see it they were successful in doing things their way they had gained wealth and influence and power

all the things that they craved and that led them to think well either God's not there there is no God

or you don't see he's checked out and it's just up to we can do what we want that's the judgment that's

what marks them David knows better than that he says the opposite he says God is in his holy temple

that's not a reference to the temple in Jerusalem that didn't even exist when David wrote this Psalm it

wasn't there he's not talking about that he's talking about God's cosmic temple

it's further clarified in the second line where God is said to be seated in the heavens

it's again a poetic picture God is in the place of rule sovereign rule over all of his creation

he sees he knows he hears he's aware he's working what David means to say is

that the Lord remains on his throne observing and ruling over creation and this truth contributed

to his resolve he could persevere through these moments not because he had the gumption to do so

he persevered through those moments because he truly believed God is there and he's active and I may not

see exactly what he's doing or understand everything that he's doing but I know he's there and I trust him

that's what gave him the resolve to continue

temptation to doubt the Lord it often follows the observation of the wicked success isn't it

because we can't understand why a holy God allows evil to succeed it's easy to question if we've placed

our faith and hope in the wrong place

we look at the suffering the evil around us and it makes us question doesn't it we're tempted to say

well maybe we've got this wrong how can how can God be loving how can he be good and all of these other

things be true too

you don't understand but God's delays

they prove neither his absence nor his idleness

we may not always understand his plan in fact most of the time we don't

but the faithful know and believe that he reigns

that he sees our works that he knows our thoughts

and that he will act according to his sovereign divine and perfect plan

and affirming that God remains seated on his throne produces the resolve we need

to continue when the situation is grim

but that brings us to a different question

how can we be so certain of this

how could David be so certain

how can we how can we really know that God is good if he is there

how do we make sense of what we see

is our faith blind

is Christianity a blind faith

an unsubstantiated faith

no I don't think it is

of course

that doesn't mean that we have every answer to every question

as one may ask

we don't claim that

but we're not without reason

for one

for all the evil that we see around the world

that suggests God's absence or at least his apathy

there is a multitude of good

that can only be attributed to his presence

we tend to ignore that part in this conversation

we focus on the wrong and on the suffering and on the evil

and we don't want to acknowledge the good

that can only come from the hand of a God

who is loving and engaged and good

but it's there

also God's revelation in the scriptures

it affirms again and again

that he is always working out his righteous plans

not only by what he states he will do

but what he has proven in history

that he has done

in fulfilling those promises

he's proved that he's there and that he's active

David knew that

he experienced it firsthand

but nothing gives us more confidence

than this

the resurrection

of Jesus Christ from the dead

the resurrection

it changes everything

it changes the whole conversation

it proves that God has a distinct

saving purpose

in all that he does

it shows that he has

made a way for the wicked

a category to which we all belong by nature

that he has made a way

for the wicked to be forgiven

and to actually be transformed away from their wickedness

to display the glory of God

for which they were created to display

it affirms that Christ is indeed ruling and reigning

until every enemy has been defeated

and all of his elect has been redeemed

ours is not an empty faith

it's actually quite a robust faith

built on the incarnate word of God

Jesus Christ

the sinless son

and on the inscripturated word of God

the fact that

our God is a God

who has spoken

and he has revealed himself

in the pages of scripture

that is where our hope rests

it's not an epiphany

it's not in dreams

it is in substantiated reason

David says

because of this

the Lord is my refuge

and I will keep going

so the next time you're tempted

to give up and give in

consider the good that you see

go back to the scriptures

study them

but most importantly

look to the cross

in the empty tomb

it must mean something

it means much

the Lord is on his throne

the second affirmation here

is that

the Lord will judge the wicked

he will judge them

it's coming

look at verse 5

the Lord tests the righteous

but his soul

hates

the wicked

and the one who loves violence

let him rain coals on the wicked

fire and sulfur

and a scorching wind

shall be the portion of their cup

because David believes

that God remains on his throne

he also affirms

that God will eventually

bring his judgment

he doesn't do that

according to our timeline

and to our wishes

we aren't God

and he's not our pet

he's our God

we submit to his ways

to his plan

and what he has affirmed

is that judgment will come

and clearly the Psalms

are meant to assure our hearts

of this future judgment

a future judgment

which the wicked will be destroyed

and the righteous will be vindicated

it's one of the primary themes

that we've seen

again and again

in these first 11 Psalms

and we're going to continue to see it

in book 1 of the Psalter

over and over

it's repeated

that God's judgment is coming

even though in the present moment

it doesn't seem like it is

in this Psalm

David alludes to

God's judgment

of Sodom and Gomorrah

that's I think

the reference

that he's pointing us back to

in verse 6

let God rain coals

on the wicked

fire and sulfur

and scorching wind

shall be the portion

of their cup

the scriptures

they routinely refer

to that story

to emphasize

the future judgment

of the wicked

Jesus does it

in Luke 17

Peter does it

in 2 Peter chapter 2

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

in both places

they refer back

to Sodom and Gomorrah

to encourage those

in the present moment

who are wondering

if God is actually

present and active

in order that

they may set their eyes

on a future judgment

that's coming

so the scriptures

routinely

they go back to this

and I think David's

doing it again

here

so that his resolve

to continue trusting God

rested on the fact

that God will eventually

judge all who continue

in sin and unbelief

and he has proven

that he will do that

in other moments

so that we can trust

that those things

are pointing forward

to a greater judgment

for all

just because that judgment

isn't seen now

doesn't mean it isn't coming

it is coming

that's a reality

that should drive

unbelievers

to repent

while there's time

to do so

but it should encourage

believers

to remain faithful

when we begin

to doubt

and to question

as David was tempted

to do

so the Lord's

on his throne

and then he says

the Lord will indeed

judge the wicked

but then the third thing

is that really a promise

the Lord will bless

the righteous

he will bless us

verse 7

for the Lord

is righteous

he loves

righteous deeds

the upright

shall behold

his face

that's more

than an affirmation

he's clinging

to a promise

here

a future hope

that for David

was as certain

as the judgment

of the wicked

why should you

reject the temptation

to quit

and faithfully

continue instead

because God

is righteous

because he loves

those who follow

his righteousness

by faith

and because

all who do

will quote

behold

his face

can we think

about this

as a motivation

on David's part

anybody

can be

motivated

to desire

refuge

from God

that's what we see

in verse 1

in the Lord

I take refuge

that means

that things

are hard

and difficult

I need help

and if God's

willing to give me

that help

I'll receive it

from him

anybody can do that

this is different

this motivation

at the end

in verse 7

is not like that

this is a desire

it creates a desire

on the part

of the believer

to want to see

God's face

that is not

motivated

by a desire

for protection

that is produced

by a love

for a God

that you know

and believe

it's intimate

David says

the righteous

will behold

his face

and what he's

saying is

I want to

behold the face

of God

and God

has promised

that those

who continue

in faith

will see

his face

they will be

with him

and he

will be

with them

as certain

as God's

judgment

against the

wicked

is his

eternal

blessing

of the

faithful

and while

the wicked

will suffer

in conscious

punishment

apart from

God

those who

repent

and believe

will enjoy

the presence

of God

for all

eternity

if you know

Christ

this is your

hope

it's your

certainty

is that

not helpful

is that

not an

encouragement

in the

midst

of a

difficult

life

when the

foundations

are eroding

and the

wicked

have aimed

their arrows

this hope

of eternal

life

it produces

a resolve

to stay

faithful now

because of

what we

anticipate

will be

our future

but again

that produces

a different

kind of

question

for us

though

doesn't

it

if all

of us

are by

nature

sinners

set in

rebellion

toward

God

how can

anyone

be

considered

upright

enough

to behold

his face

doesn't that seem

to be what

David says

at the end

of the verse

the upright

shall behold

his face

does David

mean to say

that those

whose good

outweighs

their bad

will ultimately

be accepted

by God

no that's

not at all

what he means

to say

the scriptures

make it clear

that all of

our righteousness

all of our

righteous deeds

are like

polluted garments

that's what

Isaiah says

it's graphic

he says

even the best

that we can

offer

is not good

enough

essentially

is what

Isaiah is

saying

in Romans

we read

that by

works of

the law

no human

being will

be justified

in his

sight

so what

hope can

we possibly

have

that we

will behold

his face

or

are the

Roman

Catholics

right in

this

that you

can't

really

know

for certain

that you

can do

your best

and you

can just

hope that

you build

up enough

righteousness

that you'll

be able

to escape

this

kind of

intermediate

state

in purgatory

and enjoy

the presence

of God

instead

but there's

no way

for you

to really

know

now

are they

right

about

that

can we

really

not

know

no of

course

not

we have

a hope

that is

far more

certain

and secure

than any

hope of

righteous

deeds

that we

might

compile

now

you can

commit

your whole

life to

goodness

and get

to the

end of

it

and look

at your

big pile

of good

works

and you'll

still have

doubt

I wonder

if it's

enough

I hope

it's

enough

I'll cross

my fingers

oh we

have a

hope

that's

far

more

certain

than that

far

more

our

one

and only

hope

is the

death

and

resurrection

of

Jesus

Christ

he

is

the

sinless

son

of

God

he

bore

God's

wrath

against

our

sins

he

died

in our

place

so that

God

the

father

would

see

us

forever

more

not

for

our

righteousness

but

with

Christ

perfect

righteousness

by

raising

him

from

the

dead

God

showed

that

Jesus

is

death

was

enough

so that

our

sins

would

be

forgiven

and that

we

could

have

eternal

life

in

his

name

we

talked

about

this

with

Carmen

Carmen

and

Julie

and

I

sat

for

an

hour

or so

yesterday

just

thinking

about

this

idea

the

idea

that

what

Christ

has

done

is

enough

it's

sufficient

you

need

add

nothing

to

it

in

fact

if

you

try

to

add

something

to

it

it

means

that

you

don't

have

the

faith

that

you

need

to

receive

Christ

to

come

to

Christ

is

to

trust

that

you

can't

possibly

do

enough

it's

to

trust

that

he

has

done

enough

that

he's

taken

your

place

and

to

turn

from

all

of

those

other

pursuits

and

to

trust

him

by

faith

and

to

believe

that

what

he

has

done

truly

is

enough

and

he

invites

us

to

receive

it

this

salvation

he

invites

you

he

says

come

to

me

all

of

you

who

labor

and

are

heavy

laden

he's

talking

to

a

group

of

people

who's

doing

their

best

and

trying

their

hardest

to

pile

up

all

the

good

stuff

and

hopes

that

it

will

get

them

there

and

he

says

this

is

a

burden

to

you

you

have

that

burden

he

says

come

to

me

I

will

give

you

rest

you'll

find

rest

for

your

soul

he

says

why

because

he's

done

what

you

cannot

do

he

fulfilled

the

law

never

violated

it

even

once

and

when

God

raised

him

from

the

dead

it

proved

it

was

God's

way

but

then

it's

also

God's

way

of

saying

to

us

my

son

has

power

over

death

and

life

and

he

has

authority

to

freely

give

it

to

all

who

come

to

him

for

it

that's

the

gospel

message

David

doesn't

have

all

those

pieces

at

the

time

that

he

lived

he's

living

in

an

old

covenant

time

he

doesn't

know

Christ

yet

he

has

the

promises

!

he's

clinging

to

the

promises

but

we

have

a

much

greater

advantage

than

David

and

we

have

no

possible

excuse

because

of

what

Christ

has

done

every

single

person

who

does

this

will

be

considered

upright

not

because

they

truly

are

but

because

Christ

is

and

they

will

all

behold

the

face

of

God

in

heaven

for

all

of

eternity

this

is

a

certain

promise

for

those

who

believe

and

it

will

produce

that

kind

of

faith

that

will

never

quit

John

Stephen

Ackwary

his

story

is

inspirational

we

should

reflect

on

things

like

that

it

will

help

us

those

things

do

good

for

us

we

should

pay

attention

to

them

but

you know

when

John

Stephen

Ackwary

finished

the

race

you know

what

he

got

nothing

he had

a sore

knee

and a

hurt

shoulder

sure

he's an

Olympic

legend

you know

I bet

if he

had an

opportunity

he would

have

loved

to have

had

that

gold

medal

though

he

finished

his

race

but

he

got

nothing

for

it

that

is

not

at

all

how

the

Christian

life

works

listen

to

Paul's

words

in

2nd

Timothy

chapter

4

I

have

fought

the

good

fight

I

finished

the

race

I

kept

the

faith

hence

forth

there

is

laid

up

for

me

a

crown

of

righteousness

which

the

Lord

the

righteous

judge

that

David

speaks

directly

of

from

this

psalm

will

award

to

me

on

that

day

on

what

day

on

the

day

that

he

stands

before

the

Lord

in

judgment

but

he

doesn't

finish

there

notice

the

next

phrase

not

only

to

me

but

also

to

all

who

have

loved

his

appearing

look

this

whole

issue

of

facing

situations

and

temptations

to

doubt

and to

quit

and to

question

whether

or not

this

is

all

worth

it

that's

going

to

happen

a lot

you

know

it

is

some

of

you

can

testify

to

that

greater

than

I

can

don't

quit

Paul

tells us

here

there

there's

there's

too much

waiting

for you

to

quit

don't

give

up

on

it

only

those

who

persevere

to

the

end

will

receive

the

crown

and

God

is

good

to

give

it

his

promise

is

true

it's

sure

don't

doubt

it

anymore

what

else

must

he

do

to

convince

you

this

resolve

it's

only

going

to

come

through

trusting

God's

unchanging

character

in his

unfailing

word

what

can

the

righteous

do

they

can

go on

being

righteous

they

can

go on

standing

against

the

evils

of

society

doing

whatever

we

can

to

help

and

they

can

take

refuge

in

the

promises

of

God

that

are

fulfilled

and

made

perfect

in

the

person

and

work

of

Jesus

Christ

that's

what

the

righteous

can

do

and

that's

what

the

righteous

will

do