"God Sees" Psalm 53 Sunday Morning Worship Service

But this morning our text is Psalm 53.

Let's begin our worship this morning by reading from God's Word in Psalm 53.

I'm going to read the entire Psalm beginning with the title.

So if you will look down at your Bibles, Psalm 53, beginning with the title.

God's Word says this.

To the choir master, according to Mahalat, a maskil of David, the fool says in his heart, There is no God.

They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity.

There is no one who does good.

God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all fallen away.

Together they have become corrupt.

There is no one who does good, not even one.

Have those who work evil no knowledge, who eat up my people, as they ate bread and do not call upon God?

There they are in great terror, where there's no terror.

For God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you, and you put to shame, for God has rejected them.

Oh that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when God restores the fortune of his people.

Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.

This is the word of God.

Perhaps one of the more contentious categories of songwriting in the modern world is the remix.

Because after all, is a remix song even art?

And because I share it in an office with our church artists, I have been informed I'm not actually in the category of person to judge art.

Stay in your lane, Ryan.

But as we read Psalm 53, I think a number of you, especially if you've been reading the Psalter, would recognize I've read this song before, and indeed you have, for Psalm 14 is an identical psalm.

And so I find here in Psalm 53 vindication for the remix genre.

This is, if we could, you know, if you'll permit me a bit of corniness this morning, this is a divinely inspired remix.

Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 go together.

They sing the same song, but they sing the same song in different life contexts.

As we've walked through some of the Psalms from the second book of the Psalter over the last few weeks, we've seen that the Psalms individually can stand on their own two feet and minister to you in your life.

But you can also take a broader view of the Psalter and see that the meaning of each Psalm is enhanced when you understand it in relationship to those around it.

And I think we can do that with Psalm 14 and Psalm 53.

So if you think about these two Psalms, let's examine them for a moment.

If you read Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, you'll find they're identical, save for a couple word changes.

But there is one verse where there's a radical change that kind of reorients the nature of the Psalm.

I don't want to look at that verse with you for a moment as we begin to think about Psalm 53.

Here's the key verse in Psalm 14, verse 5 and 6, that reads, They are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.

Psalms 14:5

You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge.

And there's just a couple features to note here.

One, notice the usage of the word Lord in all capitals.

That's Yahweh, the covenant name of God.

It seems that this is an intra-Israel verse.

There are wicked people within the covenant people of God who seek to harm the poor and afflict them.

And this psalm offers hope to the faithful within the people of God, that God sees you and God will vindicate you.

Notice that the you, the second person addressed in this Psalm, is to the wicked.

You plan shame for the poor, but the Lord is the refuge for the poor among his people.

But when you get to Psalm 53, there's a different orientation to the Psalm.

The same verse reads like this There they are in great terror, where there is no terror, for God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you.

You put them to shame, for God has rejected them.

Here the orientation isn't trouble within the people of God, it's trouble coming from without the people of God.

Notice the covenant name of God isn't used, but rather the general term for God in Hebrew Elohim is used to speak of God's sovereignty over all the nations.

And God here is promising to his covenant people, I see there are people outside who would afflict you.

I see them and I will vindicate you.

Notice the second person addressed in this psalm is to the people of God.

Put your trust in God, for God sees, and God will judge, and God will vindicate you.

Together, these two psalms give us a kind of full-orbed way of dealing with sin in the world.

In Psalm 14, if you think of the immediate context in the Psalter, it comes between a couple of very important Psalms.

Psalm 13 is a lament, one of the first laments in the Psalter, where David cries out that he's experiencing affliction even though he's the king of the covenant people.

Psalm 14 then offers hope that God sees the evil even within the people of God and he will right every wrong.

So that gives way to Psalm 15, that famous Psalm that says, Who shall dwell in God's holy tent?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart.

The understanding that God sees and will vindicate me leads to a resolve that I will be faithful to God's covenant and I will faithfully follow him in this world.

Psalm 53, then comes in a different context.

It comes just after a lament.

Psalm 51 is a lament, but it's a lament not over evil that's done to me, but evil within me.

Psalm 51 is David's confession of his sin.

And a person in the position of having confessed his sin before God then can look evil in the face, as he does in Psalm 52, and say, I know God sees this and God will vindicate it.

God will vindicate me.

Even Psalm 53 builds on that and says, There are great evils.

The whole world is characterized by evil, but God sees and will vindicate.

And so Psalm 54 issues out this cry in Psalm 54, God, save me by your name and vindicate me by your might.

Oh God, hear my prayer, give ear to the words of my mouth.

Having reassured himself that God is still sovereign, and I'm in right relationship with him, having confessed my sins to him, I hope in him that he will see the evil in the world and right every wrong.

So I think a way that we could view Psalm 53 is something like this.

Psalm 53 is a Psalm that teaches you how to live in a sinful world.

The entire world is characterized by sinfulness, both within you and without you, in your relationships, in your community, in the states, in the nations.

This is a sinful world that you live in.

And Psalm 53 gives you ballast for your life to enable you to navigate the difficulties that you encounter in broken relationships and unmet expectations and wrongs that are done.

How are you supposed to live in this sinful world in a way that glorifies God?

By remembering who your God is.

Psalm 53 teaches us three truths about God that give us ballast to navigate a sinful world.

God sees you, God will judge, and God will deliver.

Let's just walk through those three truths about God as we look at Psalm 53 this morning.

The first truth is in Psalm 53, verses 1 through 3, that God sees.

Psalms 53:1–3

Look down at your text at verse 1.

We read, the fool says in his heart, there is no God.

And let's part the car just for a moment and remind ourselves in Scripture who is the fool?

What does this word mean?

And we remember that the word fool doesn't just have an intellectual connotation.

Just as the word wise isn't merely an intellectual thing.

The word wise is defined for us even in this text.

You look down at verse 2.

God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand.

And your footnote, or maybe even your translation, says, God looks to see if there are any who are wise.

That's the word in Hebrew.

Are there any wise people here?

And who are wise people?

The next phrase defines wisdom.

Those who seek after God.

Wisdom and foolishness in Scripture are moral categories.

They're oriented around the end of human existence.

In other words, being wise or foolish isn't just a matter of how high your IQ is.

Being wise or foolish is a matter of what direction your life is oriented.

It's telic, it's goal-oriented.

Wisdom or foolishness is oriented around this question: what is the purpose of my life?

What am I here for?

You see this everywhere in Scripture.

I just want to point out a couple texts.

In Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 29, Moses says, if they were wise, they would understand this.

Deuteronomy 32:29

They would discern their latter end.

So wisdom is oriented around what is the goal?

What's the purpose?

What am I here for?

And the purpose of human life, according to scripture, is what?

Well, if you ask your kids, what's the chief end of man?

What are people for?

The scripture gives us a resounding answer.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That's the goal of human existence, is to know God, to enjoy God, to be satiated in God, and to bring other people to know God and to enjoy God in community with others who enjoy him.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And wisdom is a life that is oriented towards that end.

So I often will explain to our teenagers this little illustration to help them understand wisdom.

You could think of your life as a car, and if your life is a car, the engine in your car is your intellect.

You might have a very big engine in your car and so be able to drive your car really fast.

So you can have great intellect or great skills, all kinds of abilities in this life, and so be able to drive your car really fast.

But what ultimately is going to matter in your life is not how big or small your engine is, not how skilled and gifted you are, but what road you drive it on.

Because it doesn't really matter if you drive really fast and drive off a cliff, then you just die sooner.

What matters is what path you drive on.

The path is wisdom.

A wise person is one who understands the path that will lead to their flourishing, that will lead to joy and satisfaction and peace and meaningfulness.

A wise person is one who orients his mind and his thoughts and his desires and his ambitions and his actions around the goal that God created you for: knowing him and enjoying him forever.

So a wise person is one who orients his life around knowing God and helping others to know and enjoy God.

Now the wise person has a good end to look forward to.

Daniel chapter 12, I think, well summarizes the end that the wise person's life is oriented towards.

Daniel 12 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 12, we read, Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel 12 · chapter mention

And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever.

That is the outcome of the one who is wise.

Their life is oriented towards God, and their outcome is enjoying God for ever and ever.

So Psalm 53 begins with addressing the person who is the opposite of that.

The person who is a fool is the person who is disconnected from the purpose for which they were made.

They are not living for God and for his glory.

In fact, the scripture says a number of things to flesh out our understanding of what a fool is.

A fool is someone who ends up cursing God, Job 2.10, who would even revile God's name, Psalm 74, verse 18.

Psalms 74:18

Now the foolish can be counted noble in this world, Isaiah 32, 5, but because they are loosed from relationship with God, their end is destruction, and in the meantime they do things that in God's sight are abominable.

Look at the end of verse 1.

The fool says in his heart, There's no God, they are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity.

There is no one who does good.

That word corrupt is the same word that could be translated corruption of a corpse.

It's the same word that gets used for a grave.

And the word abominable is the verbal form of this word that you get that sounds just harsh in our modern American ears of an abomination.

Those who are disconnected from God, fools who are not living on the path oriented towards knowing and enjoying God, the way they end up living their life is characterized by rotting corpses and things that are abominable in God's eyes.

Because the goal of human life is to know God, and anything outside of that ends up just being folly.

Look at verse 1.

What does the fool say?

The fool, verse 1, says in his heart, there is no God.

Now I have listened to I don't know how many sermons on Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, and there's a thread that I imagine a number of you have heard before.

There is an acknowledgement that the words there and is are not in the original Hebrew.

If you're reading from the King James, as some of you are, there is is in italics, which indicates it's added for smooth English.

And I've heard that, but I don't think it's correct.

In fact, I know it's not correct.

It's a little bit leads us astray, I think.

Do you know what this verse says in Hebrew?

Amar Naval Balibo Ein Elohim.

Do you know what that means?

The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

Your English translation is perfect.

What matters is what does that mean?

This is what it means.

The fool in his heart says there's no God.

Now, is that philosophical atheism?

And every modern commentator wants to say, no, it's not philosophical atheism.

Nobody in the ancient world was a philosophical atheist.

Alright, fine.

There was, but even that, I'm a little skeptical of because I understand the skeptics.

What is the fool saying?

He is saying, there's no God.

You know what that means?

The fool is saying there's no God.

But the scriptures add, he says in his heart there is no God.

In other words, what the scripture is focusing on is this denial of God as it ends up being localized in his heart.

A fool may well say there's no God, but the scripture is saying that doesn't make external reality.

Only God's words make external reality.

If you say there's no God, that'll be localized to your heart and you will live as though there's no God, but it won't make it real outside of you.

Any more than if you close the blinds and say there's no sun, maybe you live in darkness, but the sun is still there.

That's what the scripture is telling us.

That's the way we live life, when we close God out and say there's no God.

We're living in darkness, but it's delusional because God really is there.

Now we do this in all kinds of different ways, of course.

But I think there's an interesting question to ask.

And if we say the fool says in his heart, there's no God, well, is that contradictory to some other propositions we find in Scripture?

For example, when you read Romans 1, and Paul indeed is the one who quotes from Psalm 14 and 53, so Paul's aware of these texts, but in Romans chapter 1 and verse 21, he says, Everyone has a knowledge of God because God's made it evident in the natural created world and in the law that he's written on our hearts, on our conscience.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

So everybody has natural knowledge that there is a God.

So does that contradict what this text says?

That the fool says in his heart there is no God.

Certainly not.

Paul himself is the one who unravels that apparent tension in verse 18 of Romans chapter 1, where he says that the unrighteous person suppresses the truth about God in their unrighteousness.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And the word he uses for suppress is an interesting word.

It's a word you might use if you have a dog, maybe when you open the door, you grab hold of him and you shove him back in the closet.

Stay in the house, dog.

There's truth about God that we just implicitly know as human beings in God's image.

But that truth, as it sits on the table and stares us in the faith, has implications for our life.

And we don't like those implications.

And so we grab hold of it and we wrestle it down and we shove it somewhere hidden, we suppress it so that we can live as though there were no God.

Like the person who doesn't want to get up in the morning, shuts the blinds, and says, There is no sun.

Has he erased the sun?

No, but he has erased it insofar as he can is concerned, so that he can continue sleeping.

But every so often something will happen in your life where the blinds get rustled a little bit and a little bit of sunlight cracks through.

And you see this in the life of even the people that you may know, and maybe some of you were them, certainly some of you were, who used to be people characterized by this assertion that there is no God, and yet there are times when light breaks through.

I've known people who at a funeral, when a person that they love is gone, they will tell themselves he's there in a better place.

Which doesn't logically follow from the assertion there is no God.

But this is a moment in which the implications of the worldview lead to just absolute, entire hopelessness, so much heaviness that you can't bear it, and so you ignore it and let just a little bit of light through.

Sometimes people, when they are in great trouble, cry out, God, if you're there, help.

Because the implications of this assertion there are no God are so weighty, you can't bear it, and so you try to let a little bit of light through.

What the psalm is inviting the fool to do is throw open the lights, throw open the blinds, let the sun in.

The sun is there, you haven't erased his existence, and only he can give you joy and life and peace.

The rest of this psalm then begins to describe for those who do want the sun to come in how to understand how to live in a world that is so often characterized by people or even our own hearts that try to shut out the light.

This is where the Psalm turns in verse 2.

Though the fool may say in his heart there is no God, what does God do?

Verse 2, God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand who seek after God.

We may say he's not there, but the text asserts he's still there.

And what is he doing?

He's looking down on the children of man.

The word that's used for looking down is an interesting word in that it's used in this story of Isaac and Rebekah in the book of Genesis, when they went to the land of Abimelech, and Isaac told Rebekah, I'm scared because you're so beautiful.

If anybody sees that we're married, they'll kill me in order to take you.

And so say you're my sister.

And so she does.

Until a few days later, the roost is up when Abimelech looks, looks down on Isaac and Rebekah, unsuspecting, and sees them interacting in a way that he says, They're not brother and sister.

Those two are married.

That's the word that's used for the way God looks down on our life.

We might think we've closed the curtains and he's gone, and there just isn't even a God at all, but the text says he still sees.

There's nowhere you can go where he will not see.

This is repeated in Scripture, a couple verses that tell us this Jeremiah 16, My eyes are on all their ways.

They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.

Or Jeremiah goes on, Can a man hide himself in secret places so I cannot see him?

Declares the Lord, do I not fill the heaven and the earth?

declares the Lord.

The emphatic truth of Scripture is that God sees.

The blinds are transparent to him.

He still sees.

And this is what he sees as he evaluates the children of man.

Verse 2.

Are there any who understand who seek after a God?

And God makes this emphatic declaration.

Verse 3.

They have all fallen away.

Together they have become corrupt.

There is none who does good, not even one.

Know the there is none, there is none, there is none.

That's an exact replication of the line in verse 1.

The fool says there is no God, and then God takes that and reverses it and says, You say there's no God, but I say there's none good.

That's his evaluation on human the human condition.

There is none good.

Now, of course, we have to ask the question, and we're accustomed to doing this in church.

What does that mean?

Because it seems like there's good people in the world.

There are people who do good in the community, there are people who are good citizens, there are people who are honorable.

This word's not talking about, this psalm is not talking about there's never a single good action that's done by another human being to another human being.

This psalm is oriented towards the goal of human existence.

Look at what it says in verse 3.

Together they have all fallen away.

Fallen away from whom?

From God, from the purpose for which they were created.

And they have all together become corrupt.

That word translated corrupt is a rare word in Hebrew.

It means spoiled milk.

What is the purpose of milk if you go to the store and you bring home a gallon and stick it in the refrigerator?

You might have many purposes.

Our purpose is rather simple.

I would like for my kids to drink it and for my thirdborn to finally gain some weight.

But if the milk spoils, then the purpose for which I bought it is ruined.

It can't do what it's supposed to do, and I throw it out.

It's not good.

That's what God is evaluating, that's the way God is evaluating the human condition.

What were you made for?

What is the point of your life?

You were made to know God and enjoy Him forever.

You were created to glorify God.

That's what it means to exist in the image of God.

You were made to have infinite delight in the goodness of God.

Now, what it means to be made in the glow in the image of God, what it means to know and enjoy God is not just that you do good things and don't do bad things.

That would be an outcome of knowing and enjoying God.

Because knowing and enjoying God means that you see God as He is and you delight in Him.

More than a 12 year old basketball fan delights in LeBron James.

You are absolutely ecstatic and overwhelmed at who God is and the beauty of his character, his truth, and justice and mercy excite you.

They elicit joy.

A contentment.

They satiate you.

And so you want to live in a way that reflects that, that reflects the truth and goodness and beauty that you find so enticing in God's character.

That's what it means to be an image bearer.

It means to be a mirror reflecting God's glory back to him.

When God looks on the children of man, he created us in his image and likeness.

And what he is supposed to see is the earth is covered with one giant mirror of image reflectors, so that when God looks at the earth, he sees himself.

He sees his own truth and justice and goodness and beauty reflected back to him and the creatures he made who are capable of knowing him, delighting in him, and expressing his goodness to others horizontally.

But when God looks on the children of man, he doesn't see that.

He sees an entire human race that has gone astray, that has tried to close the blinds, that have become corrupted, and are not fit to be in his presence.

He sees darkness because none of us irradiate the glory of God back to him.

You know, this concept of what I'm trying to communicate that to be in the image and likeness of God is not just do good things, don't do bad things.

That's a consequence of being in the image of likeness of God.

Being in the image of likeness of God is possessing the resplendent glory of God and reflecting it back to him and those around you.

And one of the texts that teaches this is Romans 3.23, which I hope many of you know it's the very first verse we teach our little Iwana kids on Sunday nights.

I have a little cubby, and it's the very first verse in her book.

A is for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

A very familiar verse.

But I wonder what image that verse conjures in your mind.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

When I first encountered that verse, I remember what I thought.

I thought that verse is talking about report card.

And this is the way I conceptualized it.

I have fallen short of the glory of God.

So the glory of God is like to be as perfect as God is perfect.

And indeed, Matthew 5.48, Jesus teaches that.

You have to be as perfect as God is perfect, and I'm not that.

I'm not 100%, so I can't get into heaven.

That's a true image from other biblical texts, but that's not the image Romans 3.23 is communicating.

What Romans 3.23 is communicating is something even more essential.

That word that we translate usually, all have sinned and fall short.

The Greek word fall short is in every other case translated we lack something.

So we could render it, we have sinned and we lack the glory of God.

What does it mean to lack the glory of God?

To lack the glory of God means to lack everything that I've just been describing.

We don't possess love for God that dominates every fiber of our being and means that we delight in all that God is and we reflect all that God is in our thoughts and desires and actions.

We've lacked it, we've lost it, and God doesn't look on the earth and see mirrors reflecting his glory back at him, he sees darkness.

There is one translation that I think does this extraordinarily well.

It's one of our missionaries, Davis Brickett, who is a Bible translator in the Middle East, has done a kind of expansive interpretive translation of Romans.

And whenever I'm reading Romans and I have a question, before I go anywhere else, I will go to Davis' translation of Romans.

And his rendering of Romans 323 is so good I want to share it with you.

He renders it this way: For everyone without distinction has sinned.

As a result, everyone without distinction has lost the resplendent glory of being a perfectly holy creation, made in God's image.

And everyone has failed to live for the purpose for which they were created, to give God glory, honor, and praise.

That's what we're made for.

That's the wise person.

That's none of us.

God looks down on the children of man to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God, who are full of the resplendent glory of God, who, when he looks at them, they are mirrors that reflect back his own character, his own image, his own nature, his own glory.

And he looks on the children of man and he sees darkness.

All have turned aside.

Together they're corrupt.

Except one.

When he looks on the children of man, he sees one light.

One bright pure light.

That when he looks at this one person, what he sees is the fullness of his glory, the exact imprint of his nature, all of his glory, love, holiness, purity, justice, truth, mercy, every single bit of the essence of his glory radiating back to him perfectly.

One perfect man, one perfect life, one person who achieved the purpose for which human existence was made for, one person who ought to be welcomed into his kingdom, one person who ought to dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever and ever.

That person's Jesus.

He's not you, he's only Jesus.

The only way that you can sing the rest of this psalm, which is going to turn the corner as we come out of verse 3 into verse 4, it's going to turn the corner from God's seeing and it's going to promise that God is going to judge and then he's going to deliver.

And the only way that you can sing that psalm and it be good news is if you are confident that when God looks at you, he looks at you and he sees your life hidden in Christ.

That's what he will do when you repent and believe the gospel.

When you surrender to Jesus Christ, when you do what David did in Psalm 51, and you confess, I am a sinner, have mercy upon me.

God grafts you into Christ.

And when he looks at you, he sees all the perfection of Christ, he finally sees you as a perfect mirror.

He looks at you and he sees himself because when he looks at you, he sees his son.

All of his glory, all of his perfection radiated back to you when he looks at you because he looks at you and thinks of you as in Christ.

If that's you, if you are a Psalm 51 person, if you have first song sung, Psalm 51, then you can look out on the mess that is this world, and you can confidently say, The Lord will count me righteous and will vindicate me because he views me in his son.

That's where we're going to go the rest of this Psalm.

Having shown us that God does indeed see, the rest of the text teaches us that God will judge.

So look down at your Bibles at verse 4.

And in verse 4 we read this Have those who work evil no knowledge who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon God?

This is kind of setting the scene for the intervention God is promising in this Psalm that He's going to bring.

So if you think of the scene that it set as being set in verse 4, have those who work evil no knowledge who eat up my people?

You get this image that there are people in the world who don't know God, and as a consequence, they don't try to know God and enjoy him and bring others to enjoy him.

Instead, they objectify people and they will exploit them if they think that it will be to their advantage.

And they get away with it.

The Psalm says, just as they eat bread, they eat up my people, and they don't call upon God.

That's the scene being set for us.

That's the world in which you live in, in which it can sometimes seem that there are people in the world who, just as they eat bread, they eat God's people.

What is the hope that a person in this world is supposed to have when experiencing that?

Verse 5 tells you what it is.

Verse 5, there they are in great terror, where there is no terror, or where there was previously no terror.

Previously these people had the best of life.

Everything that they did, they got away with.

But now they will be in great terror, because God will scatter the bones of him who encamps against you.

You put them to shame, for God has rejected them.

Just as one would scatter ashes, God will scatter the wicked.

That is, those who lived in this world without the fear of God will be brought to fear the judgment of God.

That's what God is promising.

The stage is set in which there is a world in which there are people who act in ways you can't believe.

But you can believe it if you believe this psalm.

I'm tempted all the time to think I can't believe he would do that.

But then I remember I've read Psalm 53 and I've read Romans 3.

I know what people are like.

Actually, I can believe that he would do that.

But I also know that God sees.

And I also know that God will right every wrong.

So I have a ballast for my life because my hope is not in this world, but as the rest of the psalm is going to tell us, it's going to be in the next.

That's what God is promising.

He is going to intervene and he is going to bring judgment.

It's a consistent theme throughout the scriptures, particularly in the Psalter, which is a very interesting thing to consider when typically, kind of stereotypically, we kind of give the Psalms short shrift and suppose that they are just happy clappy songs to sing.

Many of them are laments, and the laments frequently end in a hope that God will intervene in this world and right every wrong.

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 73, which tells the story of a worshiper who had gone through a period in life in which he had looked at the wicked in the world and said, They have everything good.

They don't bother with the restrictions of trying to follow God.

It seems like their life is so much better.

If I could live like them, I would be happy.

And he goes to worship God and he remembers what the end of human existence is for.

And he remembers what the outcome of human life is going to be.

And he recounts that in Psalm 73, verse 20.

Psalms 73:20

How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors, like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

He's doing what Moses said in Deuteronomy 32.

The wise person considers the end, the wise person considers the goal of human life.

And here the psalmist is reflecting on the reality.

There is a God who will intervene in this world.

And all of human life, you'll wake up from it, and it'll be like this life was a dream, and reality is what's coming.

That's a different kind of orientation that we have to constantly revisit in our lives.

This world is not all there is.

There is an eternity that is coming.

And the way you live for that eternity is anchoring your hope in the God who sees, will judge, and then will deliver.

And that last truth about God is given to us in verse 6.

So look in your Bibles at verse 6.

Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when God restores the fortunes of his people.

Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.

This is an incredible verse because it is much of Christian hope distilled into one verse.

That first part, oh, that salvation would come for Israel, that it would come out of Zion.

They're speaking of the Redeemer that God has promised, that He's going to bring salvation to His people.

There's a longing that's supposed to characterize life in this world.

One day I'm going to wake up from this dream, and in the meantime, I am longing for the day when I will see my Redeemer.

And what will the Redeemer bring?

He will restore the fortunes of his people.

He'll let Jacob rejoice, and Israel be glad.

And that is so much biblical theology packed into one little verse.

And so I think the best way that we could end this morning would be to just expand it just a little bit.

So I want to close by having you turn in your Bibles to the book of Jeremiah, chapter 33.

Jeremiah 33 · chapter mention

Jeremiah chapter 33.

Jeremiah 33 · chapter mention

And we'll just read a couple verses that give us a little bit wider scope as to what is the hope that God is bringing his people.

Over and over in the scriptures, we are told to put our minds on the hope that God will bring us.

The Apostle Peter tells us, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that it will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That's where a Christian's mind is to be, on the hope that God will bring you.

But the hope that God will bring you is not merely a me and Jesus, like I'm in a little cylinder in a little phone booth having my time with Jesus, but it's much more expansive.

It is very personal and intimate, but it is not private.

It is public and corporate.

And the expansive view of what God is going to bring is given to us in just a couple more verses in Jeremiah 33.

So let's read them.

Jeremiah 33 and verse 7.

God promises, I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first.

I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me, one day, free of sin.

Verse 9.

And this city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise, a glory before all the nations of the earth, who shall hear all the good that I do for them, and they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.

You know, if you don't fear God in this life, then you will have to fear God in the judgment.

But if you fear God in this life, when you experience the joy he will shower upon you forever and ever, you will be afraid of how great your joy is.

You will tremble with the greatness and the weight of the joy and satisfaction you'll experience in the kingdom of God forever and ever.

And he continues, verse 10.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, in this place of which you say it's a waste without man or beast, in the cities of Judah, and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast, there shall be heard again the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, and the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, and the voice of those who sing as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord.

That is, everything that is lost will be brought back.

And it will be all the greater for having lost it and received it anew.

Deliverance, deliverance is what is promised, that will prompt in our hearts this song: give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever, for I will restore the fortunes of the land as it was at first, says the Lord.

That's the direction the psalm is pushing us.

You live in a very sinful world.

There's sin inside you, there's sin outside of you, there's sin locally, there's sin internationally.

But God sees, and God will judge, and God will deliver.

And these momentary light afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

That's where we anchor our hope.

Let's pray.

Oh, Father in heaven, we do ask that you would seal your words to our hearts in such a way that we would reflect your glory more in this world.

We ask that you would give us deeper love for Christ, deeper gratitude for the greatness of our salvation, stronger hope for the coming grace that you will bring us at the day of Jesus Christ.

We ask that you would give us perseverance to fix our eyes on Christ, to be anchored in him, rooted in him, to rejoice that our life has been fully joined to his.

Make us a people who are satisfied looking to the day when you will bring our salvation.

And we pray this in the name of Christ, amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.