"Vertical Vision in a Horizontal World" Psalm 11 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Well, friends, in just a few short weeks, our church will begin a focused study of the Sermon of the Mount, which Matthew began chronicling in the fifth chapter of his gospel.

And two of the early verses in that powerful sermon is where Jesus addressed the crowds with words that resonated loudly with those assembled and resonate perhaps just as loud today for those of us assembled here.

Especially for those of us who seek to live a godly life in an increasingly godless society and world.

It was in the 11th and 12th verses of Matthew's fifth chapter gospel where Jesus said the following Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice, be glad, for your reward is great.

Notice he doesn't say here on earth, but he says in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

As we've come to discover whether it was the first century or the 21st century, desiring and attempting to walk as a follower of Jesus seems to invite unwanted scrutiny and pressure, and even some cases, persecution.

But as Jesus points out, we're in good company, for even the prophets were persecuted for their faith.

But we also are reminded that eventually the reward in heaven will far exceed the troubles that we experience here on earth today.

Now, having just read Matthew's account, and that's as far as we will go today, I would submit that there, if there was an Old Testament prequel for what Jesus spoke about in those two verses of the Sermon under the Mount, if there was a place in the Old Testament which predicted the opposition of the redeemed, then I think our text for today would make for a worthy candidate.

Therefore, if you have a Bible with you, and I hope that you do, open with me to the book of Psalms and put a placeholder at Psalm 11.

Psalm 11 gives hope for the accused and the attacked, the pursued, the persecuted, and even the prosecuted.

Psalm 11 contains faith's response to fear's counsel.

Psalm 11 expresses the necessity and the benefit of having vertical vision while living among the trouble of this horizontal world.

Psalm 11 encourages us to look up when the problems of this world which surround us seek to bring us down.

Now we don't know when, exactly when or why David wrote this psalm.

Some would suggest that he was being pursued at the time by King Saul, who thought David was after his throne.

Others would suggest that it may be his own son Absalom who sought to kill him.

We really can't be sure why he wrote it, but this we can be sure of.

This psalm comes at a desperate moment in David's life when his enemies seemed to be closing in on him, and his so-called well-intentioned friends encouraged him to run away, to hide, to flee for safety.

Nonetheless, in the seven verses of this short psalm, you and I have been assigned the task of asking and answering the pertinent and weighty question that is found in verse 3.

And here it is.

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

If all that we know to be true as believers in Jesus Christ in this world is being torn down and destroyed, then what can the righteous do?

In other words, what can we do when good and ethical laws are no longer upheld?

What can we do when morality is diluted?

When evil seems to forge on unchecked?

What can we do when the Bible is undermined, when teaching is disregarded?

And when churches and even whole denominations are adjusting their doctrine and their practice to yield to the pressure of the culture and align with secularism?

What can we do when family values seem as if they are crumbling, doing catastrophic damage to the most innocent of ours, our children, even within our schools?

What can we do when it appears like what's described in Isaiah chapter 5?

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

Where Isaiah says, It looks like evil is now good, and good has become evil.

When darkness is now mistaken for light, and light is mistaken for darkness, and when bitter is offered as sweet, and sweet is now thought to be bitter.

What can we do?

When the loudest, irreverent, secular, self-gratifying, and evil voices in our country and world seem to be undergirded and championed, even funded by societal and government support, encouragement, protection, and promotion.

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

You know and I know that when a nation celebrates what God condemns, judgment from on high must eventually come.

Our God has been so patient with us, has He not?

No one can say how or when or where that the judgment will come, but as certainly as God responded to the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah, and as certainly as the great empires of history in their arrogance have fallen, we know that no nation and no people will ever escape the judgment of God, including the land of the free and the home of the brave.

So as the redeemed of the Lord, just considering the challenges and the resistance that we are facing for being righteous, what are we called to do?

Some would say we should separate ourselves, isolate ourselves.

Perhaps we take buses quickly up to Lancaster and join the Amish.

Or perhaps we should join some Hasidic Jewish community somewhere and turn out the world completely.

But in this psalm, we will see that as the enemy grew closer and their vicious intentions became more obvious, David's response, his only response, was to look up and take refuge in the Lord.

David displayed a vertical vision in the face of the evils of this horizontal world in which we live.

As David spoke to his well-intentioned friends, our Psalm 11 text reads as follows to the choir master of David, in the Lord I take refuge.

How can you say to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain?

For behold, the wicked bend their bow, they've fitted their arrow and the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart.

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

David's quoting his friends there.

And while it's not indicated, you can almost picture in David's communication with them that he pauses, a long pregnant pause here, as he looks at each of his friends who are telling him to run and to hide and to flee, as he looks at them in the eye.

And he begins again in verse 4.

The Lord is 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.

What a powerful, encouraging text for those of us who call ourselves the redeemed of God.

Again, although we don't know exactly what prompted David to write this psalm, whether it was being chased by Saul or Absalom, we don't know.

But I believe its message is not limited by David's historical circumstances.

Because the central issue dealing with here in this psalm is what we are experiencing today as well.

It's the oppression of the upright by the wicked of this world.

Wherever and whenever evil seems to triumph, God's people can take heart in the attitude reflected here in this psalm by David.

Despite the chaotic swirl around him, on the horizontal plane, David's assurance was vertical in God and in God alone.

In fact, look at it.

It begins right in verse 1, right from the start of the psalm.

And we haven't even heard from his friends yet.

We can surmise that David's confidence seems grounded in years of walking with his God.

He boldly says, right at the beginning of the Psalm that he wrote, in the Lord I take refuge.

Yes, the journey sometimes and the destination may be difficult, but we should not be surprised at that.

In the 16th chapter of John's gospel, Jesus said to his disciples and said to us, friends, in this world you will have trouble.

In this world, we will have trouble.

But David seems to have been in distress before.

He's seen that trouble, but he's also witnessed the hand of the covenant God of Israel upon this life.

In David's view, God has never failed him in the past, and David's sure that God would not fail him now.

Thus, in those moments of distress, and in every moment, David took refuge or comfort, he says, in the presence of the Lord.

I was a young boy growing up on Long Island.

We often traveled to New York City to see both of my grandparents.

And each of the routes that we took to their homes through some of the more dangerous neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

And while I was really not all that aware, perhaps at that young age of the danger, what I was aware of was that my dad was at the wheel.

And my dad was fearless.

He was wise, he was strong, he was protective.

It didn't hurt that he was a cop.

Well, let me be clear.

In my earthly father, I took refuge.

My dad had never failed me before in the past, and I knew he would not fail me then.

I can relate to the confidence that David expressed because of who he claims as his father and the refuge that his father provided him.

But in verse 1, it continues as confident as David was in his heavenly father, he was just as amazed and disappointed in his well-intentioned friends, perhaps even deeply offended, as they greatly insulted him, even to the point it says of piercing his soul.

Look what it says.

How can, in verse 1, how can you say, speaking to his friends, to my soul, flee like a bird to your mountain?

His well-intentioned friends encouraged him to flee like a bird, make a quick getaway.

And then the next two verses, they give him three facts of why he should escape, why the pressure was on, and why he should run for his life.

First, in verse 2, they said, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow on the string.

In their view, the attack was imminent.

They were telling David.

Today we would say to a friend, we'd say, They have a gun to your head and it's cocked.

They're about to pull the trigger and eliminate you.

You talk about a cancel culture.

Or if you don't like their agenda, that they'll work to eliminate you.

Secondly, in verse 2, it continues, His friends report that the wicked lurk and work in the dark.

The battle is not in the open, how the wicked and the evil work, where one can see it and try to defend against it.

The wicked hide so as not to be seen by God.

And that's how evil works, my friends.

It's pervasive.

Often it's camouflage.

It's not easy to spot.

It's wicked.

The wicked are cunning, they're intentional, and they're filled with treachery.

And lastly, David's friends told him in verse 3 that all of the foundations, all of what you had hoped in and put your trust in, are now destroyed.

We don't know if this was an exaggeration or if it was true or not, but they remind David that all that he thought was true and trustworthy had now been torn down.

And once he thought was right at one time is now really wrong, is what they're telling him.

Similar, what is repeated often in the book of Judges.

In those days there was no king in Israel.

Everybody just did what was right in their own eyes.

So when the foundations are destroyed, we like David are left with the question, what can the righteous do?

Or what will the righteous do?

And I would submit that there are only two kinds of responses to that immediate threat.

Friends, we're either going to fight or we're going to flee.

We're either going to run or resist.

We're going to either get out or dig in.

We're either going to retreat or rely on God.

What will we choose?

And before we go on, let's remember that biblical history often paints a dim picture of those who chose to run and to flee.

We think of King Saul who was chasing David, but he was really on the run because he was running from God, thinking that David would somehow be working to take over the throne.

Eventually it led King Saul to be a man of anger and violence and ultimately depression and mental breakdown.

Let's not forget Jonah, who was running from God, who told him he needed to go preach to Nineveh.

And he was fleeing from God not just once but twice.

Of course, we have our New Testament hero by the name of Peter, who in Matthew 16 told Jesus, You will not go to the cross.

To which Jesus responded to that threat.

Get behind me, Satan.

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

Fight or flee?

Retreat or rely fully on God.

I would submit that at this point we've come to a crossroads in our text today.

Where we must pause and look inside of ourselves and wrestle with that very question.

And before you make a decision about what you will do, let me share some things with you about our culture today.

This is not doomsday speak, although it would seem that way.

This is just where we are, where we are surrounded by the celebration of transgenderism, the promotion and the protection of same-sex marriage, the protesting and the threatening of those who are pro-life and seek to save the life of the unborn, the call to defund the police departments, the complete lack of civil discourse and respect for one another.

We are really seeing what Paul speaks about in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

He says, God has given them over to their dishonorable and often unspeakable passions.

We've been given over by God.

So the question is still before us.

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

And what will the righteous do?

Now, as I look out here at this congregation, and I know many of you and see many of you who were involved in the foundations of who we are as a society.

You're involved in the education system, you're involved in the healthcare system, you're involved in the government or the military and so on.

And those words, those words like quit and run and retreat, I'm thankful that they are not even in your vocabulary.

May your tribe increase.

Because in verse 4, we see just what David did.

When faced with crumbling foundations and strong opposition, he looked above both his well-intentioned friends who told him to run, and his ill-intentioned enemies.

And he raised his eyes in the vertical towards heaven.

And the God that had never failed him.

It was there that he reminded himself that all of us, all that is happening, all that is going on on earth, that God is still, the scripture says, on the throne.

God is still in his temple.

He's aware of all of his saints and all of their circumstances.

And as God is on the throne still, and God is in his temple, let us not forget that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father.

Revelation chapter 12 calls Satan the accuser of the brethren.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

So you have this picture in your mind that whatever access that Satan has to the throne room of God, he may be shouting from a distance, but he's still shouting our names.

And the fact that we are sinners, in that respect, he still speaks truth, Satan does.

We are sinners in need of a savior.

But Hebrews chapter 7 says, seated at the right hand of the Father is Jesus Christ, who intercedes on our behalf.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

Satan utters your name, and Jesus said, paid for at the cross of Calvary.

Who do you got next?

We put our faith and trust, as David did here.

We look above all of the swirl of this world, and we see God on the throne, and we're reminded He is in complete charge.

The wicked are now.

And then at the end of verse 4, in the beginning of verse 5, David says that he's speaking of God.

He says, His eyes see, his eyelids test.

It really means he's squinting hard, God is, if there is eyes that God has.

He's squinting hard for scrutiny of the believers.

These are the redeemed, he's speaking about.

He tests the children of man.

The Lord is testing the righteous.

The description that David gives us here that God is allowing us to go through this testing by the wicked in the world.

As the foundations are crumbling and the wicked seem to be gaining momentum, God is watching carefully as to how you and I will respond.

This is an opportunity for the believers in Jesus Christ to honor God and glorify him.

And David says that God is watching how you and I will respond to this testing that he's allowing us to go through.

But at the end of verse 5, David also tells us that God also sees the deeds of the wicked.

And the deeds of the wicked will not go unpunished.

Verse 5 says that God hates, I know it's a strong word, it says, but God hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.

You see, God's holiness would not allow him to love those that do wickedness and those who love violence against the redeemed.

Unless the arrogant, arrogance of the wicked goes unpunished, verse 6 seems to indicate that God is preparing his judgments for the wicked.

Those who seek to do the righteous harm may do so from the shadows, as David's friends said they tried to do, but eventually God will bring all of that into the light.

David writes, he will then rain coals on the wicked.

Fire and sulfur and scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.

It seems as if David has the scene of Sodom and Gomorrah in mind here.

Complete and utter devastation of the wicked is coming.

And though right now it may seem as the wicked continue to prosper, there's coming a day when they will receive the full penalty of their ungodly behavior.

But finally, look at verse 7.

David concludes his psalm.

We see that just as God has prepared judgments for the wicked, he's also prepared a reward for the upright.

For the Lord is righteous, verse 7 says.

And the upright, they shall behold his face.

When David's friends told him to run, the foundations have crumbled.

David said, I will not flee.

I will not flee.

I know one day God will bring the wicked to justice.

And I also know that he's prepared a place where we will live and see his face.

The upright, those by faith who have trusted him and seek to follow his ways will eventually see his face.

This means that the righteous, the redeemed of the Lord, those of us here who have put our faith and trust in Christ, we will one day be admitted to his presence where we enjoy his blessings forever and ever and ever.

Anytime we look at the scripture like this, we we need to think, what are the careful applications that we can make from this text?

I believe anytime we look at any text in the 66 books of Scripture, we need to think of the application we'll make both for the believer and the unbeliever as well.

When we think about what Paul wrote in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, he says, all scripture is inspired of God, therefore it's profitable.

2 Timothy 3:16

Obviously, we have application for the believer.

For teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

Verse 17 says, so that the man of God, speaking in generalities, the man and woman of God will be found to be adequate, equipped for every good work.

So every time we look at the scripture, it's obvious that we should make an application for the believer in Jesus Christ.

For the unbeliever, perhaps not so obvious, but Paul deals with that as well.

And he deals with that in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And Paul says, the wicked, those that are destined for eternal punishment, those that are yet to put their faith and trust in Christ, he said that they receive the truth, they understand the truth, but they suppress it in their unrighteousness.

But here's the thing, they're still responsible for it.

There's still a payment to be made.

You know, you get your electric bill in the mail and you take it and say, okay, just throw it in the trash.

You eventually got to pay that bill.

And so for the believer in Jesus Christ, it should be obvious that we make every application every time.

But for the unbeliever, we have to do the same.

And so I want to make some quick applications of our text today.

I hope they'll be helpful.

But I want to start with the unbeliever first as we look at this text because it deals so much with the wicked.

And if you're here today and you never put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, I don't want to offend you.

It's not my words, but it's the psalmist's words.

Take it up with David.

He's the one that says, You're the wicked of this world.

Let me make a challenge to you if you're not a believer yet in Jesus Christ.

David's friends said that they had their bows cocked and ready with an arrow, ready to go.

Let me encourage you, if you're here today, to put down your bow.

Put down your weapon and take a pause.

And see if you'll enter in a dialogue with a believer in Jesus Christ.

To do two things.

To see if the word of God is true.

Actually, what we've been talking about here, to see if this is really true, and to see if the people of God are genuine.

Enter in a dialogue, don't cancel them out because they don't agree with your agenda.

Put your agenda for the side for a little bit.

And enter into a dialogue with a believer in Jesus Christ to see if they are not genuine because of the word of God is actually true.

That would be my challenge to you.

Secondly, let me encourage you, don't settle for the fading pleasures of this world when God's got another whole thing He wants to do for you in the future.

This is not speaking about prosperity theology.

But the things, the short-term pleasures that you're pursuing in this world that are aligned with the evilness of this world, don't succumb to that.

Don't give in to that.

Verse 7 of our text said today that the righteous will see his face forevermore, not the wicked.

All of the pleasures that you will get will only be on this side of eternity if you don't put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

And thirdly, I would say, this is the last application for the non-believer.

Let me say this be forewarned.

Be forewarned.

The scripture speaks to it.

Verse 6, David laid it out.

That God has judgments He's preparing for the wicked, those that are separated from Him, those that refuse by arrogance or ignorance to put their faith and trust in Christ alone.

There's judgments being prepared.

He even speaks about the cup of judgment that's theirs, that's yours.

You remember the Charles Dickens classic of Christmas Carol?

And that evil, unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge is visited at night by three ghosts.

The ghost of Christmas past, Christmas present, and eventually the ghost of Christmas future.

That ghost of Christmas future takes them on a journey, but they end up at the cemetery.

And they go by tombstones, and eventually they go by one that has Ebenezer Scrooge already engraved on the stone.

My friend, if you have not yet put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the cup of judgment that David speaks about here in verse 6 already has your name etched on the side of that cup.

God will do what he says he will do, he will bring judgment.

There will be a penalty for unbelief.

Beforewarned.

But lest I leave you on a low note, there's good news.

Because Jesus Christ, on the night before he suffered on that cross in the Garden of Gethsemane, had a dialogue with our Heavenly Father.

And they spoke about the cup of judgment.

They spoke about your cup and my cup.

And Jesus said, if I must take that cup, then your will be done, God.

And he willingly took that cup of the redeemed.

Those of us who put our faith and trust in Christ, he took our sin and our judgment in the cup that had our name engraved on it.

And Jesus said, I will pay for that.

I will be the one that goes to the cross to pay for you and you and you.

But friend, unless you give your life to Christ, your name will be permanently etched on that cup, and you'll take it in eternity with you.

And you'll pay the penalty.

It would be our desire to share the good news of the gospel where you would come to a point that you would acknowledge and repent of your sin and come to know Jesus as Savior and release the cup to him at Calvary.

For the believer in Jesus Christ, I see some obvious applications for us as well.

First of all, I would say you and I are not responsible to punish the wicked.

That is not our responsibility.

We are not called to do that.

We have a choice.

We can either criticize or we can evangelize the wicked.

And so your digs at the wicked on social media, your digs at the wicked in any forum that you use are not what you and I are called to do.

We should be grieved about the wicked to the point that we will evangelize them.

And secondly, we should not gloat at the suffering that the wicked will endure in all of eternity.

Have you ever stopped to think of somebody who's lost?

You go to the funeral, did you find out if they gave their life to Christ?

They never did.

They were obstinate.

And then the picture comes into your mind.

That person will be in hell forever.

There will never be a time that they get out on parole.

There's no days off.

There's no family visits.

There's never, ever, ever a free moment or a break.

It'll be suffering and separation and awareness of their sin and what they could have done.

Forever.

Forever.

There'll never be another time.

That should cause us to grieve, not to gloat.

Grieve to the point that we'd be willing to share the good news of the gospel with them.

Thirdly, armor up.

Armor up.

We talked about the spiritual battle that is all around us here, and it is a spiritual battle.

Paul warns us in the second half of Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

We wrestle not with flesh and blood.

If it were flesh and blood, we could all go to boxing lessons or some martial arts class.

We could all become MMA fighters so we could take on anybody in the world.

We could get cruise missiles, or we could get.

That we better armor up.

Paul says in Ephesians chapter 6, the second half, put on the full armor of God.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

It's a spiritual battle.

Gird your loins, breastplate of righteousness, helmet of salvation, shod your feet with the gospel of peace, the sword of the spirit, and then pray.

But friends, if you're going to go into battle, armor up.

Armor up.

Armor up.

Fourth, remember that this world is not our home.

We are suffering from the foundations that are crumbling, but we're not responsible for this world.

At the moment of your salvation and the moment of my salvation, our citizenship was transitioned to heaven already.

Remember what Jesus said to his disciples in John chapter 14?

John 14 · chapter mention

He said, I go to prepare a place for you.

And where I will be, you will be with me.

And the place that he's prepared is not Springfield, Virginia.

This is, friends, is not our home.

As the song says, we're just merely a passing through.

We got to remember that.

As we get so wrapped up in the foundations that are crumbling here and the swirl that goes around us in this horizontal world, and we need to look above that and look vertically and realize that's where we're going.

We're just passing through here.

2 Corinthians 4, 4 says that Satan is the God of this world, but this is not our home.

Hallelujah, this is not our home.

And lastly, I would say you and I need to learn to live vertically in a horizontal world.

You think back in the Exodus when Moses led the nation of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.

And how quickly the people of God forgot what God had done for them.

Part of the Red Sea, provided food and the desert, all the things that they forgot about that.

And Moses is involved in all of this filth and rebellion in the horizontal plane here.

And God calls him up to the mountain.

To be with him, and for Moses to be with God.

And friends, you and I need to have that fresh view of God.

And remember, have a long view of history, what God has done.

He's never left us, he will never forsake us.

We need to remember that.

Have that fresh view of what God is doing as we live in this horizontal world.

We are looking vertically.

That's the dainess we have with God by way of his word.

That we're interacting with him by way of his word every day.

That we're interacting with him by way of prayer.

That we're interacting with him by the fellowship of the body.

Have that connection with God.

When the foundations are crumbling, what can the redeemed do?

When we have that vertical relationship with God, that question changes a little bit.

Because when the foundations around us are crumbling, we then respond with, What can't the redeemed of God do?

I go back to the verses that Jesus spoke in the Sermon of the Mount as we close.

He said, Blessed are you when others revile you, persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account.

Rejoice, be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And so, God, we end with that.

We end with an understanding of what Jesus said and what we are living.

We understand because of the suffering that we are experiencing from time to time, the persecution of the elect, the surrounding of the enemy against us, the redeemed.

We understand that, Lord.

May be we be like David, that we look up, that we put our faith and trust in you and you alone.

You are the one that never fails us when the world seems to be collapsing.

May we be strengthened for the task.

We ask for your protection and encouragement.

And Lord, I do pray if there's anyone here today who does not know you, in the enjoyment that they're getting in this world, would you start to slowly remove that and give them no rest until they come to the point where they understand that they need to put their faith and trust in you and you alone.

And Lord, would you allow us to be part of that as they transition from the wicked to those that belong to you?

That would be our desire.

We pray in the powerful 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.