This Is How Life For The Wicked And Life For The Godly Look Like (Psalm 36) - A Sermon By Elise Beatrice

TRANSCRIPT

This Is How Life For The Wicked And Life For The Godly Look Like (Psalm 36)

A Sermon by Elise Beatrice - 14 May 2025

I thank You, Father God Almighty, I thank You, Lord Jesus.

I thank You for Your Holy Spirit.

We welcome everything that You give us, my Lord.

For You are good, and what You give is always good.

So, thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your grace, for Your love and Your peace, and Your joy and forgiveness, and Your deliverance from evil.

In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. 02:16

Okay, for any of you who can’t tell what wickedness looks like, or sounds like, must pay attention to this Psalm 36. So, as we can see here, the first part is speaking about wickedness. And it is always a great thing that God, the Father, gives us His words, and presents before us good and evil so that we choose good.

The Holy Bible is a Book of life that presents to us life as it is, in which there is evil, and there is good. You see the wicked people behaving in certain ways, and you see the godly ones behaving in another way.

Like Father said,

“I present before you life and death; choose life so that you may live. I present before you blessings and curses; choose blessings so you may be blessed. And I present before you Myself: God, and I also present before you my enemy, the devil; choose Me. Choose Me, the Good, so that you may live; you may be safe forever.”

So, God is not hiding anything, for He lays all the cards on the table for us to know exactly which belongs to whom. So, let’s now read Psalm 36 to see what it says about the wicked.

“1 Sin whispers to the wicked, deep within their hearts. They have no fear of God at all. 2 In their blind conceit, they cannot see how wicked they really are. 3 Everything they say is crooked and deceitful. They refuse to act wisely or do good. 4 They lie awake at night, hatching sinful plots. Their actions are never good. They make no attempt to turn from evil.”

Yes, as you can see here, this is how the wicked behave like. This is how the wicked look like. This is how they sound like.

Wickedness is a cruel behaviour. There is a difference between a child of God who loves God and His righteousness, but may be stumbling, or even have weak faith, and someone who is wicked, and embraces it. They have no fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord here is hatred for evil. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as the Scripture says. So, those who have no fear of the Lord are not afraid to lie, are not afraid to disrespect God, disobey Him and rebel. Those who have no fear of the Lord are not afraid to serve the devil and do evil.

That is wickedness. There are people who may sin without knowing what they’re doing, but then, they are feeling really bad about it, and they would love to get out of it, but they don’t even know how. They don’t really belong in the darkness. Many can be in the darkness and living in sin, but they would love to get out. They feel a void in them, they feel lonely, they feel worse after every sin they commit. However, some, truly, after they sin, are so pleased with themselves, they’re so happy because they are the children of the devil.

As we can see, the Bible is clear to us that it is evident who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. The children of the devil are those who don’t practice righteousness. And if someone is loving their wickedness to the point that they are praising themselves for being evil and loving themselves for being evil, their brain is distorted, they have lost touch with reality, and no longer are humane.

So, Father God said,

“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear their prayers from heaven, and I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land. And now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer made in this place” (This is 2 Chronicles 7:14-15.)

2 Chronicles 7:14–15

Father God is pointing to us that wickedness is the reason why He turns His face away, the reason why He hides His face from some people.

He is saying, ‘If you are mine and call yourself by my name, you should have nothing to do with wickedness. Wickedness is the opposition of Me. Wickedness is what I hate; wickedness is evil, wickedness is darkness. No Child of mine must embrace wickedness. If you must come before Me, turn from that wickedness.’

And when we turn from that wickedness, God will then blot all our sins away. But first, we must want those sins to be gone in order for the Lord to take those sins away. If people cherish their ways, they remain in their ways and will be lost forever.

So King David here lives his life to serve God. He knows the difference between wickedness and godliness.

Let’s see now what godliness sounds like and what it looks like from verse 5.

“5 Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. 6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O Lord. 7 How precious is your unfailing love, O God!

All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings.”

Yes, only the godly can speak these kinds of words because they have God’s Holy Spirit in them and strive to live a righteous life. The godly are those who live according to God’s ways. Being godly shows the difference between those who are moral, sometimes, but are not with God. And those who are moral while with God, and living according to God’s ways, are referred to as the godly. And the godly are speaking these kinds of words because of the help of the Holy Spirit in them.

When you have overcome sin by welcoming Christ on the Cross and living for Him; when you obey God, and then He sends you His Holy Spirit to live in you, you become a new creation, and that new creation, given that you are listening to God, ‘the old you’ has now gone and the ‘new’ has come.

And when ‘the new’ has come now, you speak these types of words.

The godly are anointed with the oil of joy, a garment of praise and the Spirit of gladness, and the Lord God delights in them. Your mouth becomes about worshipping God, about praising God, because you understand His beauty, you know His beauty, you know His love, His miracles, and you are there as a witness to His wonders to preach, to speak about His beautiful words, for the Holy Spirit from within you is reminding you of all this beauty of God, and teaching you about God in a way that He is indeed; His beauty.

While the wicked people have instead the evil spirits in them who tell them lies against God and replace the beauty of God with evilness. They look at God and see only evil, while indeed evil isn’t there; no evil is found in God.

It is the evil from them, the evil spirits from within them, who speak evil against God, because they are rebellious, they are pure evil. Of course, if evil spirits or satan had to be there and begin to worship and praise God, everyone would be praising God. Doing so would mean satan and demons would be confessing to all humans that they have been lying since the beginning, deceiving everyone who is away from the one true God.

Many people are deceived and wrongly assume of God because of evil spirits, because of satan, who is the father of lies.

Those who are godly recognise the Beauty of God.

So you see the difference between those who are in the Lord and His Holy Spirit, yes, those beautiful words come from their mouths.

So yes, he continues in verse 8, saying,

“All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. 8 You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. 9 For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see.

10 Pour out your unfailing love on those who love you; give justice to those with honest hearts. 11 Don’t let the proud trample me or the wicked push me around. 12 Look! Those who do evil have fallen! They are thrown down, never to rise again.”

Let’s take a look around us. We see that there are people who are truly wicked. They are cruel, they are ruthless, and they are deceptive. When we look at them, we think they are rising; they are going up. Evil seems to be taking over, and that’s what we are seeing here in this world today. But it is written here that, ‘Those who do evil have fallen!’ But those who do evil would say instead that they are rising. But it is just what it seems to them. They are indeed falling. Being in the darkness means that you have fallen. This is regarding the people here. And if you don’t let Christ rise you up, you will remain in the place of the dead.

‘Those who do evil have fallen!’ They are thrown down never to rise again. However, when it is regarding demons and satan, that’s also the truth that they have fallen. In fact, Father God fired satan from Heaven; they have fallen from Heaven and thrown down never to rise again. Even Revelation 12:9 says,

Revelation 12:9

“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

They will perish in the fire of hell for eternity. So when you see his empire building now, and his corruption appearing like it is taking over,

that is like his tower of babel he built in the past, using humans, who did not listen to God, to build it. And God is waiting until his sins rise up; rise up until they’re almost reaching Heaven, and the Lord Jesus will come down and crumble them.

So, sin cannot enter Heaven, and the wicked one can never rise. The highest position belongs to God. And God at no time is going to let the evil one take His position and be above His power.

God is the Power above all powers, He is the Kingdom above all kingdoms, He is the Authority above all authorities.

So, yes, when they were building the power of babel, if you had told them at that moment that their building would be crumbled down, they would never have believed it.

They had no clue what God was planning to do. They thought they would be building their tower until the end, but God waited until it was at a certain level, and He came down and crumbled it down.

In the same way, satan’s sins are building up, the wicked think they are rising up, but that is just what it appears to be; it seems like that now, but it won’t reach Heaven. God won’t allow it. Just like the tower of babel, the Lord Jesus and His angels will come down and crumble it. So whatever the wicked are doing here, thinking that things are flourishing for them, they are already down and never will rise again. The only way to rise again, at least for the humans, is if they stop sinning and turn from those wicked ways and seek God, for it is indeed the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the Cross for all humanity and rose again, who rises with everyone else, who renounces their own ways, and brings them to the elevated position. Those who don’t turn from evil and seek Him will remain in the place of the spiritually dead.

So, the truth is that God is still paying so much attention, He still cares, He still loves us, and He still loves everybody to the point that He is bringing this truth for us to see, for people, even those wicked ones, for them to see there is hope even for them. If the Lord Jesus Christ was not there as the Hope for everyone, the wicked would not have any hope of Salvation. The Lord Jesus died for all mankind. So if we go to God with whatever sins we have, we are entitled to be forgiven because Father God sent His Son to die for us. So if we truly renounce evil and go to God, He will forgive us. But if nobody goes to God, their sins remain. So, the wicked ones are lost forever only if they remain in the darkness. Only satan and demons are doomed to be destroyed. Their punishment is already ordained by God. However, the Lord said in Ezekiel 33 that the wicked behaviour of the wicked person will not condemn them if they turn to repent. So, even the wicked are not yet doomed to be destroyed, like satan and demons, given that they come to God, repent and sin no more. It is God who takes people’s wickedness away, given that they want to let go of that wickedness.

So, I pray that you will hear this and understand that, though you may be wicked now, there is Hope for everyone, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ who died also for you on the Cross. There is still hope for you, but there is no hope for demons and satan. And I’m praying really with all my heart that you will hear this and consider it.

So, please, this is an opportunity for you to turn things around and seek the ways of the Lord.

So, Lord, I thank You so much, God, that You are such a gracious God. You give beautiful sermons for the sake of others.

You give us all those sound teachings so that people can hear. You explain the words in Your book for us to understand them. So, Lord, You are so amazing, and You are so beautiful beyond our comprehension, Lord. You are the perfect Hope we all need.

The truth is, without You, we are nothing. Without You, we are all pure evil, all of us. Without You, we are all going to be like satan and demons, because they have corrupted themselves, and they are proof that if even those who are good stop listening to You, they will just rapidly become darkness. So, You are the Lord of lords, You are the King of kings, You are the Alpha and the Omega, You are the beauty that fixes us.

Thank You so much that You are there for us, and Your people everywhere and for those who seek You.

The reason why I love to be godly so much is because You say that You delight in the godly. The same way that we delight in You and Your words, Lord, it is so great to know that even You, Father God, delight in us when we are godly. So yes, that’s why I’m pleading for us all in this church and many places on this earth to be godly so that You will always look at us and delight in us, Lord.

Thank You so much, God, for Your grace and Your mercy. And I pray that those who are wicked will hear this, Lord and seek You while they still can. Lord Jesus, thank You so much, God, You died on that cross for us so that we know at least where to go, and those who no more want darkness will know where to find. So thank You so much, Lord God, for Your forgiveness and deliverance from evil. We love You, Lord, please hear my prayer, in Your Holy name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Thank You, Father God, for Your Son Jesus You, and thank You for everything and Your Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.