Transcript

Well, take your copy of the Scriptures and let’s go to Psalm 140. Psalm 140, a very, very unique Psalm and that I am confident that it’s one of those passages that has many typologies in it, at least, many expressions of one typology and that is as David speaks of and views his enemies coming against him, he’s speaking ultimately of the enemy for whom’s bidding his enemies are carrying out and that is Satan himself. We know that the kings of antiquity, the King of Assyria, the King of Babylon, the Pharaoh of Egypt, are always types of Christ. We see Christ in their woes and in their schemes and in their purposes and I think we see that here in this text of Scripture. Now, if you’re an esteemed Bible scholar and you think that I am spiritualizing a little too far, then you might be right but I would ask you to consider 2 things: 1. This typology is common in Scripture; secondly, my interpretation is well balanced with the whole total of biblical systematic theology. I’m saying nothing that’s not fully supported by the balance of Scripture. But there are statements here and insights here that go beyond a human enemy and I think it’s part of what helps us understand David’s such strong and forceful denunciations and predictions and requests for the crushing and destroying of his enemies because he saw Satan in, behind the human enemies that he faced. You see, brothers and sisters, when you’re persecuted for righteousness’ sake it is Satan that is against you. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. There is a demonic and a Satanic force behind. Well, I’m not going to go into that.

Let’s look at the text. Psalm 140, beginning in verse 1,

1 Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men; Preserve me from violent men 2 Who devise evil things in their hearts; They continually stir up wars. 3 They sharpen their tongues as a serpent; Poison of a viper is under their lips. Selah. 4 Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; Preserve me from violent men Who have purposed to trip up my feet. 5 The proud have hidden a trap for me, and cords; They have spread a net by the wayside; They have set snares for me. Selah. 6 I said to the LORD, “You are my God; Give ear, O LORD, to the voice of my supplications. 7 O GOD the Lord, the strength of my salvation, You have covered my head in the day of battle. 8 Do not grant, O LORD, the desires of the wicked; Do not promote his evil device, that they not be exalted. 9 As for the head of those who surround me, May the mischief of their lips cover them. 10 May burning coals fall upon them; May they be cast into the fire, Into deep pits from which they cannot rise.

Pretty graphic and harsh, isn’t it? Verse 11,

11 May a slanderer not be established in the earth; May evil hunt the violent man speedily.” 12 I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted And justice for the poor. 13 Surely the righteous will give thanks to Your name; The upright will dwell in Your presence.

So I’m going to interpret this in view of the one who is behind all evil and all violent men, particularly when you see evil and violent men attacking others because of their faith and their convictions in the word of God and in Jesus Christ. I want to interpret it in view of the one who is the final authority behind all evil and all pride: Satan is the father of the proud. I want to interpret it in view of the one who is the one who tries to trip up and to trap and to set nets and snares or bind in cords the child of God. The one who is the true and ultimate slanderer, the one who slanders with poisonous lips. All these are terms from our Psalm. The true child of God. Remember, Satan is neither man nor God. He or at least one of his agents, is present with us here in this room today. He is the devil or Satan. He is not the imagination of some ancient and illiterate people. He’s not a relic of superstition. He’s not a myth of some bygone era. He’s not a mere abstraction. He’s not a mere negation, that is, the opposite of good. Liberal theologians some time back began to say, “Well, you need to take the word ‘devil’ and take the ‘d’ off and that’s what you’ve got. The devil is just a fictitious idea, a notion for all the evil that’s in the world.” No, that’s not true. You don’t just take the “d” off and it’s just evil, he’s a person. He’s the devil. Then they’ll say, “Well, you know, God’s just God with 2 o’s. The things that are really good in life, well, that’s God.” Basically that’s what we see in our culture today. We have thrown out biblical revelation and now men subjectively are deciding what’s fair, what’s equal, what’s nondiscriminatory, what’s good for everyone. And we see these perverse and bizarre notions that have taken over our country. Am I just getting old or is it not getting very strange, very fast? Very strange, very fast.

The devil is real. He’s not some grotesque monster with horns that comes and gets after naughty children. And I believe David as he’s talking about the wicked that are coming against him is, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, writing out things that lets us see something of Satan that is behind all wicked who persecute men of God. Now, you’ve got to understand too and remember that David was God’s king and David is a type of Christ in the Old Testament. He represents the things of Christ and correspondingly, David’s enemies were types of Satan representing Satan himself.

First of all, a few things about the person of the devil. I. If you want to jot down an outline would be the devil defined and let’s talk about his person. His person. First of all, that is, he is a person. He’s not a force. He’s not just evil. He’s a person. The Bible refers to him with personal pronouns. The Bible speaks of him with personal characteristics. The Bible speaks of his great intelligence. You have no concept and you are no match for the brilliance of this spiritual being called Satan. The Bible speaks of his memory. The Bible speaks of his great knowledge. The Bible speaks of him having emotions and having a will. He has personal actions. The Bible shows Satan speaking. It speaks of Satan tempting others. The Bible talks of Satan being an accuser. He is the accuser of the brethren, the Scripture says. The Bible says he makes wars. He performs miracles. And the Bible says he will receive punishment.

So he is a real person. He is the ultimate force and the ultimate being behind all evil that is against the true good, the good that comes from God and the good expressed in the word of God. His names are Satan, which means adversary or devil which means slanderer or Abbadon which means destroyer and there are many others like the dragon or the serpent that are also used of him in Scripture. So make it settled in your mind that I don’t care how modern and how sophisticated and how arrogant and Bible-denying the culture we’re in the comes, Satan is a real person. He’s a spiritual person but he’s a person. He’s not omnipresent. He’s not like God. He can’t be everywhere at one time but his demons are most everywhere at one time.

Secondly, let’s talk about his purpose. Let’s talk about his purpose and I think we see something of this in verses 4 and 5 as David reflects on the wicked that are coming against him where he says, “Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked; Preserve me from violent men.” Now, notice some of these things, “Who have purposed to trip up my feet.” Is that not exactly what Satan tried to do to Jesus? And that’s what he’s trying to do to every cause that aligns itself with Christ. Verse 5, “The proud have hidden a trap for me, and cords.” Over and over and over and over and over again we saw the Pharisees who were the agents of Satan trying to catch Jesus. They had what they call today those “gotcha questions” they throw at Jesus, scenarios that they would set up so that whatever Jesus decides it would put him in a bad standing or make him appear as a law breaker in the eyes of the people. This looks just like a Satanic inspired plot. “They have spread a net by the wayside; They have set snares for me.”

So, Satan’s purpose if you want to get the broad overarching purpose, is always to thwart the glory of God. It’s to diminish or thwart or if he can, remove the glory of God. Our purpose as Christians is that our God might be made much of, that his name and his fame might be known to the ends of the earth. We plant churches and we mentor pastors and we disciple other churches and we support missionaries because we want, through God having his Gospel proclaimed and starting churches for his name and his fame, to be set abroad everywhere. Well, Satan is right the reverse of that. Anyway, anything he can possibly do to trip that up, to ensnare that. And by the way, I think Satan is fired up about church planting. I think he’s fired up about spreading the Gospel. If it’s his kind of a church plant, if it’s his kind of perverted and watered down Gospel, he’ll get more advantage through a weak, false church than he will just getting rid of the whole concept of churches. Satan comes to church. He’s welcome in most of them and he’s comfortable in religious services as long as he can work his means to rob God of his glory. Remember, Satan coming to Jesus and led him out into the wilderness to tempt him. “Jesus, I’ll make you ruler over all the kingdoms of the world,” and he had some authority under the sovereignty of Almighty God to do that. He said, “If you’ll just bow down and worship me, we can forget all of this going to the cross stuff. There’s an easier way.” Isn’t that the modern Gospel? Isn’t that the modern message of the modern church? “What is this cross bearing? What is this difficulty? What is this preaching about carrying a cross and possibly suffering in this world to do what’s right? There’s an easier way.” The Joel Osteen Gospel. And Satan’s been doing that ever since the Garden of Eden, ever since he tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness to say, “Don’t honor of Father’s will and the Father’s word. There’s another way to accomplish these things. It won’t cost you anything.” Peter comes to Jesus. Jesus had just begun to tell the apostles, “I’m going to Jerusalem and I’m going to die on a cross.” Peter pulls Jesus aside and begins to rebuke Jesus, the Bible says, and Jesus turns right back at Peter and says, what? “Get behind me, Satan. You want to find a way, Peter, that avoids God the Father’s will of going to the cross. You want to think that there’s an easier way but there’s not an easier way. God the Father’s way is the only way.”

He’s always trying to trip us up, deceive us, put a spin on things, put a twist on things. The Bible says that Satan blinds the eyes of the unbelieving. Isn’t that an interesting statement? He blinds the eyes of the unbelieving. Maybe we need to pray more directly, “Oh God, don’t let the enemy blind the eyes of those who need to hear the Gospel.” Christians are tempted to sin by Satan. We know that the Bible says that Satan himself, now listen to this, he is the one who sows the tares among the wheat. Satan is busy converting lost men to his “false Christianity” and planting them in God’s true churches. Are you hearing me, church? That’s Bible. Satan plants tares among the wheat. That’s why it takes diligence and discernment to strive to keep a church decently pure. There will always be false sons in our pale as the songwriter said but we don’t have to be run and run over by them. Satan, he’s the accuser of the brethren. He’ll be doing all of these things until he’s brought to an end by Almighty God. That’s his purpose: to thwart the work of God and the will of God and to rob God of his glory.

Now, for just a few moments, let’s talk about his position. I think David says something interesting here in verse 9. Look at it there, “As for the head of those who surround me.” I can’t tell you I did a real exhaustive study but I didn’t find a scholar that could explain just what does that mean. What is David saying, “As for the head of those who surround me?” Perhaps he’s saying just the leadership but I think he’s saying something different than that. I think he’s saying, “There is an authoritative head behind all the evil that’s coming against me.”

The Bible says that Satan is the prince of the power of the air. Satan has an unusual authority in the spirit realm. He’s to be taken seriously. He’s to be made aware of. I don’t know how that works but under the sovereignty of God, he is the prince of the power of the air. The Scripture also calls him the ruler of this world. He has a rulership over this world, this godless world system that’s working in the world today. In another place, the Bible calls him the God of this world and we know that will take full fruition in the person of the antichrist when he takes the throne on the earth. Remember, the antichrist will make an alliance with the false, counterfeit Christian church. They’ll fall right in line because the false, counterfeit church wants to run with any trend, any worldly gimmick that comes along that makes them do better, makes them more popular. So the antichrist seems to be the going thing. Everybody just really loves him. Of course, he won’t be called the antichrist at that point; nobody will know what he is. And the false church is just falling in line with him and then he’ll turn on the false church and he’ll exalt himself as God to be worshiped and that’s why he’s the God of this world. Ultimately he will want that worship.

Speaking of his position and that it is a high and powerful position, in Jude 8 and 9, Jude says that Michael the Archangel would not bring a railing accusation against him but rather said, “The Lord rebuke you.” Michael had great respect for the authoritative position that Satan had. You know, before his fall into wickedness, Ezekiel 28:14 called him the anointed cherub. That’s a very powerful phrase because Jesus is God’s anointed. My presumption is that he’s the anointed cherub that he had a special role at the right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Isn’t it just like wickedness through the years, it’s very rare to find a number 2 guy that’s loyal and is satisfied being the number 2 guy. The temptation is always to overthrow the top guy and be the top guy yourself. Satan was most likely the highest, most gifted, most intelligent, most powerful angel God made and he served at the right hand of Jesus Christ. He was the anointed cherub. So he had a very, very high position. He was the head and could that possibly be? I believe it is what David is talking about when he talks about “the head that’s over those who surround me.”

Well, that’s something about the devil defined: his person, his purpose and then his great position. Now, let’s look at the devil denied. David is going to go into some length here talking about how he wants to avoid these evil men and their snares and their plots against him. Notice, first of all, in verse 6a, notice, I think David gives a word of sonship here. He says in verse 6, “I said to the LORD, ‘You are my God.'” Personal pronoun there. God wasn’t just some distant being that he knew in an abstract way from reading some sacred writings. He knew God as his Father. David is an example of a dedicated Christian in the Old Testament. He knew God’s salvation. He knew he was a son of God. Once we were blinded by Satan but now through Jesus Christ we have been brought close to God and more than just close to God, we have become the sons of God. That’s a powerful thing to remember that God has more interest in you than just to say, “You’re lined up with me as a part of my army.” That may be true but you’re more dear to him than that. You’re the apple of his eye. You’re his sons and his daughters. That gives you a powerful place to know that Satan can be denied in his energies against you.

An old song writer wrote,

“The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin; Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in, The light of the world is Jesus.

“You dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes, Go, wash, at His bidding, and light will arise; The light of the world is Jesus.”

And that like comes into our souls and we go from being sons of darkness to sons of light, the children of God. Revelation 12:11 speaks of those who will be living on the earth during those horrible days of tribulation. The Bible says they overcame by the word of their testimony. Well, part of the word of their testimony was, “We have become the sons of God and we don’t have to follow what’s going on on this earth.” And the Bible says they were faithful even unto death. There’s a strength in knowing you’re a child of God.

Secondly, not only sonship but notice strength. There is a strength that we have in the Lord. Verse 7, “O GOD the Lord, the strength of my salvation, You have covered my head in the day of battle.” Now, let’s just elaborate on this from the balance of Scripture. Where do you get God’s strength? How does God’s strength make itself available to you? How do you walk in the strength of God that he has for you? 1. Closely connected to my earlier sermon today: humbly admit your lack of strength. That’s where it starts. If you want any of God’s strength, you start with a humbling that, “God, I can do nothing.” Jesus said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” “God, I have no strength.” Don’t you grit your teeth in your fallen, human manliness and say, “I’ll not do this. I’m going to do that.” You’re not going to do anything but fail. You get on your face. In the next section of Luke 18, Jesus said, “Unless you become like a little child,” you get on your face like a little child and say, “O Father in heaven, I have no strength. I need your strength.” Humbly admit you need his strength. Ephesians 6:10 says, “Be strong in the Lord,” not strong for the Lord, “be strong in the Lord.” That’s in his strength, not your strength. His strength. “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” When I am weak, then I am strong.

First of all, 1. Humbly admit your lack of strength. Now, the whole tenor of David’s crying out is, “I can’t handle these guys. I can’t defeat these guys. I can’t overcome the violence and the wickedness coming against me.” His point is, “God, you’re my strength.” Now, 2. Wholly commit yourself to the word of God. Wholly commit yourself. Just say, “Lord, I need your strength. I need to be about what you’re about. Now, what does your word tell me I’m to be about? That’s what I’m going to be.” Look: God is not going to give you his strength to do your will. God will give you his strength to do his will. Listen: his whole reputation is on the line when you stand on this book. Are you with me? Do you not remember Moses out there in the wilderness crying out to God and saying, “God, if you forsake us here, if these Egyptians overcome us, if we perish out here, then you’re going to be in effect,” Moses is saying, “laughed at among the nations because we’re doing your will by following you out here in the wilderness so you’d better take care of us. Your reputation is on the line.” We ought to be bold with God. God likes that. You say, “Lord, I’m standing on your word, now give me the strength to make it through.” I’m going to tell you, look: Jesus Christ, I believe, gets up on his seat in heaven and says, “Angels, let’s go help him.” Look: when you stand on his word. Now ladies, are you listening to your pastor? You don’t stand on your emotions, you stand on his word. You get your emotions in line with the word of God. Some of you little old men need to get your emotions in line too sometimes. Stand on the word of God, then look to God to give you strength.

Can I just say as a word of personal testimony as a pastor who’s certainly known weakness and certainly made blunders and certainly had failures but we’re doing things, we’re walking in things and we’re standing on things today as a church where 25 years ago it scared me to death because everybody said we were wrong except it was clear in the Bible and I could find a lot of it in church history. I thought the forefathers lived this way and stood on the word of God and we can too. That’s all we had. We basically said, “God, if this isn’t true, if you will not help us, if you don’t strengthen us on this book, then this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces.” I’m about to celebrate 34 years here. God’s strength has been with us as we’ve stood on the word. Not because Jeff Noblit is smart, that’s been proven, I’m not. Not because I’m special, that’s been clearly proven, I’m not. But God will honor his word. “God, I’m going to stand on your word.” Now look: you may be in an area where the word is not very clear, then look for biblical principles, find some godly brothers and sisters to pray with you to be accountable and then go with the best you understand it and trust God’s strength to be there for you.

Well, wholly commit yourself to the word but first, humbly admit your lack of strength. Now thirdly, fully resist the devil’s approaches. I wish I could tell you I knew exactly what this looks like but I’m not sure. I think I do know in a way but I wish I could just graft out for you on the screen, “Now, here’s exactly what the devil’s attack looks like,” but I’m not sure. I’m just being honest. I think I know but the Bible says a lot about this. First of all, let me point this out: the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. That means when I’m walking in God’s Spirit, there is an enablement by the strength of the Spirit within me to control myself and not succumb to all the wiles and the temptations and the snares of Satan that are thrown out there. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. I would argue with my charismatic brothers and sisters who say, “Well, when the Spirit comes, you’re just out of control.” That’s not what the Bible says. When the Spirit comes, you’re fully in control. Fully in control.

James 4:6-7, listen to this, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Now, what’s the humble? He is the one who acknowledges to God, “I have no strength.” He’s the one who says, “Not only do I not have any strength, I don’t have any sense so I’m going to go to your book. I have no strength. I have no wisdom. I’m going to the wisdom of God here.” God is opposed to the proud but he gives grace to the humble. Then he says, “submit therefore God.” Walk in those 2 points we’ve been talking about, then “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” You see, I think there are a lot of people that aren’t doing step 1 and step 2 and they’re just doing all this devil resisting and the devil is just laughing because he knows God’s not going to help him because he’s not humble first of all, he’s not confessing he’s weak and has no strength and he’s not standing on God’s word so Satan says, “I can do anything I want with him. He can stand up and chant and stomp and name and claim and whatever and zap and sling his coat in air, whatever he wants to do but he has no power and no authority because he has forsaken God by not being humble and not being biblical.”

But listen to me: I just spent some time with a dear, dear pastor up north of Memphis who is doing a good job but has a massively difficult job on his hands. You know, I tell you this all the time: if you’ve been here a long time, you can’t fathom the bizarre nonsense that’s going on in Baptist churches. It’s unbelievable what’s going on and this guy is fairly young, good brother. He didn’t create the mess. He was on staff and the pastor who created the mess had character and moral issues and had to leave and he’s trying to get it back on track and he’s asked us to come alongside as much as we can just to help. I preached for him and had a time of breakfast with some of his men and I just thought, “Wow, what amazing stuff is going on here.” I don’t know how to say this other than as I drove home, the weightiness of what God has called us to be and do just kind of came over me, just the weightiness, because if those men do what the word of God says and if they do what I told them to do based on the word of God, then they may lose their jobs and they may not be able to feed their families. That’s not easy but we go back to this: if I’m standing on the word of God, God will support me, some way, some shape or some fashion. They couldn’t keep going the way they were going.

Again, one of the large churches in the Southern Baptist Convention that used to be a flagship in many ways and I wouldn’t have agreed with everything they did but they had a good man and he preached the word and there were some good things going on but today, that church does a thousand events a year of every stripe, type in the world. Everything from mothering and parenting to baby diapering and you name it, they do it. That’s their way to bring people into the church. Whatever happened to preaching the Gospel? Do you see what I’m saying? It’s just unbelievable. It’s fascinating the money and the expertise they have in all the things other than the one thing that matters. It’s not wrong to have some events to help people and do things for people but what happens is a snare of the devil: he gets you down that track and you can’t get back to the serious work of building a biblical, Christ honoring, God-focused, Bible-saturated church doing a thousand other events. It’s not that those events are all wrong, there’s no time. I’m saying all that to say: you can’t go to God and say, “O God, support us,” unless you know, “God, this is what your book says and I don’t care what they believe or what they say, we’re staying right here and we look to your strength to help us.” That’s the way we get the strength of God.

Well, not only fully resist the devil’s approaches but prayer. Prayer is a way to harness God’s strength, if you will. Prayerfully call out to God for rescue. I believe there’s something to this. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you might be able to bear up under it.” Now, I’m not saying it’s the only application of this text but have you ever tried crying out to God for the way of escape when Satan comes against you? Just cry out to God, “O God, help me! God, show me another way! God, show me the way out!” I think we don’t get God’s strength and God’s help because we don’t ask for it. There’s a truth there.

Well, the devil defined, the devil denied and now, the devil defeated, verses 9 through 11. Again, I don’t think you can see these wordings here without thinking that David is talking in typologies here. He wants us to see the power behind these evil men of his day that were coming against him. First of all, the devil is going to be fully defeated. Look at verse 10, if you will, “May burning coals fall upon them; May they be cast into the fire.” Isn’t that interesting and doesn’t that parallel what’s going to happen to Satan? He’s going to go into the fiery abyss one day.

Now, again, this is another one of those Psalms where I think, how shall I say this, we’ve become effeminate in our spirit. The whole age we live in has become a non-manly, effeminate age. There’s just a lot of whininess, a lot of wimpiness, a lot of feely-feely, touchy-touchy, my feelings. I mean, if you hurt somebody’s feelings today, you can go to jail. It’s unbelievable. It’s almost like little girls playing in the backyard. So when we read a text where David is asking burning coals to fall upon people, even though I believe it’s a type, ultimately it points to Satan, but it does include the people that are actually persecuting David. Then he says, “May they be cast into the fire.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon said 175 years ago, listen to this, I want you to listen to this statement because I think it hits the nail on the head. “He who does not desire judgment on the wicked may wish to be considered as humane or Christ-like but the chances are that he has a sneaking agreement with the wicked or is deficient in a manly sense of right and wrong.” Boy, he smacked that over the fence. I’m going to read that again. “He who does not desire judgment on the wicked may wish to consider himself as humane or Christ-like but the chances are that he has a sneaking agreement with the wicked or is deficient in a manly sense of right and wrong.” Here’s what I’d like to say: we don’t need any more little sissy girls dealing with right and wrong, we need some men. We need some men to be men about what’s right and wrong. We lack a manliness. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this country if we don’t get adults back in the government and especially the little girls; the State Department comes on and those little girls come on there. God help us that we get somebody in government leadership that actually has accomplished something before they got there: ran a business, built something, fought in the military, something. Manliness. That’s, I think, what we’re missing. That’s why there’s all this apologetic, “Oh, the judgment of God and oh, that’s not fair.” I’ll tell you what’s not fair: what’s not fair is that God would let them breathe another breath being as wicked as they are on this earth. We need some manliness and standing up for what’s right and wrong. Alright, let me leave that alone.

Fully defeated. That’s a statement of full defeat there in the first part of verse 10. Swiftly defeated. Look at verse 11, he said, “May a slanderer,” is not Satan the ultimate slanderer, the accuser of the brethren? “May a slanderer not be established in the earth; May evil hunt the violent man speedily.” You see, the violent have for time immemorial hunted in their evil ways down the righteous. I can’t promise you that God’s not going to let some of the righteous in our day be more persecuted. By the way, around the world, our brothers and sisters are being martyred for their Christian faith.

Can I just say this as a sideline? I think I would like to see Grace Life Church do something tangibly for these people around our country who are being persecuted as they stand on their biblical moral values concerning gay marriage. I just believe we ought to do a little something at least there. Matthew 25 is in the context of a cultural persecution against believers and Matthew 25 teaches true believers will be there for each other when the culture comes against them. I just think, I’m not fully happy with all the political action groups that claim to be Christian but I think we need to do more there and if you feel like you’re a person that might need to head that up, then talk to Brother Matt and just say, “I’d like to be involved in that.” We can’t be involved in every issue but with the sermon I think we ought to do more there. We ought to stand with those who are being attacked.

But those are the wicked and they have violently hunted down the righteous through the years but here, the Bible text says, look there in verse 11 again, “May evil hunt the violent man.” That’s very interesting. The hunter here is devoured by his own hounds, and so David is crying out for God to let the wickedness of men come back upon them. It’s a very interesting statement.

Well, permanently defeated, verse 10 again, the last phrase there. He says, “May be cast into the fire,” and then he says, “Into deep pits from which they cannot rise.” I believe that’s a symbol, again, of the abyss of Satan’s final demise there in Revelation where he’s thrown in Revelation 20:10 into the lake of fire. You know, when a righteous man falls, he rises again. When the wicked man goes down, he falls as Lucifer falls, never to rise again. I think that’s what David is saying, “O God, may you be esteemed, may you be honored and may you be praised and those that are against you and against your men,” David is saying, “I, me, I’m your man on earth, not the only one but I’m one of your men on earth and may those who are against you and your people fall never to rise again.” Aren’t you glad, brothers and sisters, that in Christ Jesus, we blunder, we fail and we fall but we don’t stay down? We rise again.

Satan’s fall was predicted in the garden of Eden. Satan’s fall was pictured in Egypt. Satan’s fall was provided for on Easter. And Satan’s fall is prophesied in eternity future.

Now, verses 12 and 13, David says, “I know,” that’s a key phrase, “I know.” Now, I know, there are sincere brothers and sisters and Christians who struggle with assurance but isn’t it good when you know you’re God’s? I mean, like I preached this morning, it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s got nothing to do with your performance. It’s got nothing to do with, “I just said this and you did that.” I mean, you just know you’re God’s. The Spirit of God bears witness with your spirit that you’re a child of God. That’s where David is. He said, “I know. I know. Let them rage. Let them roar. Let them threaten. Let them devour. Let them lock me up in jail. Whatever, I know something.” What does David know? “I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted And justice for the poor.” Now, the afflicted here are those who are afflicted for righteousness’ sake. Don’t make this into some liberal, socialistic interpretation. He’s not talking about just the poor on the earth, he’s talking about those who are poor because they honor God and they’ve been forsaken and abandoned by the powers that be on the earth. David says, “I know.” I believe you can expand that out to say David says, “I know that I’m a sinner but I know that Jesus died vicariously for me on the cross. I know that I’ve been brought to repentance and I’ve become a repenter of my sin and my evil and my weakness but I know that I am now his child.”

Then verse 13, “Surely the righteous will give thanks to Your name; The upright will dwell in Your presence.” No matter what they do, no matter what happens on earth, no matter how widely and powerfully it looks like the wicked are winning, I’m telling you, they’ve got an end coming and the righteous will be established on this earth with Jesus Christ as their head. It’s going to happen. David says, “I know. I know.” And if you are a child of God, something rises up in your spirit as we look at these glorious truths and something in your heart says, “Yes, I know it too. It is true. I know, I have confidence in ultimate victory. I know I may get down, I may spiritually get down, I may be discouraged but I know I’m never out. I know that he has promised never to forsake me and never to leave me. I know that he is conforming me to his image and I know that whatever he allows the enemy to gain over me, no matter what God allows to happen, I know that he’s even using the wiles of the wicked to conform me to the image of Jesus Christ. I know some things,” David says. “I know that he who began a good work in me will perform it to the day of Christ Jesus. I know that he’s coming again to receive me unto himself and I know that I will one day thank him and praise him in his presence forever and ever and ever.” Verse 13, “Surely the righteous will give thanks to Your name; The upright will dwell in Your presence.”

Child of God, listen to me, I don’t care, watch the news, I know that the governor of Indiana right now has passed a law to give religious liberties to those who under their religious convictions do not want to condone and endorse the wickedness that’s going on in our world and now Apple and these mighty corporations are threatening to boycott the whole state. Look: it looks like they’re winning, don’t you be discouraged. David says, “I know they’re coming to an end one day and we’re going to be in his presence and praise him forever.” Do you know what that means? That means we win. That means we win. And right now it’s not anything near as bad as it’s going to be in the tribulation but we still win. You just can’t lose because Jesus is not a loser and every ploy, every plot and everything they devise and everything they do, that is, the wicked, will ultimately turn out to bring praise and glory to him. Aren’t you glad he rescued you from darkness and blindness and let you see the wickedness and darkness of this world in your own heart and placed you in the kingdom of his beloved Son? All of God’s people said, amen.

Let’s all stand together.