THE MESSAGE OF REVELATION (1)
“IN THE FEAR OF YOU”
(Psalm 5)
SUBJECT:
F.C.F:
PROPOSITION:
INTRODUCTION:
A. What are your first thoughts in the morning? Do you remember them? Do they follow any kind of pattern? I tried paying attention to my first morning thoughts for a while and this is what I remembered. They tended to merge with what I had just been dreaming about. I awaken to an alarm, and so don’t just naturally come to consciousness. Add to these thoughts bodily sensations, usually aches and pains, backache mostly. And then my musings turn to “I’ve got to get up and get on with the day.” And lastly I remember that I’m a Christian: “Good morning, Lord. Thank you for a new day.” It seems like I lose my religion overnight, every night. My first morning thoughts are about me, and only later do they turn to the Lord Jesus Christ.
B. We have another morning psalm in Psalm 5, also a psalm of David. It would be tempting to carry the pattern through Psalms three, four, and five, namely, that Psalm 3 is the morning of the worst day of his life, Psalm 4 is the evening of the same day, and Psalm 5 is the next morning. It’s certainly possible, though that’s probably stretching it a bit. But Psalm 5 is clearly a morning psalm, and appears to give us David’s first thoughts of the day, and they are profound. They survey the biggest questions of life and are instructive to us of the weighty matters we are to consider as we turn to God in prayer, whatever the time of day.
C. You can almost sense the awakening process in verses 1-3. In verse one, David speaks of his “groaning.” Literally the word means “inmost thoughts.” One can see him awakening in silence and his thoughts coming to him:
“1Give ear to my words, O LORD;
consider my groaning (or inmost thoughts).”
And these mere thoughts turn to a “cry” and then to a more specific and deliberate “pray” in verse 2:
2Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
And finally, David moves to the concrete action of worship:
3O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
So his first thoughts of the morning are the LORD and his worship-duty to him. We will come back to this.
I. THE HOLINESS OF GOD.
A. What thoughts first come to his mind? David first ponders the question, “Who is God? What is he like? What is his character?” And his answer is that the Lord is holy, that is, morally pure and absolutely intolerant of any sin, disobedience, or form of evil.
4For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
Why is God’s holiness David’s first thought of the morning? Why does he focus on this aspect of God’s perfect, holy character? Undoubtedly it is in contrast to the enemies that he went to bed with that night. He fell into troubled sleep the night before because of the wicked enemies who have slandered him, but even more have rebelled against the Lord. We will consider these enemies a bit later.
B. So David considers the Lord’s holy character, and he does so by what is called “the way of negation.” I don’t know if you have thought about this before, but it’s somewhat difficult to speak about who God is and what he’s like. The reason is because he is spirit and so is beyond the power of our five senses to apprehend directly (we cannot see, hear, touch, taste, or smell God). So one of the primary ways God reveals himself to us in his Word is through analogy, which literally means “to lay a word alongside.” So an analogy is taking something that we do know and understand fairly well and laying it alongside or comparing it to something that we do not know, and most all of our learning is through the use of analogies.
And these analogies can either be positive or negative. For example, God is like this or God is not like that. And in this psalm, because the presence and threat of the enemies has much been on his mind, David compares the Lord to them and is assured that God is not like those enemies, and in fact, God hates and condemns these enemies for their wickedness, their unholiness. You can hear the numerous negations: 4For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
5The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
6You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
C. Now we should pause here a moment and let the sobering truth of this declaration sink in. Does God love everyone? Does God love even the wicked? Here in the fifth psalm we have the clear denial of what is arguably the only universal, religious truth accepted today, that “God loves everyone.” Today everybody says this. Two hundred years ago, nobody said it. What made the change? Did we suddenly discover new truth in the Bible? No, this notion that “God loves everyone” came not from the Bible but from secular thinking which declared that everyone is basically good at heart, and that God must therefore love everyone. The notion of “unconditional love” came out of this thinking. Humanistic psychology declared the need for “unconditional positive regard.” And if we are to love everyone unconditionally, then, of course, God certainly must love everyone unconditionally. The one great fly in the ointment of this is the text of Scripture which flatly denies this universal truth. God “hates all evildoers” and “the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” That’s strong and unambiguous language.
So David’s first thoughts of the day are to the Lord, prompted by the threat of evil enemies, and he focuses on God’s holiness: that the Lord “hate(s) all evildoers” and “abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”
II. THE GRACE OF THE LORD.
A. But here David has a problem. Though he’s certainly morally superior to these evil enemies, his hands are not completely clean either. And that’s why he quickly turns from the Lord’s holiness to the Lord’s grace. So we read in verses 7-8:
7But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love,
will enter your house.
I will bow down toward your holy temple
in the fear of you.
8Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies;
make your way straight before me.
Why is it that David is allowed to or even desires to enter God’s house and bow down toward his holy temple in true fear of the Lord? Because of the abundance of the Lord’s “steadfast love.”
B. Now this term “steadfast love” is one of the most important in both the Old and the New Testaments. It is the Hebrew term “chesed,” and if I’m not mistaken, I think Pastor Bob Vander Schaaf recently preached a whole sermon on that word. The Old Testament declares that this is one of the primary attributes of God. For example, when in Exodus 33 Moses asked to see the Lord’s glory, God said that that would destroy him and instead declared his own glory in these terms: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”(Ex. 34:6-7)
This word translated “steadfast love,” along with “faithfulness,” is repeated over and over again in the Old Testament. It comes right on over into the New Testament as… “grace.” In fact, John in the prologue to his gospel declares that Jesus came “full of grace and truth,” which is the counterpart to “chesed and emeth” or “steadfast love and faithfulness.”
C. So the second thing that David considers as he awakens after the holiness of God is the grace of God by which he enjoys a loving relationship with the Lord. The center of this psalm I think is verse 7b: “I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.” And so, in view of God’s holy and gracious character, David responds in true worship in the fear of the Lord. These are very profound thoughts for the first thing in the morning, when I’m usually only contemplating my aches and pains and what tasks I have before me that day.
III. THE JUDGMENT OF GOD.
A. The next thing that comes to David’s mind in the morning, the next subject in his morning devotions and prayer, is those enemies he went to bed fretting about. And he is confident that they no longer pose any threat because the holy and gracious Lord will not allow them to prevail.
9For there is no truth in their mouth;
their inmost self is destruction;
their throat is an open grave;
they flatter with their tongue.
10Make them bear their guilt, O God;
let them fall by their own counsels;
because of the abundance of their transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled against you.
David focuses on the dreadful judgment of God. His holiness moves him to act against the ungodly. In fact, David prays for their defeat.
B. Now, again, we need to take some factors into account when we approach what the scholars call “imprecatory” psalms, psalms in which the king calls upon the Lord to curse the wicked or to curse his enemies. There are two factors which we should keep in mind.
The first is that the psalmist is the king, charged with the protection of God’s people. There was no “separation of church and state” in the Old Testament. The church was the state. An attack upon the Old Testament church was also an act of war against the nation of Israel, and so God’s king was charged to protect God’s people, and to go to war and destroy the enemy if need be.
The other thing we should keep in mind is that things have now changed significantly. In our time the church and the state have been separated. God has entrusted the gospel to the church and the sword to the state. This can create some difficult dilemmas, but the church must not take up the sword in vengeance and the state must not shirk God’s calling to protect her citizens. That means that as the church, though we may seek the aid of the state for relief from evildoers, yet we count no human being as our enemy, and so we seek to win all with the gospel which is mighty to save.
That being said, we still bear in mind that we do have spiritual enemies. Our Lord Jesus taught us to ask for six things when we approach God as he gave us the Lord’s Prayer. The first three are for God to be honored: his name regarded as holy, his kingdom to advance, and his will to be done in obedience. The last three are very practical requests for our needs: our daily bread or physical sustenance, and our greatest spiritual need for forgiveness, and the last one deals with our enemy, that we not be led into temptation but that we be delivered from “the evil one.”
C. So we really must keep the enemy in mind and plead for God’s help to vanquish the world’s pressing influence, our own sinful nature, the flesh, with its sinful an self-centered passions, and the devil himself, “our ancient foe” who seeks “to work us woe.” Once again, in the first though of King David’s morning musings is something profound: the Lord’s help in vanquishing his enemies.
IV. THE BLESSING OF THE LORD.
A. The last thing that comes to mind for David is the promised blessing of the Lord for those who obey him. And it’s helpful for us to note that the dark enemies will not have the last word.
11But let all who take refuge in you rejoice;
let them ever sing for joy,
and spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may exult in you. 12For you bless the righteous, O LORD;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.
B. Is it right for us, in view the Lord’s surpassing greatness, to be concerned our eternal reward? Isn’t that “selfish” and “self-centered”? Shouldn’t our faith in Christ be nobler than this, unconcerned about “what’s in it for me?” It almost seems like the only difference between the wicked and the righteous is that the wicked want their goodies now and the righteous are willing to wait, to endure, to hope in their “seventy-two virgins” in paradise, and so to agree to put up with a little abstention and hardship for the relatively short time being. Is there something wrong or selfish or mercenary with people following Christ for the sake of promised future rewards?
C. Here’s where the genius of the Westminster standards truly shines as a helpful summary of the Bible’s teaching. You all can recite the answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer is “Man’s chief end is to glorify God.” Is that all there is? If so, then the argument that we should not consider future rewards may have some validity. If all we should be concerned about is God’s glory, period, then we probably shouldn’t be thinking about eternal rewards.
But that’s not all. The full answer is “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” So the reason God made, the whole purpose for our existence, is that we glorify God, yes, but also that we enjoy him forever. And that makes great sense. For if we take no joy in the Lord, then what does that say about him? What I were to speak of my wife to my friends in this way, “It’s my duty to love her. It’s really hard. Actually, I hate it, but she’s my wife so I’ll do my duty and love her.” If that’s how I spoke of my wife, it might glorify me for being willing to suffer so much by keeping my promise and doing my duty, but who would it not glorify? (My wife!)
So we glorify God best by enjoying him most. In fact, we can only glorify God by enjoying him. Or as John Piper has stated so well, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Beloved, if you have to hold your nose to do your duty to obey Christ, then stop to consider what you are doing. You are only glorifying your self by dishonoring the Lord.
And the great teachers of the church have understood this as well. John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion taught that the Christian life consists in the mortification, killing, putting to death of sin, vivification, becoming more and more alive in love for Christ and obedience to him, and the third element along with mortification and vivification is meditation on the life to come, it’s glory and goodness and blessing: our future reward.
CONCLUSION
Beloved, God himself is the great subject of our thoughts and contemplation, of our awakening, morning musings. His holiness, his grace, his judgment, and the glory of his promised blessings: that’s enough to sustain us all through the day.
But we have another problem. God is absolutely intolerant against sin. He hates evildoers and abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful person. So on the one hand God is holy. On the other hand, God is gracious with steadfast love toward the particular sinners who are his people. How can this be reconciled? How can a holy God steadfastly love sinners like us?
David tips us off in verse 3: “in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” A sacrifice? Yes, David knew very well the need for bloody sacrifices to cover his sin so that he could continue to enjoy a vital relationship with a holy God. So what bloody sacrifice do you offer each morning? A lamb? A goat? Perhaps a pigeon or a turtledove?
Beloved, this Psalm, indeed every Scripture only makes sense in view of Christ. Jesus is that perfect sacrifice, that Lamb of God slain for sinners, once for all to make atonement for our sins.
So this is how we can have peace with a holy God who is intolerant of all sin. This is how he can maintain steadfast love for his people. Without Christ, his enemies have no future. But with Christ we will enjoy the everlasting favor of God.
“12For you bless the righteous, O LORD;
you cover him with favor as with a shield.”
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