Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 5 | Date: July 2, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

and watch. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But 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. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me, for there is no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongues. Make them bear their guilt, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Because of the abundance of their transgression, cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. But 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 exalt in you. For you bless the righteous, O Lord. You cover him with favor as with a shield.

And then we have a postscript, which in our printed editions appears as the superscript of the next Psalm: “To the choirmaster.” Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we have profited so much from these Psalms. We look forward to working our way through them. This cherished and beloved book of the Bible, a favorite of so many. We ask today that you will teach us again. We pray that you will take this psalm and use it to teach us the fear of God, teach us the holiness of God, teach us the wrath of God, and teach us the grace and goodness of God. We pray that you will open our eyes to see it and through it give us a greater appreciation for and a firmer faith in our Lord Jesus. We pray in his name, amen.

We have here another lament psalm, and you recognize that by now. You’re cued in; you recognize the clues to a lament psalm. Right off, you have the direct address, “O Lord.” And right off, we have the introductory petition, the introductory lament in the first two verses. “Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry. For to you do I pray.” And then next, in verses four to six, we have the confidence section of the lament psalm. Verse four: the Lord has no delight in evil. Wickedness can’t stand in his presence. And then we have the praise section in verse seven. “But 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.” And then verses eight to 11, the petition section. This is always the heart of the lament psalm, where the psalmist makes his request to God. So he asks God, verse eight, “Lead me in your righteousness because of my enemies.” And then verse 12, we conclude with praise. “You bless the righteous, O Lord. You cover him with favor as with a shield.”

So throughout the psalm now, we have the voice of the psalmist, but notice again, before we get into it, there is an alternating point of reference through the psalm. We have on the one hand, the psalmist speaking for himself, and then he speaks of the plight of the wicked, and that alternates back and forth through the psalm. Verses one to three, we have the prayer of the psalmist: “Give ear to my words, O Lord.” Verses 4 to 6, we have the plight of the wicked that’s highlighted: “Evil cannot dwell with you. You destroy those who speak lies.” Then verses 7 and 8, we’re back to the prayer of the psalmist: “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness.” And then verses 9 and 10, we’re back to the guilt and the plight of the wicked: “Make them bear their guilt, O God.” And then verses 11 and 12, the psalmist gives his petition and prays, “Let all who take refuge in you rejoice.”

Now in the context here, remember we’re trying to keep an eye on the arrangement of the psalms, and the inspired editors have placed these in particular arrangement for certain reasons. It’s not always detectable as far as I know, but sometimes there are some clues as to why they put one psalm with another or a particular cluster of psalms together, and I think we have that here. In Psalm 1, we have God’s blessing for those who delight in his law, and the wicked will perish. And we have set up at the beginning the contrasting destinies of the righteous and the wicked. Psalm 2, then, we have God’s Son, or God’s King, commissioned to destroy the wicked at the end. And then Psalm 3, we have Absalom’s rebellion against the King. Psalm 4 and 5, we have enemies from within Israel again. Those are also lament Psalms. Psalms 3 through 5 all give petitions that are somewhat similar: protect David, the chosen king, from the wicked, from problems from within his own kingdom.

In Psalm 3, David’s enemies are many. And then in Psalm 4, remember we saw his enemies were influential. It was the high-born ones, the nobility and the ones in high positions of his kingdom who are undermining him and turning on him. And now we’ll see in Psalm 5 that his enemies are malicious liars. Presumably influential people still, when they’re in high positions, but they’re seeking to undermine him by the use of the tongue. So the theme that we have in Psalm 5 is similar to what we’ve had previously, and that is the righteous king is under attack by vicious enemies. Verse 5, he calls them evildoers. Verse 6, he calls them bloodthirsty. Most prominently, they are attacking with malicious speech, as I’ve said, with the use of the tongue. Verse five, you see they are boastful. Verse six, they speak lies and they’re deceitful. Verse nine, there’s no truth in their mouth.

So here we have some who are lying and slandering against David. They are treacherous in a way. They’re undermining him. They’re seeking to weaken his position, not with a sword, but with the use of their tongue. It’s a topic that has worked many times over the centuries. And so with all of that, we have David’s corresponding petition, verses 8 and following: save the king, save his people, and punish the enemies. So the occasion, although the superscript doesn’t give us an exact historical point of reference and the content of the psalm doesn’t give us enough specificity on that either, we can surmise it’s some kind of crisis in the kingdom, some kind of severe kind of trouble, opposition of some sort. It may be the context of Absalom and his rebellion, maybe just prior to that with the talking that was going on in the kingdom undermining him; maybe he had caught wind of all of that. We can’t be sure, but there’s some moment of crisis, and as we’ll see, it’s a rather severe one as well.

First: Introductory Petition And Lament

So first of all, we have in the first two verses his introductory petition and his lament. “Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God. For to you do I pray.” “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning.” So he’s asking God not just to consider the words that he is praying, but listen to my groans as well. In fact, verse 2, it’s also “my cry.” The particular word that’s used here in the Hebrew is a loud cry, typically connotes a loud cry, or even a scream for help. So David is in the severe kind of crisis; it’s a distressful moment, and then he prays then in verses one and two. Notice the three imperatives: give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning, give attention to the sound of my cry. In other words, not just pay attention to when I talk, but hear me graciously and give response; give what I asked for. So he sets out the psalm right off, stating then in so many words that he’s in this crisis moment in his kingdom and he cries out to God for help and asks God to intervene.

Now in verse 2, the second part of the verse, we’re introduced to a new theme in the Psalter, and that is when he says, “my king.” He refers to God as my king. Now the word king has appeared in the Psalter now only in Psalm 2. And there it referred to God’s king, the Messiah, God’s king, his anointed. And it also referred to the kings of the earth. But here now it’s referring to—David is saying, “God is my king.” So he’s acknowledging God as the true king of Israel. And this reminds us that Israel was a theocracy. The king was not autonomous; he was a vice-regent. He was serving under God to administer God’s law in God’s kingdom.

You will remember that Moses had left instructions in Deuteronomy for when Israel finally receives her king. The first day of his kingship, the day he’s anointed, what he’s supposed to do, according to Moses’ law, is that king is to sit down and copy out by hand the entire law of Moses to remind him up front that he’s not autonomous; he is not the law, God is the law, he’s ruling under the king. And David is acknowledging that here. My king—God is my king, and I rule under him. And God has established his kingdom now on earth in Israel through his human representative, David. And eventually through David’s greater son, of course, as we’ll see.

Now he calls him “my king and my God.” And so David here is not only acknowledging his position as subject to this greater king, but he’s addressing him in terms of his covenant relationship. And this is the basis of his confidence in his prayer. God is my king. He is my God. Now, of course, there’s a sense in which we can say that God is the God of every last person. He is your God whether you acknowledge it or not. He is your king whether you acknowledge him as king or not. But David is referring here, obviously, to his covenant relationship with God, that God has entered into relationship with David through a covenant promise. And God’s part of that is that he will protect the faithful king. And David is just playing on that now and saying that I am the faithful king, I’m the one you have appointed, you have made promises to protect me, you are my God, my king, come to my help. So he begins then in verses one and two with an introductory plea and lament; he positions himself before God as subject to him, but also as his loyal covenant partner coming to God for the promised help that he would give.

Now we come to verse three; we have a little bit of a translation question, and I deal with these when I think it’s necessary because we have in our congregation many of you using the English Standard Version, the ESV, like I have, some of you the New International Version, and there’s a discrepancy here, so I think I’ll take time to point it out. In the ESV, like I have here, it says, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” The NIV in the second line says, “In the morning I lay my request before you and wait expectantly.” So the ESV says, “I prepare a sacrifice.” The NIV reads, “I lay my request before you.”

Now the problem here in translation is that there’s no—we have the verb, but we don’t have a direct object to the verb. It’s not supplied. You have to fill it in yourself. The verb here, “I prepare,” or “I lay my… before you,” it means to prepare, to arrange, to put forward, to set in proper order. And this verb is used in other contexts of setting the battle, the soldiers in order, and preparing an account, or preparing a sacrifice, or whatever. But we have to supply here the direct object. Just what is it he’s laying out here? It just might be that both are right. And that sounds kind of strange, but it could be that both are right because we have “in the morning”—this is the time of the morning sacrifice, and I think probably the majority of commentators take that view that it’s referring to a time of sacrifice, but that time of sacrifice was accompanied by prayer.

And clearly, prayer is the context here that David is dealing with. He’s bringing his prayer and his request to God, and so I think we could read it then somewhat like the NIV does, although I think the ESV is correct, but we should keep in mind, as the rest of the verse says, “I’ll lay my request before you and watch.” That is, he watches expectantly. He’s waiting for an answer. He’s looking ahead to time when God will answer the prayer that he is giving now. So he says, “I’m setting in order my prayer. I’m setting out the words. I’m laying them out carefully.” The point is, David rises early in the morning, and the first thing he does is he goes to God in prayer. A great idea. A wise way to begin the day. And he carefully arranges his words. He’s not speaking rashly, but carefully considered, he makes his case before God. And then he watches. He waits patiently to see what God will do in response.

Second: The Holiness And Justice Of God

So in verses one to three, then David cries out to the Lord and waits for his help. He hasn’t yet stated the problem or the specific danger, but he cries out to God for help, and now he’s waiting for the answer. And now verses four to six, he gives the basis of his petition. And the basis of his petition here in these verses is the holiness and the justice of God. This is the—we can call this the confidence section of his lament. What’s the basis of his petition? Help me? Why? Verse 4: “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you.” So already we’re getting a clue, although he hasn’t said it specifically; the problem is one of wicked people opposing him. So help me, for you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

Now notice how this stanza here intensifies this idea of God’s opposition to the wicked. I’ve been increasingly impressed in the studies I’ve been doing in the Psalms over the last year or two how carefully David works and constructs these psalms, just from a poetic standpoint, how he labors so hard to make these perfectly symmetrical in so many ways. There are some psalms where they have two stanzas, two broad stanzas, and the one and the other have the same number of words, and then those stanzas have strophes in between—the substanzas in them—and they have the same number and the same number of words. He’ll do that kind of thing sometimes. Amazing how he’s worked so hard at it.

Well, here what we have instead in verses 4 to 6 is an intensification of the idea of God’s opposition to the wicked. In verse 4, the first line, we have a dramatic understatement. “The Lord, you are not a God who delights in wickedness.” Well, I guess not. That says it rather mildly, doesn’t it? That’s a dramatic understatement to make the point. But notice how it grows from there. You’re not a God who delights in wickedness. And then verse 4b: “Evil may not dwell with you.” The word dwell here is typically the word that in the King James Version used to be translated “sojourn.” It has to do with somebody not moving in permanently, but passing through and settling for just a moment, temporary time. And what he’s saying here is that God and evil are so absolutely incompatible that even a momentary coexistence is impossible.

So, he does not delight in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. Now verse 5: “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.” That is, they’re not allowed to be there. They’re not given asylum there. They’re driven away. Verse 5b: indeed God “hates all evildoers.” And so, verse 6, he’ll destroy them. And he’s not reluctant about it. And then the last part of verse six, he summarizes with a climactic kind of intensity: “the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” He finds these wicked people offensive, and so he’s indignant with it, he’s repulsed by it, he finds them repugnant, and so he’s angry.

And what we have then in verses four to six is simply a practical application and exposition of the righteousness and the holiness of God. In the ancient Near East, there was no concept of moral and ethical holiness with regard to the gods. The gods in the ancient Near East surrounding Israel were basically more or less like the people in the nations, but just on a grander scale in every way—in their power, but also in their vices, just evil in the worst kinds of way. And there was no sense at all of this idea of a holy God ruling over people and requiring holiness. And that’s unique to Israel.

In the Old Testament, God is a holy God. That word has, first of all, the concept of transcendent. He’s other. He’s beyond us. And one aspect of His otherness is this moral aspect. He is holy. He is marked by things like truth, justice, faithfulness, love. And he expects his people to be that way as well. God is a righteous God, and it is righteous for God to demand righteousness of his creatures. That’s why, like in the book of Proverbs, a false balance is an abomination to the Lord. Why is it such an abomination to the Lord when you cheat someone? Because it’s so contrary to who he is. It’s contrary to what He is and to the laws that He has given that reflect who He is. And so, verse 5, He hates evildoers. That’s God’s necessary response to those who are evil and to all that is opposed to Him. For God to be indifferent toward unrighteousness would not be a virtue.

And so God hates. Now it is true that the Bible tells us that God is love—of the essence of who he is. And the Bible nowhere says God is hate. But at the same time, because God is love and because God is holy and because God is righteous, his necessary response to all that is opposed to him and all that is contrary to him—He’s repulsed by it, and he’s indignant toward it, and he hates it. He demands righteousness, and he’s opposed to all that is unrighteous.

I suppose this would be a good time to pause and talk about the familiar expression that we have bandied about so much in Christian circles today, and that is that “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” What should we make of that? You’ve all heard it. There is just enough truth in that statement to be confusing. It’s an oversimplification. The Bible nowhere makes a distinction like that—that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. It’s a distortion. And it’s a distortion for two reasons. Number one, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner”—that little jingle, as nice as it sounds, allows no room and no place for verse five: “He hates all evildoers.” It makes no space for verse six: “He abhors them.” He’s not indifferent toward them.

In fact, this is not just Psalm 5. If you want to look over at Psalm 7, verses 11 to 13: “God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword. He has bent and readied his bow. He has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.” And if that’s not enough, look at Psalm 11, verse 5: “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” That’s why you find in the book of Proverbs, for example, that God hates a false witness, God hates these various vices, he that sows discord among the brethren, and so on. It is all contrary to God, who is truthful and righteous and morally pure, and he cannot but hate all of those who act contrary to him.

So the first way that jingle distorts the truth is that it allows no place for these kinds of plain statements we have in the scriptures. The other way it distorts the scriptures, I think, is that it seems to let the sinner off the hook where the Bible doesn’t. To say that “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner” leaves the connotation that God will punish the sin, but not the sinner—as though the sinner will not be held accountable. When of course, hell in the Bible is not for sin. It’s for sinners. God will not punish in hell sin. He punishes sinners. I think in both of those ways, that little jingle, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner,” distorts what we find in the Bible. The greatest problem that every man and woman faces is that by their sin, they’ve set themselves in opposition to their Holy Creator. They have incurred His wrath and become detestable.

Now the remarkable truth of the gospel is that God has set His love on hateful sinners, and He has made a way to save them. He has sent His Son to save them. He has given Him a people whom He would save. He sent His Son to save them. And then in Romans chapter 3, as we’ve seen here many times, He has made a righteous way to save them. And so God has sent his son. He puts him forth as a propitiation for our sins. And here God the son has come and taken the wrath of God against sinners and satisfying divine justice against sinners. God now can take us who are in Christ and declare us to be righteous, and he can be righteous in doing so because of our righteous substitute. And having provided Christ now in sheer mercy, he offers free pardon to all who will come to Christ. But the reality remains: God hates all of those who are outside of Christ and unrepentant. The whole backstory of the gospel is that if you have not bowed your knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have not found refuge in him, you’re the object of God’s wrath and you are in fact condemned already.

Our culture, as we say all the time anymore, struts increasingly in its rebellion against God. And the message our culture needs to hear is not, “God hates the sin, but he loves the sinner.” What we need to hear is what we’ve needed to hear all along, and that is: because of your sin, you’ve offended God. You’ve become the object of His wrath, and you’ll not escape it. God will punish sinners. And it will be either you who are punished, or the substitute that you find, who is found only in Jesus.

Now, for David, in Psalm 5, God’s holiness, his abhorrence of the wicked, and his hatred of the wicked is the basis of his prayer. He’s saying, “God, hear me, because you hate these wicked people. They’re opposing me, but you hate them. They just can’t be allowed to succeed.” So verse four, “You take no delight in them. You cannot allow them to dwell with you even a moment.” Verse five, “These people could never take place before you and stand because you hate them all.” Verse six, “These people are the ones that you destroy and that you abhor.” These people, he’s saying, cannot be allowed to succeed. If they win, that would be just unthinkable. It would be contrary to God. So this is the basis of his prayer.

And then verse seven, he offers a positive reason why God should hear him. “But I”—notice the contrast—”but 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.” Notice the contrast between verse 7 and what we saw in verse 4, and 4 through 6. Verse 4: “evil may not dwell with you,” and now verse 7: “but I, I will… enter into your house and bow down in your temple.” Now be careful here not to misunderstand, and this is one of those Psalms where we almost wince when we read it. David is not boasting; he’s not claiming that he deserves to enter into God’s presence. Notice what he says again in verse 7: “I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.” So David is still reasoning from the character of God. In verse 4, it was the integrity of the judge that demands their destruction. But now in verse 7, it’s the covenant mercy of the judge that allows David to enter into his house.

And here we come across this “steadfast love” expression that we find. It’s one of those familiar Hebrew expressions that becomes so familiar in Christian circles that even non-Hebrew readers have begun to hear the word and say it themselves. That Chesed word, you know—it’s H-E-S-E-D, but it’s more of a guttural. Now you know. But it’s a word that’s been translated various kinds of ways: steadfast love, loving kindness. King James Version often translated loving kindness. It’s a word there’s really no exact equivalent in the English. It has the connotations of affection, so the love thing needs to be in there. But it also has the connotations of a loyalty, helping, and so a steadfast love, sticking to it. Faithful love—that’s sometimes the expression. It often in its use in the Old Testament has the connotations of a superior and inferior, and the inferior pleads the covenant mercy, the steadfast love of the one who’s above him. “So he can do for him what I’m not able to do. Take over for me and do for me what I can’t do for myself.” And that’s what David is asking here. It is the integrity of God that demands the hatred and the destruction of his enemies, but it is this covenant mercies, this steadfast love of God that allows David now to enter into God’s house.

So David is not claiming a personal merit. What he’s claiming is a divine pledge. God has pledged himself in covenant loyalty to David. He’s made me his, he’s made me a promise, and that is the basis of his confidence. So his plea is not absolute. And by the way, you need to keep that in mind throughout the Psaltery. We find that often where David pleads his innocence and his righteousness and that God should save him because of his righteousness and things like that. Keep in mind a couple of things. One, it is relative to his opponents that he is speaking. They are the wicked ones on the advance. He has not done anything to deserve this treatment from them and to provoke it. And keep in mind also there are other statements in the Psalms where David will say things like, “if you should keep a record of sins, who should stand before you?” If God is my judge, I’ll never be righteous. Putting them all together, you have to recognize that David is speaking in relative terms with regard to his enemies who have unjustly opposed him. And yet still he’s able to say, “I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter into your house.”

Now on this side of the cross, with minds informed by the full revelation in Jesus in the New Testament, we read verse 7, and we cannot help but think immediately of the covenant mercy secured for us by the Lord Jesus, by whom we have access into God’s presence. That’s the whole argument of Hebrews 9 and 10: that we have access to God because Christ has stood in our place and borne our sin. Now, verse seven may indicate that David—it may indicate that David was in exile as he writes, because he says here, “I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house.” Maybe he’s away. Maybe he’s in exile at this moment. But it’s a statement of confidence as he prays: God will both bring me back, and when I get there, he’ll allow me to enter and dwell in his house.

And then second part of verse seven: “I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.” I’ll bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. So far from those who flout your law, I prostrate myself before you. And that, of course, is the only appropriate position and posture before this God. You might remember the event in 1 Samuel 6, when the men of Beth Shemesh presumed to look on the Ark of the Covenant, and God struck down 70 of them. And you remember what the people said in response? “Who is able to stand before this holy God?” And it’s with that sense of overwhelming awe that David approaches the Lord God. He’s a covenant partner, so he has confidence. But he approaches with reverence, bowed low in homage before his king. And that’s the difference between David and his enemies.

Third: Petitions And Praise

So in verses 1 to 3, we have his introductory petition. In verses 4 to 7, he makes his case. It’s grounded in the righteousness and the holiness of God and also in the steadfast love of God. Now in verses 8 to 12, we have his petitions. “Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies. Make your way straight before me.” Lead me—that’s shepherding terminology. It typically connotes leading through danger to safety. That’s why he says here, “Lead me in your righteousness because of my enemies.” They’re what’s in view. So he’s asking God to lead him safely. In fact, that’s the sense of “lead me in your righteousness.” That is in God’s righteousness. “Do right by me as your covenant partner and lead me safely. Keep me safe. And then make your way straight before me.” Level out the path so I don’t stumble and get tripped up by my enemies.

And then verse nine, he again reasons with God, “for there’s no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongues.” Pretty clearly here, he’s saying that these folks are an evil sort. There’s a play on words, actually, almost a pun, that’s not translatable at all—it’s apparent in the Hebrew—and that is the word “inmost self” in verse 9: “for there’s no truth in their mouth, their inmost self is destruction,” is very similar to the word “their throat is an open grave.” Inmost self, open grave. There’s some kind of play on words between those two. The idea is that what they are on the inside is really ugly. Now I have never looked inside an open grave. That’s fine with me. I don’t care to. But you can imagine the corruption. And David is saying that in their heart of hearts, that’s what they are. They’re corrupt, they’re evil, they’re rotten. You might remember Paul cites this verse in Romans chapter three, verse 13, as the ground of universal condemnation and universal guilt. This is the condition of every man born in Adam.

So verse 10, he petitions God further: “make 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.” So he’s calling here for justice to be administered. Find them guilty. The court has been in session. You found them guilty; now treat them accordingly. “Let them bear their guilt, O God.” Render sentence and execute it rightly.

And then verses 11 and 12, we have his final petition and his praise. Here, the petition is for the destruction of God’s enemies, and that becomes the occasion—the destruction of the enemies becomes the occasion of the saints’ jubilation. Verse 11: “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.” And so when we reach the end of the psalm, the observable circumstances haven’t changed. Verse 11, David is still taking refuge in God. He’s still in need of protection. Verse 12, God is still their shield. So the external circumstances are the same at the end of the psalm, but the atmosphere is entirely different. David is no longer feeling trapped. He’s no longer feeling alone, trapped by his enemies. But the prospect now, by the time we come to the end of the psalm, is a happy one. In his prospect, the king is delivered, his enemies are destroyed, and the king’s people rejoice. The king is delivered, his enemies are destroyed, and his people rejoice. It sounds like a big biblical theme, doesn’t it? The king is delivered, his enemies destroyed, and his people rejoice.

All right, we’ve worked our way through the psalm. Very quickly, how does this psalm then pertain to us? And particularly with its tone with regard to the enemy and the call for their judgment. In the early church, early centuries of the church, particularly a man by the name of Jerome, which you’ve heard of before, he understood the wicked in David’s kingdom in this psalm to be prospective of the enemies of the church, and particularly enemies in the church, and the heretics of his day. And the theme of the psalm then is clear: the church wins.

We are witnessing today what only a few years ago was altogether unimaginable. Never mind the world and all of what it’s doing in our culture. Now it has gone to the point where even professing Christian churches are championing what before was altogether unthinkable. They’re on the offensive. In fact, even professing Christian churches are not only championing these causes like we’ve seen this last month with professing Christian churches flying the gay pride flag—and they’re not only doing it, they’re doing it with a sense of moral superiority, shaming Bible believers. And the ground has shifted. Whereas in our culture for the last several hundred years, we’ve had the moral high ground, it’s been shifted. And how all that’s going to work out in the short term, in our experience and in our culture, I don’t know. But we may be assured with David that because God is righteous, in the end, righteousness will prevail. The king has been delivered, his enemies will be destroyed, and his people will rejoice.

I’ve told you this before. It bears repeating. You’ve heard the argument, which is really a stupid one: “Get on the right side of history.” They see the trends moving like they are today, and they tell us old fogies to get on the right side of history. “Don’t you see where it’s going? Just go ahead. Get on the right side of history.” What ought to come to our minds immediately is that your view of history is short. King has been delivered, his enemies will be destroyed, and his people will rejoice.

And what about this, verses 10 to 12, this jubilation at the destruction of God’s enemies? They’re destroyed, God’s people rejoice. Is that cold-hearted? Let me give you a couple of passages to think of in this regard. First of all, in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy chapter 27, we have the list of the covenant curses that were pronounced on Israel if they would not keep his covenant. If you don’t keep the law, then this will happen, and this will happen, and all of these curses that will fall out on Israel if they are not obedient to the covenant demands. And then at the end of it all, Deuteronomy 27 verse 26: “Cursed be he, cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And all the people shall say, Amen.” That is to say, they are expected to take sides with God and rejoice in his justice when his justice is carried out against those who oppose him. So again, is that cold-hearted? And the answer to that is, it all depends on where your sympathies lie.

The other passage I want to point out is Revelation 19, verses 1 and following. You remember the context? We’ve had this long, drawn-out drama in Revelation of the evil Babylon, the great harlot, opposing God, opposing his people, and finally God has come in judgment, and Babylon lies in ashes. Revelation 19: “After this I heard what seems to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for His judgments are true and just, for He has judged the great prostitute, has corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of His servants. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God, who was seated on the throne, saying, Amen! Hallelujah!”

Here’s the scene. The end has come. God has come in final judgments over the world and her wickedness. And all of his enemies are just crushed before him. It even speaks of the smoldering smoke of their ashes coming up, and there sit all of his people, in such sympathy with God and so concerned for him and for his name and his cause and his justice and his triumph, they cheer the Redeemer whom they have trusted, the Redeemer for whom they’ve been loyal all of these years, the Redeemer whom they’ve loved, the Redeemer whom they have seen scorned for all of these years—now is vindicated. You bet we’ll cheer.

Increasingly, as our culture rejects its so-called Christian heritage that we have had in this culture, the church finds itself on the crosshairs of the world, and not just the crosshairs of the world, but professing Christendom as well. We find ourselves canceled. Understand it; it’s just shadows of the Great Tribulation. And it’s not just the world; it’s professing Christian churches boldly taking sides against God and with the world just to fit in. Professing Christian churches, flying a gay pride flag. Can you imagine? Professing Christian churches, conducting gay pride worship services. In their own words, “we’re seeking to liberate ourselves from the Bible as a weapon of exclusion.”

I sent an article this week to the elders, and it was just almost too horrible to read. It was being outlined what is being done in professing mainline churches today, this past month in particular, in June, Gay Pride Month. So-called worship services being conducted in praise of gay pride, offering prayers to the “God of pronouns,” offering prayers to the “God of trans being,” and referring to the Lord Jesus as “queerness incarnate.” We may pray that God will be merciful and save them, but at some point, it is only right to pray, verse 10, “Make them bear their guilt, O God, for they have rebelled against you.” Revelation 19 assures us that that day will come. And it also assures us that when that day comes, we will cheer and we will be glad—glad at last to see not only our Lord’s enemies defeated, but to see our Lord in triumph and to find ourselves ushered into his glorious presence forever. The kingdom of God climactically established on the earth, won by the Lord Jesus Christ.

I’ve tried to emphasize in these psalms studies that there’s a royal orientation to the psalms; that is, the psalms have reference to the king. This is not typically in the psalms—it’s not the average Israelite who’s in view, it’s not some pious Israelite who’s in view. It’s typically, pervasively, it’s the king who’s in view throughout the psalms. Very few of these Psalms are directly prophetic in a predictive sense, like Psalm 110 is, or like we saw in Psalm 2. Very few of them are like that. And yet these Psalms, which have the king as their point of reference, are prospective of the greater king who will come, and they are prophetic in that sense, in an expectant and anticipatory sense.

And so we’ve tried to see some of that in the Psalms that we’ve covered so far. Ultimately, in Psalm 1, the blessed man who delights in the law of the Lord—ultimately, that points us to Jesus. Psalm 2, of course, “I have set my king on my holy hill”—that’s Jesus. Psalm 3, we have David lying down, rising again in safety, assured of vindication—ultimately points us to the lying down in death of the Lord Jesus and the rising in vindication that God has given him. Psalm 4, we have David as the accredited and trustworthy king. That points us to his greater son. And same here in Psalm 5. We have verse seven, righteous David with his privileged access to God. Ultimately, that points us to the Lord Jesus, who in the words of Psalm 24, ascends the hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure heart.

In verse 12 here, it is the Lord Jesus who is his people’s shield. That’s the essence of the gospel. Verse 10: Jesus is also the one who, in the end, will call for and carry out judgment. One day, it will be no one other than the Lord Jesus himself who says to the Father, “Make 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.” In terms of verse 11, it’s the Lord Jesus who has prayed for the safety of his people and the final judgment of the wicked. When we read verse 11 with its prayer of safety of God’s people, if you’ve read the rest of the story, you almost can’t help but think of John 17 and our Lord’s high priestly prayer, which echoes this, verse 11: “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.”

And so again, we have in this psalm, as we have so often in the psalms, the contrasting destinies of the righteous and the wicked. And as we had in Psalm 2, so also here in Psalm 5, it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the righteous and confident king who triumphs. Verse 12, he is our shield. He’s also the world’s judge, and how every last man and woman—you and me and every last person in the world—fares in that day hinges entirely on our relationship to that king today.