Let's pray. Our Father and our God, as we come now to the time to sit under the preaching and teaching of your Word, Lord, we pray that your Word would transform our minds, Lord, so that when we leave here, we will not be merely hearers of your Word, but doers of your Word. Lord, be with our pastor now. Holy Spirit, give him the strength to preach and proclaim Your truth boldly. In Christ we pray. Amen. Turn with me and your copy of God's Word to Psalm number 10. Psalm number 10. As we work our way through the first dozen or so Psalms, we've come now, as we go through this consecutively, to Psalm number 10. Now, I will wager, I don't know this for certain, but I'm fairly sure I can guess this correctly. None of you had Psalm 10 read at your wedding. I don't think anybody here has Psalm 10 listed on their favorite passages to be read at their funeral. In fact, I'm not aware of anyone requesting this Psalm to be read to them at their hospital bed. This is not a placid, pleasant Psalm. I think every Christian would eagerly go to Psalm 23, for example. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Even unbelievers know not only the poetic words contained there, but would seek some comfort in the reality of God's presence as a shepherd. Psalm 10 is not like that. And yet it's profitable for us. And it will ultimately provide true comfort, lasting comfort, enduring comfort for the child of God because of its honesty. because of its hope. See, there's an advantage, I think, to reading and preaching consecutively. I'll be candid. As I've done selections of Psalms before, I have sort of cherry-picked. and chosen Psalms that I thought were particularly helpful to us at this particular point, or Psalms that were particularly encouraging to me, and I thought you might share in that encouragement. But when we go to consecutively, we had Psalm 9 last week, well that means Psalm 10 is up. And we dare not skip it. Now there are some clear connections between Psalms 9 and 10. If you were here last week and heard Psalm 9, I didn't make much of this last week, but commentators have noted that Psalm 9 and 10 are at least a match set, if not one psalm that's been divided in two. In fact, the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, has Psalms 9 and 10 as one psalm. And they're written in an acrostic style, meaning they take in order the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, verse by verse. The difficulty is that pattern breaks between the two psalms. It's not a perfect pattern. And so there are reasons that we could see these as one psalm, but I think it's more profitable for us. It's probably more likely that these were, in fact, two different psalms, but maybe written on the same occasion. And so I'm going to take the authorship. There's no inscription with Psalm 10. But because these are a matched pair, in a sense, I'm going to take this as David being the author of the psalm. I can't be absolutely certain about that, but it doesn't really change the way that I'm going to handle and interpret the psalm in general. Dale Ralph Davis observes that there's a contrast, a stark contrast between Psalms 9 and 10. Even though perhaps they were originally one, the tone, the tenor, the mood of the two psalms is strikingly different. In fact, He says that this reminds us that there are, in fact, seasons of a believer's life, and those seasons can change rapidly. You know, we live in Houston. Anywhere in Texas, for that matter, you're accustomed to weather changing pretty quickly, right? Not right now. In August, it doesn't typically change that frequently, but we have those days coming up this fall where we'll be hot in the morning, and by the afternoon, that northern comes in, and we'll drop 40, 50, 60 degrees within a day. Sometimes our lives are like that, aren't they? We can be walking along fairly peaceably, fairly calm water, and then all of a sudden the tempest is stirred up around us. John Gill observes that Psalm 10 has this theme where the Antichrist and anti-Christian times are very manifestly described. The impiety, the blasphemy, and atheism of the man of sin, his pride, haughtiness, boasting of himself, and presumption of security, His persecution of the poor and murder of innocents are plainly pointed at, but at the end of these wicked days, the kingdom of Christ will appear in great glory when the Gentiles, the anti-Christian nations, will perish out of this land. Psalm 10, I think, serves, perhaps, as a correction for us. It corrects what we would call our anthropology. our understanding of who man is, and what man is. What kind of creature is man? See, no one can study this psalm honestly. No one can study this psalm believingly, and then come away with this notion that evil is not real. This psalm pushes back against a creeping humanism that suggests that man is basically good, but perhaps uneducated. Basically good, but with a flawed past that causes him to do things in the present which are questionable. Psalm 10 simply leaves no room for us to minimize evil. It doesn't allow us the opportunity to make light of wickedness. And further, it shows us that evil has a personal expression in this age, in this life, Evil takes the shape of human beings. Evil is not some mystical force. It's not the dark side balanced against the light side, like that great theologian George Lucas teaches us. No, wickedness is personified. It inhabits actual men and women. And those wicked and evil men and women have evil deeds which flow from evil and unbelieving hearts. Here, the psalmist in Psalm 10 describes for us what Jeremiah said so clearly, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? So if you came today thinking, I will get an encouraging sermon today, you will, you will, but you'll have to work for it a little bit. we're all gonna have to work together a little bit, because it won't come until closer to the end, because that's the way the psalm is structured. Let's consider, as we read Psalm 10, I'm gonna divide this in three places, but it's not three stanzas, it's not three equal number of verses within the psalm. The first point comes from Psalm, from verse one, and it's the godly's lament, the godly man's lament. And then the bulk of the psalm is actually this middle section in which we see the godly man's enemy. There's a portrait here. There's a composite sketch of our enemy, humanly speaking, our human enemy. And then lastly, beginning in verse 12, the last seven verses, we see the godly man's hope. So the godly's lament, the godly's enemy, and the godly's hope. Let's read together, follow along in your copy of God's word as I read Psalm number 10. I'm reading from the ESV. I'm gonna be reading God's coveted name as it appears in the original text. This is the word of God. Why, O Yahweh, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance, the wicked hotly pursue the poor, letting them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces Yahweh. In the pride of his face, the wicked does not seek him. All his thoughts are, there is no God. His ways prosper at all times. Your judgments are on high out of his sight. As for all his foes, he puffs at them. He says in his heart, I shall not be moved. Throughout all generations, I shall not meet adversity. His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue are mischief and iniquity. He sits in ambush in the villages, in hiding places. He murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless. He lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket. He lurks that He may seize the poor. He seizes the poor when He draws him into His net. The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by His might. He says in His heart, God has forgotten. He has hidden His face. He will never see it. Arise, O Yahweh. O God, lift up Your hand. Forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, you will not call to account? But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands. To you the helpless commits himself. You have been the helper of the fatherless. Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer. Call his wickedness to account till you find none. Yahweh is king forever and ever. The nations perish from his land. Oh, Yahweh, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. Amen. Let's consider in the first place, the godly's lament. The godly man's lament. We find this in verse one. Why, oh Yahweh, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Do you notice, there's no warm up here. There's no preamble. There's no lofty language. David jumps right in and he says, why? Do you hear the urgency? Do you hear the sorrow, the grief, the anxiety, even the fear that's loaded in this little word, why? Why are you far off? Why are you hiding yourself in times of trouble? It's very interesting, this phrase, times of trouble, that we see there at the end of verse 1. There are only two places in the entire Hebrew Bible where that phrase appears in exactly that same way, times of trouble. Do you know the other places in Psalm 9? In my Bible, it's on the same page, just across the column in Psalm 9, verse 9. Look at what it says. Yahweh is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And here he says, why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Do you feel the tension? Do you see that contrast? Here is the same human author saying the same thing about God. You are a stronghold. You are my refuge. You are my fortified city in times of refuge. And yet, why do you hide in times of trouble? Why do you hide in times of trouble? See, there is this contrast here that's intentional. It's purposeful. The Holy Spirit has given this to us side by side in our Bibles. In order for us to sit back and say, what's going on here? Derek Kidner observes this, he says, there is in Psalm 9, the center of gravity was the judgment to come. Here it is in the present age where injustice is rampant in Psalm 10. It is a function of the Psalms, listen to this, it is a function of the Psalms to touch the nerve of this problem. and keep its pain alive against the comfort of our familiarity, or indeed complicity, with the corrupt world. See, this is intentional. The Holy Spirit is giving to this, and I like the way he's put this, to touch that nerve in us. To make the pain come alive. See, aren't we tempted to kind of anesthetize ourselves? To be like the ostrich and hide our head in the sand and pretend, la la la la, I don't see evil. And we can even give ourselves the illusion. We have locks on our doors. We have locks on our church. We have locks on our electronic devices. We have locks on our cars. Many of us are armed to the teeth. And we have this illusion that we can really protect ourselves, that we can hide away. If we avoid certain parts of town, if we avoid certain people, if we avoid certain places, that wickedness will not find us. But is that true? I'm not saying don't lock your doors. I'm not saying we're removing the locks from the church doors. Those are common sense things that we ought to do because there are evil men around us. But the scriptures help to strip away the illusion that we ultimately protect ourselves from wickedness, that we are our own strength in light of or in the face of this kind of evil. Is this not the tension that we often feel as Christians? We know, like David knows, that God knows all, that He sees all things, that He is all-powerful, and yet, if I'm honest, if you're honest, doesn't God sometimes seem far away? In the midst of our distress, does it not seem sometimes as if God has hidden His face from you? Dear friends, take note of the fact that God is always honest with us. He doesn't shrink back from telling us the truth. He does not sugarcoat the realities of life, and neither should we. We look honestly and squarely into the Word of God, which James says is like a mirror. And we say, this is how I feel sometimes. I feel as if God is far away. I feel as if God has hidden himself. But Psalm 10 reminds us that we are able to be honest with God where we are. Have you ever felt like that you've had to hold back your true feelings from someone close to you because you did not want to burden them with what you were carrying? Perhaps with a friend you felt like their shoulders were not strong enough to bear the full weight of your tears. perhaps even with a spouse, with a husband or a wife, you've shrunk back from sharing the full measure of your fear, your anxiety, your grief, fearing your own distress might buckle their knees. The saints, we have no such fear with God. Ours is a big God who has big shoulders. He can handle our grief. He can handle our fears. He can handle our anxieties. Simply look to the cross to confirm what I say to you. This is not hypothetical, this is not theoretical. God in the person of the Son, in the person of the God-man, has confirmed that he is able to bear all things for us. Our Lord Jesus fulfilled what the prophet Isaiah foretold. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted, but he was pierced. for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds, we are healed." Saints, we ought never to think that we cannot come to God with our fears, with our sorrows, and be real with Him. Sometimes we think we've got to pray in such a way that we sort of earn the right to come in and get to the point. And we pray with lots of lofty language, many words, and we struggle just to get to the point. Why? Lord, I'm hurting. Where are you? But David's honesty continues. He spends the bulk of the verses in Psalm 10 contemplating the reality of his enemy, contemplating the wickedness of the wicked, the evil of evil men. And I think it's instructive to us because I think it's this sort of parallels what our tendencies are. When we are in trouble, when we are distressed, when we are grieving, don't we tend to focus on the problem and replay that videotape, rehash those same words? I think David's doing this here. Let's think about the godly man's enemy. from verse 2 all the way down to verse 11, and it's still mixed in in the rest of the psalm, is David's meditation upon the nature, upon the character, upon the severity of the wickedness of the wicked man. Now let's think about what does David say here? He's speaking poetically, but truly, what characterizes the wicked? And we see this in three different levels here. First, David spends the bulk of the time, this is instructive to us, I think, speaking about the heart. of the wicked man. He doesn't focus first upon his actions. He focuses upon his heart. And then secondly, we'll see that he focuses upon the words, the words of the wicked man. And then lastly, he draws out what does this wicked man do? What kind of evil does he entertain and afflict upon Notice the phrases that David uses, beginning of verse two, the very first thing, is an arrogance. We're reminded again that pride is the chiefest and the first of all sin. It was the pride of Lucifer which caused him to rebel against God. And in that same pride, the same appeal to pride, Adam and Eve fell, and we into them. and we are always vulnerable to the same pride. In arrogance, the wicked hotly pursue the poor. Let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. Look at verse three. The wicked boasts of the desires of his soul. He is not even ashamed of the evil intentions of his heart. In fact, he boasts in those things. He is greedy for gain. The inward disposition of his heart is once just more and more and more. And in verse 4, centrally and pivotally, in the pride of his face, the wicked does not seek God. All his thoughts are, there is no God. Then in verse 6, He boasts again in his heart, he says, I shall not be moved. In fact, for all of generations, for every generation, I won't even face adversity. He says such things in his heart. Then verse 11, he says in his heart, God has forgotten. He has hidden his face. He will never see. See, ultimately, what chiefly defines the wicked is he says in his heart, there is no God. He says in his heart, there is no God. Or, functionally, even if he doesn't say those exact words, because we see in verse 11, perhaps he tips his hand a little bit. He says, God has forgotten. People acknowledge there is something God-like out there. some higher power, and yet he's really not holding men accountable. He's not really engaged in the affairs of men. He doesn't really have a say in what is right and what is wrong. His lips may acknowledge God, but the God he serves is summoned from his own imagination rather than what God has made known of himself. And I was reading this week in Stephen Charnock's, one of the Puritans, a really excellent two-volume work called, The Existence and Attributes of God. And he has a whole section there in volume one on practical atheism. On practical atheism. He says this, he says, the Holy Spirit accepts none from this crime. All seek their own. This is Philippians 2.21. It is rare for them to look above or beyond themselves. What whatsoever may be the immediate subject of their thoughts and inquiries, yet the utmost end and stage is their profit, honor, or pleasure." He's speaking here about the natural orientation of man. He goes on. Whatever it be that immediately possesses the mind and will, self sits like a queen and sways the scepter and orders things at that rate that God is excluded and can find no room in all his thoughts. The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. This is universal in men by nature. God is not in all his thoughts. And he references specifically Psalm 10 verse 4. God is not in any of his thoughts according to the excellency of his nature and greatness of his majesty. As the heathen did not glorify God as God, so neither do they conceive of God as God. They are all infected with some one or other ill opinion of God, thinking him not so holy, not so powerful, not so just or good as he is, and as the natural force of a human understanding might arrive to. We join a new notion of God in our vain fancies and represent him not as he is, but as we would have him to be. fit for our own use and suited to our own pleasure. We set that active power of imagination on work and there comes out a God, a calf, whom we own for a notion of God. That's a lengthy quote, but here's the substance of it, isn't it? Man invents for himself his own image of God. The wicked will say, either one, there's no God at all. Or, I believe in God, the God of my own imagination, the God who allows me to make my own ordinances, define for myself what is right and good and true, and define for myself what is wrong. And the substance of that, the effect of that, is that men call good evil and evil good. Now you can look to Romans 1 and see how the apostolic testimony in the New Testament works this out. What's the problem there, says Paul? The infallible word of God testifies through Paul's letter to the Roman church that man's first and chief sin is what? It's a failure to worship God as God. It's a priority of worshiping the creature rather than the creator. And that man's first and chief sin is this failure to recognize God as God. He says in his heart, there is no God. And then instead of worshiping the creature, or instead of worshiping the creator, he worships the creature. And from that refusal to worship God then, the maker hands them over to their own sinful desires. And unless they repent, Unless they turn back to God and acknowledge Him as God, then they will begin a descent to greater and greater depravity because God withdraws His common grace. Notice, second of all, the wicked's mouth. We've seen in his heart, the core bedrock principle is there is no God or I am that God. And from that flows all manner of wickedness. Look what happens next. Look at verse seven. His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue are mischief and iniquity. It's only one short verse, Friends, isn't this an awful thing to meditate upon? The wicked's mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression under his tongue or mischief and iniquity. And that leads Unless he repents and the Lord intervenes, this is where it leads. We see this in verse 8. This is the work of his hands now. We've seen the thoughts of his heart, the expressions of his mouth, and now the work of his hands. He sits in ambush in the villages. In hiding places. He murders the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless. He lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket. He lurks that he may seize the poor. He seizes the poor when he draws him into his net. The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might." We live in an age that practically, functionally, if not actually denies the reality of evil. The wicked deeds of men are viewed through a therapeutic lens. We don't see wickedness generally, we just see bad upbringing. We see lack of opportunity, lack of education. So drunkenness then just becomes a disease called alcoholism. Sexual perversions are merely orientations. Violent thoughts and actions are repackaged as a lack of anger management. And the list could go on and on, couldn't it? And yet we have here, with a frightening clarity, what happens when these evil thoughts produce evil words and produce evil deeds. The wicked man sits in ambush. He lurks in ambush like a lion in a thicket. What does he do? He murders the innocent. No more striking example, I think maybe in all of history. than the current holocaust of babies being slaughtered in the womb. And you can look at the imagery here. The wicked sits in ambush in the villages. These villages called Planned Parenthood. And they sit like a lion lurking in the bushes waiting for someone to come in. Waiting for the wicked thoughts and intentions of a woman's own heart. cause her to want to come in. See, the wicked thoughts and intentions of a boyfriend's or a husband's desire to see her come in and to slaughter the baby in her womb. That's not a bad decision. It's evil. It's wickedness. His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless. He lurks that he may seize the poor. He seizes the poor when he draws them into his net. The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by his might. The confused young person or teenager. Struggling with his identity. Struggling with his sexuality. Struggling with the hormones that naturally come about in his body. And he says, maybe I'm not who I think I am. And one lurks in the bushes saying, I know the answer. You need to mutilate yourself. Chemically or surgically. Rendering yourself sterile and helpless and take years off of your life, if not kill you immediately. These are not just differences of opinion. This is wickedness. It is evil. It is demonic. And saints, we cannot be lulled into sleep thinking that this is just bad decision making. This is just a policy decision. There are those who say there is no God. God has forgotten. He has hidden His face. He will never see it. But as God's people, we ought to know better, shouldn't we? There is a day of reckoning. There is a day of judgment. See, our Lord Jesus taught us very plainly that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. And out of that same polluted well come all manner of evil deeds. See, there was an occasion when his own disciples kind of took the bait. The Pharisees were criticizing them for not washing their hands properly, for being defiled in the marketplaces. See, the official teaching of the Jews was that a man or a woman became defiled by contact with sinners. That if you went out in the marketplace, you picked up sin and defilement as you went. And that the answer to that was to come back and ceremonially clean yourself, wash your hands in a particular way. They weren't worried about viruses and bacteria on their hands. They were worried about spiritual, moral defilement. And Jesus was having none of that thinking, though, among his people, among his men. Listen to what he said. He called the people to him. This is in Matthew 15. And he said to them, Hear and understand, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this, defiles a person. Then the disciples came and said to him, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? You think? Jesus answered, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone, they are blind guides, and if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, explain the parable to us. And Jesus said, are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and it's expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands, that doesn't defile anyone. You see what he's saying? Our Lord's words could not be more clear. It is out of the wellspring, the polluted wellspring of a wicked heart that all kinds of perverse words come, and following those words are sins of every category. He just gives a summary. He just gives a sample platter of the Ten Commandments there, doesn't he? Blasphemies, sexual immorality, lying, theft, all of it comes from the very same place. Now I think we've got to think practically about this. What does this mean? First of all, with respect to the wicked deeds of unbelievers, we have to see that evil is real. Again, these are not merely policy differences. These are not differences of opinion. Evil is real, and it infects the whole person. the whole man. So we are not dealing with merely aberrant behavior. We are not dealing merely with blasphemous words. We are dealing with moral rot at the root of humanity. And we have to be wise, according to the Scriptures, to see that for what it is. When the enemies of God do wicked things, number one, it ought not surprise us, but number two, We cannot be content with just outward moral reformation. That doesn't change anything, does it? But there's a second level of application here. It's not just for our view of those out there, but what about you? For the believer, for those who are in Christ, we need to understand something very, very significant. The roots of our sin are far deeper than we often acknowledge. And it will not do for us either, simply to seek moral reformation. When you find yourself sinfully angry and expressing that in sinful ways, it is not anger management that you need. You need the Holy Spirit to address the root, the well from which those angry thoughts come. When your eyes behold things that they ought not, it is not the eyes that are ultimately the problem. It is a root, the desire to set the eyes upon something they ought not see. When you find yourself tempted to lie and deceive, it's not merely the words that are the problem, is it? What are the motives of your heart, the hidden motives of your heart, that maybe even you are not fully aware of? Where do you need the Spirit's help to uncover and pull out those deep roots? Dale Davis again, he says, the believer's life is a war, a lifelong conflict. And pieces like Psalm 10 are meant to aggravate you. to anger you, to sadden you, to keep you from forgetting that your life is always at odds with the wicked. Are not then these descriptions of the wicked having such success trampling the helpless meant to disturb and upset us and therefore drive us to prayer? See, Psalm 10 is real with us, it's honest with us. It's gritty, even. But it's also hopeful. It's optimistic. Because even though David spends a large amount of time meditating upon the wicked, he doesn't end there. The psalm doesn't end at verse 11, God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see. If we ended there, it would not be a very pleasant sermon or a pleasant psalm at all. But David finds, and he points us to his eternal hope that exists in Yahweh. Let's look at the last several verses, beginning in verse 12. Arise, O Yahweh, O God, lift up your hand, forget not the afflicted. Here we find the godly man's hope. Arise, O Yahweh. And again, David appoints, or appoints specifically, and appeals specifically to Yahweh's covenant name, to God's covenant name, Yahweh. And he says, lift up your hand. I want you to notice the use of words in verses 12 and 14. In verse 12, he says, Arise, O Yahweh of God, lift up your hand. Now, children, does God have hands? No, God does not have a body like men, right? Well, why does he say, lift up your hand then? Well, he's using language that is, one, it's poetic, but it's also, it's a way to speak to us. One commentator said, it's like speaking to us in baby talk. It's something we can understand readily, but it's also an image that's used throughout the Scriptures. Look down at verse 14, but you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands. What's the significance of that? Saying, Lord, exercise your might. If you take this into your hand, no man can stand. No wicked scheme can survive if God takes this into His hand. Look at the contrast in verse 15. Break the arm of the wicked. Now see, we might be uncomfortable with that language. It's imprecatory language. It's language that the Scriptures often use and requesting that God do violence to His enemies. And so do we understand this literally? Lord, will you literally break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer? No, it's worse than that. We're asking God to do something even worse. By breaking his arm, he means poetically, break his strength. With whatever strength he seeks to deploy his wicked schemes, Lord, break that strength. Render him helpless and ineffective. Take this into your hand and break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer. Call his wickedness, verse 15, to account. So he begins with, Lord, do you stand away? Sorrow far away? Do you hide yourself in times of trouble? Turns out the answer to that is no and no. God does see, he does hear, and he's taking an inventory. God's keeping score. And so that when that day of judgment comes, this is where our hope is, this will not be a passive judgment. It will not be a partial judgment. It will be a judgment based on God's perfect reckoning and His perfect accounting of all the evil that has ever been done. Arise, O Yahweh. It's an appeal to Yahweh to demonstrate His genuine and lasting strength against the apparent and temporary strength of the enemies of Yahweh and the enemies of His people. See, in Psalm 44, David celebrates there. He says, you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted. You afflicted the peoples, but them you set free. For not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arms save them, but your right hand and your arm, in the light of your face, for you delighted in them. What is he saying? Again, poetically, it was your hand, God, that delivers your people. You dispatch the nations before them, and by the same hand, you set your people aright. You set them in place. Then in Psalm 136, David again, and brought Israel out from among them for his steadfast love endures forever with a strong hand and an outstretched arm for his steadfast love endures forever. So David recognizes God has done this before. It is by the strength of God's own hand that he has delivered his people, that he has vanquished their enemy and set them in place. But the real meat, I think, of the psalm, of David's hope here, is found in verses 16 and 17. This is why David can say, lift up your hand, forget not the afflicted. Look what he says in verse 16. Yahweh is king forever and ever. The nations perish from his land. What is David saying? My king is sovereign. My king is all-powerful. He is omnipotent, omnipotent. He has no rival. He has no equal. There is no wicked one who could ever stand before His face. That's why He can say, arise, O Yahweh, lift up your hand, because the Lord, Yahweh is King forever and ever. The nations perish from His hand. Two things we have to grab hold of. This first thing is that Yahweh is, in fact, sovereign. He has no rival. We see this worked out in the New Testament in the person, in the work of Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of all that had been foretold about Him. And Paul testifies to us in Philippians 2 that he has now, after his humiliation, been exalted to the right hand of God, and that he's given a name above every name. What is the name that he's given? Kurios, Lord. The name at which every knee will bow. And every tongue will confess that he is, in fact, Lord, sovereign, king, and supreme." So David fixes his hope on that fact. Despite the full measure of wickedness of the wicked, David can say, yes, but the wicked is not sovereign. The wicked's strength is no match for my King." And Jesus Christ has demonstrated that, hasn't He not? He conquered every enemy, even sin and death, even the grave itself. But there's a second thing that we see here in verse 17. First is that the Lord is sovereign, that He is King forever and ever. But secondly, O Yahweh, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear. You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more." Here's the promise, Yahweh strengthens His people. And He does so from the inside out. All the while, David is looking at this portrait of the wicked, whose wickedness is revealed first of all in his heart, in the secret thoughts and motives and intentions of his soul. And David says it's at that very place that God strengthens his own people. You hear the desire of the afflicted, you will strengthen their heart. There's not a promise here, this may disappoint you, there's not a promise here to remove all adversity. in this life. But David's comfort is in the fact that, Lord, You will strengthen me inwardly, from the heart. Jesus told His disciples in John 14, He says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live in that day. You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." Beloved, the strengthening of our hearts begins with this promise that Christ is with us. That even though the world says, we don't see Him, we don't know Him, it says, because I live, you will live. You will know that I am in my Father, in you, in me, and I in you." And of all those characters that we find in the New Testament apart from the Lord himself, perhaps none suffer to the degree that the Apostle Paul did. Perhaps none suffered the kinds of afflictions and hardship and faced enemies, faced the wickedness of men head on, than did the Apostle Paul. And Paul, in his very last words in 2 Timothy, in the very last recorded words that the Apostle Paul ever wrote, he says, in my defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. Can you imagine that? After all the churches that Paul planted, after all the men and women that he instructed and prayed for and fellowshiped with and poured his heart into, at the end, no one was there with him. Completely abandoned and forsaken. And Paul says, may it not be charged against them. But listen to Paul's hope, Paul had no human strength on which he could rely. In the end, in a Roman prison by himself with no one ministering to him, he said, the Lord was my strength. The Lord strengthened me. The Lord stood by me. Saints, this is the hope that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to say to those who are here present this morning that are not in Christ, that do not know this hope. You can know this today. The reality is, whether you're in Christ or out of Christ, you're going to face difficulties in this life. You are going to face all kinds of wicked schemes. Many of them will come from the least expected place, perhaps, your own heart. And yet the remedy to that is repentance towards God, believing upon the Lord Jesus Christ, to take Him at His word. that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Will be rescued, first of all, from the wickedness and the evil that resides within you. Now, here's an irony, I think, purchased by Jesus Christ for all those who are found in Him. If you look back at verse 6, here's the testimony of the wicked in his own heart. I shall not be moved throughout all generations. I shall not meet adversity. See, there's an irony here because it is the Christian alone who can actually make this boast. Not yet, not in entirety, but on the day of the Lord's return, everyone found in Christ will be able to say that sin and death have been conquered. And everyone found in Christ will be able to boast, I shall not be moved. Throughout all of eternity, I shall not meet adversity. See, that's the irony. The wicked boasts of this, and he doesn't possess it. Sometimes as Christians, we shrink back and are afraid to claim that when it is actually ours, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. May the meditation of Psalm 10 be a help to us, not if, but when. It seems as if wicked men are getting the best of us, individually, corporately, nationally. And may we find our hope fully and finally in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray together. Lord and our God, thank you for your faithfulness to us. Your steadfast love endures forever. You've made yourself known in the gates of Zion. You have proclaimed yourself today. You've reminded us the true source of all evil. And we pray that you would give us grace to see and discover in our own hearts where evil remains. You'll grant us grace to look to Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and for the cleansing leading to righteousness. We pray that you will grant us grace to walk together in unity together, forbearing with one another in our weakness, strengthening one another with the power of your word, and the bond of fellowship we enjoy with your spirit. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.