We've just sung two songs that you might call a lament in biblical terms. We're going to read one of those for our text for our sermon this morning, Psalm 140. Deliver us, O Lord. Psalm 140 is our text today. Just to remind us of where we've been at scripturally, We are coming to the ascent, excuse me, the peak, ascending to the peak of the Psalms together. Having worked through the Psalms of ascent, and then the two Psalms that follow after them of thanks and praise, we come now to a last flurry of Psalms of David. Connecting, by the way, the whole Psalter together in a Davidic key. because it's ultimately the great Son of David, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, whom this book points to. And it's in union with Christ Himself that then we can sing these psalms about ourselves. But now having asked the Lord to search us in Psalm 139, we come to Psalms 140, 141, 142, and 143, the final grouping of Psalms of lament in the whole Psalter, recognizing the reality of the world in which we live, and training our souls, shaping our souls to seek first the kingdom of God, even in the midst of an evil world. We're not in the kingdom yet, that's coming. But this teaches us how to live. The main point I wanna communicate as we look at Psalm 140 today is simply this, the world lies, but the Lord delivers. The world lies, but the Lord delivers. This psalm itself is a very straightforward psalm composed of four stanzas, verses 1 through 3, 4 and 5, 6 through 8, 9 through 11, and then a two-verse conclusion in verses 12 and 13. Now for our purposes here for our sermon today, I'm simply going to combine the first two stanzas into one point and the next two stanzas into one point. and then see the conclusion so that we can meditate on this, appropriate this Psalm for ourselves, make it a part of our hearts to commune with the Lord, because that's what the Psalms are for. They're for us to sing together to the Lord, to meditate on, to memorize, to make the language of our hearts as we speak as the voice of the body of Christ to our God. So in verses one through five, we're going to see God deliver, preserve, and guard, In verses 6-11, we'll call upon Him to protect, reject, and repay. And then we will conclude with justice leading to joy. Let's start with the first petitions here in this Psalm, verses one through five of calling upon God to deliver, preserve, and guard. Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men. Preserve me from violent men who plan evil things in their heart and stir up wars continually. They make their tongue sharp as a serpent's, and under their lips is the venom of asps. Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked. Preserve me from the violent men who have planned to trip up my feet. They're arrogant, have hidden a trap for me with cords. They have spread a net beside the way. They have set snares for me. Here, the Psalm in two mirroring stanzas calls upon the Lord to deliver, preserve, and guard. Deliver me, take me away, O Lord. Just like something is removed from a situation, take me away, O Lord. From whom? From an evil man. In the original, it is actually a singular. It's a representative evil man, representing all the evil of this world. Preserve me from a violent man. This, by the way, is exactly what Jesus taught us to pray. Deliver us from evil. This is the heart of the psalmist as he's approaching God as David gives us this psalm to sing. Why do we need this preservation? Well, the answer is in verse three here. They make their tongue sharp as a serpent. The imagery is very vivid. We're starting to see this violent man take on the shape of a snake. And he's speaking, his tongue is accomplishing his evil mission, his violence. Under their lips is the venom of asps. And so it turns back again. Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked. Preserve me from the violent who have planned to trip up my feet. Pardon me. They have an agenda here. They have plottings going on. They have desires that they want, and it involves undoing the righteous, pushing him down. We usually translate these here, trip up my feet, but I envision it more, it's much more violent than merely tripping. It's more like a crack back block, if you know what I'm talking about in football, where you catch somebody and you just clock him. That's what the wicked are trying to do to the righteous, totally wipe him out, you might say. What do they do? They become like hunters. The arrogant have hidden a trap for me with cords, these ropes. They have spread a net beside the way. They're endeavoring to catch us in it. They have set snares for me. They are hunting down the righteous. So as we consider this first main section of this Psalm and what we're calling upon God to do, We should remember that when God's people pray these Psalms of Lament regularly, as they are designed to be prayed, God's people can never forget that there are real enemies of God and His people who are constantly on the attack. That's what verse 2 describes them, and they attack for wars continually all the day. all the day, all the day, 24-7. This is what they're after. This is their agenda. They are out to create war, to attack God's people. Because folks, there is an unending war between the seed of the serpent and the righteous. It has been that way ever since Genesis. One of the good things about these Psalms and why we need them so much is because however pretty of a picture the world wants to paint of itself, we know that underneath what's really going on is a war. Evil men are out to accomplish their agenda, and they are attacking everything that is good and right and true. The sons of Satan really do plan evil in their hearts. That's their nature. They are like their father, the devil. And they may not call it evil, of course, just like Satan himself presents himself as an angel of light. but it is evil. They might even justify it as being good, but it is evil. Their hearts are factories of evil desires and evil designs. And that means they simply cannot stop opposing God and his purposes and his people. I would simply like to ask you today, are you alert to that? Or are you comfortable in this present evil world? Do you feel like, hey, this is pretty easy? You need to ask yourself the same question that the hymn writer Isaac Watts asks in that wonderful hymn. Is this vile world a friend to grace to help me on to God? You see, the person who's praying this prayer, who's making this psalm his own can never forget, this is the true nature of the world I'm living in. Actually, it's interesting that Romans 3, you're familiar with Romans 3, verse 13, in a whole list, a whole laundry list here that the Apostle Paul cites as it is written to prove how depraved all of mankind is, actually cites this text as one of the many that he cites right there. Several of them are from the Psalms, and this is one of them, their tongues. He says, what reveals man's depravity? As much as anything in this whole world, their tongues. We are, mankind is wicked. We can never forget that. Mankind is opposed to God and his sin. He is the world system as a whole under the leadership of Satan is actively working to undermine God. And of course, then your faith, your following of God, your glorifying of God. Now we've already started to note this here in this war, a primary weapon that this Psalm talks about is the tongue. It's how they speak. Note that, by the way. Sometimes, again, Christians think, well, the world isn't really opposing us. I mean, after all, we're not being put to death for our faith. We're not being thrown in prison, and we're not having people beat us up because we're followers of Jesus Christ. Therefore, maybe the world really isn't opposing us all that much. And I think if we're really alert to what's going on in this world, we'll see it's always there. And what's the primary weapon they're using? The tongue. It's communication. Why is that? This is a spiritual war, folks. And it's all in an arena of truth. That's the fundamental issue going on here. You realize that the most heinous thing you can do to a man is to destroy his soul. And in order to do that, you have to deceive. You have to deceive him. And that's why this psalm pictures this evil man, this violent man, with these very arresting pictures, like a serpent, like an asp or a viper. It pictures him like a hunter after the souls of man. Again, folks, remember, Satan is a liar and the father of lies. And all of his children live by his lies. You need to be praying the way this psalm teaches you to pray so that you don't get complacent in this world. This verbal attack is going to work a lot like poison, which is why this psalm picks up that venom of asps under their lips. It's going to try to be injected. But how does poison work? under the surface, right? Just this song made me a little bit curious as I was studying this last week. So I actually went and did a little search online about some of the most famous poisonings in all of history. It's not really edifying reading, but it's very common. Surprise, surprise, right? Throughout mankind's history, what have people used to kill other people when they don't want it to be known actually? They don't go stab them. They don't go shoot them. They poison them, because then they can do it by subterfuge. Then they can do it under the table, so to speak. And it's a lot harder to know that it's actually them doing it. That's exactly the way the world system is working against your faith. It's not always out there saying, hey, you stupid idiot, I'm going to throw you in prison if you confess Jesus. But it is always out there injecting its poison. injecting his poison, trying to spread the lies, trying to get you to embrace the lies. It works like poison. And of course, what's the objective? Verse five makes it very clear here what their objective is. Pardon me, verse four, they have planned to trip up my feet or knock me down, as the psalmist puts it. They want to knock down and to ensnare the righteous. That's what they're after with all this, hiding the trap, spreading the net. the church father, as he sometimes called Augustine, I think he had a good insight on the traps which the proud set for the righteous. When preaching on this text, he said, it's pride that most often drives the devil's followers to proclaim themselves righteous when they are sinful. And by the way, that's part of the lie, right? You say you're the good one. You define God's people as the bad ones. We're the ones doing right. You're the ones obstructing what's right. You're the bad people. That's one of the lies that the world likes to tell. He says, it's pride that drives the devil's followers to proclaim themselves righteous when they are sinful. Religious pretenders that they are, they envy the truly just. For no one envies inequality in another unless he wants to possess it himself or at least to be thought to possess it. The sham pretenders to righteousness want to appear righteous and holy, whereas they are not. And when they see someone who is truly righteous, they necessarily envy him and deal with him in such a way as to make him lose the very endowment that is his glory, if they can. Hence arise all the attempts to lead the just astray and to trip them up. The world hates the fact that God's people are following him. The more conformed you are to the image of Christ, the more you don't fit the mold the world tries to press you into, the more that exposes how unrighteous they are, and the more they hate it. The more you become a target because you can't be allowed to go on exposing how unrighteous they are when they want to be thought of as righteous, when they want to be thought of as good. Therefore, they have to either make you bad like them or eliminate you. This is what they're after. Now let's just think for a moment here as we think about praying this psalm and applying it in our day. Let's just think to limit ourselves here about some changes that have transpired in our own societies in our lifetimes. One area that comes to mind that I was thinking about this last week is education. I think one of the greatest lies that we have adopted is that you can educate people without Christ. You can educate people without reference to God. God is irrelevant to that purpose. Now, you're free to have God on your own if you want to, but that's really irrelevant to the whole project and process of education. And you know how, for those of you who have read C.S. Lewis on this, you know how C.S. Lewis said about education that we castrate and then bid the gelding be fruitful? I think we train children for generations that they can know without Christ, and then we wonder why they live as though Christ is irrelevant to their lives. And Christians of all people should be most alert to this, most aware of this, but often we have not been. It's been said, I know many times, the past two or three years have opened many parents' eyes to what is actually being taught to their children in schools. Well, I'm glad for that to the extent that that has happened, but it shouldn't have been a surprise at all. Did anybody really think anything else was going on? If we didn't think anything else, shame on us. It's been obvious for generations, folks, This is not a new thing. Those who reject God knew that they had to engage in the march through the institutions, as it's been called. If you want to capture a society, you have to capture the institutions of that society. You have to train the upcoming generations of that society into your anti-God worldview, and that's exactly what they've been doing for generations. This is not new. But that's exactly the kind of lies, the kinds of poisons this psalm is praying to deliver us from. Another one of the most visible changes that has transpired in our lifetimes, in our societies, is called the sexual revolution. Pardon me. as has been cataloged so many times, and I don't need to go on through all the, rehearse the whole history here today, but from, let's just say the 60s is usually when we think about the sexual revolution, and from a right to privacy, to contraception, to no-fault divorce, to now redefining marriage, and even redefining what it means to be male and female, our society has been engaged in this kind of a revolution. But here's an interesting example of how this kind of poison works. There's a conservative journalist that I sometimes read who has been chronicling the degeneration of our society in schools, in the government, in the military, in various ways. I think he really gets where we're at as a society. He sees it. He sees all that's going on. And he's trying in many ways through his writings to yell at the top of his lungs for people to wake up and just realize how degenerate we are. He hates the deception and the lies that are being told in say the transgender movement. But recently, when he was describing some very difficult situations that he's going through in his own life, and it's just in his personal life. Very difficult trials. He commented, as he was working through these things, that he was listening to my favorite album, Exile on Main Street, by the Rolling Stones. What a joy this music is, he comments. And then he later writes in the same article, which, by the way, has his title, the title of one of the Rolling Stones songs, The Stones Are My Soundtrack. This is my soundtrack for life, the Rolling Stones. Now, why would somebody say that? My heart resonates with them, with what they're saying, with what they're singing, with what life looks like from their perspective. That's what I grew up on. That's where I resonate. But folks, if that gentleman was here today, I would say to him, just like I would say to you today, here's the irony of that. The Rolling Stones are part and parcel of the very degeneration that he hates. He can't stand where that has taken society, but it's all there in them, in his heart, To put it in the words of this psalm, the rolling stones sang with poison under their lips. You cannot embrace the ethos of the rolling stones and the ethos of God, because these are contradictory positions. In fact, these are the kind of men that this psalm is praying that we would be delivered from. Deliver me, Lord, from these kinds of men who are destroyers. But you can see how the poison works. It's not out in the open. Well, to many people, it's not out in the open. It's just, hey, we're just singing about life. We're just singing about the way we feel. We're keeping it real. No, you're singing poison. and people are imbibing the poison, and their hearts and their affections are shaped to that poison, and we shouldn't be shocked when they live that way, which destroys the good things God has given us. Pardon me. Songs, too, are ways of sharpening their tongues like a serpent. And one of the hardest things to do in life is to know how to live in a world of lies. How do you fight back against hidden snares? Things that are undercover, right? How do you push back against that? How do you overcome constant subterfuge when you're presented over and over and over again with half-truths, with sometimes even glorious words that have been redefined to mean nearly the opposite of what they should mean? Folks, what you need to do is cry out to God to deliver you. That's why you've been given this song. You have to realize that if God does not deliver you, if he does not preserve you and guard you from an evil man, from the world system in which you live, you will be spiritually destroyed. You don't have the power to overcome all the enemies of God and your soul. You need God to deliver you or you will go down the same path. So the first appeal or first section here of appeal in this psalm is deliver, preserve, and guard. Now it moves on in verses 6 through 11 to call upon the Lord to protect, reject, and repay. Beginning in verse 6, it says, I say to the Lord, you are my God. Give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord. Oh Lord, my Lord, the strength of my salvation. You have covered my head in the day of battle. Grant not, oh Lord, the desires of the wicked. Do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted. As for the head of those who surround me, let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them. Let burning coals fall upon them. Let them be cast into fire, into miry pits, no more to rise. Let not the slanderer be established in the land. Let evil hunt down the violent man speedily. This is the prayer now, as the psalmist shifts gears, turns his attention, you might say, a little bit more away from the adversaries to God and says, protect. First of all, in verses six and seven, protect. I say to the Lord, you are my God. Now this is a wonderful place to start here, folks. You are my God. That's what I say to God. The wicked are trying to deceive me, so what do I do? I go to the Lord and I say, you are my God. What does that do? Why does the Psalm teach us to take those words, to make them our own, to say them repeatedly? Folks, when we say that, when we sing this, when we pray this, we are reorienting ourselves in our true loyalty and our true identity. Where am I going to find an anchor in this world of lies? You are my God, right there, right? And notice this, you are my God. You are the one I am loyal to and you are the one in whom I find my identity. You are the one I worship and no one else. You see, in a world of idolatry, in a world of false gods, we reorient ourselves by coming back to and fastening our eyes on the one true and living God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. You are my God. And I would urge you today, keep going back to this touchstone in your life. Keep going back to this touchstone. You are my God. That's how you're gonna keep your truth detector working in a world of lies. So this is your homing device. You are my God, right? That gets me back on track. You are my God. Ask him then for mercy. Give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, oh Lord. I need you to have pity upon me in my need. I'm like a wandering lost sheep. I'm in a world full of lies, and there's so many voices clamoring for my attention and telling me this and that and the other, and I know there's a bunch of lies out there, but how do I? Lord, you have to have mercy. Please be merciful to me. then call upon him as the strength of your salvation. O Lord, O Yahweh, my Lord, my Adonai, our master, the strength of my salvation. The Lord is the strength of your salvation. In other words, he is the one who affects your salvation. He protects you in the day when weapons are taken up, the day of battle, when the violent man arises, the Lord covers Your head, He protects you. He is the strength of your salvation. And so we then ask Him in verse eight to reject, reject the wicked. Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked. Do not further their evil plot or they will be exalted. Pray for the Lord to reject the plots of the wicked. Again, what do you do in an evil day? What do you do in a day of lies and deception? Pray that the Lord would reject their desires and their plots. He would confound their desires. Their desires are all against him and his good purposes. Do not let them come to fruition. Why? What will happen? They will be exalted in the earth when their desires are fulfilled. That's contrary to your glory, Lord. That's contrary to your purposes. That's contrary to your people. Please, Lord, reject them, and then, verses nine through 11, repay. We call upon God to repay the wicked. Pardon me. But notice here, especially what this Psalm asks him to repay them with. The head of those who surround me, it says, in verse nine, let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them. Let the mischief of their lips, the very things they have said, let that overtake and destroy them. just to read on through it here, says, let burning coals fall upon them. Let them be cast into fire, into miry or watery pits, no more to rise. Let not the slanderer, again going back to the tongue here, be established in the land. Let evil hunt down the violent man speedily. What was he? He was a hunter looking for the wicked. And the very evil he is perpetrating now is going to do what to him? It's going to hunt him down and destroy him. You've all probably heard the story of Haman and the Jews, right? What happened to Haman? The very gallows that he had had fashioned to hang Mordecai on, he got pierced and hung on. That's a perfect illustration of how God uses the very evil that the evil man produces to destroy himself. You see, what evil men don't realize, or don't want to acknowledge, don't want to admit could actually happen, is that the very evil they perpetrate will come back to bite them. Pardon me. You create, say, a society where there is no rule of law, where you're guilty until proven innocent. What is that society going to do to you when it comes time to turn? it's gonna devour you as well. This is the way God works in his good providence. Their poison will poison them. They will become the prey of their own hunt. They will be caught in the web of lies that they themselves have spun. It's a perfect justice that the psalmist prays for. Again, folks, don't let this throw you. Sometimes, and we've talked about it before, so I'm not gonna take a long time talking about it here, Christians read passages like this and say, well, that couldn't be a Christian thing to pray. Aren't we supposed to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us? And that is true. I think Christians can pray exactly that while praying this, because the Lord is the one who's going to bring it all out right. You know what? I desire the conversion of all of God's and our enemies. Very people in power right now that are defining Christianity and Christian morality as evil, it would be wonderful if those people would humble themselves before the hand of an almighty God, recognize their true evil, repent of that, and turn to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. That would be wonderful. But if they will not, if they do not, then this is exactly what will happen to them, and it will be exactly right, perfectly just. God does not give to people what they don't deserve. Do you realize that? God is not unjust. When God Even you think of burning coals or being cast into fire, or when you think of eternal torments in hell. This is not at all unjust of God, because a sin of a finite creature against an infinitely holy God is going to take infinity to pay back. God will do what's right, and his people can entrust that to him and call upon him to do that. That's what the psalm teaches us to do. And that psalm then concludes with confidence. Justice leading to joy in verses 12 and 13. I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted and will execute justice for the needy. Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name. The upright shall dwell in your presence. The Lord will execute justice. That's what the psalmist closed with. And this is the confidence that all of God's people can have. I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted, the picture of God taking your defense in the courtroom, so to speak. He is going to bring forward the evidence. He's going to bring forth the reality that is going to vindicate His people. What vindicates His people? You know it as well as I do. It's ultimately His anointed King. It's our prophet and priest and King Jesus Christ. It's God Himself vindicating His people and bringing us to Him, washing away our sins because we trust in Jesus Christ and bringing us to Himself. And folks, there is no court ever invented that can overturn that verdict. It is God Himself who justifies, the scripture says. I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted. When the world attacks God's people, when the world tries to tear them down, from the path of righteousness, the path of following after God, God will make it clear in the end that they were the ones following him, not this world. And when he goes to court, so to speak, he's going to pass a just sentence. He will execute justice, it says. He will give judgment. He will say, this is what is true and this stands for the needy. Folks, remember that your life right now is hidden with Christ in God. You're living in a world where the lies are thick and fast. And it can make it seem like the reality of life in Christ will never be known, will never be vindicated, will never actually be established as true. But the confidence here is that God will do that. When Christ appears, you will appear with him in glory. Colossians 3 says. That's the expectation we have. And so when we look to the Lord for justice, that results in joy. Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name. The upright shall dwell in your presence. This is what will surely happen. This is certain. And what is the desire here, the confidence of what will happen when the Lord executes righteousness and justice? the righteous shall give thanks to your name. They will dwell in his presence. In other words, they will be with God worshiping him. And folks, that's simply another name for salvation. This is what God accomplishes when he saves his people. He brings them to himself to worship him. Think about it this way. You realize that when the righteous gather right now, and give thanks to the Lord's name, that is God's salvation being enacted in this earth. What you are doing here this morning is a participation in God's salvation, God's saving justice. It is God making known the reality that this is hidden, yes, it's denied by this world, but really is true that the righteous who trust him, who follow him, As they give thanks to Him, they are making known the reality of His saving work, and that is going to culminate in ultimate worship. The upright shall dwell in your presence. You will see His face. Delivery, the salvation, results in delight in the Lord's presence. What is the goal of your existence? Why were you made? And what will fulfill you forever? Nothing short of God himself will fulfill you forever. And when that happens, folks, all the lies will be exposed for what they truly are. All the deceptions and half-truths, the smoke in the mirrors, the slanders and the deceptions, it's all going to be evaporated. It's all going to be burned through by the light of God's very face. manifesting himself in all of his truth and all of his glory and his splendor, and that's what we will see. Do you want to be like that in that day, seeing him face-to-face? Then this is a prayer for you. This is your confidence and your hope in this present evil world, justice leading to joy. The world lies. The world lies incessantly. The world lies habitually. The world lies always and all the time. The world won't ever do anything different. That doesn't mean cause for despair because the Lord delivers. And so today I urge you simply call upon the name of the Lord. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. If that is your confidence today, would you confess your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord? Again, in case you have not learned this yet, and this is a little bit harder for us to learn, we have this in the bulletin for you, our confession of faith, based on 1 Timothy 3.16. I invite you to look there. And let's confess this before men and angels, our confidence in the Lord, that he will enact justice, leading us to joy through Jesus Christ, our Lord, all together before the Lord. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory, Jesus is Lord.