That was Psalm 5 that we just sang, and we will now turn in our Bibles to Psalm 5, and we're gonna read all of Psalm 5. And before we read Psalm 5, let's ask God to give us His Spirit to help enlighten and illumine us to His Word. Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we open your word now, may you pour your spirit upon us to be able to read your word with open hearts and open minds. And Lord, may you work with your spirit to make the gospel clear to us, to make your word clear to us. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 5. to the choir master for the flutes, the psalm of David. 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. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you 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 tongue. 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. 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. This is the word of the Lord. So this text has a sort of a courtroom kind of a feel. You have like legal proceedings. You have David coming to God with his plea. giving reasons that God should hear him, reasons that God should choose in his favor. Now I can remember a time in high school where I got in trouble. I didn't just have to go to the principal's office, I had the principal there, I had a teacher there, I had a coach there. I was in trouble, I was caught red-handed, I was guilty. There was no plea of innocence in my sitting there before this board, I guess you could call it. I had my head hung down low. I wasn't approaching with any kind of sense that I was gonna get off the hook with this one. I was humbled. Well, this is not the situation that we have here in this psalm as David brings his case to God. David is not having his head hung low. David is coming with boldness. He's saying, God, listen to me. He's prepared his case and he's saying, I'm confident. He's bold. He's saying, choose on my behalf. Do not choose on the guilty's, the guilty party. The Psalm defines two parties. See, there's those who can come before God and those who cannot come before God. And what I hope you see this evening is that we can only come to God to this holy God based on his steadfast love toward us. And we're gonna look at this in three sections. First, we will look at those who can come before God, and second, we will look at those who cannot come before God. And finally, we'll finish off with looking up at the kind of the so what, why does this all matter? And hopefully you get kind of a confidence and a joy as we look at all this. So as we look at this psalm, we're gonna start in the middle. If you'll notice, this psalm is divided into five sections. There's kind of a little bit of spacing between there. You can see after verse three and after verse six, you can see five sections there. We're gonna start in the middle section, verses seven and eight, and then we're gonna work our way out. The middle section, then we're gonna work our way out after that to the beginning of the psalm and the end of the psalm. The psalm has that courtroom feel, that back and forth, and these five sections have that back and forth, but they're kind of connected with the first section and the fifth section are connected. See, the first section has God hear me. The last section has God protect me. And then the second section has God don't hear the wicked, and that's paired with the fourth section, God destroy the wicked. And then we have that third section right in the middle of God's steadfast love. And this is where we're gonna begin, right in that middle there. Well, you see, David is pleading in front of a judge against his enemies. These enemies have lied, they've deceived him, and David comes to God and says, I'm yours, they're not yours. Hear me, don't hear them, cast them out, protect me. But before we get to the first point, we have to ask the question, who is David referring to? Some claim that David wrote this psalm when Absalom, his son, was taking over Jerusalem. And this could very well be. Absalom used lies, he used deception to steal the throne away from his father David. But as with many of the psalms, we don't know specifically the context of this psalm. But the context of Absalom does fit this section. If you remember the story of Absalom in 2 Samuel 14 and 15, he was King David's son. And he tried to take the throne away from David. And he did this with lying and deceit. He stood outside the city gates. And as people would come into the city, they would be bringing their cases to the king, to David, and Absalom would say, oh, David doesn't have time. He's too busy. But if I was king, on the other hand, I would hear your case and there would be more justice in the city. He used lies. It was outright lies. Absalom was stealing the throne away from David. And David was forced to flee Jerusalem for a time. So keep this story of Absalom in your mind throughout this psalm as we look at it. The point is that David has been harmed by evil men and he's seeking help. I'm sure you've been in a situation like this. Maybe someone wasn't trying to take your throne away, but maybe you've been through difficult relationships. Someone's trying to tear you down using lies, deception. I mean, this just happens a lot in relationships. That's the nature of relationships in a broken world. Just within our families, if you look at our kids, I mean, they're just at each other. In our school, just within marriages, you can see the brokenness and how there is lies and deception. Well, as we think of times that we have wrongfully been accused, We have David laying out who can bring their case, bring their plea to the Lord, and who cannot. And David in verse seven and eight says, I can come before you, Lord. The first point I want to make is who can enter into God's presence? So verse seven says, 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. David is able to enter before the Lord. And you think, David. David is able to enter before the Lord. Of course, he's the man after God's own heart. On the other hand, maybe you think, David, he's the man that killed Uriah to steal his wife, to justify it. You think he can come before the Lord? You kind of have those two opposing views of King David. But if you fall into either of those cases, you missed the point. It's not who can enter into God's house. You see, it's not the type of person that can enter into God's house. It's the type of God. David says, through the abundance of your steadfast love, I will enter. Not through his military defeats or his accumulation of wealth is he able to enter before God. It's quite the opposite, actually. David was told that he wasn't even able to build the temple. because he was a man of war and he had shed blood. We read that in 1 Chronicles 28. But here in verse seven, he says that he longs for the temple. And we know David longed for the temple. In a couple of other Psalms, he expresses this. He's expressing this desire, but he's also expressing a confidence. that he will enter into God's presence because of God's abundant, steadfast love. You see, in Leviticus 2, we read of who could enter into God's house, who could enter into the holy of holies. God gave stipulations of who could enter and what they had to do to come in. See, only the high priest was allowed in, and he could only come in once a year. And he had to wash and be ceremonially clean, which entailed a ton of more things. The point is that coming into God's presence was not something to be taken lightly. The image drawn is that no one was able to come into God's presence unless they were sinless. The high priest had to perform a sacrifice for himself before he could go into the, before he could go in to perform a sacrifice for the people. Going into God's presence was a big deal. Not just anyone could do this unless they were sinless. If they were sinless, it was very simple. You could just go before God. Well, we all know who that person is, or maybe you don't know. Jesus Christ was sinless. He could go before God as simple as a father coming, or as a son coming to a father. But David says here, I will enter your house because you are an always loving God. We can come to God because his abundant, steadfast love has been poured on us through Jesus Christ. And it's that simple. God is love. I mean, that's the center of the gospel, right? That's the center of the psalm here as we look at it. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. And that's our confidence. Not in ourselves, but in the love of another, in the love of God. And some would like if we just left it off there. God is love, that's all we need. But this brings us to our second point. We don't just have all rainbows and gumdrops here in this psalm. If we view God's love apart from his absolute abhorrence of sin, then we lose who God is, we lose God's justice. So to really understand what God's abounding, steadfast love means, we have to go into who cannot enter into God's presence. So we are now going one step out from the middle of the psalm. We're looking at verses four to six and nine through 10. When we look at verses four to six, David tells us of God's character in contrast or compared to wickedness. He says evil may not dwell with you, You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful man. Or verses nine and 10, make them bear their guilt, let them fall by their own counsel, cast them out. Maybe you don't like hearing these verses and you maybe avoid them. But what then happens to David's plea? I mean, David is coming to God here because people are oppressing him. People are lying. You think about him leaving Jerusalem. There's men trying to kill him. What happens to David if you just dismiss God's justice, his hate of sin? You see, we have these two sides. God's love and God's hatred for sin are often played against each other, but we don't have to. If you think about the story in Genesis of Sodom and Gomorrah, God talks to Abraham. And he says to him, because of the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to their outcry that has come up to me. You see, there is a cry from the oppressed in the city. If God doesn't answer, well then, then he's not loving, right? But God is loving, so he does answer. And in answering, he, well, destroys the oppressors, he ends up destroying the whole cities actually. God stops the oppression because he is a loving God. So we can't pit these two things against each other. So we have David coming to God and he's bringing his grievance. David's saying, I can come to you. And the ones that are lying about me, the ones that are hurting me, they cannot come to you. And David defines God's character. David is laying his case out. He's saying, listen to me, don't listen to them. Don't listen to them because verse four, you are a God who does not delight in wickedness. And the ones I'm complaining about, David says, they're wicked. You are a God who can't even be in the presence of evil. And these men, God, are evil, David is saying. So you know those people that maybe they just really annoy you? You can't be around them, you have to bite your tongue when you're with them. They just get under your skin. Well, we have those kind of people around us maybe. But God does not have that. God doesn't get annoyed with sinners being around him. They can't even be in his presence. You see, the Hebrew has a sense of guests, right? God can't even have evildoers, wicked people as guests in his house, not even for a little bit. Verse six, God will destroy the one who speaks lies and the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. That is why they can't be in God's presence. They'll be destroyed. They won't even survive. God will destroy them. David is saying, listen to my plea because you're a God who hates evil and those who do evil. David says, this is the kind of God I know you are. I know you will hear me because the ones lying about me, the ones trying to hurt me, they are wicked in your sight. So you know what David is doing here? Remember, he's in a courtroom kind of setting maybe. Well, he's bringing his case, we've said that. He's setting up his enemies and he's saying, God, these men, they aren't just my enemies. They are your enemies too. Look how wicked they are. These are the ones that are not allowed into God's presence. David recalled God's character in verses four to six and now he's saying these men are those type of people. Look at who they are. There is no truth in their mouth. Their inmost self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave. They flatter with their tongue. David's pointing out to God that these men are the kind of men you do not allow into your house. Actually, as we think of this psalm as a courtroom setting, David is pleading that God not even hear their case. David is revealing their character before God and saying, I'm justified. These guys over here, they're not justified. Listen to me, don't even listen to them. Don't even hear their case. In fact, in verse 10, it goes beyond just don't hear them. In verse 10, David says, make them bear their guilt, oh God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Because of the abundance of their transgressions, cast them out, for they have rebelled against you. Now what do we do with these verses? It's one thing for David to plead for God to hear his case, and that God not hear the case of his enemies. Yeah, we can kind of think of that as being just, but here we have David calling down judgment on his enemies, that they would be cast out, that they would fall, that they would bear their guilt, the guilt of lying and bloodshed. Verse six, God destroys liars. David is asking that they be destroyed. Well, I think we have to remember some things as we read these verses lest we start using verses like this to pray against all of our personal enemies or people that are just getting in our way. I think there's four things we can remember. First, we can remember that this is a prayer. David is in hard times. He's putting his stress into God's hands. It's not as though he's doing the condemning himself at this point. And this can be a good reminder when you are sinned against. Where do you turn? I know my mind, when somebody's done something to me, I turn to vengeance. How can I get them back? How can I make them pay? I've been hurt. How can I make them feel the same type of hurt that I have felt? But this is a prayer expressing pain, expressing hurt to God. It's not inflicting this on others. He's putting it in God's hands and saying, God, This is for you to deal with. Well, second, we can remember who David is. He is the king of Israel. Those that oppose him are directly opposing God's chosen leader of God's chosen people. So it's not as though we can pray this prayer against our personal enemies or those people that, well, the guy that cut me off on the highway on the way here. You see, David's pride's not getting in the way, not like, Not like my pride of being cut off. David sees his enemies as opposing God's plan in this world for his people. Well, the third thing I think we could remember is that these are God's enemies, which is kind of connected to the point just prior to this. They're opposing God's chosen leader. David showed that these men harmed him, but more so that they are offending God, and God should defend his character. If God hates evil and is loving, then he will defend David's cause. Now that's where it's hard for us, or at least for me. It's really easy to see when I have been harmed, offended. It's always obvious when someone's sin has affected me. It's really clear to me that people at work have taken credit where I deserved it. It's easy to see the times I've been wronged by others. I'm sure it's the same for you. It's easy to see when you have been wronged by others. Maybe it's not so easy when you have wronged somebody else. But what do we do when we have been hurt? Do we take it personally? Or do we see the sin as offensive to God? Do we lash out at the injustice done to us or the injustice done to God? If we look at Christ as he hung on the cross, The image, the pinnacle of injustice. The sin of every one of us on him. And he was totally innocent. He could have looked down at the nails in his hands, the nails in his feet, and he could have been, I don't deserve this. But he didn't. He stayed there so that when we have been hurt, when we have been lied to, when we've been lied about, we wouldn't have to feel sorry for ourselves. but rather we would see that sin has far greater consequences than just making me feel hurt. Sin has the consequences of actually nailing the son of God to a tree to hold him there. So when we are sinned against, it's not just us being hurt. As David is sinned against, as we are sinned against, it can be helpful to see that sin is offensive to God. Well, the fourth thing we can remember is that there is evil out there. This is a broken world. This language, make them bear their guilt, let them fall by their own counsels, cast them out for they have rebelled against you, has to be here because there is evil in the world. It's against this evil in the world. David is showing that the wicked are separated from God. That there should be a separation from God. They shouldn't, well they should fall. They should be cast out. They should be destroyed. Does this make you weary? Does it make you maybe even scared? Well, that's exactly what it should do. Sin is not a light matter. David says, I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you. David is approaching in fear. Remember, we are looking at two opposing sides. those included in God's presence and those excluded. David said that he can come into the Lord's temple in the fear of God, fearfully and rightfully so. We have this contrast between God's holiness and the wicked and the consequences are scary. Well, this is a call to flee evil. to flee lying, deception, bloodthirstiness. God hates sin so much that he killed his one and only son. That's how detestable your sin is, that even when sin was on his son, he couldn't even bear to be in his presence. Jesus hung on a cross with your sin, with my sin, and the father had to turn his face away to let him die. but that Jesus hung there is evidence in itself of God's steadfast love. And I pray that you see that love more clearly as you see God's hate of evil and sin. But wait, God hates evil, right? And if we look at David, he's condemning the liar, the bloodthirsty man. But David himself, as we mentioned previously, he was a liar himself. He was a bloodthirsty man himself. He wasn't allowed to build the temple because he shed so much blood. He was a man of war. And Uriah, he lied, he deceived to get the woman that he wanted. He killed a man. a loyal man to himself, actually. David is a liar and a bloodthirsty man himself. So when he's announcing this, he's condemning himself with these men. And if we look at ourselves, we see that we are guilty of this sin as well. Our catechism shows us that the commandments of do not murder, do not lie, what those all entail, it's not just actions, it's even the thoughts that go through our head. There is no way that we can pass God's standard for what we should be doing. There's not even a hope. So the only hope that we have is God's steadfast love. And that's what I wanna emphasize. Your only chance is to hide behind the shield of God's steadfast love. Left on your own, you'd be cast out. Well, this brings us to our third point. We're looking at the beginning and the end of the psalm now. Verse one and three, one through three, and 11 and 12 to see why this all matters. Why it matters that David, you and I can only come to God based on his steadfast love. And I wanna point out two things here. Why does this matter? I wanna point out confidence and I wanna point out joy. Remember this is set in the courtroom and you have liars, bloodthirsty men on the one side, over here, and you have David. on the other. So we have David, which is himself a liar and a bloodthirsty man, confidently asking God to destroy liars and bloodthirsty men. It kind of reminds me of Romans 3 and Psalm 14. No one is righteous, it says. Not even one. Well, how can David be confident in this case? It's like that show, I don't know if it's still on, that Judge Judy show where you hear the two cases that these people bring to her and you just, you have no, it's like wow. How do you choose between these two cases? How does God choose between these two cases? But the thing is, we are standing in that courtroom as well. We can put ourselves right up in there with liars and bloodthirsty men. We fit right in with them. Romans says, no one is righteous. There are none who do good. All our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. So we ask, how can David be confident? And for us sitting right here right now, how can we be confident before a holy God? Well, what gives confidence in a courtroom? I'm not a lawyer, but I've been to a lot of, well, I haven't been to a lot of court cases. I've seen a lot of lawyer movies. And I'm sure they always portray it accurately, right? You see, the lawyer, he knows his case before he's even presented it in the court because he's prepared. He's ready. He knows all the circumstances surrounding the laws that have to do with his case. He knows the judge. He knows the defendant. He knows the other side, what they're gonna say. He's prepared. David knows his judge. Verse two, David says, my king and my God. My king and my God. Now when I came across the border, I came with my son, my oldest son, and we both crossed the border, and you see Canadian flags, we're Canadian. We feel a sense of just kind of a relief, like you're in your own country. Being in the US, I mean, when I see their police officer, not that I'm doing anything bad, but you just get kind of like, They're not looking out for you, maybe, because it's not your country, right? Well, this is not the case. We are God's people. We can say, along with David, my king and my God. This is not the case with our God. Well, this is the case with our God, sorry. We are his people. He is looking out for us. David can say, my king and my God, because it's his God. He is looking out for him. He will do what is best for him. God will protect us. We are his people, we're Galatians. Calls us sons of God, sons and daughters of God. Not slaves, but sons and daughters. David's confidence comes from his preparedness, yes. He knows what he has to do. Verse three, he brought his sacrifice and he watches. In verse three, you can see in the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. David brought a sacrifice. He knows the God that he serves, he knows it was required. But if we read in Hebrews 10, it says, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. See, David's sacrifice was of blood and animals, shedding of blood to cover his sin so he could come before God. If David had to wait before God to answer him. Because of his sacrifice, he'd be waiting a long time, because the sacrifice wasn't good enough. We read further in Hebrews, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. He had to wait for the sacrifice that those animals shed blood pointed to of Jesus Christ. He had to wait for that. We have this courtroom, David is crying out, convict them. let their sin overcome them, let them be destroyed for what they have done to me and to you, God. But as we look at this sacrifice, David brought his sacrifice, which pointed to the greater sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of his shed blood that would cover him completely. You see, David brings his case before God, pointing at the accusers. But then we have Jesus stepping in to the place of these wicked men, stepping into the place of sinners. And he steps in there as the ultimate sacrifice. It's as though he enters the courtroom as the accused and he stands in front of David's accusations. David says, the wicked deserve to die. They deserve to be cast out of God's presence. And what does Jesus do in his life? Well, he gets cast out and he dies. But on the cross as he's dying, what does he say? He says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Now isn't that amazing? Jesus said, forgive them as he died. That is the picture of the steadfast, loving God that we have. Our confidence rests in this Jesus Christ, who at the point of death and a point of his most suffering forgave us of our sins. So we're looking at what this matters. David's prayer is answered in two ways. See, this prayer is, David's asking for judgment on the wicked. He's saying, these people are evil. They deserve to be judged. But he's also asking another thing. He's asking for protection. So he's asking for judgment and he's asking for protection. And both of these prayers are answered. You see, the wicked are judged. Jesus is killed in the place of the wicked. And he carries their sins. But David is also delivered because Jesus is killed, and as he's killed, he forgives sinners. Jesus was saying, forgive them for they don't know what they do, as he was dying. Well, so why does this matter? Well, I pray that you have confidence in God because of that sacrifice of what he has done, stepping into your place. But I pray that you also have joy. The last two verses, David says, let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy. People of God, verse 11 says, whoever takes refuge in God rejoices. You see, there are two ways, included and there's excluded. And whoever takes refuge in God is included and they rejoice. They will ever shout for joy, forever exalting in the Lord who has saved them. This is what we are called to do, and this is what we get to call others to as well. We have the warning of what life is apart, what life is like apart from God. The Lord hates evildoers. He wants to destroy them. Their mouth is an open grave. Their inmost self is destruction. The psalmist says, cast them out. Let them fall. Because they are so sinful, destroy them. So you have those two views. The one is presented as so ugly, so detestable, and the other so good. Well, this is a warning. Don't be like this. Don't be a liar, deceiver, bloodthirsty. Rather, take refuge in God, in Christ. There's none of this destruction. There's none of this being cast out. But it's all rejoicing in joy forever. And what is this all based on? Well, it's based on the steadfast love of God on the cross, not on anything you have done or will do. It's based on what has already been done. The last verse, verse 12, says, you bless the righteous, O Lord, you cover him with favor as with a shield. We can see the wicked, that they are detestable to God, and that we fit right in with them, with the wicked. But what do we do? We tuck, we hide behind God's shield. We realize we deserve the judgment of all those accusations. What do we do? Hide behind God. So the weather is getting warm. I mowed my lawn for the first time on Thursday. We had one of those mowers with the handles. like that, and you sit on it. And my yard has this pine tree with all these low branches. So when you're mowing around this tree, you're trying to get around, you're trying to steer it, but you're trying to hold all these branches back. And they're always poking you and prodding you, and you need like four arms to hold all these branches back and still drive it and get underneath it. Well, my son likes to mow it with me, and he's my youngest son, he's two years old, and he sits right in my lap, right in between my legs, just behind the handles. So if I back up, I kind of hit him in the face, but he likes to do it with me, and he loves to do it. But when he comes to that tree, he knows the tree, and he gets his arms in there, and so we have four arms then, so we can get a few more branches back, but there's no point. All these branches are just poking everywhere, and you're trying to get right underneath the tree, And he's come to realize that there's nothing he can do. He can't hold these branches back. He's gonna get poked and prodded. So what does he do? Well, he knows that if he just sits there, and if he puts his head down like that, he knows that I'll put my hand over top of him, and I'll kinda go like that, and then I'll just go under the tree. And he's protected. All these branches don't hit him. And he knows just to duck and hide, because there's nothing he can do. And that's the image we have of Christ. He bends over top of us, shielding us, protecting us. So all these branches poking and prodding and scraping, we don't have to worry about them, because there's somebody protecting us. This is what Jesus has done for you. You will never be in danger, because he is the shield that gets bashed and bruised and stabbed and beaten, pierced, so you don't have to. I hope you've seen that there are two ways. There's accepted by God, there's sin and rejection by God, which is hell. But I pray that you see God's loving kindness in Christ Jesus and the confidence we can have in him, the joy of being protected by him. Well, maybe you ask, what do I do? We just have to believe that God hates sin, that he hates it so much that he sent Jesus Christ to die on a cross. for your sin and that your sins have been put on him. They've been paid by him as he died. And then all's we have to do is, like my son, just be covered by him because he rose from the dead. He took all that beating, all that death, and he conquered it. He rose from the dead. So he is the ultimate shield. He can take it for us. And I hope as you see that, you will be able to rejoice forevermore, knowing that He is the one that has protected you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you that you are our shield, that you have done everything necessary for our salvation, that all we have to do as we stand in our sin is come to you and you will wipe us clean, you will put your righteousness upon us. And Lord, we ask that you would do that with your spirit, that you would make us righteous so that we would be acceptable in your sight. And Lord, we ask this daily. We ask that you would love us. And Lord, we ask this with confidence, and we ask this with joy as well because of what you have done. We pray this in your name, amen.