Kootenai Church: The Psalms

No person who has ever been born into this world has ever been more hated by more people and more unjustly so than Jesus Christ. All people who have ever lived in this world have been hated by somebody to some degree, at least all people who have been born and lived some kind of a full life in this world. Every person that I'm looking at this morning is hated by somebody, right? It might be a friend, a relative, your neighbor, a distant person that you went to grade school with, the bully that bullied you in high school or whatever it is. Maybe that's just autobiographical, but somebody hates you. I'm certain of that because all of us are hated.
But nobody has ever been hated more unjustly and more robustly and viciously than has the Lord Jesus Christ. Though He is the righteous one, full of love and grace and truth, though He is compassionate and merciful and kind and just—He is, Scripture says, the perfect representation of the nature of God because He is God in human flesh. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. God represented here, God dwelling here, God in a man—that is Christ Jesus. So everything that is glorious and righteous and holy and delightful and true is in Jesus Christ. And so therefore He is unjustly hated.
He is righteous and holy, and so unrighteous and unholy men and women hate Him. And this hatred now has been going on for at least two thousand years. They still do hate Him. They deny His truth. They question His truthfulness. His name is a swear word. His claims are ridiculed and mocked. His Word is rejected and scorned and His character is maligned. And even His very historical existence is questioned by people who despise Him. In fact, just this last week, they cast a bald, lesbian, Black woman to star as Jesus in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar, which is perennially a blasphemous presentation. Never question the justice of an eternal Hell. News stories like that remind me. Never question the justice of an eternal Hell.
And so mankind continues to blaspheme Him, and that kind of blasphemy is frankly stunning. The perfectly righteous One is hated and hunted and oppressed and opposed and mocked and ridiculed. And so if you, believer, are seeking to conform your life to the standards of His righteousness and to speak truth and justice and have His Word dwell in your heart and be conformed and transformed into the very character and likeness of Christ, then it should not surprise you if you likewise will be hated. You will be hated too if you speak righteousness and stand for righteousness. In fact, this is what Jesus promised in John 16:33. He said, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” He promised us tribulation.
In fact, in a very odd statement in the book of Acts, chapter 14, verse 22, the writer of Acts, Dr. Luke, says that Paul went from church to church on his first missionary journey, and he says this: “[He was] encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’” He was encouraging them by telling them that they were going to face tribulation. That seems like an odd encouragement, right? Try that on your next encouragement card that you send to somebody. Hope you're doing well coming off your surgery. Just so you know, it's through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of Heaven.
A righteous person trusts in a God who preserves them through these earthly perils and through these tribulations for our eternal possession. And that is the point of this fifth section in Psalm 37. Verses 32–34 is our passage for this morning. The fifth section of the psalm is verses 27–34, which we just read today. Two weeks ago, we saw that the Lord preserves us for our eternal possession. That's in verses 27–29. There is there in verse 29 the reminder that the righteous will inherit the land and will dwell in it forever. The Lord preserves His people for their eternal possession. Then last week we learned in verses 30–31 that the Lord preserves us through His enduring precepts, the Word of God, His truth, His precepts, His commandments. His truth which dwells in the hearts of His people is a tool by which the Spirit of God preserves us for that eternal inheritance.
And then today in verses 32–34, we're going to see that the Lord preserves us through earthly perils. Verses 32–34 describe the earthly perils and God's keeping work in keeping the righteous through them. So in verses 27–34, Yahweh is preserving His people through this life, through those earthly perils, and preserving us for our eternal inheritance, which is to come. Today we're going to notice in verses 32–34 that there are three things about the righteous that we are to observe. Number one, in verse 32, the righteous are pursued in this life. In verse 33, the righteous are preserved from judgment. And then in verse 34, the righteous are patient for the world to come.
Let's read together verses 32–34. First, the righteous are pursued in this life. “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him” (v. 32). Second, the righteous are preserved from judgment. Verse 33: “The Lord will not leave him in his hand or let him be condemned when he is judged.” And then finally, the righteous are patient for the world to come. Verse 34: “Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.”
Notice how the righteous are pursued in verse 32: “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.” Now that seems kind of stark, harsh, almost like it is described in militant terms, like it's an exaggeration. Do the wicked really pursue the righteous and seek to kill them? Can any of you name somebody in your life that is personally seeking to pursue you and to kill you? Anybody here that is hunted? Don't raise your hand. I don't want to out you for something that you've done. Or is this just kind of a hyperbole, as if the author is simply describing something in exaggerated terms that's not necessarily true of all the righteous?
It does seem as if he is describing an extreme situation, and I do think that the wicked that are in David's mind as he writes that are some of the worst kind of the wicked. Certainly there are plenty of unbelievers in your life who are not trying to kill you. I don't think David's point in the psalm is that this afternoon when you go to Walmart you need to watch out because on the other side of almost any endcap is going to be standing some unbeliever who's looking to shiv you with a knife that they got out of the kitchen section a few aisles over. I don't think that that's what David has in mind. But generally it is true, generally speaking, that throughout all of human history, beginning with Cain and Abel, the righteous are pursued by the wicked. Generally speaking, that is true.
There is this war that goes on between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman are at enmity with one another. And if the seed of the serpent were to get everything that they want, they would extinguish the righteous from the earth. And thus all the persecution and the hostility and the hatred for the righteous that we have ever seen throughout all of human history is really described here in verse 32: “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.” Look up in the psalm at verse 12:
12 The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth.
13 The Lord laughs at him, for He sees his day is coming.
14 The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy, to slay those who are upright in conduct.
15 Their sword will enter their own heart, and their bows will be broken. (Ps. 37:12–15 NASB)
Though this is an extreme description in verses 12–15 and in verse 32, it's not an unjustified one or a wildly exaggerated or even uncommon one. It is something that is experienced by the righteous in every country, in every era of human history, again, from the time of the garden until our present day. It is true—if you've watched the news story even this last week, you saw that there were Christians who were hunted and hated and persecuted and even killed for their faith. It made national headlines this last week, at least probably in some of the news outlets that most of us would follow, if not on the major news outlets.
But is this true of all the righteous at all times? No, it's not true. We do live in relative peace here in our own country, but it is frequent enough that this is an honest description of the condition of the righteous in this world. We are spied upon and the wicked do seek to extinguish the righteous and the influence of righteousness in this world.
That word spies in verse 32, “the wicked spies upon the righteous,” it's a descriptive word. It means to observe or to keep watch or to look out or to look upon. That's the Hebrew word. It's used of a watchman who would stand up on the wall and look out for danger. And it's not used in the sense of—though it can be used this way—but it's typically not used in the sense of just observing something, like I'm watching the reactions on your faces and you're watching me, you're just observing something, both of us actually back and forth both ways, rather dispassionately. That's not what it's describing. It's not meaning to simply see something or observe something, but it actually means to be fully aware of a situation in order to gain an advantage or to keep from being surprised by an enemy, thus the use of it to describe the watchman on the wall who watches out and spies out over the land, watching for an approaching danger lest he be overtaken. The watchman on the wall wants to spy out in order to perceive a coming danger so that he is not taken by surprise. So he's watching out over others for an opportunity to gain an advantage. That was the work of a watchman, to gain an advantage over an enemy who might be approaching the city.
And that's the way it is used here. The wicked spies upon the righteous. He observes the righteous, looks out over the righteous, and is watching him closely for an opportunity so that he can take advantage of the righteous and not be taken advantage of by the righteous. It's kind of like lying in watch, in ambush, waiting for the perfect opportunity to spring. It is the very situation that we read in Psalm 10 earlier.
8 He sits in the lurking places of the villages; in the hiding places he kills the innocent; his eyes stealthily watch for the unfortunate.
9 He lurks in a hiding place as a lion in his lair; he lurks to catch the afflicted; he catches the afflicted when he draws him into his net.
10 He crouches, he bows down, and the unfortunate fall by his mighty ones. (Ps. 10:8–10 NASB)
That describes the way in which David is describing here the watching of the wicked over top of the righteous, looking for that opportunity, lurking over them.
Now, why do the wicked do this? Why do the wicked watch for the righteous in that way? Obviously, the wicked see the righteous as an enemy. I would suggest even two things from the immediate context as to why this would happen. In Psalm 37:27, you notice that David commands us to “depart from evil and do good, so you will abide forever.” Since the righteous depart from evil to do good, the wicked see that departure and that doing good as treason. When the wicked love evil, those who turn from evil to do good are automatically seen as an enemy and as if they have committed treason against their cause. And therefore, they lurk and seek to destroy the righteous.
A second reason is in verse 30: “The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice.” And to those who hate wisdom and justice, that's heresy. So when you depart from evil to do good, in the eyes of the wicked you're committing treason. And when you stop speaking evil and speak what is good and just, in the eyes of the wicked you're committing blasphemy. That's heresy to them. So because you do not do what is wicked and speak what is wicked, the wicked will hate the righteous.
Sometimes it is obvious in this world that the righteous suffer. We have a couple of examples of that even in Scripture. You can probably think of more than these two, but I would just remind you of David and of course the Lord Jesus Himself. You remember David, who wrote this psalm, may have in the back of his mind even episodes in his own life when he was hunted and hated by Saul. Do you remember that? And Saul would seek after him and get his army engaged in looking for David and pursuing David, and David had to hide in caves and in little crevices, and he and his mighty men went all over the place just to avoid being overtaken by Saul. Saul was looking for an opportunity to strike David down and to destroy David, and David of course was unjustly pursued.
The Lord Jesus—it is interesting. Just in the Gospel of John—I would challenge you this. Read through the Gospel of John sometime in the coming weeks, and just look for all of the references to the plots to kill Jesus and to subvert Him. You'll find in John 7 eleven times that the Jews attempt to kill Him or seize Him are mentioned. Eleven times in one chapter.
In John 8:37, Jesus said, “I know that you are Abraham's descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you.”
John 8:40: “But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do.”
The Gospel of Luke—I sometimes wonder if Luke had Psalm 37 in mind as he was describing the life and the ministry of Jesus because listen to these references from the Gospel of Luke. It almost sounds as if Psalm 37 is a prophecy of Jesus's life. Luke 6:7: “The scribes and the Pharisees were watching Him closely to see if He healed on the Sabbath, so that they might find reason to accuse Him.”
Luke 11:53–54: “When He left there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile and to question Him closely on many subjects, plotting against Him to catch Him in something He might say.”
Luke 14:1: “It happened that when He went into the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Him closely.”
Luke 19:47–48: “And He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, and they could not find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said.”
Luke 20:20: “So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, in order that they might catch Him in some statement, so that they could deliver Him to the rule and the authority of the governor.”
Look at Psalm 37:32: “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.” If Psalm 37:32 described anybody, it was the Lord Jesus Christ. At every opportunity, every miracle, every word, every turn, every trip, every city, every teaching, every synagogue encounter, they were spying upon Him and watching Him so that they could find an advantage to destroy Him. And eventually Jesus was delivered into their hands and so have thousands of righteous over the years. They have been delivered into the hands of the wicked because the righteous do fall into the hands of the wicked.
And verse 33 then is an encouragement to us, and here we see the righteous are preserved from judgment. Verse 33: “The Lord will not leave him in his hand or let him be condemned when he is judged.” The idea of the Lord not leaving the righteous—“the Lord will not leave him [the righteous] in his [the wicked man's] hand or let him [the righteous] be condemned when he [I think that’s a reference to the wicked] is judged.” The reference to being in the hand of the wicked means to be under his power or subject to his designs. The righteous are vulnerable in this world, exposed and overpowered and threatened. But the promise of the psalm is that the Lord will not leave the righteous man under the power of the wicked one.
So how then is it and when is it that the righteous are finally delivered from the hands of the wicked? This comes down to what the psalmist, David, means by that phrase, “Or let him be condemned when he is judged.” There are three possible meanings for that phrase. One of them I think we can rule out, and the other two I think are possible meanings. First, one suggestion for what it means is that the righteous will not be subject to unjust prosecution before their enemies. See the phrase? “Or let the righteous be condemned when he [the righteous] is judged.” If we understand that the righteous is the one being judged, then some would say that this means that the righteous will not be subject to unjust prosecution when the wicked haul the righteous in before magistrates or kings or judges or rulers to be tried and then condemned and then executed or plundered or persecuted or imprisoned for their faith.
But I don't think that's what it's referring to because that happens all over the place and that happens all the time. Righteous people are brought in before unjust civil magistrates and kings and they're prosecuted and persecuted and even turned over into the hands of the wicked, and in some countries and some lands they are executed or even imprisoned for their faith and their goods are taken from them. So it does seem as if the righteous in this life are turned over and left into the hands of the wicked when they are judged.
Second, it's possible that this means that the righteous, though tried by the wicked, will never be guilty in God's eyes. In other words, the righteous are judged by the wicked but never condemned by God because God knows the truth and He deals with the righteous on the basis of what He knows. And because the righteous have been imputed the righteousness of Christ and had their sins taken out of the world, off their back, and laid upon Christ, though it may be that the righteous in this world are dragged before the unjust magistrates and they are tried and condemned, in the court of God the righteous will never ever be condemned because God will see to their vindication. This sort of fits the context because in verses 5–6 of this psalm—look what it says. David says, “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.” In other words, God will vindicate the righteous. The truth will eventually be known and will be established, and though the righteous may be condemned by the wicked, they will never be condemned by God. And that's true enough and it fits the context.
So it could mean that, or third—and here's what I think it means—that the righteous will never be condemned when the wicked are judged. In other words, on the day of God's judgment upon the wicked when they are cut off, the righteous, all of them, will be spared and they will never be condemned. Look at the phrase again in verse 33: “Or let him [the righteous] be condemned when he [that is, the wicked man] is judged.” Or you could say even if it means it's referring there to the judgment of the righteous, the righteous will come forth shining, blameless before His throne on that day.
So on the day that all men are judged, the righteous themselves will never be condemned. In other words, because they have been imputed the righteousness of Christ, no one can lay a charge against them on that final day. Romans 8:1: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who have been credited the righteousness of Christ can never be condemned in the judgment. The judgment may come, it may fall upon all the world. The psalms say that God will judge the entire world in equity and in righteousness because justice and righteousness are the foundation of His throne. When that judgment falls upon the world, the righteous will escape that judgment.
Romans 8:33–34: “Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” So how can God condemn one whom He has already justified and credited the righteousness of His Son? When judgment falls, because the righteous one has the righteousness of Christ, the Father will never condemn him. So who can condemn the righteous? Who can bring a charge against God's elect? If the elect are standing before the throne of God and God says, “You're innocent. All your price has been paid. Your righteousness is My Son's righteousness, and now it is yours,” if that is true, then who can possibly bring a charge against God's righteous ones? And so when he is judged, when judgment falls, the righteous will escape. And that, I think, is what is being described here.
Sometimes it is true in this life that the righteous are delivered. So while the righteous are put into the hands of the wicked for a period of time—that's what verse 33 says—the Lord will not leave him in his hand. The implication is that for some period of time, under some circumstances, the righteous do fall into the hands of the wicked. And it's true in this life that often the wicked are able to do what they desire to the righteous and cause the righteous to suffer. But ultimately the Lord promises that there will be deliverance from that. Now, sometimes that happens in this life. So just as I used examples of David, who was hunted, those same examples of David being hunted by Saul are also evidences of God delivering David in this world. There are times when David fell into the hands of his enemies in a place where God sometimes miraculously and sometimes just providentially delivered David from the threats upon his life. That happened time and again.
It happened with Jesus as well. In His own hometown of Nazareth when He went out to preach in the synagogue and He had the audacity to suggest that God might give grace to Gentiles, the people gathered around and tried to throw Him off a cliff, and Jesus walked out of the midst of that crowd. John 10 is another example. They picked up stones to stone Him, and Jesus simply walked out of the midst of them. Exercising divine power, He escaped the plots of the wicked, but ultimately He was handed over into their hands at the perfect time. David was also delivered from Absalom.
You remember that Paul was delivered on multiple occasions from the attempts of his enemies to take his life. He was lowered down out of the city of Damascus through a rope, a basket in the wall. You remember there was another time that his nephew told Paul about a plot upon his life when he was in Jerusalem and they whisked him away under the cover of darkness to Caesarea. And even there, Paul's enemies prosecuted him and persecuted him in Caesarea. And he spent two years there under the rule of Roman civil magistrates while his trial was unfolding, and he was delivered out of that. Then Paul went to Rome where he stood before Nero, and eventually at the end of his life, Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 4, “I was rescued out of the lion's mouth.” In other words, Paul stood right there in front of Nero, preached the gospel to Nero, and was not executed at that moment. Paul was put into a prison, and he regarded that as being delivered. But ultimately, Paul fell under the power and into the hand of the wicked and he was killed.
So if in this life it is true that the righteous are often turned over into the hands of the wicked and they are not always delivered from the hands of the wicked, then what is verse 33 promising? I think it is promising, with the future emphasis of the psalm, that there is a deliverance that is to come and that deliverance is final, it is irreversible, and it is physical, and it is eternal. And that deliverance is your death and your resurrection and you being put into the land which verse 29 promises and verse 34 promises again, you being put in the land. Then you will be finally, fully, physically delivered from death, from danger, from all enemies. That final deliverance for the righteous is being placed in the land.
Just as the Lord will not allow you to fall into the hands of death and remain there forever, He will raise you up again and He will give you the land, and then you will be delivered from all enemies, from all the power of the enemy, and you and I, if you are righteous in Jesus Christ, will never again fall into the hands of the wicked. We will never again have to deal with the wicked. That is the promise. That is the promise of verse 34. The righteous are patient for the world to come.
Notice verse 34 returns us to a theme that the author has already made reference to back in verses 1–8 when we looked at the peace that we can have in this world even though we are surrounded by hostility. Verse 34: “Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.” The author returns to this theme of waiting, which he begins the psalm with. So the psalm begins with this idea of waiting, and now the author, at the end of it, is kind of coming back to that and reminding us that the prosperity of the righteous is entirely future. Our real prosperity is yet to come, and so David is reminding us that though we fall into the hands of the wicked in this life, the Lord ultimately will not deliver us there forever. We will be delivered from the clutches of wickedness and evil in the resurrection when we inherit the land, and so he reminds us that you and I are to wait for that.
We are to wait patiently for the world that is to come. Verse 7 of this psalm—look back there. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.” Look down in verse 9: “For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.” That word wait in verse 9 is the same word wait in verse 34. Notice that the promise is the same. Verse 9: “Those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land.” Notice verse 34: “Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will exalt you to inherit the land.” Do you see how he is bracketing the details of this psalm between that promise of inheriting the land, and he reminds us in each case that we are to wait for that? We need to have patience in God's timing and in His purposes and in His plan. He is not slack concerning His promise, but He will fulfill His every word to His people.
Now, it is difficult to wait. We talked about this at the beginning of the psalm in verses 7 and 9. We talked about waiting and waiting patiently. It is difficult to wait. When you are in the hand of the wicked, when the wicked are spying upon you and waiting to seek an advantage, to take advantage of you, to twist your words, to distort what you are saying, to misrepresent you, to do you some physical or financial harm, it is difficult to simply wait for the Lord's timing to give you deliverance from that situation.
Patience in verse 34 is coupled with obedience to God's truth. We are to wait for the Lord and to keep the Lord's way—that is, to keep Yahweh's way, to pursue the path of righteousness, that path that Yahweh delights in. When we delight in that path because His Word dwells within our hearts, we will patiently pursue obedience, and it is always impatience that we get that undermines our efforts at obedience. When the path of obedience is difficult and brings us more hostility, and when the path of obedience brings temptation to quit obedience for the sake of ease or temporary peace—sometimes the way of the transgressor looks easy in this life and it looks better, but in the end it is harder. And so the righteous have to wait upon the Lord for that deliverance that is to come.
I promise you, righteous one, that you will be delivered. Maybe in this life but certainly at your death you will be delivered. That's the promise. You say, “Death? That doesn't sound at all like a good promise.” It is, because that's the worst that can happen to you, is your death. And that's not bad. “O Death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55) O Grave, where is your victory? If I know that being handed over into the clutches of the wicked results in me stepping through the gates of glory, through death, and ultimately seeing Christ fulfill His promise to raise us from the dead and to put us in that land that He has promised, then that death becomes not a triumph for the wicked, it becomes the triumph for the righteous, because the righteous triumph in death and ultimately will receive the reward that is described in verse 34. “He will exalt you to inherit the land.”
This inheritance is not an earthly inheritance. It's not a mere physical inheritance. It's not even safety and possessions and security in this life. The inheritance that the author is describing throughout the entire psalm is the inheritance that puts the people of God in that renewed, resurrected land of Israel in the kingdom. You should be familiar with this promise by now because we've seen it in verse 9, verse 11, verse 22, verse 29, and now in verse 34. This is the central promise of this psalm, that the righteous in the end get the kingdom, the inheritance, the glory, all of that. They get to dwell in the land, and the wicked at that time will be cut off. This is the promise of the Old Testament prophets—the land of Israel, renewed, regenerated, purged of the wicked. And the saints are promised that at the beginning of that coming kingdom described in Revelation 20, they will be resurrected. You will be resurrected along with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, Daniel, and the rest of the Old Testament righteous. And together we will step into that kingdom and we will enjoy a thousand-year reign in this creation and then the re-creation and the inheritance in that land in the glorified and eternal state forevermore. A thousand years in this creation and then the same kingdom in that land, resurrected and renewed, the new heavens and the New Earth forever. That is the glory that the righteous get to look forward to.
But meanwhile, the wicked, they will be cut off. They will be cut off. Verse 34—not if they are cut off, but “when the wicked are cut off.” And that is the language that is used to describe the wicked throughout this psalm.
Verse 22: “Those blessed by Him will inherit the land, but those cursed by Him will be cut off.”
Verse 28—the end of verse 28 says, “The descendants of the wicked will be cut off.”
Verse 38 says, “The posterity of the wicked will be cut off.” The language used here is language of total destruction, total annihilation, and total vanquishment.
Verse 10: “Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more; and you will look carefully for his place and he will not be there.”
Look at verse 20: “The wicked will perish; and the enemies of the Lord will be like the glory of the pastures, they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.”
Verse 36: “Then he passed away, and lo, he was no more; I sought for him, but he could not be found.”
When will that happen? “When the wicked are cut off, you will see it” (v. 34). And when the wicked are cut off, you will inherit the land. These two things are happening at the same future event. The righteous will be raised from the dead prior to the thousand years of Revelation 20. They will be given the land, and the wicked will be cut off from that kingdom. They will never see the glory of that inheritance. They will have no place in it. They will vanish like the smoke. Not if they are cut off, but when they are cut off, Scripture says, you will see it. Verse 34: “When the wicked are cut off, you will see it.” You will look upon that with your own eyes. The word see here describes, again, not a neutral observation. Allen Ross in his commentary on the psalm says this is a looking on in triumph. In other words, when the wicked are cut off, we will observe it and we will see it and we will not cry, we will not mourn, we will not be sad about it, we won't be opposed to it, we won't think that God is doing something unjust or unkind or unrighteous at all. The righteous will see it and they will look upon it in triumph.
Psalm 52:5:
5 But God will break you down forever [he's describing the wicked here]; He will snatch you up and tear you away from your tent, and uproot you from the land of the living. Selah.
6 The righteous will see and fear, and will laugh at him, saying,
7 “Behold, the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and was strong in his evil desire.” (Ps. 52:5–7 NASB)
Psalm 91:8: “You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.”
Part of the consolation for the righteous is not just that the wicked will be judged, not just that their tormentors will face righteousness and perish. Part of the consolation for the righteous is that the righteous will see that with their own eyes and the righteous will rejoice when the justice of God is done. If that is hard for your heart to grasp, that means that your heart is not in conformity with what Scripture says about the truth of that great day. And it may be that in this life when we have many relatives and friends and neighbors and people that we love who will be counted among the wicked on that day, that may be a hard truth to swallow. But you and I have to shepherd our own hearts to the realization that when that happens, we will not weep it. We will rejoice in it.
Why is that? God loves justice. He delights in justice, verse 28 says. “The Lord loves justice and does not forsake His godly ones.” If God loves justice and He delights when His justice is executed—and by the way, let me back up just a second so I can add some clarity to this so you don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. God delights in compassion and mercy and grace and lovingkindness as well, which is why He saves unworthy sinners. But just because God delights in mercy and compassion and grace and forgiving sinners, just because there is joy and rejoicing around the throne of God at the repentance of even one sinner and He delights in that, that doesn't mean that He doesn't delight in doing justice either. There is a delight that God takes in doing justice because He delights when His justice and righteousness are vindicated. So if God delights in justice, if the Lord loves justice, then ought it not be the case that the righteous would love justice as well?
What's the alternative? That we would hate justice? That we would despise justice? That we would not want to see justice done? I would suggest to you that when we are resurrected in that final state and we stand and we see the wicked cut off from the land and we are given the land as our inheritance, we will not mourn that and we will not dread that. We will delight in that because our hearts will be renewed, and we will see that the Judge of all the earth does what is right. God will be satisfied at the vindication of His righteousness and at the execution of His justice, and the righteous will also be satisfied at the execution of God's justice because the righteous love justice as well. That's what verse 30 says: “His tongue speaks justice.” When the Word of God dwells in our heart and we understand what righteousness and justice are, then we likewise will rejoice when we see justice done.
Now in this world, it may sadden us to know that somebody that we have loved has just stepped into an eternal realm in the justice of God. That may sadden us in this realm. That is OK. That is, I think, the effect of us not having a perfect perspective on the righteousness of God and on His justice. But on the day when the wicked are cut off, the righteous will rejoice. You will see it. That's the consolation of the promise. God's judgment of the wicked is not going to happen under the cloak of darkness, apart from the oversight, the eyeballs, of all of His creation. It will be as open, it will be as plain, it will be as demonstrable as all of the wickedness that the wicked have done. The wicked do their wickedness in secret and in the open, and all of God's justice and all of God's judgment will be done before the eyes of all of creation so that all men may say, “He is Lord,” and all men may say, “He is righteous,” and all men and all angels and all fallen angels will be able to say, “The Judge of all the earth has done what is right.” And the righteous will rejoice in that, in the vindication of God's goodness.
One final observation before we leave this section of the psalm. I want you to notice how the execution of justice here at the end of this section of psalm 37 flips the script. I don't know if you've noticed this or not. In verse 32, “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.” Verse 34: “When the wicked are cut off, you will see it.” You see, in verse 32, the wicked are watching the righteous. In verse 34, the righteous are watching the wicked. Do you see how the execution of justice has flipped that entirely? In this life, the wicked spy upon and look upon the righteous, seeking for an opportunity to cut them off, but in the end, when God cuts off the wicked, it's the righteous who watch them. It is entirely flipped around. The reason that the wicked spy upon the righteous in this life is to destroy them, but when God judges and destroys the wicked, it will be the righteous who are the lookers-on. We will be the ones looking on. So the wicked go from spying to being spied upon, from watching to being watched. And the judgment of God brings that about. This great reversal is coming. The destruction of the wicked and the exaltation of the righteous is inevitable. God has promised it, and when it happens, everything will be set right.
Now to the wicked who are outside of Jesus Christ, this is not good news for you. This is the bad news that you deserve that judgment that is to come for the sin that you've committed against a holy and righteous God. And the fact that the Lord loves righteousness in verse 28, that should terrify you because that means that every crime you've ever committed against God will be reckoned with on that day. Every violation of His law, every statement of blasphemy, every lustful thought or deed that you've ever done in your heart or in your mind, every lie you've ever told, every act of blasphemy, everything will be brought up on that day. Your rap sheet will be read and it will be public. And that should terrify you because if God loves justice, that means that He will give you justice. That's the bad news.
The good news is that because God loves justice, for those who have repented and trusted Jesus Christ, God has poured out His wrath upon a substitute, Jesus Christ, and satisfied the demands of His justice for all who will repent and believe. For any and all who turn from their sin and trust upon the merits of that sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ, God will forgive their sin, He will credit you Christ's righteousness, and He will take you to Heaven to inherit the land. That is His promise. So He offers you forgiveness and His righteousness if you will repent and trust the Savior.
So for the wicked, the lesson you should learn is that you must repent. For the righteous, the lesson we need to learn is that we must rest. Wait for the Lord and keep His way. Be faithful in our obedience, and He will exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you will see it. And in that there is great consolation.