Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, Psalm number 36.
[00:00:04] We'll begin reading. In verse number one, the subtitle begins like this. To the chief musician, A psalm of David, the servant of the Lord.
[00:00:15] We will read the first four verses. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes.
[00:00:26] For he flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful.
[00:00:33] The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit.
[00:00:36] He hath left off to be wise and to do good.
[00:00:42] He deviseth mischief upon his bed.
[00:00:45] He setteth himself in a way that is not good. He abhorreth not evil. Let's pray together.
[00:00:55] Our Father, as we come tonight to study your word and to pray, we just ask your grace and help to us, Lord, but specifically that we would do these things. We would hear your word like wise people, with our whole heart and our attention and our focus upon you and upon your word, with our heart wide open, with ready to receive, ready to take your instruction and to act upon it instantly.
[00:01:23] And Lord, we pray as well that you'd bless our time of prayer, that we would pray in faith and that we would pray in the Holy Spirit. And, Lord, that you would do great things through our prayer time as we pray together as a church. Lord, bless our time in your word. We need your help. We need the encouragement and the wisdom that your Word gives us in many ways. We don't even know how we need it. But we do need it because you said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. So, Lord, bless our time here tonight. Lord, help me to say things, whatever it is, that your people need to hear tonight, in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:02:04] Now, the wicked is mentioned in these four verses. It was not my intention to park on this particular subject, but it just.
[00:02:13] This is. I feel like what the Lord has kind of opened up as in our study through the Psalms, the heart of the Bible.
[00:02:21] These first four verses deal with this term called the wicked. Now, I just want to make a small differentiation and make a distinction between wickedness and the wicked. Wicked wickedness is the action, right?
[00:02:40] And the wicked is. It refers to a person or people, okay? And there is a. There is a difference. In fact, the wicked, as seen in the Psalms and Proverbs and other parts of the Scripture, does not refer simply to those who do wickedness. Because the truth is, every one of us, since we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and since we have been born again, and every One of us has done wickedness, right? Telling a lie, being deceptive is wickedness. Throwing it, throwing our temper is wickedness. In other words, we have all been guilty of that. And of course, we of course, got to get that right. And we hope that as we grow, that gets less and less frequent. But sadly, even among God's people, wickedness sometimes can be found. It shouldn't be. It's shameful, but sometimes it is found. But that's different than the person that God.
[00:03:43] God labels as the wicked. That's different in Scripture. It is a different classification of people.
[00:03:51] So how do you, how do you, how do you define that person? What are the characteristics, what are the, the characteristic marks of someone that God calls the wicked? Now, if you remember, you've read through the Book of Proverbs, I'm sure, and in the Book of Proverbs, you have different people, names of people. You have the wicked, you have the simple, you have the fool, you have the wise, right? And we could go on and on and on with different people who are stamped by God with this particular name, right?
[00:04:26] And this is found throughout Scripture, right? You have, as a believer, you know, you are a believer. That's your name. But there are times when believers exhibit unbelief, right?
[00:04:39] Yet even. But just because we exhibit unbelief doesn't make us an unbeliever, except, of course, in that particular circumstance. But we still remain a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is with this, with the wicked.
[00:04:54] The other thing I want you to see from this, from these four verses, God in these verses provides an insight to us into the inward thoughts and motivations of these people that are called the wicked.
[00:05:13] He gives us, in other words, he gives us an inside view of how these people think. Now, I want to be careful that I do not present these people, the wicked, as if I'm saying those people.
[00:05:32] And we are not. That I have no idea. But there could be someone who falls into the category of the wicked here in this congregation.
[00:05:43] Here's the key thing is God knows, and that's why the Lord in these four verses gives us an insight. The Lord knows not only what people do, which is what we see in verse one, the transgression of the wicked. He knows what makes them tick. He knows their motivations and their thought patterns that drives them to do that.
[00:06:03] And that's helpful to us to examine ourselves first of all by that, but it also helps us to respond to that. But we're definitely not saying, well, you know, those are the wicked and I am the righteous. And no, sometimes, as I said, sometimes the features of the wicked are found in us and that shouldn't be. But nevertheless, the Lord does categorize people like this and he gives us, in these verses, gives us insight into the way that they think. And when you look at these four verses, one thing you cannot go away with is you cannot go away with this idea that somehow these, the wicked are somehow honest hearted, good hearted victims of temptation. They are not.
[00:06:53] They are not. Now if you look at someone, maybe, maybe you look at someone called the simple in scripture, in the book of Proverbs, often the simple victim is probably too strong of a word, but maybe you could say the subject. The simple is often a person who is the subject of temptation, the target of temptation. That is not true of the wicked.
[00:07:15] The wicked are not honest hearted victims.
[00:07:20] God in these four verses presents them as villains.
[00:07:26] Villains.
[00:07:30] I think sometimes we have been trained in our world, our culture to think of everyone as basically good people that have gone astray and those exist. But everybody's not like that.
[00:07:44] There are true villains in this world. You know, it's funny we say that. You know, I remember when George Bush, George W. Bush, some of you were not adults at that.
[00:08:00] Looking down on the Cambodia row here. I remember when you guys remember that were adults and paying attention after 9, 11, you remember George W. Bush, there was a lot of talk about evil. This is true evil.
[00:08:15] This is true evil. And nobody ever thought about perhaps the firefighter on the pile of rubble behind him was one of the wicked.
[00:08:28] Because being a firefighter and digging for victims of that terrorist attack doesn't make you not the wicked.
[00:08:36] But see, that's an unpleasant truth in this world, and that's the way it's presented by the world is most people are good people and you know, there's a few bad apples and those are the people that are going to hell and they really deserve it. But the rest of us, yeah, we're mostly, we're just good hearted people that have some, have some faults and mistakes. This is just not.
[00:08:59] It might sound offensive, but it is not what the Lord says of us.
[00:09:05] It is markedly the opposite of what he says of us. And within that category of a world of sinners, which is what we all are, right?
[00:09:14] There are some that the Lord additionally adds this term the wicked.
[00:09:19] And that's who we're talking about here. God does present them as villains. Notice verse 1. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes.
[00:09:31] Now read that. Just pause. I'm going to just give you three seconds. Read that verse to yourself one more time.
[00:09:43] The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart.
[00:09:47] So here's what we have. We have the transgression. The sin of the wicked. Man is talking to me.
[00:09:56] You see that?
[00:09:59] So that tells us that we can learn even from the transgressions of the wicked, because his transgression talks to us. In other words, you don't have to do the thing for it to teach you.
[00:10:13] You can learn from other people doing it. Now, it doesn't mean the Lord wants them to do it, but we certainly can learn. And that's what's happening here. The observation of the wicked tells us something. It teaches us things. That's what we're trying to learn tonight.
[00:10:26] Notice what it says. What is the transgression of the wicked? That is his violation of God's law.
[00:10:33] What is it teaching us? What is it saying?
[00:10:37] There is no fear of God before his eyes. The first characteristic I want you to see of the wicked. How do you define the wicked? The first characteristic is this. I'll have to go back to the end of my notes because I put all the characteristics at the end.
[00:10:51] The first characteristic is this. The wicked transgresses God's law without any fear or apprehension. The wicked transgresses God's law without any fear or apprehension. He does it boldly, without shame.
[00:11:13] That's what you see in this verse. There is no fear of God before his eyes.
[00:11:19] Now think about this idea of the fear of God. One writer put it like this. This is actually Thomas Watson. He said, the fear of God is a profound respect for his holiness, which produces in us a sincere desire to obey him and a conscientious care to avoid everything that might dishonor or or displease him. But these days, how is the fear of God defined? The fear of God is always defined as basically amazement or wonder or awe. So what we've done is we've taken a biblical principle, a biblical truth, the fear of the Lord. It's all over the Bible, from one end to the other. We've taken that truth, the fear of God, and we've said it means to be amazed and to wonder at God. The fear of God definitely includes that. But you know what we've done? We've amputated the rest of it.
[00:12:11] You know what the rest is?
[00:12:13] Fear.
[00:12:16] The rest is fear. In fact, if you study this in your Bible, we won't look at it right now. But you will see the word fear, same word as here, coupled with the word dread.
[00:12:27] Fear and dread of God. Fear and dread.
[00:12:31] So it is not just wonder or awe at God. It is wonder and awe coupled with what we think of as old fashioned afraid.
[00:12:46] Well, I don't really like. You shouldn't be afraid of God. Who in the world told you that?
[00:12:52] Who in the world told you that?
[00:12:55] The Bible did not tell you that.
[00:12:57] The Bible says In Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 13, it says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
[00:13:08] So when we end up on the wrong side of the Lord, we ought to be afraid of God. But see what has happened is we've taken this word, the fear of the Lord and we've amputated it and we've, we've so ripped out the fear part of it so that it's just all. So we think, well, God doesn't really care if I cross his commandments.
[00:13:35] Even if he does care, you know, he cares in kind of a sad way. He's not going to really do anything about it. I want to tell you something that is wrong.
[00:13:47] The fear of God in scripture says you should be afraid of God if you cross his commandments because he is a God of judgment.
[00:13:58] In fact, the word fear is often connected and used. It's used also with children and their parents. Children are to fear their parents. That doesn't mean they cower and flee from their parents. No, it means there's a respect.
[00:14:12] That's one part of it. But cross your parents, what should you expect?
[00:14:17] I know when my children were little and they did something they knew they shouldn't have done, there was a fear of their parents. And that's good, that's good. That's not bad. Your children should have a right fear of their parents when they transgress their commandments. In other words, they're going to be disciplined.
[00:14:43] Our society has removed this.
[00:14:46] God should not be feared. That is false.
[00:14:50] That is false.
[00:14:54] But in the case of the wicked man, there is no fear.
[00:14:59] He transgresses God's commandments.
[00:15:02] He thumbs his nose at what God says. And any fear, any dread, any apprehension is totally absent. And he doesn't blush, he doesn't flinch at even a little at the displeasure of God, at his wickedness.
[00:15:22] He is just an adamant stone, unashamed of what he's doing.
[00:15:27] This is the first characteristic of the wicked. The second one is in verse 2. Look what it says.
[00:15:33] Speaking of the wicked now for he Flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful. Now, you know what flatter means. The definition is to praise or compliment unduly. Now, what's interesting is the wicked in verse two is talking to himself. You see that?
[00:15:52] The wicked is talking to himself. Do you ever talk to yourself?
[00:15:59] Do you ever talk to yourself?
[00:16:02] I talk to myself.
[00:16:06] So both the wicked and the righteous talk to themselves.
[00:16:12] That's what he's doing in this verse, right?
[00:16:15] But what is the wicked saying to himself?
[00:16:19] The wicked is telling himself how great he is.
[00:16:22] The wicked is singing his own praises in his heart to himself. Now, how do we know that this is the way the wicked.
[00:16:31] The way the wicked think? Well, we know it because God tells us that's the way we know it. This is an insight into the thinking. The thought patterns of the wicked. All right, so he's saying he's singing his own praises. He's cunning. He's smart. That's why he does these things and gets away with it. He's deceptive. He's tricking people, and we'll see that in a minute. He's deluding people, and people are buying it. And he's sitting himself said, yeah, that's.
[00:16:58] That's how good I am.
[00:17:01] They have no idea.
[00:17:03] They had no idea.
[00:17:04] They're singing their praises. What's sad is that modern psychology teaches us to do this, to sing our own praises, even if it's not true.
[00:17:16] You're great. You're wonderful.
[00:17:19] You ran off with another man, but you're wonderful. You deserve it, right?
[00:17:26] Yeah. You're a drunkard, but you're awesome.
[00:17:30] You have a foul mouth. You're great.
[00:17:32] You're valuable.
[00:17:35] We're taught to flatter ourselves, okay? You say, well, but aren't you valuable? You know, there's always like a caveat, right? Aren't you valuable?
[00:17:49] Here's the way. The righteous talks to himself.
[00:17:52] The righteous says, I am a sinner.
[00:17:58] I am nothing without the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:18:02] That's what the righteous says. The righteous doesn't flatter himself. The righteous sees himself as he is without God. Destitute, corrupt.
[00:18:15] That's how he sees himself. Why do you think the man in the. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican, you know, when they both went into the temple, right, to pray. Why is it that the Pharisee was saying. I think the Bible says he prayed thus with himself.
[00:18:33] That's what it says.
[00:18:35] Why? Why is the Pharisee saying, I thank thee that I'M not like, da, da, da, da, da, like all these other people. And the publican says he smote upon his breast and said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. He. He wasn't flattering himself. He was looking at himself in one of those concave mirrors that the ladies like to use to get really detailed on their makeup. Right. It makes every ugly feature of your face this big. Right. You know what I'm talking about.
[00:19:06] My grandma had one when I was growing up and I used to love it. Had the light around it, the old fashioned kind. Right. You know what I'm talking about? Right. You press the thing that lights up on either side.
[00:19:17] Yeah. And I used to go in there, look at every little freckle on my face and everything.
[00:19:22] That's the way the righteous looks at himself. So his opinion of himself is not flattering.
[00:19:32] Any opinion we have of ourselves that is scriptural, is not going to be flattering. Now you say, well, I don't like that. I want to think well of myself. And you and I must only think well of ourselves as we are found in Christ, because that is the only good in us.
[00:19:53] That is the only good in us.
[00:19:57] That's it. Outside of that, nothing to brag about.
[00:20:02] So the way that these two talk to themselves is exactly the opposite. The second feature and characteristic of the wicked is that he thinks much of himself despite his wickedness and tells himself so.
[00:20:23] So how do you think of yourself?
[00:20:25] I'm talking about in your heart of hearts. In private, when you talk to yourself like we all do, how do you think of yourself? How do you talk to yourself?
[00:20:36] Is what you say of yourself consistent with what the Lord says of you?
[00:20:41] Or are you flattering yourself?
[00:20:45] Look at verse number three.
[00:20:47] The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. Iniquity and deceit are different.
[00:20:54] Iniquity speaks of words that are foul and evil. And deceit refers to deception, not speaking the truth.
[00:21:04] And this is the third way that the wicked man identifies himself by his words.
[00:21:10] The wicked's words are foul and deceptive.
[00:21:16] I'm going to say it. I just want to say it. I don't care if you're a Christian or if you're not a Christian. If you're a child of God, you're now not a child of God knows filthy, foul, curse words ought to ever exit the mouth of a person.
[00:21:33] So much more a child of God under any circumstance.
[00:21:40] I don't care if you're angry.
[00:21:43] I don't care. I don't care what the situation is because here I want to tell you something.
[00:21:48] If your mouth is foul, it's telling on you.
[00:21:56] You say, well, oops, I slipped up. It could be that it's actually revealing something about you as a person.
[00:22:04] In fact, that is exactly what it's doing. So much so that the characteristic of the wicked that identifies himself as that is foul and deceptive words.
[00:22:16] That's how you know him. So how can we.
[00:22:20] How can that help us?
[00:22:24] Well, if we know that the wicked man is using foul and deceptive words and filthy language and ungodly words, then we can see him afar off. We hear it and we say, okay, I know what I'm dealing with right now.
[00:22:44] And so when you meet a person like that, don't believe what they say.
[00:22:48] They're identifying themselves to you. Don't believe what they say. Remember, it's deceptive words. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He does not deserve. He should not receive trust.
[00:23:02] Because his life is characterized by deception. He is inclined to deceive you.
[00:23:12] But how do I know who's like that and who's not by the way they talk?
[00:23:16] It's that simple.
[00:23:19] Even the man's deception deceives himself because of flattery. So he's not just deceiving you or me. He's deceiving himself as well. He's doing him his own self harm. But notice what it says. So that's the third one about his mouth. The third characteristic.
[00:23:37] His words are foul and deceptive. Here's the fourth one, same verse, verse 3. He hath left off to be wise and to do good. See that?
[00:23:49] Here's a characteristic of the wicked. Number four.
[00:23:52] He has quit any attempt at being wise or doing good.
[00:23:59] He ain't even trying to.
[00:24:02] He's quit any attempt to give the appearance of good.
[00:24:08] He has given himself over to it, to his wickedness.
[00:24:13] He's not even trying anymore. That's number four.
[00:24:16] Look at verse number four, if you would, as we finish.
[00:24:19] He deviseth mischief upon his bed. He setteth himself in a way that is not good. He abhorreth not evil. Evil.
[00:24:28] Notice verse number four.
[00:24:30] He deviseth mischief. Now, I want to tell you something. There is a big difference. There is a huge gulf between falling into mischief or being presented with a temptation to get into mischief or sinful actions. There's a big difference between that and devising mischief in the first. Sometimes we get into trouble because others tipped us right. We're not looking for trouble. But trouble comes Looking for us.
[00:25:04] Trouble is created by others.
[00:25:07] But in this case he deviseth mischief. The wicked creates the evil.
[00:25:15] He's inventing ways to do it. In the one case, a person that falls into temptation is so.
[00:25:22] Is subjected to. It comes out of the blue.
[00:25:25] But in the other, he creates temptation for others to fall in. This is an identifying characteristic of the wicked. He contrives new ways to do evil. Look if you would at Luke chapter 20, just one verse.
[00:25:42] Luke chapter 20, Luke chapter 20.
[00:26:03] Look at verse number 19.
[00:26:08] Luke 20. Verse 19 says this. And the chief priests and. And the scribes the same hour sought to lay hands on him. On Jesus.
[00:26:18] Now repeat back to me, verse 19. Who sought to lay hands on Jesus?
[00:26:25] The chief priests and the scribes, okay?
[00:26:29] And they feared the people, for they perceived that he had spoken this parable against them. Verse 20. This is the verse. And they watched him. Who watched him, the chief priests and the scribes.
[00:26:42] And sent forth spies which should feign themselves. That means to fake. Feigned themselves, just men that they might take hold of his words so that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor. That's Pilate. Eventually they did.
[00:27:05] I want you to note in what we just got done saying was this. You see the deception, they're not being upfront, they're being deceptive. The Lord had already keyed in on what they were doing, right? But you notice they're actually in this verse number 20. These chief priests and scribes are exhibiting two characteristics of the wicked. Number one, they're being deceptive with their words.
[00:27:30] But number two, they're actually formulating new ways to do evil. They're trying to catch the righteous. In this case, the Lord Jesus Christ. They're trying to catch the righteous.
[00:27:42] They're devising iniquity to catch him in his words, to get him in trouble.
[00:27:50] But note who is doing it.
[00:27:56] The chief priests and the scribes among the most religious people in that society.
[00:28:11] So will we find the wicked in churches?
[00:28:18] Absolutely we will.
[00:28:21] We will.
[00:28:21] You will find the wicked in every class of people and in every walk of life. And the church is no exception. You know, one of the groups of people that I see, you know, as I follow the news usually every day, you know, one of the groups of people that I see that are. That obviously fall into the category of the wicked are these wicked protesters that are protesting all kinds of things in favor of trans rights, in favor of mutilating children. I mean, they're actually protesting. They don't call it that. But Mutilation of children who want to have surgery to change their gender and things like that. And with the whole intersectionality, it's not that. Then it also becomes racism. But it's not actual racism. It's something that's called racism. And all of these kind of coalesce into this one thing. And they're protesting everything. They're protest. They want communism, they hate capitalism. But it's this kind of. I think the term I heard today was it's this omni, Omni protest. You know, it's everything. They're against everything. But you listen to what these wicked people say, unabashed. Has anybody here ever evangelized at a gay pride parade that is among the most vile places you can go?
[00:29:50] The worst sordid filth, and done with no shame, None.
[00:29:59] No fear of God at all.
[00:30:03] In fact, it's brazen. I've seen it. And it is vile. It is vile.
[00:30:10] That's what I think of when I think of the wicked. But I would be ignorant and naive if I thought that's the only place they're found.
[00:30:21] Because in the Bible, the wicked are not found just there.
[00:30:25] They're in every walk of life, in the life of Christ. The wicked were found among the religious. We might, by application, say they're sometimes found in churches, too.
[00:30:36] So this flowery idea we have in our mind of, well, you know, we have. I can't believe they did that. They go to church and those of us who know the scripture should say, and.
[00:30:51] And the wicked are found there. They were found in the synagogue in the day of the Lord, were they not? Yes, they were.
[00:31:00] Now, is that a shame? Is that a reproach? Absolutely. Should we let it stand and tolerate it? And should we allow the church of the living God to be a place where the wicked can go unmolested? Well, absolutely not.
[00:31:16] But we would also be naive and we would not be scriptural if we thought that the wicked aren't found there. Because they are.
[00:31:26] They absolutely are.
[00:31:30] So going back to the psalms, Psalm number 36, to close out number five, characteristic of the wicked, he contrives new ways to do evil. And number six is the last part of verse four. He abhorreth not evil. The wicked has no dislike of evil in the core of his being. He doesn't hate it.
[00:31:53] He likes it.
[00:32:01] So as we summarize these verses, we should not think that the wicked think like the righteous. They don't.
[00:32:09] We shouldn't project the way that we think as the children of God. For those of us that are the children of God. We shouldn't project the way we think upon the way they think and assume that they think the way we think. And that's human nature. But that would be wrong.
[00:32:26] It is not the same.
[00:32:28] There is for the wicked as the Lord describes this person here.
[00:32:32] There is nothing in him that wants to rectify his ways. He wants to do evil.
[00:32:41] He knows that other people think that it's bad, but he doesn't. And he wants to do it. And he's unashamed of it.
[00:32:55] I don't know about you, but this is a. This is a. I don't think I've taken any liberties when I've been reading these verses like this is what God himself says when he examines the internal cogs and movements of. Of the heart of a wicked man. This is how God describes it. I hope there's nobody in here who has any of these characteristics that the Lord's not describing you in. These characteristics.
[00:33:31] Because we should have a fear of God. We really should.
[00:33:35] And if there's one thing that'll turn a wicked, a person who is the wicked will turn him from his ways, will be a fear of God. Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
[00:33:49] That's where it starts. You start to get smart right there at that point when you start to have that fear of God.
[00:33:56] Let's pray.
