Psalm 5

When it rains it pours. Sometimes, it just seems like it’s all bad news. There are some weeks, even some months, even some years when nothing seems to go right, when evil seems so strong and good seems so weak, when every time we turn around another denomination has lost its grip on the truth. We hear churches praising what God has condemned in His word, and we feel a little lonelier as we try to stand for God’s truth. We hear another supreme court decision that is grounded on a faulty sense of justice rather than the law of God. We hear about false religions that deny the Lordship of our Savior Jesus, who say that He was just a man, and we hear that so many more people are drawn to these lies. We hear about the violence in the Sudan as thousands, millions are killed because they belong to a certain tribe. Speaking the name of Jesus in our culture is less and less acceptable. We can believe, we just can’t believe in Jesus, because that means that someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus is wrong, and we’re not allowed to say that. Life, human life, the lives of the sick and elderly, the lives the unborn, grow cheaper by the day.

And it all just gets so heavy. There are times when we wonder, how much worse is this going to get? Where is the end? We thought we had hit bottom a decade ago, and somehow bad found a way to get worse. How much worse can it get before goodness is wiped out forever.

And when it gets so heavy and so hurtful, when evil seems so strong, and our frustration reaches breaking point, we turn to verse 1, and we pray:

Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing.

Sometimes it takes us a while to get to verse 1. Even before we turn to the Lord, we’ve spent our time sighing to one another, don’t we? Over coffee, visiting friends, in the Sonshine Room, we mourn the condition of our world. We shake our heads and say things like, “Can you believe it? Did you hear? Isn’t it awful what they’re doing?” And none of us have the answers, so all we can do is nod our heads and agree and sigh together.

Until we come to Psalm 5. And instead of sighing and mourning with people who don’t have the answers, we sigh, we mourn, we cry out to the Lord. Verse 2:

Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.

The heaviness of the world hits us at different times. Sometimes, it’s when we sit down to read the paper, and every time we turn the page, the news gets worse and our sighs grow louder. Maybe we’re watching TV, and our stomachs turn as we watch the reports, and the commercials are even worse. Sometimes, the weight is heaviest when we’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering how our kids, or our grandkids, are going to make it in this world, wondering where the answers are.

But when we direct our sighs to our Savior and not just the ceiling, the weight lifts, and hope grows. Verse 3:

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.

We sigh, and the Lord hears. We groan, and He responds. We let Him know our exasperation, our frustration, we express our disgust and despair to Him, and then we wait.

But our waiting is not just an empty, wishful waiting. We wait, not just wondering if He might do something. No, you heard verse 3. We wait in expectation. We expect God to respond. We expect Him to do something. We sigh, and then we wait, and we watch to see what God is going to do. Because, You, Lord, verse 4:

You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil;

As much as it angers us, as much as we hate what we see, it angers God that much more, God hates it so much more. We are hoping and waiting expectantly, because we know that God isn’t just going to stand by and let people get away with it all. Out of His anger, His hatred of sin, God will move, God must move, God will not just stand by. Verse 4 still:

with you the wicked cannot dwell.

Evil cannot exist in the presence of God. Like fog that burns off when the sun gets hot, sin evaporates in the presence of the glory of God. Right now as we read the news and watch TV and mourn and sigh, we are witnessing the struggle between the fog and the sun. And which one do you think is going to win? As surely as the sun breaks through, so surely must evil shrink before the burning holiness of God. Nothing that is evil or wicked, nothing that is broken or can dwell with God. There’s a name for that, the place that is not with God, the place where God is not. And that name is hell. Verse 5:

The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the LORD abhors.

This is the hope we have. Everything that is pure and holy and right and just will win. Everything that is harmful and wretched and horrifying will lose. It’s that simple. And it’s guaranteed. So instead of despairing and giving up hope, instead of worrying about whether we’re going to win, watch news with one eye, and have the other eye fixed on Psalm 5. Hold the newspaper with one hand, and hold the Bible open to Psalm 5 with the other. Watch the world struggling, knowing who is going to win the struggle. The fog will lift, the evil will lose, the pure, the holy will triumph.

But as we’re watching the evil around us, as we notice the wickedness in the world, if we’re honest, we’ll notice something else. We’ll see our own evil. We’ll be repulsed by our own wickedness. As much as supreme court decisions frustrate us, our own sin should frustrate even more. As much as we are horrified by genocide in the Sudan, we are even more horrified by the words we say to each other, and about each other. Our sin isn’t half away around the world hurting nameless individuals. Our sin is right here, dividing our families, dividing our church, slicing people who work with us and worship with us.

And we heard what happens to whatever is wicked. Nothing wicked can dwell in the presence of God. Everything sinful, everything evil must be driven away from the holiness of the perfect Lord. But then, that means us, too. It’s very easy for us to point at all the evil in the world, and kind of skip over our own disgusting behavior. It’s a whole other thing to realize that we contribute to the evil of this world, that our sins just make the pile of sins in the world that much higher. As much as we want evil to be punished, we have to remember that we deserve the same punishment.

And we would have received that same punishment, the punishment of hell, except for verse 7:

But I, by your great mercy (chesed), will come into your house;

His great mercy. His enormous compassion. His amazing grace. In our Bibles, there are two words, but in the Hebrew it’s one word, the word that gives hope. It’s the word chesed. We saw this word two weeks ago, in Isaiah 54, only in Isaiah 54 chesed was translated as unfailing love. We heard that God would not grow angry with us, that He would never rebuke us again. We heard that even if mountains shake, even if hills are moved, still the unfailing love of God could not end.

And some of us were uncomfortable with this idea, that God would never grow angry with us, that He would never rebuke us again. It seemed too good to be true. It seemed risky. This idea of grace, unfailing love, sometimes hits some of us as fluffy and frivolous. We want to talk about something other than God’s love.

But there is nothing apart from God’s love. There is nothing apart from His great mercy. Without His great mercy, without this unfailing love, without this chesed, we are lost along with the rest of the world, doomed to being cast out of the presence of God. The moment we step away from His mercy, we’re heading back into sin.

But, in His great mercy, in His unfailing love, we come into His house, out from the world, away from sin. His mercy attracted us to Him in the first place, and His mercy keeps on attracting us back to Him. Verse 7:

I, by your great mercy, will come into your house; in reverence will I bow down toward your holy temple.

Out of a heart that overflowed with mercy, Jesus stepped in and took the eternal punishment of hell for you and for me. In six hours on the cross, Jesus experienced an eternity of existing outside of the presence of God. It was that act of mercy, that act of great, astounding mercy, that brings us into God’s presence again.

And in response, we obey. God acts, and we respond. God shows mercy, and we bow down in reverence. God loves us, and we worship Him. Again, the greater our awareness of God’s love, the more we will obey Him. The more we understand the depth of His mercy, the more we will want to serve Him. Those who don’t obey God often don’t understand His love for them.

So, there’s a chain reaction happening here in Psalm 5. We look around at the world, we see the sin, but instead of despairing, we hope, we wait, we expect God to act. We look around at the world, we see the sin, but instead of looking down our noses at those lost in sin, we look back at ourselves and are overwhelmed, again, at the depth of the great mercy of God. We look around at the world, we see the sin, and instead of staying huddled in our houses, instead of closing ourselves up in our church, out of gratitude for His great mercy, we get out there, we do something about the mess, we’re used by God to stop the evil and to spread the truth. In response to the evil, out of gratitude for grace, we go to work. Verse 8:

Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies— make straight your way before me.

The great mercy, this lovingkindness, the unfailing love, this chesed, then has different effects on us. It gives hope in the face of horrifying evil and aggravating sin. The great mercy of God gives us a place to go with our frustrations and fears. When we are overwhelmed, staring at the ceiling, reading the news, we pray verse 9:

Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with destruction. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongue they speak deceit. Declare them guilty, O God! Let their intrigues be their downfall. Banish them for their many sins, for they have rebelled against you.

The great mercy of God gives us hope.

The great mercy of God makes us grateful. Verse 11:

But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy.

The mercy of God doesn’t make us haughty. The mercy of God doesn’t make us proud. The mercy of God doesn’t make us better than everybody else. No, the mercy of God makes us grateful. We sigh in sadness when we see the wickedness of the world, but we sigh in relief when we know the great mercy of God. God’s mercy gives us hope. God’s mercy makes us grateful.

And God’s mercy, His grace, His love makes us want to share. Because He will defeat evil, because He has saved us, we get out there in the middle of the mess, and we bring God’s purity with us. Verse 11:

Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you. For surely, O LORD, you bless the righteous; you surround them with your favor as with a shield.

There is no evil too big that God can’t tackle, using us. There is no sin rooted so deeply that God can’t pull it out, using our words and actions. A friend addicted to drugs can be freed, by God, through us. A nation that tries to silence God can be transformed, by God, through us. A culture that can’t get enough of greed, that can’t stop feeding itself with stuff, a culture that loves to watch human beings humiliate themselves to the level of animals, there is nothing so deeply evil that God won’t transform it, through us.

When this world gets too heavy, and evil seems too strong, Psalm 5 tells us what to do. We sigh, but we sigh to the Lord. We accept, but we accept His great mercy. We follow, but we follow Him in righteousness, surrounded by His favor, protected by His love, empowered by His great, great mercy.