(upbeat music)
- Welcome to our look together at Psalm 52 today.
This is one of those Psalms where the title reveals a lot.
The title of Psalm 52 reads like this,
"A Masculine David, when Doeg the Edomite
"came and told Saul, 'David has come
"'into the house of Ahimelech.'
"David," this title is telling us,
"had been betrayed by Doeg.
"The priest Ahimelech had been brought before Saul
"because he had given David and his men some safe harbor
"in his house while they were fleeing from Saul.
"And so Saul, in his anger,
"ordered that Ahimelech would be killed,
"but no one would do it.
"No one wanted to touch God's priest.
"But Doeg, who was an Edomite, who was a foreigner,
"he said he would do it.
"And he killed not only Ahimelech,
"but also 85 other priests.
"And then he went to the town that they lived in,
"and he killed their wives and their children."
This is a horrendous act,
even for the violent days that David lived in.
And so David writes in verses one to five,
"Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man?
"Why do you boast all day long,
"you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?
"Your tongue plots destruction.
"It's like a sharpened razor, you who practice deceit.
"You love evil rather than good,
"falsehood rather than speaking the truth, say law.
"You love every harmful word, oh you deceitful tongue.
"Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin.
"He will snatch you up and tear you from your tent.
"He will uproot you from the land of the living, say law.
"The righteous will see and fear.
"They will laugh at him saying,
"Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold,
"but trusted in his great wealth
"and grew strong by destroying others."
As David looks at this horrible evil that happened,
his only hope is to look beyond this world,
to look to eternity and the hope that God gives.
So he turns his eyes to some greater truths
that would help him to keep hoping and to keep trusting.
And the question that is answered in Psalm 52
is the question of what do you do
when you're faced with the greatest evil?
And what do you do when it feels like
those who committed that evil are getting away with it
and maybe even are benefiting from it?
You see David's perspective on this
in the words, "He will uproot you."
He's gonna talk in the Psalm about
what will be uprooted in the end
and what will flourish in the end.
He will uproot you.
In my garden, there are plants that want to take over
and crush the life out of my vegetables,
out of my roses, out of my lemon trees.
They're called weeds, but they don't succeed
because there's a gardener in my house.
In fact, there's two of them.
Shondell and I both.
We uproot the weeds so that the good plants will flourish.
Well, God is a good gardener.
He's a powerful gardener.
And the weeds will sprout up,
and at times it might look like they're gonna take over,
but God will uproot the evil
so that the good will flourish in the end.
So this is a Psalm about what will be uprooted
and what's gonna flourish.
First, what's gonna be uprooted?
It might have looked like Doeg had won,
like he was powerful, and he was for a moment,
but David looks from a broader perspective
and he sees that in the end, Doeg's gonna be uprooted.
He's gonna lose everything.
Specifically, in this Psalm,
he talks about four things that Doeg was holding onto,
all of which are gonna be uprooted in the end.
Boasting, lies, the third is trust and wealth,
and finally, growing strong by destroying others.
Boasting, lies, trust and wealth,
growing strong by destroying others.
Those are four sins that seem to give you power
in the moment, but they'll end up destroying you in the end.
These all have temporary power, but eternal loss.
If all you're trusting in is your pride,
or your falsehoods, or your wealth,
or the way you've built your life
on the back of others' pain, those are weeds,
and they're gonna be uprooted.
And then David, and then David turns his attention
to what will last, what's gonna flourish.
Listen to verses eight and nine.
But I, I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God.
I trust in God's unfailing love forever and ever.
I will praise you forever for what you've done.
In your name I will hope, for your name is good.
I will praise you in the presence of your saints.
A tree, an olive tree flourishing in the house of God.
I love that picture.
There is something about that picture
that is so attractive to me.
It draws me in.
It's not just the olive tree.
It's growing in God's house.
It's flourishing in God's house and in God's place.
Now an olive tree is a tree that lasts.
They can live thousands of years.
The oldest olive tree in the world
is estimated to be 3,000 years old.
And that tree which is in Crete, it still bears olives.
It's still a fruitful tree at 3,000 years old.
And God says that's what happens when you trust in me.
You're gonna flourish now, into the future,
and in all of eternity.
Now look at the three things that he tells us
in these verses that make us like a tree
that flourishes in the house of God.
He says I trust in your unfailing love.
You're gonna trust in circumstances
or you're gonna trust in God's unfailing love?
Circumstances, they're gonna fail you.
I promise you that they will.
'Cause they're circumstances.
Some are good, some are bad, and they don't last.
That's the definition of a circumstance.
Trust in God's unfailing love today.
That's how you flourish.
And then he says I praise God for what he's done.
When's the last time you took some time
just to say God I praise you
for the fact that you did this and you did this?
I hope it was just a few minutes ago.
I hope that's the habit of your day.
Praise God for the big things and the little things.
The more you praise God for what he's done,
the more you're building a life that flourishes, that lasts.
And then he says I hope in your name.
The name of God.
The name of God expresses the character of God,
who he is, his purpose, his power, his position.
And when you hope in the name of God,
you're putting all of your energy,
all of your life, all of your future into who God is.
Not who you are or what others are.
And he writes and his name is good.
Just remember that.
In an evil world, remember, remember today,
God's name is good.
And this evil world is not gonna last.
God's name is gonna last.
God's character is gonna last all the way into eternity.
You see, Doeg loved evil.
He loved lies.
David trusted in God's unfailing love.
And guess who lasted?
So the bottom line is, is your life gonna be most
about what you love or about God's love for you?
And I gotta admit, some days my life seems to be more
about what I love than about God's love for me.
But when I make my life about God's love for me,
that's how I flourish.
This Psalm, it's an easy Psalm
to let me feel good about myself.
At least I'm not like Doeg,
who committed one of the greatest evils in all of history.
But I want to leave you with a couple of truths.
First, we all have evil in our lives.
We all have boasting and lives
and selfishness and self-centeredness.
And there's just a moment of confession of these things
that I'm trying to build my life on that just won't last.
Because the second truth is,
too much of what we spend our lives on
are things that won't last.
They may not be obviously evil,
but neither are they eternally good.
And I want to spend more time with the eternally good,
the olive tree that's flourishing in the house of God.
Do you want to be uprooted or do you want to flourish?
Do you want to be a weed or do you want to be an olive tree?
Let's pray about that together.
Father, that's an easy answer.
And yet, the weeds spring up so fast
and they seem so green for the moment.
And some of them even have flowers on them
and we can be enticed by them.
Especially when others around us
seem to be growing more quickly than we are.
But remind us, it's just weeds.
It's not gonna last.
Not if it's built on lies, not if it's built on deceit,
not if it's built on hate.
But God, when it's built on your name and praise for you
and your eternal love, that is gonna last.
So right now in our mind's eye,
we picture what it means to be an olive tree
flourishing in your house and sense
what it would mean for us to be that strong olive tree
in your presence, growing, bearing fruit, lasting forever.
And we ask for that in our lives.
We ask for it in confidence
'cause it puts you tied on the cross to give us Jesus.
So we ask for it, in Jesus' name, amen.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)