This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. (upbeat music) - Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to our look at Psalm 36 to 40 this week, day one. We're looking at Psalm 36 today. Psalm 36 is a Psalm that confronts the problem of evil, but it does it in a little bit different way than we might today. When we discuss the problem of evil today, we generally do it from a philosophical viewpoint, asking questions like, why is there evil in the world? How could God allow evil? David, in Psalm 36, he takes a different approach. He discusses it from a personal viewpoint, not philosophical, but personal. First, he points to the destruction that evil brings to the human heart, and then he tells us how to personally answer the questions that we have about evil. So first, he talks about the destruction of the human heart that comes from evil. In verses one to four, listen to these verses. An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear of God before his eyes. For in his own eyes, he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful. He has ceased to be wise and to do good. Even on his bed, he plots evil. He commits himself to a sinful course, and he does not reject what is wrong. That phrase, he flatters himself too much to even know that he is sinning. That is a scary phrase. This is an expression of what happens because of sin in our lives, and how we can easily get caught up in our pride and our sin, and the destruction, the erosion that it brings to our human heart. Evil comes out of our human heart. So how do you deal with it? How do you deal with the reality that there is evil in our world today? David then turns to how do we confront the problem of evil personally rather than philosophically? And he tells us that we do it with a very simple trust. We trust, to confront the problem of evil, you trust that God is your provider. The truth that God is your provider is the truth that confronts the problem of evil in the world today. Evil cannot provide. It can only destroy what God has provided. Satan has never made anything. He just tries to mess up what God has made. When you look at God as your provider, you are confronting the problem of evil at the heart level, at the level that we all need to confront it at. So you think of it this way. Unless God had provided in the first place, evil couldn't take it away. Evil can only try to work against what God has already given, which shows how empty, by the way, evil is, and shows how ultimately powerless evil is. So you confront the problem of evil in your heart by recognizing that God is your provider. And David, in this psalm, he talks about five things that God provides in this psalm. So if you're going through evil in your life, if you're tired because of the evil that's in this world, the way that you confront it in a way that has faith, not just philosophy or thought, but faith and trust in God, is you remember these five ways that God provides. Number one, God provides love. In verse five, your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Our deepest need as human beings is to be loved. It's maybe not our most immediate need sometimes. We may be hungry, we may be thirsty, but our deepest need is to be loved. And God provides that need. In fact, He provides an ocean of love. Your love reaches to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. He provides a sky, a universe of love, more love than we can fathom. Paul said in Ephesians 3, 18, and may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. And then verse 19, he said, may you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully, and then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. So when you recognize the depth of God's love for you, you confront the problem of evil by realizing God's love is greater, and God's love is going to last longer. It's going to outlast evil. God provides love. God, number two, provides righteousness and justice. In verse six, your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice is like the great deep, O Lord. You preserve both man and beast. So there's these pictures through this psalm, vast as the heavens, beyond the clouds, mighty mountains, ocean depths, these great pictures of God's power, God's character. God's character is greater than the greatest of things that we see in creation, because it's out of God's character that all of creation was made. And out of God's character comes God's righteousness. God will set right all that is wrong. He will make right all that is wrong. And His justice, God will bring to justice all that is evil. Now, you and I today, we see glimpses of this now. We see glimpses of God's righteousness and that He has made us whole in Jesus Christ. He's given us forgiveness. And we see glimpses even of God's justice and the way that He deals with nations and with peoples. But we don't see it like we're going to see in all of eternity. In eternity, we're going to see the fullness of God's righteousness, the fullness of God's justice. God provides. And what we begin to see now, we're going to see in fullness in eternity. Number three, in this Psalm, God provides refuge. In verse seven, "How priceless is your unfailing love. "Both high and low among men find refuge "in the shadow of your wings. " So when I need a safe place from the evil that's in this world, from the anxiety that may be in my heart, I don't have peace in my heart right now. God says, I'll provide you the place of refuge that you need. I'll provide the peace that you need. Jesus reminded us that He gives us peace. "Peace I leave with you, not as the world gives "do I give to you," He said. He gives us a peace that's above and beyond what can be given in this world. And the picture that's here in this Psalm is that God gives us refuge in the shadow of His wings. Now, God's not a bird. This is not an exact picture of who God is. It's a poetic picture of who God is. It's the picture of a baby bird hiding under its mother's wings. And in that picture, I'm the baby bird, you're the baby bird. This picture shows the care of the mother, but it also shows the need of the baby. Without that refuge, the baby's vulnerable. It's going to be torn apart. But the more powerful mother makes sure that the bird is protected. God says, I'll protect your soul. Yeah, we do have to face some difficult circumstances in this world, but we don't have to face any circumstance that can tear apart our soul because God's refuge is greater. God provides refuge. Number four, God provides food and drink. He provides our daily needs. In verse eight, they feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from your river of delights. God provides for your daily needs out of His great abundance. I love this picture, out of the abundance of your house. Just think for a moment of the kitchen pantry in a billionaire's home, what it might look like. It looked like one of my bedrooms probably would be that big. That's how huge this thing would be. That's how much food would be in there. And this is God's house that we're talking about. He owns everything that the billionaire owns and much, much, much more. And out of the abundance of His house, He feeds us. I understand that in this world, it seems like maybe sometimes we don't have enough, but we can always rely on our Father because He has an abundance to feed us for all of eternity. And He says they drink from the river of delights. It's interesting, that word delights comes from the Hebrew word for Eden, the garden where God supplied every need that mankind had, that Adam and Eve had. And God is saying, I haven't forgotten that promise. Even though we've been chased from that garden, God still is providing for our every need. He provides us food and drink, our daily need. And then number five, what does God provide? God provides life. I wouldn't be here except that God created me. You wouldn't be here. He provides life. In verse nine and 10, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light, we see light. Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. God provided you with life itself. And He provided you with eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. So we have life that's in His name. Now, as we look at these ways that God provides, they're sort of like, to me, a set of spiritual reality glasses. You know what virtual reality glasses are. They, you put them on and they make something false appear at least to be real. They can fool you a little bit. Well, a long time before virtual reality, there was spiritual reality. And spiritual reality glasses, they make something real appear to be real. In this world, we don't always see what's real. Evil sometimes lies to us and tells us that the false is real. When you put on these glasses of how God provides for us, it provides a way for us to see what's really true. And in many ways, the book of Psalms is like putting on a pair of spiritual reality glasses. It may look like no one cares about you, but you put on Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, and you see what's real. And it may look right now in your life like the evil is prevailing, but you put on this Psalm we've looked at today, Psalm 36, and you see that God provides for us in ways that are greater than the mountains and the seas. So let's put on those glasses together right now as we pray. And Father in prayer, I pray you'd open our eyes to see that you do provide. Evil does attack us at times. We know that it won't last for long. We know that one day you will do away with all evil. But while we live in this world, while you provide people the opportunity to come to you, you're patient, we know that we have to endure evil sometimes. So help us never to be fooled by Satan. To think that it means you don't love us. You provide love for us. That it means you wouldn't care for us. You provide the food and drink that we need. That it means that you aren't going to be the God of justice in the end because you will be. God, you're the one who gave us life. And you're the one who's going to give us eternal life and has given it to us in your son. And so that, that is what we choose to see today. We look at you and who you are. In your name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look at Psalm 37, which talks about how to deal with anger.