Calvary Road Baptist Church

“WICKED”

Psalm 10.4 

When God created the universe, and all that herein is, He created a universe that was initially pristine and clean. At the end of six literal days and nights, God’s pronouncement on His handiwork was that it was “very good” Genesis 1.31. But by the time Eve was tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, sin had come into God’s creation. But where did sin originate? It originated among the angelic host of heaven, one-third of whom seem to have rebelled against God and were cast out, Revelation 12.4 and 9.

An account of the fall of the leader of this rebellion is found in Isaiah. Though he is now known as Satan, the Devil’s name given to him by God when he was created seems to have been Lucifer. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 14, and we will stand and read verses 12-15, which is the indictment and pronouncement against Lucifer’s sin against his Creator: 

12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 

This passage is a look back into the past, examining Lucifer’s atrocities and the punishment that awaits him. Notice that he fell from heaven, was cut down to the ground, weakened the nations, sought to exalt himself, but will be brought down to Hell. As well, notice Lucifer’s five “I wills” in verses 13-14. He said in his heart, “I will ascend into heaven.” He wasn’t satisfied with God’s place of service for him: “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.” He wasn’t satisfied with God’s station of service for him: “I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.”

Perhaps this means Satan willed to stand in prominence over God’s people: “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.” Clouds are associated with God’s glory. Psalm 104.3 declares to us that God makes the clouds His chariot. Perhaps Satan’s desire to be above the heights of the clouds is an indication that he wants to exalt himself above God.

Lucifer craved greater prominence for himself: “I will be like the most High.” He was ambitious, and he aspired to be like God. Not to be godly, but to be like God! Look at that phrase again, “I will be like the most High.” The words “be like” translate the Hebrew word hmd, which can also be translated resemble.[1]

Imagine Lucifer sometime after the sixth day of the creation of the physical universe, as he observes Adam and Eve, who were created in God’s image and after His likeness. None of the angelic host were created in the image of God. Add to that Lucifer’s duty station in God’s creation, the little planet we call earth. Imagine his disgust with being assigned to this isolated outpost, where he took note of two rather unimpressive human beings who had the impressive feature of being made in God’s image. I imagine the two combined factors must have enraged him.

The first sin, the sin which led to the massive and futile rebellion against God in heaven by the angels, was the pride that welled up in the heart of their ringleader, Lucifer. And for his sin of pride, there is waiting for Lucifer, now known as the Devil, Satan, the place called the lake of fire.[2]

Having failed to exalt himself, did Lucifer give up and repent of his great sin toward God? Not at all. He seems to have set out on a campaign to exalt himself by other means, including tempting mankind and luring him into sin.

This brings us to the Garden of Eden. A subtle appeal was made to Eve by a serpent, not an ordinary snake at all, but likely a sinful angelic being who followed Satan in his rebellion. It was a temptation to be proud: “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods,” the serpent said to her.

Eve succumbed to the temptation to be like God and ate the forbidden fruit. She then tempted her husband, Adam, and he sinned, plunging the human race into the dark abyss of sin, from which only Jesus Christ can rescue an individual.

Pride was the first sin. It was the sin that brought Satan down. It was the sin that brought mankind down. Understandably, then, the proud look is an abomination to the LORD. No wonder He hates it, Proverbs 6.16-17. It reminds Him so much of Satan, of the rebellion of the angels, of the Fall of man, of how all of the tragedy and heartache in God’s creation began.

It is no wonder, then, that God resists the proud; those who have a high opinion of themselves, who esteem themselves greatly, who think they have no need of the God Who created them to need Him. God is gracious, but He is only gracious to those who are humble.[3]

Please, once more, turn in your Bible to Psalm 10. When you find the tenth Psalm, please stand for the reading of God’s Word: 

1  Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?

2  The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.

3  For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

4  The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

5  His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them.

6  He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity.

7  His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity.

8  He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.

9  He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.

10 He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones.

11 He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.

12 Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. 

In verse 1, we read David’s complaint that God is standing afar off. And he asks why God hides Himself in times of trouble. We know God is not standing afar off, just as much as David knew it. But there are times when God’s people feel as though God is standing afar off, when God’s people feel as though God is hiding Himself in times of trouble. That’s what is meant here. David does not deny God’s omnipresence.

I have preached that there are times when God is, in a sense, nearer than at other times. Well, just as certainly, there are times when God is, in a sense, farther off than He is at other times. It is perception, mind you, but it feels so real.

If verse 1 is one bookend that binds together David’s complaint to God in this psalm, verse 12 is the other bookend. There he pleads with God to rise up, to lift up His hand in judgment, and to not forget the humble.

Considering the whole passage, David’s cries in verses 1 and 12 have to do with God’s judgment, vindication, and vengeance. If there are times when God seems near to save, when God seems aroused to draw sinners to His Son, then there are also times when God seems to stand afar off and is not aroused to judge.

What happens when God withholds judgment? What happens when He seems to the godly to stand afar off? The wicked become very active, do they not? The wicked are emboldened to flourish in their awful conduct. The wicked ever more foolishly deceive themselves when they feel that judgment and justice are very far away.

When God holds back His hand of judgment, you who are wicked will eventually begin to persecute the poor, verse 2. You will come to boast of your heart’s desire, verse 3. You think you will imagine that you can prosper forever, verse 6 where it says, 

“He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity.” 

You will swear and tells lies, verse 7. You will even become so degenerate that you will murder the unborn, either by having abortions, or by encouraging others to have abortions, or by remaining silent in the face of abortions. Look at what David writes in verse 8: 

“in the secret places doth he murder the innocent.” 

Surely that verse has application to the murdering of the unborn. Now look at verse 11: 

“He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.” 

You and I have bad memories and we forget things, so we think God forgets. There are things we don’t see, so we think God doesn’t see the things we do. How we lower God to our level. What blasphemy we are guilty of.

No wonder David complained so. He wanted to see God vindicated. He wanted to see God honored. He wanted God’s virtues extolled. He wanted even the wicked to bow before His God. And so do we. Amen? And so do we who are converted. My God reigns, and I want His rule to be acknowledged by one and all.

As much as I’d like to, I don’t have the time to do justice to these 12 verses. I cannot rehearse and preach on David’s description of the wicked, those who are evil, sinners; which is to say all here today who are unconverted Christ-rejecters. So instead, I direct your attention to verse 4: 

“The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” 

There are three things about the wicked we should take note of here. David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, assigns three comments to all who are not believers.

Don’t think you are excluded who are not yet adults. Don’t think you are excluded who are aged. Don’t think you are excluded just because you have a long history of going to Church. It means nothing if you are unconverted if you’ve not come to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.

Listen carefully, my lost friend. Our text explains precisely why you are not converted, and what sin will ultimately drag you into Hell if you die without Christ. 

First, THERE IS THE MOTIVE THAT DRIVES YOU, YOUR PRIDE 

Let’s discuss this sin called pride for a moment. Within the bosom of every human being, there is a desire to be highly esteemed, to be exalted in a sense, to be lifted up. I think it’s a part of our nature as God’s image bearers to want to be well thought of and to be honored to some extent. And it’s God’s will that you be honored ... in the proper way. After all, Proverbs 15.33 declares, “The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom; and before honour is humility.” And Proverbs 18.12 reads, “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility.” God instructs us how to receive and prepare for honor properly. So, God is not opposed to you being honored or given some measure of appropriate prominence. But He is profoundly opposed to you exalting yourself, having an inflated opinion of yourself, and overreaching. Remember, First Peter 5.6 directs you to “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.” But you don’t want to humble yourself, do you? You’re opposed to patiently waiting for God to exalt you when you have the character for it, when you’ve paid your dues when He deems it appropriate. Oh, no. You want to be king of the mountain now, don’t you?

And it’s this sinful pride, this wicked determination to hold to an inflated opinion of yourself, this arrogant notion of being a self-governing and self-authenticating king or queen in your own eyes, that drives your existence. 

I know I’ve cited several verses to you, and you’ve not had time to look them all up. But you who are proud don’t look up Scripture, do you? You do not consider God’s Word, do you? You are self-sufficient and obnoxious in your arrogance toward God, thinking to yourself that you do not need to be saved. You’re fine, just the way you are. So, I will sum up what these verses say before moving on to my second point.

God hates pride. It’s such an abomination to Him because it reminds Him so much of the first sin ever committed against Him, the sin of Lucifer, who rebelled against God in proud arrogance. So, you who are so proud and haughty in your countenances, which is to say that you have such smug looks on your faces, remind God of Satan. Not a good thing, I assure you. As well, you who are so proud have usurped from God His Own right to decide who will be exalted and who will be elevated. To elevate someone is a divine prerogative that you have illegitimately taken over to do yourself. Who do you think you are to do such a thing as pass judgment on yourself and acquit yourself of the crimes you are accused of? You who are so proud as to try to take from God what authority is His alone to exercise, raise up and exalt Who He chooses?

It is so Satanic of anyone to be proud. So much like the lying promise of the serpent in Genesis 3.5, “ye shall be as gods,” deciding on your own what station and position in life you should have, without any concern for the mind of God or the will of God on the matter. Your deception is so great, the blindness of your mind and eyes is so profound, that you pay no heed to the warning of Proverbs 29.23, “A man’s pride shall bring him low.” You are oblivious to the reality that your pride binds you in chains, Psalm 73.6, and that what’s required is nothing less than a miracle of conviction by the Holy Spirit before you will see yourself the way you are before God. 

Next, YOUR ACTIONS THAT ARE PROMPTED BY YOUR PRIDE 

You don’t think you’re so proud. But what is the crucial indicator of pride in a person’s behavior? What shows better than anything else whether or not there is wicked pride in your bosom? David complained that you “will not seek after God.” Now we know why you have not been converted. Because you are so proud you will not seek after God.

The refusal to seek after God is not a very smart thing; incredibly foolish. I speak so directly to you with the full knowledge that it will irritate your pride and stir an obnoxious spirit in you. But it’s the truth I speak, and not lies. How is someone not spiritually insightful for not seeking after God? There is nothing the human mind can conceive that’s more foolish than to refuse to seek after God. Think about what I’ve just said. Is it not truth that that I speak? After all, in your present state, you are damned to Hell forever. In your present condition, you will fall into the hands of the living God, a fearful thing for even the child of God but a catastrophe for you without Christ. You would agree that someone who douses himself with gasoline and sets himself on fire is a fool bent on self-destruction. Not one of you would fail to question the intelligence of someone who played Russian roulette with a semiautomatic pistol. However, that’s precisely what two brothers did here in California back in 2000, with fatal results for the one who took the first turn. You chuckle, but is not your folly infinitely greater? You anger the omnipotent God. You raise the ire of the One who created Hell to be “the fire of His jealousy,” Zephaniah 1.18. You sit there, on the precipice over the yawning jaws of Hell, as if you were in a lawn chair in the back yard instead of being on the brink of eternity.

But no matter how irresponsible your refusal to seek after God is, it’s a certainty, without the direct intervention of God, that you will continue in your refusal to seek salvation in Christ. Sin, you see, has so gripped your soul that you cannot alter your course. You’ve set out on a journey of refusing to seek after God, and you’ll continue until you come to the end. On top of the fact that you’re proud, which our text declares you to be, it also describes you as stubborn, even though the precise word is not used in this verse. But what is a stubborn man, except one who will not change his course? It doesn’t matter if there is any sense in what you do, intelligence, reason, or wisdom. That doesn’t enter into it at all. This is just what you do. It’s your identity. It’s what makes you what you are in your mind, a person who does not seek after God. Never mind the insanity of it. Never mind the fact that you guarantee yourself not only an eternity in Hellfire. Never mind that you consign to yourself a lifetime of family squabbles, since only by pride cometh contentions, Proverbs 13.10. You are set on the course you are going to follow because not only are you proud, but you are also stubborn. And thus, you are guaranteed not only unhappiness throughout eternity but unhappiness in this life, as well as the unhappiness of all around who you claim to love and do love you. 

Finally, THERE ARE YOUR THOUGHTS TO BE CONSIDERED 

“The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” 

Take note of the denial that’s exposed here: 

“God is not in all his thoughts.” 

I looked this phrase up in the “Analytical Key To The Old Testament” by Owens. And, a bit to my surprise, I found that the phrase “God is not” is the exact Hebrew phrase as is found in Psalm 14.1: 

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” 

Thus, Psalm 14.1 could be paraphrased, “The fool hath said in his heart, God is not is in all his thoughts.” There is in your mind a continual, perpetual, never-ending denial of the reality of God. And even if you do not deny the absolute existence of God, you substitute for the reality of God as He is some abstract notion of a distant God Who is not personal, Who is not moving in the affairs of the human race, Who is not working in the lives of each one of His people and in the lives of some who are not His people, and Who is not to be feared as the judge of all flesh. God is not real to you, my lost friend. He’s not real as He ought to be. He’s not real as He really is. So, why is God not real to you? Why is He not in your thoughts? I have had young people in our Church admit to me that they simply didn’t think about God ... ever! Their minds, they acknowledged, were always focused on play, on recreation, on having fun, on one computer or laptop or phone screen or another. Others have their minds always on boys, or always on girls, or always on making money, or always on getting high, or always on something other than God and the things of God. When someone’s mind is always on something other than God, then it must be admitted that God is not thought by that person to be Who He is shown to be in the Bible. To have your mind on something or someone other than God means you are denying God to be Who He most certainly is.

Delusion is required for such denial, is it not? Yes, delusion. That’s what it is. For God to never be in your thoughts, you who are made in the image and likeness of God, you have to be delusional. It could very well be that you are self-deceived. James 1.22 warns against deceiving your own self. There is, of course, a danger in deceiving yourself. Trick yourself once too often, and you’ll end up in a devil’s Hell. Convince yourself that the Gospel is nothing, that you don’t need to come to Jesus right this very day, and you will probably end up not ever coming to Christ. But you’ve never been wrong about anything, have you? So you don’t need to concern yourself that you may be deceiving yourself, do you? I didn’t think so. There is also the possibility of Satanic deception here. Second Corinthians 4.4 is where Paul made mention of Satan’s ability to blind the minds of those who believe not, to keep you from seeing the simplicity of the Gospel and the beauty of Christ. And since Satan and his demons are far more intelligent, experienced, and clever than any of us, no sinner is a match for the Devil when he’s bent on deceiving you. And that includes you, my proud friend. Wicked man, foul young person, evil woman? You are proud, a sin that’s an abomination to God. Because of your pride, you will not seek after God. And God is not in all your thoughts. It could be because you trick yourself. It could be because the Devil is successfully tricking you. Or worse, it could be that God has blinded you. “God doesn’t do that, preacher.” Doesn’t He? Romans 11.7 informs us that God blinds people to the truth. Theologians label it judicial blinding, where God decides to blind people to the truth as a judgment against their sins. Has God judicially blinded you? Perhaps He has. John 12.39-40 reads, “Therefore they could not believe, because ... He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted.” God blinded the eyes and hardened the hearts of people long before you came along. Do you imagine He would not do that to you? What makes you think He hasn’t done that to you already? 

Our text reads, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.”

Oh, how someone is who will not humble himself before God. How arrogant one must be for failing to yield to the demand, to the command, of Jesus Christ to “come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” By any reasonable measure or standard, it is true that all who are unsaved are wicked. No wonder godly David, a man after God’s own heart, complained against such as you. No wonder he cried out for God’s judgment against such as you.

Do you think God would never move against you in judgment? You don’t think God’s long-suffering might soon reach the limit of its endurance, and He will not swiftly pour out His wrath upon you? You truly are proud to think you can stand against God. You truly are proud to think you have any right to stall and refuse while you consider and ponder your fate, while you arrogantly refuse to consider being saved.

You have been summoned, sinner! It would do you good to obey quickly. Seek the LORD, while He may be found. Plead with God to remove the delusion, whether it be self-inflicted, whether it be satanic blindness, or whether God has already begun to move against you with blinding judgment.

Pride is not an unpardonable sin. You can still be saved. If you will but humble yourself enough to come to Christ. Because although God does resist the proud, He gives grace to the humble. And if you will come to Christ, that will be humility enough to be saved. Come to Christ today.

__________

[1] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver & Charles A. Briggs, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew And English Lexicon, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), pages 197-198.

[2] Matthew 25.41

[3] James 4.6; 1 Peter 5.5

 

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