-There’s a movie that came out in 1992 that has become one of the top movies in history. It’s a story about a military investigation into the death of a Marine, and it featured a wide assortment of stars like Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Kevin Bacon. A quote from the movie has gone down in infamy and has been rated the 29^th most impactful movie quote of all time (according to the American Film Institute). I’m sure many of you have heard the quote, if not seen the movie. The pivotal scene of the movie, and the iconic quote, is when Jack Nicholson’s character is on the stand being grilled by Tom Cruise. And it builds up getting more and more intense until Jack Nicholson exclaims: “you want the answers?!” Tom Cruise responds with: “I want the truth!” And then the line: “You can’t handle the truth!” And he continues his verbal tirade from there! 

-There is something exciting about courtroom scenes, getting a glimpse behind the curtain to the legal system. There’s book series devoted to it, movies devoted to it, TV shows that show real life courtrooms. We’re hardwired to want justice, it’s one of the ways God has created us. But what would happen if God were the one who was serving as the judge? Who would serve as the jury? How would humanity defend themselves, and what would God be indicting people for? Today’s Psalm shows us that exact situation. God delivers the opening statements, He lays out His case, and then He enacts a judgment. 

READ/PRAY (pg. 498)

-I found this quote from Derek Kidner’s commentary helpful in understanding exactly what’s going on in this Psalm, as well as a reminder that this text was also written to us! Even though this is addressed to God’s covenant people in the OT, the message applies to us today. We need these words just as much as the first hearers did, and there’s even some similar reminders for us in the NT, as we’ll see when we work our way through this chapter.

1. Opening Comments (1-6)

-The first thing we need to look at is: Who is Asaph? This is the first Psalm we’ve come across that begins with his name, but he comes up later (mostly in the 70s). We learn more about him in other places in the OT. One example from 1 Chron. 16, tells us that Asaph was the chief musician who played the cymbals (just a reminder that drums are one of the most holy of all instruments!) 

-Whomever was final compiler of this book thought that this Psalm fit contextually here, which makes sense with what we’ve been learning all summer. 

-A brief summary of our study this summer, because all these Psalms build on each other, and I’d forgotten what all we’d seen in these Psalms (vacation brain is real)! We began in Pss. 41-43 with individual complaints and requests for protections from God. Ps. 44 expands the focus out to include the the entire community. Pss. 45 and 46 address the arrival of the King and establishing His reign. Pss. 47-48 celebrate the King and His glory filling the city, and last week we saw the foolishness of looking to worldly riches to fulfill you. This week we see the story of God coming in judgment. 

-The first verse begins with a running list of the names of God: Mighty One, God, the Lord, you should read this as God establishing His credentials. Just as a lawyer lists his various accomplishments and achievements, with God His credentials are connected to His various names because who else would be able to validate these credentials? We’ll see more of this in a few verses. 

-It goes on to say that He goes on to summon the earth, the whole earth. He’s inviting His creation to come and participate in this judgment.

-And where is God calling them to convene? It says from Zion – the place where God lives, the center of the world in Israelite thought. This also connects this Psalm thematically to Ps. 48, where God was establishing His rule and reign as centered in Zion, think of it like Washington DC, the primary city where God rules from.

-The further descriptions of God here allude to the first 5 books of the OT. Radiance could be referring back to Deut. 33 where God “shines forth” as He blesses the tribes of Israel, and then vs. 3 points back to Ex. 19, God’s appearance when He delivered the stipulations of His covenant to His people, the people are warned to stay away from the mountain when God met with Moses so that His glory wouldn’t destroy them

-(4) The same word that we saw previously comes up again here, God is calling the rest of His creation to come act as the jury in His case against His people. Last time it was just he earth; this time He expands His invitation to everything. And do you see why He’s gathering them? To serve as the jury in His indictment against His people.

-One of the fascinating things about this reality is that means the jury is always watching! Think back to Ps. 19 which tells us the the creation teaches and models God’s glory for us, they’re pointing us to God, witnessing to His glory and grandeur, so not only are they serving as a jury, they also serve as God’s witnesses. Let’s think about that for a minute. Can you escape the heat of the sun? You can maybe go to your basement, which stays the same temperature all the time, but even in my basement I have windows! And when it’s as hot as it has been the past month it’s a reminder of how much the sun affects things. Did anyone else appreciate the cloud cover on Tuesday? Just as we can’t escape the sun, we can’t escape God’s watchful eye over us

-But there’s another reason God calls out His creation here: they were the witnesses when the covenant was enacted between God and His people (see the beginning and end of Deut). By calling His witnesses, He’s reminding the people of their previous promises to remain faithful to Him. It’s a bit like pulling out the contract that both parties signed to remind everyone what they had previously agreed to. 

-God tells us who all is assembled in this courtroom. He’s acting as judge and defense attorney. The jury is the heaven and earth (the rest of His creation), and on trial are his “faithful ones” connected to the Hebrew word chesed God’s covenant keeping faithfulness, which signifies that this judgment is against His people.

-Last week’s Psalm was unique because it was meant for everyone, this one gets us back to the “normal” focus of the people of God. And once again we’re reminded that God is a righteous judge, His witnesses will speak to His faithfulness.

-We see a corollary to this in 1 Pet. 4:17. Friends, we will not escape God’s judgment, we’re actually more culpable than unbelievers because we’re supposed to know better! If we fail to live obediently even though we have His Word, what hope does the rest of the world have? This is why we need to ensure we’re faithfully obeying what we learn from God’s Word instead of either going through empty motions or ignoring the commands of how God has commanded us to live. 

–Selah

-“Lord, I praise you that, like a good father, you love your children far more than others, yet you hold them to far stricter standard. It is only when I grasp both of these truths that I change for the better, escaping both self-hate and self-indulgence. Infuse them deep into my heart by your Spirit. Amen.”

• Judgment Against the Half-Hearted (7-15)

-After setting the stage, God moves to lay out His case, and the first issue he has is with the half-hearted (what Kidner called “unthinkingly religious”). And this group is a helpful warning for us to be aware of because the external appearance here is the same as those who are living in faithful obedience to God. 

-All the things God lists here are things that the people are supposed to offer: sacrifices, burnt offerings, offering up bulls and goats.

-But did you notice the pronouns here? God is building up to vs. 10 in the beginning of this section. Did you catch all the repeated use of “your.” 

-This group of people is faithful in obeying what God has commanded, but that’s where it stops. Those things aren’t wrong! But doing them as a way to “earn” God’s favor is wrong. He says every animal (wild) cattle (domesticated), but then he goes on to mention the birds and creatures of the field. If He’s the Creator of everything, is there anything that isn’t His? No! Why would the people need to “give” Him anything if it’s already His? They wouldn’t! All the offerings they could give are nothing compared the the reality that He already owns it all! 

-Vs. 12-13 we need to understand some historical context. There are some historical documents that list out that if a god isn’t given his sacrifices he dies from hunger (not sure what kind of a god that is that’s completely dependent on other people), but not this God. God doesn’t need anything. We’ve already established this, even if He did need something, it’s already His!

-This is teaching us something about God. Your fancy theological word for the day is “aseity” which means His complete self-existence. (from Latin a se which means “from himself.”) God is completely self-existent. He didn’t come from anyone, He doesn’t need anyone or anything else for Him to exist. Everything else comes from Him.

-There’s also another theological idea that’s coming up in this text, that is that God is also spiritual. He doesn’t need to eat like we do, He doesn’t eat bulls or drink their blood. That means the commands for the people to offer sacrifices to God aren’t just to expand His portfolio, there’s a different purpose to this: it’s meant to do something to us, which is what God talks about in the next verse:

-(14) Instead of just going through the motions, God invites His people to offer a thanksgiving sacrifice, to demonstrate gratitude for the gift of life that He has given.

-We see a parallel to this in Heb. 13:15. The author there tells us this is something that’s supposed to be going on continually, confessing and praising His name, giving Him thanks for the salvation that has been given to us because of His Son.

-When that becomes our way of life, then God invites us to not just go through the motions, but to pursue Him. He will meet us in our struggles and rescue and redeem us.

• Judgment Against the Hypocrites (16-21)

-This next group has a different problem, Kidner called them the “hardened and hypocritical” This group is similarly going through the motions, but not all of them. These people say the right things, but then intentionally throw away God’s words, and even worse, God refers to this people as “wicked.”

-I’ve had this happen to me before! I had someone come up to me after a sermon onetime and tell me that they didn’t like one sentence of the sermon. When I asked which sentence it was, it was a Bible verse I quoted. This person said, “I don’t agree with that.” So I just said, “you’ll have to take that one up with God!”

-Jesus talks about this idea, too in Matt. 15, quoting from the prophet Isa. They speak the right things, they’ll recite the commands of God, but then live as if those words don’t exist.

-And the question we need to ask ourselves is: what do we do when we’re confronted by God’s Word? The goal of our study of the Bible isn’t to master it, the goal of our study of the Bible is to be mastered by it. Each week when I’m preparing these sermons I’m thinking of the Bible as a mirror: my goal is to hold this up to you and trust the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how closely your image reflects what we’re reading in the text. See, preaching isn’t just about me getting up here to pontificate each week about things I find interesting, God has designed the church to have leaders who weekly remind us of the truths of what God has done, and we’re supposed to respond with obedience. Preaching is meant to be a means of grace in the life of the Christian, a gift that helps us take 1 step closer to Jesus each week. 

-That’s the opposite of the description of the wicked: they see what it would take to grow closer to Jesus, and they run away from it. Instead of moving towards holiness they’re running in the opposite direction, which is the temptation of all our hearts. We think our way is better, we don’t always trust that God’s way is best or that He has our best interests at heart. That’s why the Bible is so incredible, it knows the way we’re all wired, which means it’s timeless. It knows the orientation of our heart, it isn’t bound to a specific cultural climate, it helps us correct our misplaced priorities 

-In this case, the Psalmist goes on to list some specific things they’re doing, ways they’re disregarding God’s Words:

-3 of the 10 commandments are listed here: thief, adulterer, speaking evil. Based on the description of these people, I’m guessing they could even list them out all 10 commandments if asked. But this text also tells us that they’re not always the ones committing the sins. 

-These people are guilty by association. It says they befriend the thief, they spend time with adulterers, and then they join in on speaking evil against others. This means it’s time to hold up the mirror of this text: church: who are you spending time with? We become like the people we spend time with. Now, this doesn’t mean that we never spend time with unbelievers (or the wicked), we’re still commanded to evangelize and tell others about what Jesus has done in our lives, but don’t put yourselves in places where you’ll be tempted to follow in their sinful ways. You need to know yourself well enough to know what faithful evangelism looks like for you without giving in to their sinful ways. You also need to have other Christians who know you well enough to be able to speak into your life and help you as you process and navigate life on this side of eternity.

-And it could even be that the Psalmist is trying to say that even though they didn’t participate in these things they were affirming them by not stopping them or telling their friends that this was wrong. This doesn’t mean you need to be a legalist or a party pooper, but it does mean evaluating what’s taking place around you and refusing to cross the line into sin.

-The last verse in this section tells us that they assumed that because they hadn’t yet been stopped or confronted that there was no problem with what they did. But it gets even worse. The 2^nd line here could contain a reference to God’s name “I Am”, so it would be something like “you thought I AM was just like you.” This is connected to God’s aseity that we talked about earlier, God’s covenant name. Think of this like when your parents call you by your full name. The people were taking God’s silence as His permission to sin, but this verse is saying there’s a different reason for this:

-2 things: there is both a reason for His delay in returning and today is incredibly important. We see a warning like this in Heb. 3, where the author repeatedly says watch yourself today. On the day you hear God’s voice, don’t respond with a hardened heart! Obey now! Because tomorrow it could be too late.  

-Paul talks about this exact same idea in Rom. 2: God’s patience and long-suffering is intentional: so that we could have time to repent. And if you don’t repent then it’s going to be even worse for you when God returns, where we will face the consequences for everything we do on earth. Friends, your decisions today have implications for your life in eternity. God invites us into a way of flourishing as humans, but it comes through obedience to God’s way of living. One of the things that worries me is we tend to view Christianity as a 1-time decision and that’s it, instead of seeing that God expects a complete reorientation to our lives. God tells us that we need to pursue holiness with our whole lives, not just the bare minimum.

-So friends, are you pursuing God and living a holy life with all that you have, or are you wanting to continue holding on to your old ways of living?

• Concluding Remarks (22-23) 

-The ending of this Psalm is a reminder about true wisdom. There are 2 ways to live: either obediently following God or refusing to obey and running away from Him. And we once again see that we’re not just supposed to go through the motions of sacrifices without a changed heart and life, we need to always give thanks to God for the salvation He has won on our behalf.

-Following Christ means that we live a thankful life. We give thanks to God for His good gifts, but there are also string attached: we need to order our conduct, we need to ensure that we obey God’s commands in our lives because those commands are how we live in wisdom, aligning ourselves with the reality of how God has designed this world to operate.

-The mirror of this text has a lot for us to reflect on! We see the reminder to not live a half-hearted life where we go through the motions but don’t allow that to affect our whole being, and the reminder to no be a hypocrite who can say all the right things but not be pursuing holiness and righteousness in our life. And with those reminders to pay careful attention to how we live, we have the promise that we will experience God’s salvation that comes through Jesus Christ.

-And the reality for us is that spiritual none of us can “handle the truth.” Rom. 3 tells us that we’ve all sinned, that we’ve all fallen short of what God has done, which means in God’s courtroom every single one of us has a “guilty” verdict. “But God,” we saw that reality last week! But God did what we couldn’t do, He paid the penalty that we couldn’t and gives us the freedom to live as new creations who have been called to live a holy life. We are the half-hearted, we are the hypocrites, but God’s mercy and grace are enough to deal with our sins.