Broken Bows and Slaying Swords (Psalm 37:12-15) | Worship Service

Call to Worship from Psalm 2

Well, good morning and welcome to Kootenai Church. This first Sunday of the new year, would you please stand as we begin our call to worship this morning. From the book of Psalms and Psalm two verses one to four, it says, why do the nations rage?

And the peoples meditate on a vain thing. The kings of the earth take their stand against the rulers and the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against his anointed, saying, let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their courts from us.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord mocks them. Every time I read that, it never gets old. So let's sing together. Psalm two. Why do the nations rage?

The kings and rulers of this age, against God's holy, shall tell shame as earth is undone.

And let's sing together. Christ will be my hideaway.

Well, within the shelter of the God who reigns above, I will rest beneath the shadow. I did not stand upon it. It will be my hideaway. Channels gather to protect me where faith is weak. The scripture reading today, will you please turn in your Bibles.

To the book of Psalms, to Psalm ten, Psalm ten. All right. And we will read together the entire Psalm, Psalm ten. Why do you stand afar off, O Lord? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In pride, the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted.

Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised. For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire, and the greedy man curses and spurns the Lord. The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek him.

All his thoughts are, there is no God. His ways prosper at all times. Your judgments are on high, out of his sight. As for all his adversaries, he snorts at them. He says to himself, I will not be moved.

Throughout all generations, I will not be in adversity. His mouth is full of curses and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue is mischief and wickedness. He sits in the lurking places of the villages.

In the hiding places, he kills the innocent. His eyes stealthily watch for the unfortunate. He lurks in a hiding place as a lion in his lair. He lurks to catch the afflicted. He catches the afflicted when he draws him into his net.

He crouches, he bows down, and the unfortunate fall by his mighty ones. He says to himself, God has forgotten. He has hidden his face. He will never see it. Arise, O Lord, O God, lift up your hand. Do not forget the afflicted.

Why has the wicked spurned God? He has said to himself, you will not require it. You have seen it, for you have beheld mischief and vexation to take it into your hand. The unfortunate commits himself to you.

You have been the helper of the orphan. Break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer. Seek out his wickedness until you find none. The Lord is king forever and ever. Nations have perished from his land.

O Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to vindicate the orphan and the oppressed so that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror.

You stand with me as we pray. Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we have such stern and clear reminders in your word of the judgment that will befall those who do not confess and do not repent and do not bow the knee before the King of Kings.

We have sung of that destruction even by singing the words of Psalm 2, where we are commanded to do homage to the Son lest he be angry and we perish in the way. And your word warns against or about the judgment that will come against the wicked on that final day.

And we can only praise and give you thanks that by your grace, we are not counted among that number, but by your grace, we have been brought nigh unto Christ. We have had our sins taken away. We have been given righteousness in him.

Thank you for removing our iniquity and changing us from enemies into sons so that we may worship and adore you, our great King and our God. Thank you for the mercy of salvation and the grace of it. And we must be reminded again each day when we open your word, just how serious it is that you take sin and that you have not imputed it to us, but instead given us the righteousness of your son.

And we praise you for that eternal redemption. We thank you for the grace of salvation and for the grace that draws us here to worship you each and every Lord's day. Thank you that we can celebrate not just a sacrifice made on our behalf, but that we can also celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

His sure and certain triumph over the grave is also our sure and certain triumph over the grave. And we look forward to that day when we will with our own eyes see the wicked cut off and the righteous inherit the land, all for your glory and by your grace.

And so we thank you for it. We thank you for our hope. We thank you for our savior who is our hope. And it is in his name that we pray.

Amen.

Worship in Psalm 46 and Psalm 18

Let's continue with our worship this morning and sing together Psalm 46, Be Still My Soul.

Should mountains melt into the roaring oceans? The earth give way or heaven's lights grow cold. O mighty God, you are my strong defender. Be still, be still my soul. All I see are enemies before and doubt have taken hold.

O Lord of hosts, you promised to defeat them. Be still, be still my soul. I need not fear your song, it seems to prosper. They mock your name and rise against your throne. O righteous judge, their deeds you will remember.

Be still my soul. Nations rage, you guard us as grits of peace. We will not be abandoned.

In Psalm 18, it says in verse 2, Yahweh is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon Yahweh, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

Let's sing together, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

And my redeemer, greatest treasure of my longing soul. My God, there is no one, is found, too deep to found, exceeds or true. Against my song, my joy, just say, I give a slate on your shore. My place, you suffered, bled, you rose.

You may be seated.

The Protection of the Righteous in Psalm 37

And now in the book of Psalms, we please turn to Psalm 37. Psalm 37, let's pray together before we begin. Our Father, we ask your blessing upon the preaching of your word, upon our meditation here before your truth, your written word.

Thank you for revealing yourself and your purposes for us and for this creation in a written form that we may have it in our own language. We are grateful for that. We are grateful that you give us your spirit by which we may be taught truth.

And we are thankful that you open our minds and our hearts to the truth of your word. So we pray that you would do that today and that you would bless this time for the end that you have ordained. That we would give honor and glory and praise to you, our great God, as we see here what you have in store for us in your word.

We thank you for your grace. Sanctify us, we pray, conform us to the image of Christ. Make us more like him in thought, word, and deed. That you may receive the glory that you are due from your people.

For it is in Christ's name that we pray, amen. Returning now back to Psalm 37, it's been a few weeks. So in case you are new or in case you have forgotten where we're at and what we were doing, I'll give you a brief review of Psalm 37 and what we have covered so far.

This is a psalm that addresses the issue of the prosperity of the wicked and how the righteous should respond to that prosperity and to the wicked. And really the emphasis or focus of the psalm is on what the righteous receive from God, rather than focusing on what the wicked get in this life.

The psalmist focuses our hearts and attention upon what the righteous will receive in the life that is to come. In verses 1 to 8, and well, let me back up. When we started this psalm, I gave you an eight point outline for this psalm.

Eight headings, as it were. Verses 1 to 8 describes the peace of the righteous. This describes how it is that we live. The righteous can be at peace in a world surrounded by the wicked. In verses 1 to 8, we're told how that is possible.

Verse 3, we're to trust in the Lord. Verse 4, we are to delight ourselves in the Lord. Verse 5, commit our way to the Lord. And verse 7, rest in the Lord. That is the path to peace in this world surrounded by the wicked.

Then in verses 9 to 11, we saw the promise to the righteous, that is that the righteous will receive an eternal prosperity in a renewed land that is blessed by God and purged of the wicked. The wicked will be cut off and the righteous will inherit the land.

That is the central promise of this psalm. As the psalmist brings back to our minds again and again that Old Testament promise that the wicked will be cut off and the righteous will receive the land. In fulfillment to what God promised to Abraham, in fulfillment to what God promised to David, in fulfillment to what God promised through all of the prophets, even up to the very end of the Old Testament era, the righteous will inherit the land.

That is a land that will be renewed, regenerated, and it will be a land that is purged of the wicked. Now we come to the third heading of the psalm, verses 12 through 15, and we notice the protection of the righteous.

So let's read verses 12 through 15, and then I'll break this down a little bit and show you how we're going to tackle it today. Verse 12 of Psalm 37, the wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth.

The Lord laughs at him, for he sees his day is coming. The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy to slay those who are upright in conduct. Their sword will enter their own heart, and their bows will be broken.

And in those four verses, we see that God's judgment on the wicked will bring all of their evil back upon their own heads. God's judgment on the wicked will bring all of their evil back upon their own heads.

What the wicked devise, what they plan, what they plot, what they purpose, will all be turned back on them to their own destruction. This is the ultimate end of all the wicked. The evil that the wicked bring upon others is visited on their own heads as they suffer the very things that they had planned and plotted and purposed for others.

We would call this poetic justice, and it is certainly an expression of God's justice. It is not unjust for the wicked to receive the very thing that they have plotted and purposed for others in their wickedness and in their oppression.

So, verses 12 through 15 is one unit, and I want you to see how there is a structure to these verses. There's actually two different kinds of Hebrew parallelism here, not only parallelism between verses, but parallelism between sets of verses.

So, notice verses 12 and 14 are parallel ideas. Look at verse 12. The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth. Verse 14, the wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy and to slay those who are upright in conduct.

Those two verses are saying the same thing in different words. So, those two verses are similar. There's a parallelism there between those two. Then there's a parallelism between verse 13 and verse 15 as well.

This is the parallelism of the response or the justice that comes. Look at verse 13. The Lord laughs at him for he sees his day is coming. It's describing the day of judgment. Verse 15, their sword will enter their own heart and their bows will be broken.

So, in verses 12 and 14, the parallelism describes the actions of the wicked, their plots, their plans, what they're doing, how they're doing it, why they're doing it, describes what they're doing. Then verses 13 and 15 describe the justice that is going to come upon them.

So, what you have in verses 12 and 13 is a description of the wicked and a description of something that happens to them. And then in verses 14 and 15, you have a description of the wicked and a description then in verse 15 of something that happens to them.

So, 12 and 13 go together, 14 and 15 go together, 12 and 14 go together, 13 and 15 go together, so that those two, 12 and 13, go together with 14 and 15. Do you see all that? Brilliant, isn't it? You didn't even notice that was there, did you, until I pointed it out?

And even some of you still don't understand what I just said, and you're like, I don't have a clue how that's parallel, but I'll take your word for it.

Okay.

If you're going to take my word for it, then here's what we're going to do. We're going to group together the similar verses, that is 12 and 14, and deal with those under one heading, since they kind of go together, and then we'll take 13 and 15 and deal with those under one heading, since they kind of go together.

So here is our two-point outline for the passage. First, in verses 12 and 14, the psalmist describes the pernicious plans of the wicked, in 12 and 14. Then in verse 13 and 15, the psalmist describes the poetic punishment of the wicked, their pernicious plans and their poetic judgment, their poetic punishment.

All right, so let's deal with 12 and 14, and we're going to deal with that, the pernicious plans of the wicked, verses 12 and 14, today, and then next week, we will address the poetic punishment that comes their way.

I had originally sort of put all of this together into one message, and then I had to make a game-time audible decision this morning to break this into two, because I thought there's no way that you can talk about the beauty of poetic justice in verses 13 and 15, and cram that in after everything I planned to say this morning.

So we're going to break it into two parts. First, the pernicious plans of the wicked in verses 12 and 14. Let's read together verses 12 and 14 again. The wicked plots against the righteous as gnashes at him with his teeth.

The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy, and to slay those who are upright in conduct. Now, you can notice that the language of those two descriptions is the language of conflict and war, opposition, hostility, enmity, strife, conflict.

You can see it in the words that are used, the military imagery of the swords and the bows. It is describing a battle between two forces or two camps, the righteous and the wicked, between two forces or camps that are set against each other in an animosity and a hostility one with another.

That's what's being described here. The wicked against the righteous. Now, it didn't start in Psalm 37. It didn't start in David's day. It didn't start with David's dad or his grandfather or his great-grandfather.

Where did the enmity start? In the garden is where it started. In fact, this distinction between the righteous and the wicked goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, when after Adam and Eve rebelled and ate the fruit, God condemned the man, condemned the woman, and then also issued a judgment upon the serpent.

Genesis 3 .15 says, I will put enmity, notice the language of hostility and conflict, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.

Now, that is a prophecy of the Messiah. It is the very first proclamation of God's gospel that there would come one who would come from a woman. The seed of the woman is unique language there in Hebrew, and it is intended, I think, as a foreshadowing of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There would come one who would be born of a woman, whose triumph would be to crush the serpent's head, and in the process, his, that is, the seed of the woman, his heel would be bruised. So there is obviously a conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, that is, the offspring of the woman, all of Adam and Eve's descendants, and there is this conflict, or sorry, the seed of the woman being the righteous seed of the woman, and then there is a conflict between all of those who are of the serpent who go along with his seed, his people.

There's two camps, and there is enmity and hostility between these two camps, and there always has been since the garden, and there always will be until the Prince of Peace comes back and until that enmity is removed, when, as we see in Psalm 37, the wicked are cut off and the righteous inherit the land.

Then there will be no enmity and no hostility. But until that time, Genesis 3 .15 describes this constant conflict, God's people against the serpent's people, the serpent being the devil. So it is a war or a conflict, an enmity between God's people and the devil's people.

This is not a hot conflict in the sense that we use weapons and we go to war and we draw our swords. That is not the point of the passage. The point of the passage is that there is a truth war, there is a spiritual war that is waging between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.

The righteous are on one side and the wicked on the other. The chosen out of this world on one side in one camp, and Satan's offspring, his spiritual descendants, his spiritual workers of iniquity are on the other side.

Jesus described this hostility in John 15 .18 and 19, the world hates you. You know that it has hated me before it hated you, and if you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because I chose you out of the world and you're not of the world, therefore the world hates you.

That's John 15. Notice what Jesus did there, divided all of humanity into two camps, those whom he has chosen and the world, that is everyone else. There is no middle ground between, no common ground between those two camps and there is no third category in the middle.

All of humanity is divided into those two camps, the sheep and the goat, the wheat and.

The chaff.

It is divided between the righteous and the wicked, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, between those who belong to God and those who do not, between those who are of Christ and chosen by Him and those who are in the world.

Those are the two camps, irreconcilable, spiritual, moral, intellectual, and eternal hostility between those two camps. And there can be no partnership between them because there is no common ground and there is no common convictions between them that are of any kind of lasting import or significance.

This conflict is repeatedly described in the Psalms and we already looked at two of them when we were in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. You remember we saw the same conflict. There are those who walk according to the counsel of the wicked, who stand in the path of sinners and sit in the seat of the scoffer and then there is the blessed man.

Those are the two camps. And the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. There's two ways. And the righteous are like a tree planted by the rivers of water that flourishes and prospers and bears its fruit in its season and the wicked are like chaff.

There is that distinction right at the head of the Psalter, the very first Psalm. And then Psalm 2 gets into that same conflict. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed saying, let us tear off their chains and cast their fetters from us.

There is this conflict or this war. The kings of the earth take their stand against the king of kings. And those who follow the kings of the earth take their stand and wage war in hostility and animosity against those who belong to the king of kings.

And so there is this war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The war between the righteous and the wicked. It is a war ultimately that is the world's hatred on the righteous because they represent Jesus Christ.

That's really what it boils down to. Their hatred of the righteous is a hatred of us because we represent Jesus Christ. How do they express it? Look at verse 12. The wicked plots against the righteous.

Those are the two camps. But look at verse 12. He gnashes at him with his teeth. The imagery there shows their hatred and their anger. This is how the wicked fret. Remember we talked about fretting back in verses 1 to 8.

Do not fret over the evildoer or be anxious because of their envious of the wicked. What does it mean to fret? Fretting in verse 1, I mentioned again in verse 7, and then in verse 8, that fretting meant to become hot or angry, to heat oneself up in vexation.

You get stirred up in your spirit, anxious, driven over these things. You get boiling on the inside. It's a form of anger. Fretting is a form of anger. That word fret is sometimes used to describe God's anger.

It's sometimes used to describe man's anger. How is it that the righteous are tempted to respond to the wicked? By fretting, getting angry. But look at the anger as it is, as describes the wicked. The wicked are angry as well, and that is expressed through the gnashing of the teeth.

That is vivid imagery, isn't it? The gnashing of the teeth. Do you live with somebody who just grinds their teeth all the time? Sometimes that can be just like a habit that you have because nobody's ever slapped you and told you not to grind your teeth, so you just grind your teeth.

It's not that kind of a habit. This is the same idea, the grinding or the gnashing of the teeth, but here it describes the deep-seated anger. It's the imagery of a wild beast that would chew and consume and devour something.

The gnawing of the teeth, the clenched jaw. The imagery, the language is intended to describe not just sort of a casual hostility that might exist between two unreconcilable camps, but on the one side, that is with the wicked, the very real angry, murderous, and violent desire to destroy those who are the righteous.

They would devour if they could. And let us not be confused about this. If there were no restraining hand of government and law, and if there were no restraining hand of God's grace, and if there were no restraining hand in others able to defend themselves, the wicked, if they had their way, would devour the righteous off the face of the earth, eliminate them entirely.

We should realize that and be thankful that we have the restraints in place that we do have that keep that from happening to the degree that it would happen if it were not for those restraints. Psalm 2 verse 1 describes the nations in an uproar.

We talked about that in Psalm 2, the language there describes like the tossing of the sea, the raging, the frothing of the waves. This describes the nations. The nations are in this uproar, this angry, frothing state.

Why is that? Because they are allied against the Lord and against His anointed. It is the righteous that they hate. They grind their teeth. Spurgeon says about this, quote, the wicked show by their gestures what they would do.

If they could.

If they cannot gnaw, they will gnash. And if they may not bite, they will at least bark. Close quote.

That's beautiful.

That's poetic. Speaking about poetic justice, that's poetic language. If they can't gnaw at you, then they will gnash their teeth without you. But it does describe their anger, their visceral hatred. So as believers, we are told not to fret.

We are called to not fret. Verse 1, do not fret because of evildoers, do not be envious of the wicked, the wrongdoers. Verse 7 and 8, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him. Do not fret because of Him who prospers in His way, because of the man who carries out evil schemes.

Verse 8, cease from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret. It leads only to evildoing. So here we, as the righteous, are called, are commanded to not respond in our own form of anxious, vitriolic anger over the prosperity of the wicked that the Psalm describes.

So there's an anger that we can fall into as well. We need to be aware of that. And there is an anger that the wicked have at the righteous, and that is described in verse 12 with that phrase, he gnashes at him with his teeth.

We are not called to gnash our teeth back in response at the wicked. That is easy to do. When you see people who deserve prison, given presidential medals of freedom, lined up like candy in a Pez dispenser and they're handed out one right after another, the response of the righteous could be to just gnash your teeth at such injustice and corruption.

Probably, most of us here wanted to do that at some point, say, in the last three or four days. Just tempted to do that, but our response is not to do that, not to fret and not to gnash our teeth back at the wicked, especially when they prosper in their way.

It's the point of the Psalm. One has to wonder then, why is it that the wicked in this Psalm are so angry? Why are they so angry? You see the language that's used to describe it, they're gnashing their teeth.

Why are they so angry? What have the righteous ever done to deserve that? Do you wonder that? What did I ever do to elicit the hatred of the wicked? The answer to that is nothing, likely, unless you've done something, but I guess I'll speak for myself personally.

I don't think I've ever done anything to elicit the hatred of the wicked. Why are they so angry? Why should they be so angry since they are the ones prospering in their way, right? Isn't that what verse 7 says?

Do not fret because of him who prospers in the way. Isn't it true that the wicked in this world usually get all the things that they want and desire? They have their way, they do their sin, they commit their sin, and they're the one who prospers in it.

Meanwhile, we would adopt the language of Psalm 73 where Asaph says, I've been chastened.

Every day. I go without.

I'm under affliction. I have to deal with difficulties and trials and temptations and tribulations and illnesses and sicknesses and want, and these things are the things that come upon the righteous. And then you look at the wicked and you see them, they are at ease and they are comfortable and they die at ease and they die in comfort and they are remembered and everybody lauds them and celebrates them, and the righteous don't get any of that.

Why are the wicked so angry? Why are they so hostile when they are the ones who are prospering in this world? Their plans succeed. They benefit from their iniquity. They are in ease and comfort. They have this world's goods, it seems, in abundant measure.

The world applauds their iniquities and celebrates their perversions. There are entire months of our calendar year that are dedicated to celebrating sexual perversion and immorality. And there are entire legislative branches of government and committees of government that are designed and intended to do nothing but give themselves entirely to the promotion of all this iniquity so that the world lauds its own perversions and celebrates its own immorality and prospers itself in all that it does.

And since they get everything that they want and they enjoy everything that they're pursuing, and since it seems that at least in the short term, they lack nothing, why would they be so angry? What is it that causes them to be so angry?

You know what it is? It is because this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light. That's why they hate it. They hate the light. Jesus said, men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil and everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be manifest.

That's John 3, 19 and 20. Scripture calls the righteous the children of light, Ephesians 5, 8. It calls us children of the day, sons of the day, and sons of light in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 5, and darkness hates the light.

Because the light is a constant reminder to those who are in darkness that their judgment is coming and that there's something beyond this world that they are not living for that they are going to be held accountable to.

And that constant reminder is enough to fill them with rage. The wicked are reminded at least of the eschatological judgment that is to come and so they lash out in hatred, in anger, with visceral hatred, gnashing at the righteous with their teeth.

Look at the weapons of their warfare described in verse 14. The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy and to slay those who are upright in conduct. That's verse 14.

This military imagery that is used, bow and sword, these are the weapons of warfare and destruction, violence, murderous weapons. Destruction is in their paths. The sword, it says in verse 14, is drawn.

They have drawn the sword, not just that they have a sword, but like a soldier who has pulled his weapon and unsheathed his sword, he is ready and stationed and positioned for battle. And not just that, but he has bent his bow, that word bent there means to march out or to tread out.

And the idea is they've grabbed the bow and they have marched it out. They have bent that bow back. They have pulled it back as far as they can and they have put an arrow in that bow and it is aimed, not randomly in any sense whatsoever, it is aimed at the righteous.

The sword is drawn because they are ready to shed blood for their cause and to persecute and prosecute those who are the righteous. This is the nature of that warfare, a bloody, murderous, and violent imagery.

They stand ready to devour, gnashing their teeth, swords drawn, bows bent back, ready to do their mischief. They have the means, and this is the scary part, they have the means to carry out their.

Ends.

This is what the psalmist is describing. Not just somebody who gnashes their teeth but has no power in their hands to commit their atrocities, but one who is filled with anger gnashing his teeth and then he has all of the weapons necessary to wage his warfare against the sons of light.

So he has the weapons and they're drawn and they're primed and they're ready to draw blood. This could refer, it could describe both verbal assaults as well as physical assaults. There are some who suggest that all this being described here is just the use of the wicked, how the wicked use their tongues.

They're like arrows or they're like swords. They pierce, they go after, they harm, and they hurt us, and that that's what the wicked do with their violent gnashing of the teeth, that this is just the words of their mouth that is intended.

False accusations, ridicule, verbal abuse, slander. The Lord did suffer this. He was reviled and he reviled not back. It's true that the wicked do sometimes lash out at the righteous with their mouths, with their words.

But I don't think that that's all that the psalmist has in mind because down in verse 32, he describes the works of the wicked. Verse 32, Psalm 37, verse 32, the wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.

So it seems as if the psalmist, David, has in mind here not just some sort of verbal assault but actually physical intention to kill and destroy the righteous. To oppress, to jail, to persecute, to pursue, to kill and exploit, to rob the righteous.

This is what the wicked intend to do. Shouldn't surprise us since in John 8, 44, Jesus said to the Pharisees of his day, you're of the father of the devil. He was a liar from the beginning and a murderer from the beginning, and he doesn't stand in the truth because the truth is not in him.

So if there is an enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, it should not surprise us that those who are of the seed of the serpent, his spiritual offspring would themselves wage war and it would be bloody and violent and murderous against the righteous.

Those who rage against the righteous serve the interests of the serpent. The heart of unbelieving man is full of hatred and violence, and this really is what hatred is. It is a violation of that commandment to not murder, thou shalt not murder.

So the one whose heart is full of violence and hatred is one in whose heart murderous intent dwells. They hate and they gnash with their teeth. They have bent their bows. They have drawn their sword. They are ready and willing and able.

Now that is a daunting picture, is it not? It's a daunting picture. It's one that you will see repeated in the Psalms in multitudes of locations in the Psalms. If you're familiar with the Psalms, you've read through it, you know that even the passage that we read at the beginning of the service today from Psalm 10, Psalm 7 is another, Psalm 22 is another.