“Joy in Justice” – FBC Morning Light (5/7/2024)

What a good Tuesday morning to you. Today we are continuing reading some of the Psalms of David and reading

Psalm 58 and Psalms 61 and 62. And I want to focus on Psalm 58 because there's a section in this

Psalm that can be rather troubling to you. But let me preface it by asking you this.

How do you feel about the people who are the orchestrators of sex trafficking rings?

I'm talking about those people who will kidnap young girls, take them into captivity, whisk them off to some other part of the country or the world, and force them into sexual slavery.

How do you feel about the people who do such things? How do you feel about these drug cartels, the people who are in charge of these, running these drug cartels in Mexico, those who are doing the best they can to flood our country with fentanyl that will kill thousands and thousands of people?

How do you feel about them? How do you feel about those jihadists who just think nothing of whatsoever, taking a sword and beheading people who claim to be

Christians? How do you feel about those kinds of people? What do you think?

How did you feel when you read about Hitler's death?

He killed himself, right? Was there a sense of disappointment in that?

I was disappointed when I read of that. I would rather have seen him tried in the

Nuremberg trials and then hanged, so that he received justice for what he had done. Now the reason

I bring all this up is because of what we read in Psalm 58. Psalm 58,

David is addressing the Lord and he says, "...the wicked are estranged from the womb.

They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." Now he's not talking about all of us who are born sinners.

He's talking about those who are like those I just talked about, the drug traffickers, the sex traffickers, the butlers, people who are bent on evil.

He says, "...their poison is like the poison of a serpent. They are like the deaf cobra that stops its ears, which will not heed the voice of charmers."

These are people who are just determined to carry out evil deeds that will be harmful and maybe destructive, and maybe cause the death of many, many other people.

What do you want to see happen to them? Well, the psalmist prays in verse 6.

He says to the Lord, "...break their teeth and their mouth, O God. Break out the fangs of the young lions,

O Lord. Let them flow away as waters which run continually. When he bends his bow, let his arrows be as if cut in pieces.

Let them be like a snail which melts as it goes away, like a stillborn child of a woman that they may not see the sun."

That's pretty dramatic, and it may seem rather drastic.

Well, I want to be careful here, because I want to make sure and clarify that there is absolutely no place whatsoever for a so -called

Christian jihad, where those who name the name of Christ take up the sword and seek to do justice, the justice of the

Lord, to execute his vengeance. That is not our place whatsoever. But what I'm getting at is

David's response to all of this, when he says in verse 10, "...the

righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, so that men will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous.

Surely he is God who judges in the earth." So I think a reasonable and understandable and correct response, when

God determines to execute judgment and vengeance on those who are bent on evil, determined to cause harm and enslavement and death of other people, when

God exacts vengeance upon them and takes them off the earth, it is appropriate for God's people to breathe a sigh of relief and to rejoice that such wickedness is removed from the earth.

Now to be clear, to be sure, what we would long for is for the

Lord to bring such people to utter ruin and despair and death, death to their sin and to their harm to others through repentance and faith.

He's done that. He's brought mobsters to repentance and faith in Christ, and it's a wonderful testimony when that occurs.

But if not that, then it is appropriate to rejoice in their removal from the earth, that they can no longer do harm to others.

I hope that a psalm like this doesn't rattle you and make you feel like, well you know, as a

Christian I shouldn't rejoice in the death of the wicked. No, you don't rejoice in the death and the resultant eternal damnation of the wicked, but you can rejoice that God is just and that in his justice he has removed those who are so determined to cause death and harm to others, and he removes them from the earth.

We can rejoice in that justice, and so we should. Our Father and our

God, we do grieve when we read of all of the forms of evil that create hardship and pain and misery and even death of others.

Lord, may we see some justice in these situations.

May some of these be removed from the earth so that their influence is felt no longer.

We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Well, alright, have a good rest of your