WWUTT 934 God is Angry Every Day?

Psalm 7 and the Meaning of God’s Indignation

Psalm 711, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation or anger every day. This is not the same way you and I feel anger, for when God is angry, He is just. When we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Visit our website at www .utt .com.

Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

David’s Plea for Refuge and the Background of the Psalm

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the Psalms in our Old Testament study. Today looking at Psalms 7 and 8. If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, I'll go ahead and read all the way through Psalm 7, where we read, O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge.

Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me. Lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rendering it in pieces with none to deliver. O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

Selah. Arise, O Lord, in your anger. Lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies. Awake for me. You have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you. Over it return on high.

The Lord judges the peoples. Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous, you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.

My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will wet his sword. He has bent and readied his bow.

He has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made.

His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. I will give to the Lord the thanks due his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

So right at the start of Psalm 7, and you may have this in your Bible, it says, a Shegion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, the Benjaminite. What a Shegion is, we don't know for sure.

It's a musical term of some kind. It may have been a word that described the kind of music that was to be played along with these words that were written and sung by David. He sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

This is a saga that has been lost to us. We don't know exactly this circumstance, but it may have been similar to the situation that we read about in 2 Samuel 16. That's where we read the story of Shimei, who walked beside David along the road hurling rocks and insults at him.

Shimei was from the house of Saul, who was a Benjaminite, and Shimei likewise a Benjaminite. Maybe Cush is another name for Shimei. Sometimes we see characters in the Bible with multiple names. That's just speculative.

We don't know for sure, but nevertheless, the title of this psalm, that little added title there, gives us some background as to what prompted David to write what he wrote. He begins with, O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge.

Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest, like a lion, they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces with none to deliver. So when mankind tears me down, when they seek to rip me apart, David's refuge is in the Lord and so should ours be.

There are people that we may completely trust and they turn out to betray us. They turn out to be our enemies instead of the friends that we thought that they were. Mankind can be untrustworthy. I think that we need to have friends and we need to trust people, but there are going to be times when our friends will betray us.

We were just reading about this, even going through John this week, when Judas became Christ's betrayer. Even when Judas came to Jesus and kissed him on the cheek, Jesus referred to him as friend. He said, friend, do what it is that you came to do, and this was in fulfillment of what was written about him in the scriptures.

Even Peter, who said to Jesus, even if all these fall away, referring to the other disciples, Peter said, I will never fall away. I will go to death with you, and Jesus replied to Peter and said, the devil is asking to sift you like wheat before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.

Paul had a man who was part of his missionary entourage. His name was Demas, and in Paul's darkest hour, Demas abandoned him. In love with this world, he went back to Thessalonica and left Paul in prison.

Paul writes about that with Timothy in 2 Timothy 4. So there are times when we will entrust ourselves to people and we must entrust ourselves to one another. We can't know the depths of a person's heart.

The Lord knows that. So there are going to be times when that person may betray us, and nevertheless, the Lord is our refuge. He is our strength, and he is the one who is going to lift us up. He is always trustworthy.

His love endures forever. It will never be taken from us. We are secure in the hand of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. So you can rely on the Lord, and he is with you no matter what, even when men turn their backs on you, even when they try to devour you and tear you apart.

The Lord is good, and his words are comforting. David goes on, Oh Lord my God, if I have done this, this is a very humble approach now David takes, putting himself in the place of his enemies. If I have behaved like these people, and I've been in that particular position before, I have been in a place where I've been treated so incredibly poorly that it caused me to reflect, have I ever acted like this?

Man, have I ever done this to somebody else? How wretched this is. And so asking for the Lord's forgiveness, even in those moments, should there have been a circumstance that I ever treated anyone like this?

And David approaches these things that same way. Oh Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, even his enemies, it was David just in coming up against his enemies, or was there something that was very selfish and arrogant in his motivations toward his enemies?

Was there an occasion which he took from his enemies when God did not bless it? God was not on the side of David making the decision that he made against those who were against him. So David says, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.

If David is so hypocritical to pray for the destruction of his enemies or deliverance from his enemies when he may have done this to somebody else, and they're praying for deliverance from David, if I am so hypocritical, then let my enemy take me down and lay my glory in the dust.

And then you have Selah, that word of pause, of reflection there in the middle of the psalm. So right after David has so humbly come before the Lord like this, he pauses for a moment to reflect as to whether or not his heart is guilty of this very thing.

If the Spirit of God would convict him. So now we go into something more imprecatory. We talked about imprecatory psalms last week, psalms in which the Lord is called upon to enact vengeance upon his enemies.

And that's what we see here in verse six, arise, O Lord, in your anger, lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies, awake for me. You have appointed a judgment. You have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you, over it, return on high.

So let the judgment of God happen in this moment. Here you have wicked men who have blasphemed your name and have come against your servants. O Lord, vindicate me. The Lord judges the peoples. Verse eight, judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.

And this is not arrogant for David to have prayed this and asked this of the Lord. For before this, he had prayed that if I have ever done anything wicked, let the enemy overtake me. And then he pauses.

He waits for conviction in his heart from God. David tests himself by the Spirit of God. He has been tested and is righteous, not because he has done anything good, but because the righteousness of God has been given to him.

David says, O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous. You who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God. Both a call that David's mind and heart would be tested and also indicating that he has been tested and has found to be righteous in the eyes of God.

My shield is with God who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. This means that God is angry every day. That's not the part about God that we like to hear about.

We want to hear more about how God is love. Don't tell me about how God is angry. I don't want to hear about the angry God. I want to hear about the loving God. And of course you do. Because if God is an angry God, then he would be angry at you because there's part of you that knows you have sinned against God.

You may suppress the truth with your unrighteousness, but every one of us has rebelled against the Lord and what we deserve for that is death. But we want to think of him as a loving God in the sense that we're ascribing our definitions of love to him.

He can't possibly be angry at me for the things that I do. But if God is an angry God, then that anger is directed at every one of us. Now Christ, of course, has appeased the wrath of God and all who believe in him are not under God's wrath, but we are in his love.

Nevertheless, when it comes to the way that we preach God with others, we need to tell them of a God who has appointed a time of judgment, just as David is prayed here in Psalm 76, and that he is angry every day and he is going to pour out his wrath on the unrighteous.

This is a characteristic of God we just simply want to ignore is there. But if you do so, if that's your attitude about God, beware, you may be raising up a God in your image and not worshiping the God according to what the Bible says about him, what God has said about himself.

I appreciate my friend John in North Carolina, who sent me an email last week after going through Psalms five and six, particularly Psalm five, five, where it says the boastful shall not stand before your eyes.

You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and the deceitful men. And after reading that psalm last week, John sent me a clip or actually an audio that has a series of clips from Paul Washer talking about the anger of God.

Let me play a little bit of that for you.

The Wrath of God, Human Sin, and Why We Need Christ

Now, some of you will walk out of here tonight shocked. You'll say, I've never heard anything like that. You'll say it was mean spirited, all sorts of things. But I can assure you, if you would only read old books, you would find out this is what preachers have always said.

They don't say it anymore because they want big churches. Now, let me talk for a moment about something that will be quite offensive to you. I want to talk a moment about the hatred of God. Now, I know that you've heard these evangelists over and over on television.

How many times do I hear evangelists get up in the pulpit and say God is not an angry God? OK, let's just see. Go with me to Psalms chapter 7, verse 11. God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day.

In some of your translations, a God who is angry every day. The Bible says God is an angry God and you ought to fall down on your knees and praise that He is. Not only is He an angry God, He is a God who hates.

The Bible does not say that God hates the sin and loves the sinner. The Bible says God hates the sinner. Look in Psalms 5.

Just look there for a moment. Psalms 5, verse 5.

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity. In another translation, you hate all who do wrong. Now, you know that wonderful statement that goes something like this. God loves the sinner and hates the sin.

Just look at this text. Is that what it teaches? It's not what it teaches. I'm sorry. I know it's a pretty thing to say and it looks good on the back of a contemporary Christian T-shirt, but it's not what the Scriptures teach.

It does not say here that God's hatred is manifested towards the wicked deed. It says God's hatred is manifested towards the one who commits it. You say, Brother Paul, but what about John 3, 16? It's in the book.

God so loved the world. Yes, it's in the book, but so is Psalms 5. But God is merciful and a loving God. What about that? Yes, that's true. And we're going to talk about it, but you can't understand it until you understand the full counsel of God.

God is love, but this loving God hates. God is merciful, but He is angry. You see, you just can't take one side of the coin, not just one part of the story. And that's the problem today, because you need to realize the Bible says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

And you have no idea what that means, that we were born radically depraved and God hating, that we would have never sought God, never come to God. We have rebelled against God, broken every law. It's not just an issue that you have sinned.

The issue is you've never done anything but sin. The Bible says in the prophets that even our greatest works are like filthy rags before God. And because of that, you know what we deserve? The wrath of God, the holy hatred of God, you say now, wait a minute, God doesn't hate anybody.

God is love. No, my friend, you need to understand something. Jesus Christ taught the prophets, taught the apostles, taught this, that apart from the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ, our Lord, the only thing left for you is the wrath, the fierce anger of God because of your rebellion and your sin.

When I speak in universities, they're always quick to point out, no, God cannot hate because God is love. And I tell you, God must hate because God is love. You see, I love children, therefore I hate abortion.

If I love that which is holy, I must hate that which is unholy. God is a holy God. That's something that the Americans have forgotten. God loves all that is right, all that is true, all that is good, all that is virtuous.

But scripture after scripture after scripture in the Bible tells us that his hatred is manifest against wickedness.

The Fearful Reality of Judgment and the Wrath Christ Bore

I mentioned the wrath of God in my sermons fairly often, and every once in a while I am asked why I talk about it so much. I even mentioned it in the Easter sermon that I did this past Sunday. And somebody might come to me and say, Pastor Gabe, why do you talk about the wrath of God in your sermons?

And my response the last time I was asked that was, it's because I don't want you to fall under it. Hebrews says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. You do need to know there's a day of judgment and you need to fear that day so that you will believe in Christ and then in Christ Jesus, in the perfect love of God shown to us through his son.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. That's first John four eighteen or they have suppressed the truth and unrighteousness.

Romans one eighteen. That could be that could be the other reason as well anyway. So I speak about those things so that you will understand what God has saved you from when we call Jesus savior. What does he saved us from our sins?

Yes, death, of course. But more specifically than that, he has saved us from the wrath of God. Jesus took the wrath of God upon himself so that we would not fall under it. All those who believe in him.

But that day of judgment is coming. God will wet his sword and he will strike down the unrighteous. He is a God who has love for his own. Those who believe in Christ and have been covered by the blood of the lamb.

But he has anger and indignation toward the unrighteous every day. Verse 12. If a man does not repent, God will wet his sword. That's where I got that from. He has bent and readied his bow. He has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.

Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out and falls into the hole that he has made. Let's talk about immediate consequences for the stupid things that we do.

Even the rebellious, sinful things that we do against God. There will be consequences for those things in this life. But there is a worse consequence to come if we do not repent of it. Those consequences that we may face for our sinful actions are to humble us that we would turn from that sin and seek Christ and live.

But those who persist in it, who never repent, they will fall into a worse pit. And that is the eternal wrath of God poured out upon the unrighteous forever in hell. His mischief returns on his own head and on his own skull, his violence descends.

I will give thanks to the Lord and thanks due to his righteousness. And I will sing praise to the name of the Lord God most high. We find over and over again, even in the Psalms, expressions of God's anger toward those who do evil, not just his hatred for sin, as Paul Washer talked about there.

But hatred for the sinner himself. Psalm 11 5, the Lord tests the righteous as David is prayed even here in Psalm 7. But his soul hates the wicked and the one who does violence. Psalm 53 5. They there they are in great terror where there is no terror for God scatters the bones of him who encamps against you.

You put them to shame for God has rejected them. We find in Psalm 106 40, the anger of the Lord was kindled against even his own people and he abhorred his heritage because they had turned from God and worshipped false gods.

So even the people of Israel, God had turned over to the hands of his enemies. God is so holy and so good. He will not allow evil to go unpunished. Now, on this side of heaven, we might see evildoers and wicked men get away from it or get away with it and seem like that that vengeance never comes upon them.

Well, maybe in this life it won't. But there is a judgment that is to come. You make sure that on that day you are right with the Lord by faith in Jesus Christ. Follow him and you will live. Amen.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .tt .com.