Book of Psalms - Psa. 11, Vs. 1-7 (03/12/2023) | NOTE: Low volume until minute 6:19

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to make the choice, right? Like, you can either trust in your sight, or you can trust in the

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Lord. And often, that choice comes about as a result of some sort of situation, something that's going on.

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For David, this is being written at the time when he has received persecution from Saul.

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He's not yet run from Saul. And think of it like this.

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He's got trouble in his own house, so to speak. When would you feel compelled?

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You've got to write it down. There's so much feeling there that you've got to put it on something.

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You've got to put it on paper. Or somebody who has some plots that they want to share with the world, they've just got to write a book.

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Right? That's kind of what's happening with David here. His thoughts are so strong that he has to write it down.

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And of course, he's being led by the Holy Spirit to do so. That's why we have Psalms. But these are very strong thoughts.

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I am going to choose to trust the Lord. You know,

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I can write that down. We've got to get serious here. And so that's what's happening.

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It's very overwhelming feelings that he's having. Consider the problem.

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The problem is Saul. But who is Saul today? He's his king.

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That's a pretty big problem already. He's his father -in -law. So it's a pretty personal problem.

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He's the dad of his best friend. He's the man he faithfully serves.

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Kills his enemies. Soothes him with his music. Right? Treats his daughter well.

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Best friends with his son. And I'm like, you would think this would be a good relationship. And this is a relationship that is strong.

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Because Saul is in a bad place. So if you serve the king, and the king no longer likes you, and tries to entrap you, which he has already done, even in the giving of his daughter.

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He intended for Michael to be a snare of David. Michael loved

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David. Turned out great for David. And he said, well, if you want my daughter, then you're going to have to go give me 104 skins of Philistines.

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So there's the snare, right? David will go and get himself killed. David brings back 200.

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He's like, all right, let's go. I'm going to go get that girl. And he does. So it doesn't work out the way

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Saul wants. And now Saul fears David even more, because he sees the Lord is with David. Not with Saul.

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So it's a really big problem. So these are the feelings that David's experiencing.

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I've got this choice. I can either trust what I see, or I can trust in the

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Lord. Now here's what David sees. The king doesn't like me. He really doesn't like me.

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He kind of wants me dead. And David's friends are advising that David run away.

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Which is why we get the second half of this verse. How say ye to my soul, flee of the bird to your mountains?

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It's interesting he phrases it like that question. Because he's coming off the heels of I put my trust in the

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Lord. So it kind of goes like this. I trust God, so why would you tell me to run away?

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So there's a little bit of confidence that comes as a result of David making that choice.

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I'm reminded of something that Brother Byron teaches. He teaches about when you make a choice, you make a decision.

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The word decision means to cut off other options. And so he has made a decision to trust in the

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Lord. Which means any cowardly decision has been cut off. It promotes confidence to make decisions.

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So that's why people who are indecisive are less confident in life in general.

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Because they can't make a choice. I've tried to get better about it.

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I can think of one silly way in which I used to be very indecisive.

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And that was I'd go out to eat. When I'd eat, I'd see that menu and I'm like, man, it all sounds good.

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There's not much in life that I don't like to eat. And so I'd see that menu.

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And now I haven't had a hard time. I was going to be the last one to order. Save me from last because I've got to read the whole thing.

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And I've got to pine over two or three different options. And it was very hard to decide. But as soon as I made the decision,

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I was like, oh, but then I want the other thing. Right? When I met Jamie's family, half of them don't even use a menu.

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And during that, if I can wrestle the bear, if I can wrestle the lion. He's already had enough life experience making this same decision to face the danger.

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And put his trust in the Lord. That he has not just confidence, but he has history on his side.

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Right? Which just gains more confidence. I'm reminded of Psalm 23 where we see

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David, of course, talking about being in a place of contentment.

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The valley. His eyes are directed at the Lord. Right?

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And he begins to talk to God. Previously, he was talking about God in the third person.

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So he's talking about God in the third person. But when he gets in the valley, He's talking with God one -to -one.

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Right? Like in the first person. He goes through the valley. He gets to the table that the

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Lord has prepared for him. In the presence of his enemies. That shows that God had it all planned out from the start.

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And his head is anointed with oil. His cup runneth over. And it says, So after he had been through the valley,

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He experienced going from a place of contentment to a place of abundance.

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Right? So contentment, like shadow of death, abundance.

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And at the end of that, we see goodness and mercy following him for the rest of his life. Because he made the decision to go through that and to face that with the

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Lord. There's this added blessing he gets and an advantage for the next time he goes through that.

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The goodness and the mercy. So David has goodness and mercy following him. He already has the life experiences to prove that making this decision has worked out for him in the past.

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So he's going to do it again. So his trust is not in the devices of man.

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It's not in the world system. So for us, how helpful is this when you realize we live in a country founded on Judeo -Christian principles.

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Our government was built on those principles. And is currently working to cancel the very principles they were built upon.

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The foundations are destroyed. Yet we can't put our trust in our constitution.

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As much as we'd like to. And we have been able to trust that for a long, long time.

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And so long as it's being upheld, it's, I believe, a God -inspired constitution.

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But that will fail. That will ultimately fail. And if our trust is in our constitution, we will fall victim to that failure.

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But if we don't put our trust in the foundations of law and justice, if we put our trust in the

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Lord, who's the ultimate judge, then we'll be okay.

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Even when the best country on the planet ultimately crumbles.

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Which, someday it may. Let's hope the Lord returns before that happens, right? Right? So, David begins to remind himself of the ultimate judge.

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The Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes behold,

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His eyelids try the children of men. This is a really cool verse to me. First, because I love the phrasing of the first part, where it says the

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Lord is in His holy temple. Because from David's perspective, he is picturing the

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Lord, Jehovah, right? Jesus, advocating for Him in heaven.

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But on this side of the cross, we have Jehovah in His holy temple right here with us.

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That's pretty cool, right? So now, not only do we have Him advocating for us in heaven, but we have

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His Holy Spirit within us as well. So just the fact that He says the Lord is in His holy temple, for us that says, you're not alone.

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God is right there with you. He is present in the situation. And then it says, the

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Lord's throne is in heaven. So not only is He right here with us, He has authority over all other authority.

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Because His throne is in heaven, above all other thrones. He's the King of kings and the

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Lord of lords. So I have the judge of judges, right?

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I've got El Numero Uno, the one who has authority over Saul himself, the king on earth, right?

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I have Him right here with me. So when man's law and order crumbles,

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I have the righteous God to advocate for me.

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When the law and the justice is twisted, when it's used against me, when it's used to entrap me, when it's used to make me look like the bad guy,

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God sees it. And that's what He says, is that His eyes behold. Nothing gets by Him.

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Nothing. He sees it all. You can't slip one by God. And in case there's any doubt that maybe you could slip one by God, it says that His eyelids try.

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What do you picture when it says His eyelids try? Why His eyelids?

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It's kind of a weird way to put it, right? Picture it like this.

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Have you ever looked at something really small? What do you do? You hold it up close and you squint your eyes to block out all of the distractions around it.

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And you kind of, you know, you might even close one eye to see it really closely.

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God doesn't just see everything. He can closely study everything in its most minute detail all at once.

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So not only can you not slip anything by God, like, you can't slip any tiny, itty -bitty, microscopic thing by God because He's looking at it and focusing on it.

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Like, He can focus on you individually as if you're the only thing that exists in the world.

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And yet He can do that with you and me and anyone in this room and everyone in the world all at the same time.

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And it says that He does that. His eyes behold, His eyelids try the children of men.

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Who's the children of men? Everybody. Like, He is trying all men at once as if there's nobody else to look at.

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He's holding you up. He's turning you around. He's looking at your life. He's looking in your heart.

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He's looking in your mind. He's looking at every decision you've ever made and every decision you're going to make.

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And He's just kind of spinning you around, looking at you. And He can do that with each and every one of us all at the same time as if we're the only one.

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Mind -blowing. Mind -blowing. And so He does that with every single human being.

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But then we see David make a distinction between two types of human beings.

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And that's in verse 5. The Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

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Okay. So we saw in verse 4 that the children of men are tried and we are all the children of men.

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But here we're seeing the distinction between the children of men, that's everybody, and God's children, the righteous.

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Right? So first we see He's trying everybody, but now there's something different about the ones

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He's trying that He considers righteous, which are His children. The difference is, they're still a -trying.

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And I think that's important for us to realize. Like, even His children are tried.

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Even His children are tested, are refined in the fire, are made perfected in Him.

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Like, He is working on us. And He is turning us around and going, don't like this part, cut that off.

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Don't like that part, let's get rid of it. Let's keep turning you around. Have you ever...

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Has anyone in here ever worked on a piece of art of any kind, a sculpture, a painting, a drawing, anything like that?

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Okay, let's take drawing for example. How many of you have ever drawn something? Because I think most people have at least tried to draw something.

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Let me see. Everybody's at least tried to draw something. Right? And have you ever worked really hard on drawing something and you worked for a long time and the more you worked on it, the more emotionally attached you got to the drawing?

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Like, man, this is getting kind of good. Like, I want to spend a little more time on it. I want to spend a little more time on it.

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Have you ever done that? Like, man, this is one of my better works. I think

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I can make it a little better here, I can make it a little bit better there. And that is kind of what happens with the

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Lord. It doesn't really happen that way because it's not like He gets more emotionally attached. He's already fully attached to His children.

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But that's the kind of care and attention that He's putting on us. Now, contrast that.

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Have you ever drawn something and you just didn't like how it was turning out? And you might have tried to fix it.

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You might have... Maybe you didn't. Maybe you started off so bad you're like, And what did you do with that drawing?

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Crumble it up and toss it. It's so bad you don't want to look at it anymore. You want to throw it in the trash.

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Your soul hateth that drawing, right? That's essentially what it's like, is that when

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God looks at all of humans, all of human creation, He made it all.

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It's all His handiwork. And when He looks at His children, ooh, this is good.

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It's not perfect yet, but I'm going to make it perfect. We're going to spend some more time on this one. And then the others?

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Well, I did create that human being. I don't like it. Crumble it up and throw it away.

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His soul hateth the wicked and those who love violence.

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What a hopeless situation for those. Completely hopeless. But what's the difference?

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Is it that we were good? I mean, it almost reads that way.

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The righteous, right? But there is none good. No, not one. Right?

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Who made us? He did. Who made them? He did. Who determined that we're righteous?

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He did. Whose righteousness is it? It's His. It's not ours.

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So we did nothing to merit God's love. He just loved us.

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Praise the Lord. We're His handiwork, and He keeps on working on us. And then you got the other ones.

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They're His handiwork, and He's done with them. Because He is. Because His soul hateth them.

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I am so glad I'm not one of those. There are times when I could look like them. You know?

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There's times when I can look a lot like them, and I think that's one of the reasons why it's so important for Christians and our own confidence to make that decision to put our trust in the

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Lord. Because what we see ourselves do also lets us see the contrast between us and the enemy.

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Between us and those that the Lord's soul hateth. Our decisions are not just for the pleasure of our

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Lord. It's also for us so that we can go, there is something different about me.

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When the Scripture talks about work out your own salvation, think about what that's really talking about.

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You can't save yourself, but you can certainly prove to yourself that you're saved. Because you have an ability to do things that no one else on this earth has the ability to do.

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You have the ability to love God. Because He put that ability in you. You have the ability to love

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His people because He put that in you. You have the ability to choose to put your trust in the

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Lord. The unrighteous, the wicked, those who hate violence, they don't even have that ability.

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So when you choose to make that decision, you say, I am putting my trust in the Lord even though it's really scary.

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I just did that. Thank you, Jesus, for giving me that ability.

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It can help you with the confidence that you need to continue in that decision.

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Verse 6. Upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest.

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This shall be the portion of their cup. Now remember, what is the current state of the wicked in this chapter?

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They're hated by God, but they're also ready to attack. They're like this.

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I'm about to get the righteous. Got the bow bent, the arrow notched.

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I am aiming. And here's my movie reference. Happens in all these movies, right?

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Like, you're about to see the hero die. The bad guy, he's got his gun out.

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And the camera work is just perfect where it's like, this is a hopeless situation. Bad guy's gonna win.

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It's gonna be one of those movies I hate where they let the bad guy win. I can't stand this, right? And then the gun goes off. And you see the hero.

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And then the hero looks down and he's like, wait a minute, I didn't get shot because the sheriff showed up and shot the bad guy.

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Yes, right? Like, it was the wicked who had the drop on the good guy.

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But God is going to rain down snares, fire and brimstone, horrible tempest.

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So how much does God hate the wicked? Well, he destroyed a world full of wicked in a flood.

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He obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah to the point at which if you looked back and gazed upon them, that was deadly.

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He caused King Herod to be consumed by maggots.

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Which by the way, we pointed this out in Bible study the other night, that maggots only eat rotten things.

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So King Herod was pretty rotten. And in the future,

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God will rain down this, his reserved weapon of war, which

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Ben has talked about, which is hail, on Gog and Magog when they come up against Israel.

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He'll destroy them. He'll bind and burn the wicked forever and ever.

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And so even though the wicked is ready to attack, they'll use the world devices against us.

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They'll twist what was created as a good and righteous document, the constitution that I believe, in a sense, was

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God -inspired. It's not inspired like Scripture is inspired, but it's based on inspired

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Scripture. So it's a really cool document in that it is inspired by a document that was truly inspired by God.

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Right? They'll twist it and they'll use it eventually to come after us.

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And just when it looks like they're going to get the drop on us, that's when God's going to rain down fire from heaven.

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And this is what David's reminding himself of. That's why the end of verse 6, it says, this shall be the portion of their cup.

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This is what they're destined for. The ones that don't put their trust in the Lord, the ones that trust their sight and walk by sight and not by faith, they are destined for destruction.

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And that's not me. I'm not they. And he ends it with kind of an element of praise.

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For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness. His countenance doth behold the upright.

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I really like the way it says that his countenance beholds the upright. And let me tell you what I picture when

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I see this. I picture something that my wife does with babies, with our babies, with all the other babies.

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And we have lots and lots and lots of babies in this family right now. So she does it a lot. And my little girl,

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Maddie, does this too. They love to do this. They grab the baby on both sides of the face and they bring them in close.

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And it's like, I love you. You know, she's done this with all of our kids.

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She does it with Sam, I think the most like she'll get right up in his face like this. I love you. You're my little man.

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Right. And it's like her countenance is upon him. That's what God's doing is that it's countenance, which means face.

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It's upon us. Right. It beholds the upright. It's like he's grabbing on both sides and going,

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I just think you're awesome. I love you. And that's how God looks at us.

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He loves us. He loves the righteous and his countenance doth behold the upright.

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We are upright because he made us that way. And he continues to make us that way. He continues to try us with his eyelids and turn us around and say, let's fix this.

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Let's fix that. And at the same time, there are other works of art, beautiful works of art, people with minds and bodies and souls that he just goes, nope.

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I don't love them like I love you. And that's a hard truth for a lot of people to accept.

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And of course it would be, especially if you're one that he doesn't love. But if you have breath in your body, right, and you're still alive and you feel in your heart like,

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I want to be loved by God like that. There's a good chance you already are.

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There's a good chance that you're his and he's working on you. And eventually he's going to let you know that he,

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I just love you. But if you're one of those that he's going to throw away, it doesn't really bother you.

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You don't really care about the Lord, which is interesting because it's almost like the feelings mutual, right?

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Anyway, so that is Psalm chapter 11, seven short verses.

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And we got through it. We have a little bit of extra time. So does anybody have any thoughts they want to add? Yes, sir.

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Well, this scripture would definitely lend itself to teach that God just hates them.

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But I do think there's other scripture that would indicate he loves his creation as a whole.

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Like it all looks good to him. I love my creation, but he doesn't love them individually at all like he does us, which

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I think is what you're getting at. He loves his plan.

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Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So that's a better way to put it.

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He loves his plan, but he doesn't necessarily love everything in his plan or else these verses can't be true, right?

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He can't hate these pieces of the plan and they are part of his plan. So you're right.

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Pastor got that one right for sure. Yeah. It could warrant more study, but these verses definitely don't leave much room for God loving the wicked.

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Yeah. There you go. I like that.

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He loves you with a special love and just leave the others out of it. Yeah, just period.

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Yeah. Yes. Yes. He does not want the world to be one with God.

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So if you were, if you're listening online, the scripture brought up is that Jesus praying in the garden says,

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I pray not for the world. I pray for those that you gave me, right? And that they would be one with you.

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So that literally is saying, I am not praying for the world to be one with you. I'm praying for the ones you gave me to be one with you.

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That's a pretty strong statement there. I mean, if he wanted the whole world to be one with God, why wouldn't he pray for the whole world to be one with God?

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Yeah. If he loved them, he certainly would pray for them to be one with God. Interesting.

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Yes, sir. Oh, okay.

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Okay. So when it says that the

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Lord's soul hated them, it means literally hate, not loves less, not loves different, just I despise,

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I loathe entirely, right? To count as an enemy.

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Wow. And I think what's interesting, what's interesting is the world will try to get us to accept this idea that God loves everyone because it's just like the

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Incredibles, right? The Incredibles syndrome is the bad guy in the Incredibles cartoon. And his whole idea is

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I'm going to give everyone superpowers because if everyone's super, no one is, right?

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And that's what the world's trying to do. If God loves everyone, then he doesn't, there's nothing special about you.

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But there is something special about you. And this chapter makes it pretty clear like he loves you.

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He's got his face, his countenance is upon you. He's turning you around. Like there's something truly special about his children, the righteous, the upright, which is who he loves.

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He tries us, but he loves us and he hates the others. And that hate for the others lets us know just how truly special we are to him because we don't get that hate, we get his love.

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All right. So any other thoughts? Okay, let's pray.

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Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you so much for your love. We thank you that we are not on the receiving end of your hate, but we are in the receiving end of your mercy and your grace.

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And we thank you, Father, that when the world tries to get us to think of the logical outcomes and to focus on sight, even our own friends and family and coworkers, they can all have a genuine concern for us and tell us to flee.

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But if you have a plan and we know your plan because we're in tune with you, if we put our trust in you, then we won't put our trust in what we can see.

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We won't walk by sight, we'll walk by faith. Thank you, Father, for the ability to do that because we only have that ability because you gave us that ability.

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Father, we just ask that you help us to remember that. Help us to be confident in making the decision to put our trust in you and to not put our trust in the world or the flesh or the lies that Satan tells us.

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Help us to be confident in those decisions. Lord, we thank you so much for the word.

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thank you that it is truth. Help us to follow it. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen. Amen.