FBC Morning Light – May 31, 2022

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you.

I hope you had a good holiday yesterday, spent some time reflecting on

our nation's history, its wars, its warriors, and those who

sacrificed everything for our freedom.

I also hope you were able to have some time for rest and refreshment and maybe a cookout

or whatever you did.

I just hope you had a good holiday yesterday.

Today I want to share a couple of thoughts from Psalm 58.

The way David opens up this psalm, we can relate to in

our day and age, can't we?

Listen to what he says.

He asks these questions.

He says, Do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent ones?

Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men?

I want you to think about some of the crime that's been going on in our

nation in the last couple of years especially.

We had all those riots and all of that mayhem and

people in riotous behavior, tearing down statutes, creating all kinds of violent

behavior, and so many just simply got away with

it.

Nothing happened to them, nothing at all.

In contrast to that, you had this behavior on January 6 that has

been greatly exaggerated as an insurrection and a riot and

violent and all of that kind of thing.

If you look at it all objectively, you hold the images of

what happened on January 6 wrong as it was, but you hold that up next to

some of these other images of torched federal buildings,

courthouses, torched police cars, rocks thrown,

widespread looting, violent damage to property, the

murder of police officers, and all the rest.

You put those two things side by side and you see on the one

side where all of the horrible violence and so forth and the riots

was met with just almost nothing.

Very, very little, if any, prosecution.

You contrast that with the way those who were arrested in this January 6 stuff

have been treated.

Some of those people are still in prison from January 6 and they haven't even had a trial

yet.

They haven't even had a trial.

You see the injustice there.

Then you come to a verse like this, and this is just two polar opposite examples of things, and we could

cite many, many more things today, right?

Then you come to a verse like this that asks the question, do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent ones?

Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men?

Is there really much righteousness and justice to be had?

We're seeing our whole justice system becoming

undermined, don't we?

Criminals, people who behave in criminal activity slapped on the wrist and sent back out to

engage in it all over again.

Where is the justice in this kind of thing?

When are those who are committing such heinous and evil behavior really going to be held

strictly accountable?

The next verse goes on to answer that question.

David writes, he says, No, in heart you work wickedness.

You weigh out the violence of your hands in the earth.

Look at the consequences of your unjust decisions and the wickedness

that you work in your heart.

It ends up promoting and encouraging violence in the earth.

The righteous look at this, and we grieve,

we wring our hands a little bit, and we say, where is the justice?

We want to see righteous judges.

We want to see justice take place here.

It's very, very aggravating.

The psalm ends on a positive note for the righteous, that is, because he says

this at the conclusion of the last two verses.

Let's take the last three verses.

Verse 9, he says, Before your pots can feel the burning thorns, he, God, the righteous

judge, he shall take them away, the wicked, who seem to be getting away with so much,

and the wicked judges and justices that aren't giving out righteous justice.

He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, as in his living and burning wrath.

And the righteous will see this, verse 10, and shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance.

He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

I would say that's a metaphor, that's a figurative expression about

just basically taking delight in seeing justice finally meted out.

And then it ends with this, so that men will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous.

Surely he is God who judges the earth.

That is what we look forward to, and that is what will yet come.

And while on the one hand we would be wrong to be

gleefully delighting in anybody's harm or physical danger, what we can rejoice in, what

we can delight in, is righteousness.

Righteousness and justice.

And we should, when justice is meted out, we should rejoice in it.

When you see righteous judgments executed, we should rejoice in it, that

righteousness is being upheld.

And ultimately, so shall it be.

The judge of all the earth shall do right.

So let's take encouragement in that.

When we look around, we read our newspapers, we watch the news, we see all kinds of

violent, wretched stuff that seems to get a slide, it won't forever.

It won't forever.

Our Father and our God, we are grateful today that you are the judge of all the earth and you do

right.

We look forward to the day when we can look upon what's going on in our world and

we can see the righteous rule of our God, meting out justice, meting out vengeance

as it is rightly due.

So we thank you for that hope and that confidence that we have yet to come.

Now bless these thoughts to our hearts today, we pray.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, well have a good rest of your Tuesday and I hope your week's getting off to a good start.

Good day.