The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): As believers we live with our eyes upon the eternal, but we still have to function now in a world that is wicked at its core. So how should we respond to the injustices we observe and battle with every day? Today on The Bible Study Hour, Dr. James Boice will encourage us to intercede faithfully, plead with God for justice, continually, and then rest in the fact that judgment is surely coming.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Let's listen in as Dr. Boice presents the major spiritual dilemma of today's Psalm. How can God allow the wicked to prosper?

Dr. James Boice: Tonight we're studying Psalm 10, and the theme of the Psalm is practical atheism. I'm going to explain as we go on a little bit more what that means, but let me begin by saying that it is a characteristic plague of our time. We live in an age in which there are many practicing atheists. Indeed, if there is a religion of America in the 20th century, that's it.

I'd like to prove my statement in this way. A number of years ago, George Gallup did an extensive survey of the religious beliefs of Americans, and he was struck at once by this anomaly. On the one hand, Americans are excessively religious, unusually religious, but on the other hand, religion makes very little difference in the way they live.

Let me give you some of the things he came up with. 81% of Americans claim to be religious, which places them second only to Italians, whose rating is 83%. 71% of Americans believe in life after death, 84% believe in heaven, 67% believe in hell. Large majority say they believe in the Ten Commandments, nearly every home has at least one Bible, and half of all Americans can be found in church on an average Sunday morning. Only 8% say they have no religious affiliation, most say that religion plays an important role in their lives, one-fourth claim to lead a very Christian life, and 95% believe in God.

Although 95% believe in God and four out of five say they're religious, only one in five says that religion is the most important factor in his or her life. Most want some kind of religious instruction for their children, but religious faith ranks far below many other traits they would like to see developed in their sons or daughters. Only one in eight says that he or she would consider sacrificing everything for religious beliefs or God.

Gallup records what he calls a glaring lack of knowledge of the Ten Commandments, even by those who say they believe in them, and he observes a high level of credulity, a lack of spiritual discipline, and a strong anti-intellectual strain in the religious life of most Americans. I call that practical atheism. It's a kind of atheism which professes a belief in God, but for whom belief in God makes very little difference.

I think we need to have that in mind when we come to Psalm 10, because in the Psalms, we encounter two different kinds of atheism. One kind of atheism is theoretical atheism, and it's the kind we normally think of when we use that word. When we say someone is an atheist, we mean they don't believe in God. They say there is no God. The Psalms recognize that as well. The 14th Psalm says that explicitly, and the 53rd Psalm is almost word for word a repetition of Psalm 14. Psalm 14 begins with those very well-known words, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" That's theoretical atheism.

The kind of atheism we have in Psalm 10 is not that. This is what I call a practical atheism. This person would say, "Oh yes, there may be a God. I don't deny there may be a God. After all, somebody made everything we see around us. We didn't make it by ourselves." But so far as living your life is concerned, it's pointless to act as if this God has any concern for you whatsoever. After all, you have to take care of yourself. This is a godless world, and so what you need to do is live the best way you know how. In this kind of a world where everything is competitive, the thing to do is get ahead by whatever means possible.

This person lives as if there is no God, and the result of that kind of living is godlessness or wickedness. There are always consequences in spiritual things as in anything else. If you jump out of a building, the consequence is that you fall to the ground and get hurt. If you act as if there is no God, going your way, there are consequences as well, and one thing this leads to is godlessness. It's what led Martin Luther, when he was writing about this Psalm, to say this about it: "There is not in my judgment a Psalm which describes the mind, the manners, the works, the words, the feelings, and the fate of the ungodly with so much propriety, fullness, and light as this Psalm."

It's very tempting to approach this Psalm on the basis of Luther's analysis. If you heard that carefully, he gave a five-point sermon there: the mind, the manners, the works, the words, and the feelings, and the fate of the ungodly. It would be tempting to do it that way, but I think this isn't exactly what the Psalm is trying to do. It is true that all of those things are in it. What it tries to do in its first half is portray the path of this practical atheist, how he manages and what is characteristic of him. Then in the second half, what we have is the reaction of the godly man to this practical atheist.

Let's talk about the practice of atheism as you find it in the 10th Psalm. There are a number of characteristics of this person. You can find different ways of doing it here, but I find five of them. They are intermingled, which means the description of one particular characteristic will be reinforced later on, but if you take them in the order in which they first appear in the text, they're in this order. First of all, arrogance. You find it in verses 2 through 4. As a matter of fact, that is the very word that David uses. This practical atheist is an arrogant man or an arrogant woman.

He says in verse 2, "In his arrogance, he hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises." The two other words he uses to describe it are this: he boasts of the cravings of his heart, and in his pride, the wicked does not seek him. David is saying the first thing you notice about the practical atheist is his arrogance, and it's exactly what you would expect. He doesn't depend on God, he doesn't depend on anybody but himself. That's an arrogant person. He says, "I don't need anybody else. I can get on all by myself, and I'm doing very fine, thank you."

There are several things that this practical atheist says about himself, however, and you find his attitude in verses 6 and 11. This man in his arrogance says, "Nothing will shake me. I'll always be happy, I'll never have any trouble." That's certainly an arrogant statement as well as a foolish one. In verse 11, he says to himself, "God has forgotten. He covers his face and he never sees." Do you know anybody like that? I know lots of people like that. They go through life sublimely arrogant, assuming that whatever they do is certainly unseen by God, and as long as they get away with it, everything is all right.

Maybe as we go through these, you'll notice a progression. I'm not sure David intends a progression, but I think maybe there is one. The next of his characteristics is his prosperity. It's what David talks about in verse 5: "His ways are always prosperous. He is haughty and your laws are far from him. He sneers at all his enemies." Verse 5 is talking about arrogance also, but the new element that's introduced here is prosperity. At first glance, that is somewhat surprising, isn't it? Because being people who know scripture and being on the side of God as we like to think of ourselves, we would expect that when the arrogant person lifts up his head and says, "Well, I'm just going to do what I want. I don't need any God," God would certainly not prosper him.

We think a person like that would get in all sorts of trouble and suffer, and sometimes, of course, he does. But also quite frequently, this kind of person prospers. He gets rich. He's doing very, very well. If he didn't prosper, his arrogance wouldn't matter. A person who isn't prospering can act in an arrogant way and you just laugh at him. That's a foolish person talking like that when he doesn't even have enough money to buy a nice car. But if he's really prospering, when he's driving around in his Maserati and dressed in designer suits and flying off to all the hotspots of the jet-set culture every other weekend for his vacation, and when he does that and he looks at the godly and says, "You ought to give up on that business about God. Where's it ever getting you? Look at me," that's when it really gets to be tough.

The next step along the line is this arrogant man who is prospering, and it becomes a problem. I think it describes our culture. We have a very prosperous culture, and if you can do it in reverse, the prosperity encourages the arrogance, and the arrogance encourages the godlessness, and so on. There's a third thing, found in verse 6: his security. He says to himself, "Nothing will shake me. I'll always be happy, I'll never have trouble." Why? Because I'm prospering. If I wasn't prospering, well, I might worry about the future. I might say, "Where am I ever going to get enough money to get the oil changed in my Maserati?" But as long as I've got plenty of money, well, I'm secure. I don't have to worry about anybody else. Nobody's going to shake me. Money makes money. The more money I have, the more money I get. The more money I get, the more secure I feel.

Mussolini was a very arrogant man. During the Second World War, there was an instance in which somebody shot at him and he was almost killed. But Mussolini, the fascist dictator, laughed it off. He said, "The bullet hasn't been made that can kill me." That's the kind of arrogant security you find here of this man in the 10th Psalm. Here's a fourth characteristic of him, verse 7: his mouth is full of curses and lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue. It's interesting, isn't it? We tend not to put much store by speech. When we think of wickedness, we think of evil acts, doing harmful things to other people. We don't think so much of words because we regard words as relatively unimportant, certainly as harmless.

It's somewhat surprising to come to the Psalms especially, as well as other portions of the Bible, and find how often the writers of the Psalms are concerned about evil words. Saying harmful things, lying, cursing, bitterness, that troubles them a great deal, and they're far wiser than we are in that respect because they know it's harmful. C.S. Lewis, at one point in his writing, his reflections on the Psalms, says that he was surprised when he discovered this too. He thought when you went back to a less sophisticated age where there was a great deal of external violence, what you would find the Psalmist railing against was that kind of physical violence. But although that is there in the Psalms, surprisingly what they talk much more about is words.

When you read these things, you can almost hear the rumors, the innuendos, the slanders, the backbiting, all the vicious comments that were going on in the kingdom and went on in that time. He said you don't have to do any kind of cultural transferal to get that down to our time and apply it. This is the world in which we live. This is exactly the way people act today. Then finally, in verses 8 through 11, you have a description of the violence practiced by such people. David seems to need images to describe it at this point, and there are three of them. He describes this man as an assassin; he's lying in ambush to murder the innocent. He describes him as a lion, and that idea of the assassin lying in wait suggests the image of a lion, a lion lying in wait in cover to catch the helpless. Then the idea of the helpless suggests another idea to him, and it's a hunter who's out hunting, catching the helpless and dragging them off in his net.

That is what this man is like, and not only is he like that, he's successful. His victims are crushed; they collapse, they fall under his strength. The bottom line of it all is that this man says, "God has forgotten, he covers his face and never sees." I don't know whether David intended a progression there, but perhaps you've noticed one. It seems to me there's a progression. A man starts out being arrogant and in his arrogance, because he takes advantage of other people, he prospers. In his prosperity, he assumes that he's secure. Nothing's ever going to touch him. Because he's not afraid of anything touching him, he doesn't care what he says. He'll slander anybody at all. He'll use words to get his own way. He'll lie, he'll cheat, he'll do anything like that. In the end, he practices outright violence against those who are weaker than he is, and he's successful even at that point.

That's the problem of the Psalm. This is not a theoretical analysis of practical atheism. That's the characteristics of it, but David isn't writing this to analyze atheism and say, "Well look, this is the way it functions." He's dealing with the problem, and the problem is look, this guy is prospering. There's a problem for the poor people that are crushed, of course. Victims are crushed, they collapse, they fall under his strength. But David wasn't one of those victims. David was never crushed like that, although there was a time in his life where he had difficulties because of Saul. But David was the king. He had the power. It's the injustice of it that bothers him. It really creates a great spiritual problem for him. How can the wicked prosper? How can he get away with this in a world in which God is the creator and who is in charge?

Peter Craigie, who is one of the great writers on the Psalms, a great contemporary writer, puts it in these words: it's easy to say that God exists, to affirm that morality matters, to believe in divine and human justice. But the words carry a hollow echo when the reality of human living indicates precisely the opposite. The reality appears to be that the atheists have the upper hand, that reality really does not matter, and that justice is dormant at the moment that this reality is perceived in all its starkness. The temptation is at its strongest to jettison faith, morality, and belief in justice. What good is a belief and a moral life which appear to be so out of place in the harsh realities of an evil world? Indeed, would there not be a certain wisdom in the oppressed joining ranks with the oppressors?

That is the problem, isn't it? I'd be very surprised if you've never asked that question yourself when you've seen some very ungodly person prosper. It's not always helpful, sometimes it's helpful I guess, to know that the ungodly sometimes trip themselves up and the arrogant sometimes do fall. But quite often they don't, or at least it seems for long periods of time they don't. Don't you ever find yourself saying, "Why should that be true?" Especially, I think, we wrestle with it when an injustice is practiced against us and the person gets away with it, or against someone we love and we see them suffering and the other person thriving in their sin.

How do the godly respond to such things? That's what this is about. In the second half of the Psalm, we see it. There are a number of things here. First of all, David, like all the godly, calls upon the Lord in such troubles. What he asks God to do is act. Verse 12: "Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God! Do not forget the helpless!" It would seem as if God forgets the helpless, and for long periods of time, he does seem to be inactive. When we pray and ask him to intercede, often, frequently, our prayers are not answered. At least they are not answered immediately in a positive sense. We don't understand it, we're confused. We don't know why God delays even if we believe eventually he's going to answer.

Even though we are confused and even though we do not always see the answer, it is nevertheless not wrong to ask. We should ask, and often God does answer. That's what intercession is all about. We are to intercede for those who are suffering and ask God to intervene. It's what David does. It's not wrong to do that, and we ought to be doing it if we have any sensitivity to injustice. We should pray for those who are experiencing it at the hands of wicked people. Then there's a second thing he does, and that is he reassures himself that God really does see. You notice the great contrast there between verse 11 and verse 14. Verse 11 quotes the ungodly, this wicked, arrogant, boastful man says, "God has forgotten, he covers his face and never sees." But David in verse 14, reminding himself of the reality of the situation, says, "But you, O God, do see trouble and grief. You consider it to take it in hand." God doesn't always do it right away, but he does see it.

Sometimes he brings down the wicked in this life, but even if he doesn't do it in this life, it will certainly happen in the life to come. You and I need to remind ourselves of that and live by what is right regardless of what's happening round about us. No matter that the godless scoff, no matter that they look at you and say, "Well, you're just foolish to live that way," they're the ones that are foolish in the long run. You know how Peter talked about it? Peter obviously faced people like that in his day, and he said the same thing is going to happen in the future. There are going to be scoffers in the last days. Here's the way he describes them. They're going to say, "Where is this coming he promised?" that is, the second coming of Christ which is connected with a final judgment. "Where is it?" they say. "We've been waiting a long, long time. It hasn't come. Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."

Peter says they deliberately forget. In other words, things have not continued always as they have from the beginning of creation. They deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and with water, that is God made all we see. By water also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. He's talking about the great flood. He says they willingly forget that God in history gave one great demonstration of the fact that he does not always ignore evil, and he will not ignore evil inevitably and forever. So he intervened with the flood and the flood came. Now he says by the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, a final judgment by fire being kept for the Day of Judgment and the destruction of ungodly men.

The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. That's Peter's testimony. That's the apostle of the Lord, and it's something that David recognizes as well. God is going to intervene because God does see trouble and grief. Sometimes he does it partially now, but he certainly will do it in fullness at the last day. That's two things: intercession is a proper response, and a reminder that God does see and a judgment is coming. Is there anything else? Yes, there's a third thing, and that is in such difficult times the godly live by faith. That is faith in these things and faith in God to keep them and sustain them even during the difficult times.

You know how Habakkuk experienced it? Habakkuk was a prophet who lived in an age just before the destruction of his kingdom by a foreign nation. The Babylonians were going to come and destroy it according to God's own prophecy to him and through him. Habakkuk was greatly distressed by that because it meant that these practicing atheists, these people the Babylonians who act as if God does not exist, were going to triumph, prospering over his own people, and he was greatly distressed by that. God told him what he was to do. He said the just shall live by faith. That became the great text that Martin Luther discovered and is found in the New Testament in three different places. It really is a great text about justification, but what it means, what it meant to Habakkuk, is that in these difficult times, the ones who know God should live and will live by keeping their eyes upon him and trusting him to help them through those times.

Habakkuk has a great testimony toward the end of his prophecy, which is poetic in the most beautiful sense and yet powerful as well. He's looking forward to these bad days when everything's going to be destroyed, and here's what he says: "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior." And this great testimony: "The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer and enables me to go on the heights." That's the faith David had, and that's the faith that breathes through this Psalm. David ends by saying the Lord is king forever and ever, and the nations will perish from his land. You and I need to learn to live that way, living with our eyes upon the eternal, looking to God, trusting him. It'll make a difference in how we face things, but more than that, it'll be a testimony to his grace and something he will honor as he did in the case of David and has in the case of all the righteous.

Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for this Psalm, and we thank you for its encouragement. How Christian people, godly people, people who know you are to live in days that are characterized by the kind of practical atheism we see around us in our own time? People living as if there is no God, making prosperity, security, and dominance over others the chief end of life. Here is your word to remind us that the end of such conduct and of such people is judgment, judgment at the last day and perhaps even now. In the meantime, we are to live with our eyes upon you and in obedience to what you have told us to do. So strengthen us to that end and give us a joy in that knowledge, a joy even like that that Habakkuk showed and rejoiced in, and help us to live triumphantly for the sake of Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit AllianceNet.org. While you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians, or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how The Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep The Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, AllianceNet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support and for listening to The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.