The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): When everything around us seems to be crumbling and breaking down, we can rest in the fact that our ultimate security does not depend on human institutions. Thanks for joining us today for a message from Dr. James Boice out of Psalms chapter 11. He'll challenge us to live a countercultural life, aligned with God's standards, though it may often be at odds with the world around us.

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 together as Dr. Boice presents five key words he believes summarize this particular Psalm.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying the 11th Psalm, which is one of the great Psalms of the Psalter. They're all great, of course, but this one particularly so, or at least it seems so to us because it speaks so directly to contemporary issues or a contemporary problem.

If I could summarize what this Psalm is about briefly, I think I could do it in just five words. I would call it "faith's response to fear's counsel." The Psalmist, who presumably is David, is in danger. And his well-meaning friends are there around him and they're giving him some advice. What they say to him is this, "David, these are bad times. Things are falling apart all around us. What you need to do is get away from your enemies, escape while you still have a chance. Flee to the mountains," is their counsel.

And what David says to them is that he's not going to do it. Rather, he is going to trust God. Now, in the midst of this Psalm, as part of the erroneous advice of David's friends, there is a question which is a classic question from the Old Testament, and probably you know it or have heard it many times. Verse 3: "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Fifty years ago now, when the great Bible teacher Arno C. Gaebelein, who participated in the preparation of the Scofield Reference Bible, was commenting on this Psalm, he said, "This is the burning question of our day: when the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" But if that was true 50 years ago, half a century ago, it is even more so true in our time. I suppose a hundredfold more true today than it was back then.

What shall we do in an age when the laws are no longer upheld, when morality is undermined, and evil seems to sweep on unchecked? What shall we do when even Christian people disregard the Bible and go their own way, when even teachers in the church make fun of spiritual things? What can we do when everything about us seems to be giving way? That's the question the Psalm is asking. Some, like the counselors of David, advise flight. But David says that his response is to take refuge in the Lord. And that's what we need to consider.

Now, we ask the question: Is there a period in David's life into which this Psalm fits? There are two possibilities and there are people on both sides that see this as important. One is when David was fleeing from Saul. It was certainly a bad period in his life; he was in great danger. The other was during the rebellion of his son Absalom when he was also in great danger and had to flee Jerusalem.

The difficulty with addressing this Psalm to either of those contexts is that in this Psalm David says he's not going to flee to the mountains, and in those two situations, because of a variety of requirements, he did. I don't think that hurts in our interpretation of the Psalm, however, because what it really does is release it so we can interpret it more broadly. This doesn't apply to just one particular situation through which David lived, but it applies to any situation in which those who are trying to live a righteous life, live by the standards of God's revealed Word, find themselves in a culture where everything seems to be giving way.

Now, the Psalm has three parts. The first three verses contain the bad advice of the Psalmist's friends. The next verses, verses 4 through 6, the second stanza, contain David's response. And then finally, at the very end, you have a verse that describes the result that follows from that response. What we need to do is look at this question, the question of verse 3, and think about it in terms of David's time, such as we know it, and also our own time.

"When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" That is meant to be a despairing question. When everything is breaking down, there's nothing the righteous can do, is the way the question is intended. Think of some of the situations. I said there's no particular situation in David's day that we know of to which it might be applied, but there certainly were bad times in David's day in which, as it seemed, the foundations were giving way.

I think, for example, of that particularly dark moment that's told us in 1 Samuel chapter 22, when David was fleeing from Saul for the very first time. In his youth, after he had killed Goliath, he was a favorite at the court; he made good friends with Jonathan, Saul's son. But things got worse and worse as the jealousy of King Saul increased, and finally there was a parting between David and Jonathan in which Jonathan said to David, "I regret to say this, but my father is determined to take your life. The only thing you can do is run away."

And so he did. David went to the town of Nob. He arrived in a hurry without any adequate preparation. He didn't have his army with him nor did he have food to eat. He went to the priest, Ahimelech, the priest of Nob. Ahimelech was a bit surprised to see David there without his division of the army. David had always traveled with a division of the army before. But David explained that he was on urgent business and he asked Ahimelech if he couldn't have something to eat. Ahimelech didn't have anything except the consecrated bread that was there at the altar, but Ahimelech gave him that. That's referred to in the New Testament as the needs of people coming before ritual rites of purification and so on.

David took that and he said, "Do you have any weapons?" He didn't have any weapons, but he did have Goliath's sword, which had been in the safe keeping of the priest. And so he gave David Goliath's sword and David went on his way. Now, a short time after that, Saul heard that Ahimelech had befriended David and he called Ahimelech to account. He accused him of treason. He said, "You have assisted my enemy David and more than that, you've even, as I understand, inquired of the Lord for him," that is, he sought for a special revelation as to what David was to do.

Ahimelech denied that he had been traitorous at all. He said, "David is your servant. I treated him as I always treat him. He came on your business. I took care of him. What else would you expect me to do?" But Saul wouldn't hear anything about it. He continued in his accusations, so blinded was he by his anger and he said, "As the Lord lives, you and your family shall die." He turned to his soldiers and he said, "Kill Ahimelech and the other priests." The soldiers wouldn't do it. It was wrong, of course, but in addition to that, you just do not lift up your hand against the Lord's anointed. They refused.

Finally, there was a hanger-on of the court there; his name was Doeg. And Saul turned to him and said, "Well, you kill him." And this man, in order to get in good with the king, did exactly that. He took a sword, he killed Ahimelech and the other priests, and then he augmented the tragedy by going to Nob and wiping out all of the priest's families, all of their children, all of their wives, all of their livestock. He absolutely killed everything living in the town. Those living in that day, perhaps at that time David himself, might have said, "When the foundations are giving way, what can the righteous do?"

Let me give you an illustration that brings it down a little closer to our own time. In Colombia, in South America, the foundations are giving way. As you know, the government of President Virgilio Barco is under attack by the nation's drug cartel. The government has been trying to enforce its laws; the drug barons are fighting back. They have unleashed a long series of terrorist attacks in which bombs have been exploded in the country's newspapers, and the banks, and the courts, and in which they've begun to assassinate important people, including one of the police chiefs of Medellin and several judges, and then, as you well know, the Colombian presidential candidate, Luis Carlos Galán.

When the government began to extradite those who were engaged in the drug traffic to the United States to stand charges where their cohorts would not be able to release them, the drug cartel threatened to kill 10 judges for every one of its people that were extradited. Some time ago, Justice Minister Monica de Greiff came to Washington for help. There were rumors that she was going to resign because of the dangers, the mounting dangers of her job. She denied it at the time. She said, "The law is under siege in Colombia. We must protect it in every way we can." But two weeks later, she did resign because of the mounting danger. Colombia today is a near-anarchy, and I am sure the righteous in that land might well be saying, "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

And it's not just in South America or in other third-world countries that that kind of a threat looms. We see it in our own country as well. The drugs that are prepared in Colombia and South and Central America are for the American market. And there are very few countries, very few cities in our own country that are not affected by it. In major US cities, including our own, the drugs are sold openly on the street corners. People are killed because of the drug traffic. And not only those who are engaged in the traffic, sometimes it's innocent victims.

In Philadelphia, not long ago, six-year-old Ralph Brooks was paralyzed by a stray bullet that was fired in a feud between two drug dealers in the area of 20th and Tasker Streets. In New York City, Maria Hernandez, a 34-year-old mother, was shot through the window of her home because she had been mounting a campaign in her neighborhood to resist the encroachment of the drug traffic into her block. Two weeks before that, her husband had been stabbed because he had stood up against a dealer. We have that here.

And we have crime as well. Crime is mounting in our city. It's normal now to go out on the streets and see cars with a sign in their window, cars that have to be parked on the streets regularly, that say things like "No dollars, no radio, no valuables, no nothing," because people are breaking into the cars regularly. It's hard to walk down a block, a street in a block of our city where you don't see broken window glass on the street, which is a silent testimony to the fact that a car was broken into there some time before.

The laws are not being enforced. And when you call the police, they come, sometimes but not always, because the chance even of apprehending someone who does something like that, let alone convicting them or sending them to jail is so slim. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?

And you see it in the church as well. Church should stand as a bastion of righteousness. It should stand on the Word of God. It should speak faithfully of God's revelation. But the church is not doing that. Church has sold out to entertainment, and the liberal church to liberalism, where the Word is not believed and the wisdom, such as it is, of men and women, with all its relativism, comes in to take the place of the truth. Believers who want to live by the Scripture might well repeat the question of the Psalm, "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

Well, one thing the righteous can do is go on being righteous. And in addition to that, they can stand against the evil. God doesn't call us to be successful, but he does call us to stand. And, of course, that is what David does. The one thing we are not to do is to flee to the mountains.

Now, let's look at what David actually does here. I've asked this question, "What can the righteous do?" It's a question of the Psalm. Well, let me answer that question by another question. And the question I ask now is this: Where should the righteous look when you're living in such times? In what direction should you look? To whom should you look? The answer to that is perfectly obvious: The righteous should look to God.

Charles Wesley knew it. He wrote of such times: "Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on Thee; leave, ah! leave me not alone, still support and comfort me. All my trust on Thee is stayed, all my help from Thee I bring; cover my defenseless head with the shadow of Thy wing." And that's what David does. They're saying to him, "Flee to the mountains." But he says, "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne."

Do you remember when we were studying Psalm 8, I pointed out when we were studying Psalm 8, that there you have this very fascinating description of man as being in a middle place in God's created order? That Psalm begins by talking of the Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. It ends by talking of the Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. But in between, it has a description of man. And it's talked about God and the angels and then it talks about man and then after that it goes on to talk about the beasts, the animals. And it says of man, "You have made him a little lower than the angels, but you've crowned him with glory and honor." The word actually is Elohim, "a little lower than the gods" or "a little lower than God."

And I pointed out, you see, that that is very significant because by describing man as a little lower than the heavenly beings, it's a way of saying that it's our privilege in this mediating position in the universe to look up to the heavenly beings, to the angels, beyond the angels to God, and become increasingly like God. But if we won't have God, if we cut ourselves off from God, the only place we have to look is down. We look to the animals and we become like them. That's what's wrong with our culture. That's why it's so beast-like. That is why the foundations are being destroyed. The foundations have to be God. And if you don't have God, well, what you have ultimately is anarchy, people behaving even worse than the beasts.

But you see what the righteous do is look to God. Righteous know that they're made in the image of God. They know that God has reached out to save them from their sins, and so instead of looking down to the animals, they look up to God and they fix their hopes on Him. And that is exactly what we find David doing in the Psalm. What can the righteous do? They can look to God.

And what does David see when he looks to God? Well, he describes it in a number of different terms. First of all, he says, "The Lord is in His holy temple." We tend when we read that word "temple" to think of the temple that Solomon built, or perhaps of that later temple that was built by King Herod that was standing there in the time of Jesus Christ, and we say, "Well, the Lord is located in the building, in his holy temple." That's not what David's talking about. For one thing, the temple wasn't built in David's day. There was no temple in David's day. I know very well that that word "temple" sometimes is used later to look back to describe the wilderness tabernacle which did exist in David's day, but it was used to describe the tabernacle in David's day because those living in a later time who knew the temple saw the tabernacle as a forerunner of the later temple. The architecture of the tabernacle was the architecture of the temple. So the word is sometimes used in that way.

But that's not what David is talking about here. He's not thinking of any earthly tabernacle, he's not thinking of any earthly temple. He's thinking of God's temple in heaven, His holy temple. And when he says the Lord is in His holy temple, he's reminding himself of the holiness of Almighty God. You see, the tabernacle had the Holy of Holies within it, the very, very holy place. That's where God was understood symbolically to dwell. And David looks beyond that to the real Holy of Holies in heaven and he reminds himself that the judge of all the earth will do right. God is a just judge. He is a holy judge. He is not indifferent to what is happening on earth.

And then secondly, he says, "The Lord is on His heavenly throne." Not only in His holy temple, but on His holy throne. A throne is a place from which a king renders judgment. So what David is saying here, reminding himself strongly, is not only is God a holy God, a God who knows the difference between right and wrong, who is not indifferent to the sins and evil of men, but he is also a God who is going to render judgment. He is a just, holy, sovereign King. Maybe, often is, that times of history go by and we don't see evidences of God's judgment, that execution of justice seems delayed. But it's not going to be delayed forever and sometimes we even see glimpses of it in the things that happen day by day. David said, "Let's not forget that. Let's not forget the nature of our God."

Now, you see these two phrases describe the direction that he's looking. He's not looking down; he's looking up. He's looking to the holy temple; he's looking to God upon his heavenly throne. And when he looks up and when he sees God that way and reminds himself of the character of the God that he's worshipping, what does he remind himself that God does?

The rest of this section talks about it. Number one, He is observing the sons of men; His eyes examine them. God isn't up in His holy temple, sitting on His heavenly throne, with His eyes closed. God's eyes are never closed. God is looking by His spirit at what goes on throughout the universe in every corner thereof. He sees the thoughts and intents of our hearts, enough to describe them as being only evil all the time. It's a way of saying He's there every instant to know every single thing and thought that you and I do and have. David says, "That's our God. That's our God who knows it all. You can't pull the wool over this God's eyes." He's observing the deeds of men; He may not be acting immediately, but He is observing. He knows what's going on. So I, when I go through the difficulties of life and the foundations seem to be giving way, am never to find myself saying, "Oh my, if only God knew!" God does know what's going on. And He knows it far better than we do.

And then He says secondly, "The Lord examines the righteous." Now that word "bahan" in Hebrew is a word that can be translated in two ways. It can be translated "test"—He tests the righteous—or it can be translated "examine" in the sense of "approve." How it is taken different ways, you'll find some of your translations will do that. It occurs actually in two verses. You have it in verse 4: "His eyes examine them." Some of our versions say "test them." And you find it in verse 5: "The Lord examines the righteous." And some of our versions say "test them."

Now, Charles Haddon Spurgeon took the word in the sense of testing and they said, "Well, He's testing them by the kind of situation the early verses of the Psalm describe. Here they're living in times in which the foundations are giving way. The Lord is using this to test His people, to see if they're strong, to develop their faith, to purge their dross." All of that, of course, is a perfectly valid meaning.

But then there are other people, the great Bible student Delitzsch is one who says that no, it really means examines them in the sense of approving them. He tests them in this way: He examines their heart, observing the sons of men, which is what the verse immediately preceding says. And when He looks at the righteous, He says, "These persons are righteous." And so He sets His approval on them.

Which of the two are you to choose? I think the second is the obvious one in the context. Not that the word can't mean "put through trials" in order that by trials our faith might be strengthened. That's a true enough idea. But you see, that's not what he's saying here. He says God is a God of judgment and He's looking down on earth upon the hearts of men. And He knows who's doing well and He knows who's not doing well. And He knows the righteous, even though they're beset by all the problems of the times in which they live, and He approves them. He sets His seal of approval on them. Why do I say that? Because the very next verse develops the other half of the contrast. It begins to talk about the wicked and it says on the wicked, He will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur.

I guess that was encouraging to David, too. When he said "burning sulfur," he's thinking back to Sodom and Gomorrah; it's the way they were destroyed. And he's reminding himself by that term that God has judged the wicked in the past. He's given us those judgments so that we might not think that God is indifferent to evil. Peter does the same thing in his first letter in reference to the flood. He says they're willfully ignorant of the fact that God is a God of justice because if they'd only open their eyes and read history, they would know that there was a time in the past when God destroyed the race by a great flood; only Noah and his immediate family were saved. God is not indifferent to evil. And David's doing the same thing here. He's reminding himself that there was a time when He destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sin. That same God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their sin and the race at the time of Noah by the flood is a God that is going to execute a final judgment upon all people. And those who have destroyed the foundations, those who, as he says in the opening verses of the Psalm, have been hiding in the shadows to shoot at the upright at heart, they themselves are going to be shot at by the Almighty God and destroyed.

And what of the righteous? They are going to be approved, for the Lord is righteous and He loves justice. You see what happens when David looks up? The whole perspective changes. He says to himself, "Well, yes, the foundations are being shaken, but after all, I'm not standing because I stand on human foundations. I don't get my security because the laws are good laws or because the government is so secure. Nothing human is secure. I get my strength because I depend on the God who alone is stable and who will execute a perfect judgment in the end." You see, with that kind of faith, that kind of trust, he can live through anything.

There's one other thing. I said you see that David looks up, that's one thing the righteous do. There's another thing he does. Not only does he look up, he looks ahead because he says, "What's going to be the end of it all?" Not so far as the wicked are concerned; God's going to judge them, he's already spoken of that. But what's He going to do so far as the righteous are concerned?

The very last line of the Psalm tells us. The last line says, "Upright men will see His face." What is that? That is the beatific vision, the sight of God face to face. That was the great aspiration of the Old Testament saints. You know how it was true of Moses. Moses, who was with God on the mountain and who experienced such a transference of the glory of God that when he came down from the mountain his face was shining and it was so bright that the people who confronted him couldn't bear to look upon it, they had him wear a veil to cover his face until in time the glory faded away. Nevertheless, as he was in a cloud on the mountain, and Moses, when he was face to face with God, said to him, "God, what I really want to do is see your face."

And you know how God answered him. He said, "I'm going to put you in a cleft of the rock. I'm going to cover you with my hand. I'm going to pass by. You'll see my back, but you'll never see my face, because no man can see my face and live." And yet, you see, the aspiration of the righteous is to do just that, to see the face of God. And David says, you see, in the life to come, the upright will indeed see God.

A lot of the commentators don't like that because whenever you begin to talk about an afterlife and so on, they say that's putting too much into the Old Testament. The Old Testament saints didn't have that kind of faith; they didn't have that well-developed an understanding of the afterlife. There's some truth to it. The resurrection of our Lord had not occurred, and all of the things that we normally use to talk about the afterlife were absent from their experience. But nevertheless, they looked ahead.

And when we come to the New Testament and begin to think about this in terms of the New Testament revelation, we find exactly the same thing. You know what John says in his first letter? It's the third chapter. He's talking about the return of the Lord and says, "When He comes again, we will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is." The day is coming when we're going to see him face to face, and when we see him face to face, we're going to be like him.

And then he draws an important conclusion. He says, "Therefore everyone who has this hope in him," that is, to see Jesus, to see God face to face, "everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as He is pure." What shall the righteous do? Go on being righteous and look for that day when we're going to see him face to face. It's people like that who change the world. If God so blesses, sometimes the righteous prosper and you have something like revival and revolution, all in the best sense. But you see, even if that doesn't come, if that's not God's will for our age, the righteous are still to live by faith.

Our Father, we thank you for this Psalm. We thank you for the practical teaching that it has for us. Each of these Psalms is so practical because they deal with life situations that all of us confront. And this one, perhaps especially, because it describes the decay of civilization in our day. And yet we're not to look at that and be hopeless, as so many around us seem to be. We're to look upward to You. Help us to do that. Give us that upward gaze which does not make us unfit for life but actually fit to stand against the terrors of the time. And so strengthen us that it might be seen that we were with Jesus and one day we'll see Him face to face. 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. And 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.

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