Standing Against the Message of Hopelessness

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the privilege of hearing your word today. We recognize a certain fearfulness in this process because we’re responsible for how we respond to your truth. But there’s joyfulness because you’ve given us truth. And Lord, as we open it today and consider what you’ve written for us, we pray that your spirit would teach us, give us ready hearts, humble hearts, give us the wisdom to apply what we learn. pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen. I invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn to Psalm 11. If you need a copy, there should be one under one of the chairs in front of you, maybe within reach. The book of Psalms is right in the middle of the Bibles that don’t have a lot of commentary in them. And so split it down the middle, you’ll probably be in Psalms, then find Psalm number 11. And while you’re doing that, I want to tell you about a heresy that was taking the church by storm in the fourth century AD. It was called Arianism, and it’s the idea that Jesus is a created being, that he’s not truly God.

And as strange as it sounds, that heresy had caught the attention of almost every prominent theologian in the church in that generation. There was just one prominent voice pushing back against it, and that was the Bishop of Alexandria whose name was Athanasius. And he was the only guy of any consequence who was saying, no, Jesus is the creator, he’s not created. The controversy was pretty intense and it was very public.

And so at one gathering, Athanasius was at the podium and one of his opponents became very exercised and stood up and yelled, Athanasius, the world is against you. And he calmly replied, then it is Athanasius against the world. And that became the watchword, Athanasius Contramundum. Athanasius against the world.

It was an insult. It was an attempt to pressure him into getting in line and agreeing with the vast majority of the theologians of that day. For Athanasius, it was resolve. He was right, of course. His view eventually prevailed, but he was long dead when it did. The Athanasian Creed was named in his honor by a grateful subsequent generation but he was in heaven when that happened.

He lived the balance of his days against the world. You ever feel like that’s you? You ever feel like it’s you against the world? Genuine believers actually usually do feel some of that and should feel some of that. There’s a system in this world that is against you and you have to stand against it. If you’re in Christ, your normal course of living in this world can often be described as against the world. You don’t fit in. You can’t be what they insist that you be. There’s a spiritual battle going on, and in this battle, the world is arrayed against you, and you have to stand against the world.

And it’s just like it was in the fourth century, that much of the worldliness comes at us from religious people. Athanasius was standing against people who were claiming the true faith. Many of them, I’m sure, were of the true faith, but were very confused. Others of them were false. But the foolishness also comes at us from the irreligious.

It comes at us from the government, from businesses, and in whatever form it comes, the world has a message for you. The world wants you to be afraid. The world wants you to worry. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t show your faith. We can live our beliefs, but you can’t live your beliefs outside of that building you go to. And live flinching in fear and being quiet. It’s you against the world. With you trying to maintain a sense of hope and confidence while the world is telling you you’re crazy for thinking that way.

Can’t you see how terrible everything is? We’re told every day that things are really bad, maybe they’re worse than they’ve ever been, and there’s just nothing you can do about it. The message comes to you through every kind of media, but also through people that you can’t avoid, the people that you’re interacting with. And the message is that everything is falling apart. Society has come off of the rails. People are worse than they’ve ever been, and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.

And much of the negative talk comes veiled in a positive message. If we could just do these things, everything would be better. But those things can’t be done, and it’s just a different way of complaining. Seems more positive for a while, and then you realize this is going nowhere at all.

In the normal course of living in this world, you’re inundated with negative ideas and predictions of hopelessness. And if you want to live a life of hope, if you want to live with any kind of confidence and with joy, sometimes it really is you against the world.

And the people bringing this message of hopelessness speak as if it’s a brand new message. The hopelessness that they announce is presented as if it were news, something that’s never happened quite like this before, and it seems that way. Like you’re standing against something that’s brand new. It’s so new, nobody even knows how to respond. And that’s part of the message. And it seems to be so. But in reality, the message of hopelessness is an old, old message.

Today, I want to take you back in time just over 3,000 years and show you the same message of doom that you’re hearing every day. And more importantly, I want to show you how a godly man stood against it. and maintained his hope and confidence. Our text is Psalm 11. I hope you’ll look for yourself at what God’s word says.

In the Lord, I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain, for behold, the wicked bend the bow. They make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord’s throne is in heaven. His eyes behold. His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. The one who loves violence, his soul hates. Upon the wicked he will rain snares. Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his face. Now this psalm is written by King David of Israel.

And it’s an expression of David’s frustration with this message of hopelessness that was prevalent in his time. And his expression of frustration is followed by a response to the messengers of doom. Now Israel had a great many enemies then just like it has now. And David personally had enemies throughout his life. Some of his own family. His life was often in danger.

And so the words of the Psalm that we’re looking at today are not coming from a novice. These are not words from someone who is naive about life or has never faced anything complex. In reality, David’s challenges were probably far more significant than anything any of us has seen.

And so if this means of standing against a message of hopelessness worked for this guy in his circumstances, it’s going to work for us in ours. David heard a lot of hopelessly negative, aggressive talk about how bad things were, and he answers that talk in this psalm. But before we look at that, we should note that before David mentions anything about the message or any response to the message, he begins this psalm with his own personal resolve. Before he even gets to what people were saying, he says, in the Lord I take refuge. Now this is an important key to standing against this message of hopelessness, resolve to do what David did and say in the Lord, I take refuge. Despite all the talk around him, David was determined to select his own beginning point for his own thinking. And that’s what this first line of the Psalm is a declaration of.

He never gave in to the hopelessly negative talk because he didn’t start with the circumstances. He didn’t start with the prevailing opinions of the day, he started with the Lord. And he did that very intentionally. His refuge and hope were completely in the Lord, that was his starting point, that was his default position. His confidence came from a source that is not dependent on circumstances and is not dependent on opinions.

And because his focus was on the Lord rather than on the circumstances, His immediate response to the people who were complaining about everything and predicting doom and gloom was to say, how can you even say that to me? After stating his resolve, he asked the negative campaigners a question.

How can you say to my soul? And then he’s quoting them after that. But we should note that The popular message of doom is a message aimed at your soul. How can you say to my soul? This message is designed to strike fear at the very core of your being, to weaken your spiritual condition, to destroy your ability to commune with your God. The negative talk coming at you all the time is not just for your mind. It’s not just for your intellect. The target is drawn on your soul.

But David’s resolve to take confidence in the Lord was so strong that he didn’t give an inch, and instead he says, how can you say that to my soul? Notice that David did not engage the messengers of hopelessness in a dialogue. He didn’t invite them to debate the issues in hopes of ending with a better understanding of each other’s position. He didn’t seek to blend his view with their view in order to move them to the middle a little bit. This question is a rebuke. How can you say to my soul?

And what follows the initial resolve and the question that is a rebuke is a quote of what the messengers of doom were saying. So from the middle of verse one to the end of verse three, he’s quoting or at least summarizing the things he was hearing. And they were saying, flee as a bird to your mountain. For behold, the wicked bend the bow. They make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? They’re saying you better run away and hide. The only hope for you is to avoid these powerful problems and try to go unnoticed by your enemies. Flee as a bird to your mountain. The wicked are more powerful than you. They’re active and they’re deadly and they’re ready to do you harm right now.

The wicked bend the bow. You cannot win because they don’t play fair and you do. They make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. They’re treacherous. They’re going to catch you unawares. There’s no way you can be ready. Anyone can be ambushed. They’re going to take advantage of your vulnerability. They’re shooting from the dark places. There’s no way you can defend yourself against that. They’re going to get you. And it’s the upright in heart that they’re targeting. There’s nothing you can do but hide. Hope they don’t find you.

And the messengers of doom are quick to announce that things are so far gone that they can’t possibly be turned around now. Society is so completely off the rails that the very foundations are destroyed. No one remembers where we came from. No one embraces the things that made us better in the past.

Verse three captures the heart of it. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? You feel the hopelessness in that? That’s exactly the kind of message that we hear constantly. People don’t respect the laws anymore. They’re not interested in facts anymore. People are protesting perceived injustice by carrying out acts of injustice and then defending their position. Foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do? We hear it in reference to the economy. The dollar has been eroded. Corporations are purchasing privileges rather than competing in the open markets. The markets themselves have been manipulated.

What can the righteous do? We hear it in reference to education. Those who stand against everything good have complete control of the system of education. They’re destroying our society by destroying the minds of the next generation. What can the righteous do? We hear it all the time in politics at every level, Washington, state level, local level. The international news is filled with the same message. The foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do?

That’s the message of hopelessness aimed at your soul by a wicked world. And that message is compelling because it seems so contemporary. and because it has a measure of truth in it. There are a lot of negative things that can be pointed to as evidence of real problems. And so the message gets traction because of that measure of truth, but the message itself is not true. That truth that they’re pointing to has been twisted into something else. So the message of hopelessness is a lie. It’s been distorted into something wrong. There are very real problems, but the conclusions that they try to reach from those problems is completely wrong.

This idea that you need to run away and hide and be intimidated while you hide is wrong. Now, it is possible that the message of doom has already taken root in some of the souls here today. Maybe there’s already a tendency to want to keep your head down and not be noticed. to run away and hide somewhere. Maybe some of you have come to think that there’s nothing we can do because things are so bad. Things have gone so far for so long, and the evil people have become so powerful. Maybe some of you are dreading the future, maybe fearful of the world your children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren are going to live in. Maybe anxiety and dismay have come to characterize your thinking too much. It’s a trap, but it’s a trap that has caught a lot of believers, at least for a while. The Pilgrim’s Progress study, this is what was going on in Doubting Castle. When you get there, they were in the trap, they were caught.

But in this Psalm, David shows us how to get out of that trap if we’re caught, how to avoid getting in it if we’re not caught yet. We’ve seen David’s initial resolve. And we’ve seen his question that was a rebuke. And then we’ve seen a message that is remarkably contemporary that he was hearing more than 3,000 years ago.

The rest of this psalm is David’s response to the messengers of doom. He answers them and he demonstrates that their premise is completely flawed. Their conclusions are all wrong. There is a greater reality. that the messengers of doom have not been willing to consider or by some other means have failed to consider. David’s response starts with that greater reality and the rest of the psalm just stays on that theme.

Look again with me if you would at verse four. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord’s throne is in heaven. His eyes behold. His eyelids test the sons of men. Now this one verse puts everything in a completely different light. And this one verse will go a long way to help us remember to be in a more hopeful frame of mind. The Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord exists above all of these things that trouble us.

He is the Lord. He’s absolutely sovereign. He rules over his creation. His throne is in heaven and he rules there, but he rules everything he has made. And it says the Lord sees. Nothing that is done on this earth escapes his notice. His eyes behold everything. None of these problems are news to him. He is attentive to all things happening on this earth and his attention is intense and is active, he is fully engaged. And the declaration that God makes through his servant David in this psalm is that this engagement of the Almighty is personal and individual.

It says he tests the sons of men. Now that is an expression that we could say people. The Lord tests people, not just the guys. It’s just an expression. Individually and personally, God is attentive to everyone on this earth. And not only does the Lord observe everything that every person is doing and thinking, but he measures what he sees. And he measures what he sees by his own standard of righteousness.

He doesn’t look down and say, well, Dave is a pretty lousy guy, but he’s doing better than that wino in the gutter. That’s what all our comparisons are. They end with two winos in the gutter going, he’s worse than I am, Lord. God doesn’t measure that way. He measures by his own standard of righteousness. When he tests the sons of men, he tests us from the perspective of absolute holiness.

Nothing escapes his notice and no sin is ever accommodated by him. The world is constantly assuming that there’s nothing to stop the wicked. The constant message coming particularly from the wicked is that the wicked operate independent of all constraint, all accountability, that they’re so powerful that nothing can stop them. They’re too big to fail. They’re gonna get you, so you better hide. But the premise is all wrong. There is a much higher reality.

The Lord himself knows. Now verse five goes on to say more about God’s testing of people. Verse five says, the Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence, his soul hates. The Lord tests every heart. The wicked are not operating outside of the Lord’s observation. It’s not as if he is unconcerned about what they are doing. It’s not as if they could do something beyond the scope of his notice. Now some people believe that the Lord cares for his children and everybody else is just on their own. But this says the Lord tests the righteous and the wicked. And the Lord is not indifferent of what he sees.

Now verse five contains some very strong language. And we need to face it head on. And we need to think about the ramifications. Because this is language that is not at all consistent with what most people would say is true about God. This verse says, but the Lord, the one who loves violence, his soul hates. Not God loves the sinner, but not the sin. The one who loves violence, his soul hates.

So the wicked who are bending the bow to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart, may think that God doesn’t notice. Or they may think that if God does notice, he’s not gonna care. Or they may think that God doesn’t even exist and so can have no bearing on anything. But what an awful lot of them think is that God will see and God will notice that God is love and his love is going to override everything and it’ll all be fine in the end because love is the only thing in the whole Bible about God. God announces a very hard truth through David in this psalm.

And it’s something that many people who call themselves Christian think it would be wrong to say. And not realizing that they’re arguing against the scripture, many Christians have argued against this idea that God could hate. Some with great vigor, some of them are like Athanasius, opponent who couldn’t keep quiet and stood up in the crowd, that’s wrong.

And yet this says, the one who loves violence, his soul hates. And what this means is that God has seething wrath stored up for people who love violence, for people who are attacking the innocent, who are continually working to intimidate and destroy the righteous. God’s hatred is not like the impotent hatred that people so often display. Now we lack the power to follow through if we indulge in hate. Most of the time we don’t get the revenge we want when we sin in that way. We don’t have the power to hate to affect, but God’s not like that. He has the power to follow through. The defender of the righteous stores up wrath against the wicked. But we may be absolutely sure that when his time has arrived, he is going to act in righteousness.

And verse six describes his actions. Verse six, upon the wicked he will rain snares, fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. The fire of judgment is coming upon the wicked and it’s coming from God himself. And the assumption for the prophets of doom is that the wicked are going to win because they’re so strong, too strong for us to stop. Well, surely they’re going to win. David replies that fire, brimstone, and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. Now at issue in this argument is what constitutes reality.

The wicked tell you that you’d better hide, there’s no hope, there’s nothing you can do. The wicked are too powerful. They’re too treacherous. Nothing can stop them. The best you can do is keep your head down and try not to be noticed. Spend your life being afraid.

The other perspective is that the Lord is still in heaven. He’s enthroned there. He’s paying attention. He knows that the righteous are righteous. He knows that the wicked are wicked. He’s storing up wrath. against those who love wickedness while he calls to himself everyone who will believe his gospel. That’s why he’s waiting. He’s waiting because he’s still calling people to himself. He’s holding back unimaginable wrath until all of his children are brought in through the gospel.

So which opinion of reality? Not in this hour. The answer is always easy in this hour. What opinion of reality do you have Monday morning? Or when life gets harder as the week goes on? How well do you remember under pressure who it is you’re serving?

Does what you know about him give you the kind of confidence to stand against the world and its message of hopelessness? At the end of this psalm, David returns to his confidence in the Lord. In verse seven, he says, the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his face. The one who rules from heaven is righteous, and he loves righteousness. And none of God’s hatred will ever be carried out or spent in any way on those he has made righteous. The Lord loves righteous. He has only good things in store for the righteous.

David makes a very bold claim here. I don’t know if you can fathom how big this is. The upright will behold his face. What this means is that the righteous, when we will be in the Lord, in the presence of the Lord in a face to face relationship in which we are not judged. That’s where this is headed. There’s no need to run away and hide. There’s no need to live in fear. There’s no need to dread the future. There’s no need to be intimidated by the evil that is all around us, even though it really is all around us.

If you’re righteous, you will behold his face. We’ll behold the face of the Almighty without being condemned in judgment. We’ll behold his face and be welcomed. Remember in Acts 7, when they killed Stephen, looked up into heaven, he saw the Lord Jesus standing. The Bible says he’s seated at the right hand of God. Stephen saw him stand up, welcome his child. into heaven in a face-to-face relation with the Almighty. So if you’re righteous, you have nothing at all to fear. But how does one become righteous? How do you even know if you’re in on this deal? And how do you get in on this deal if you’re not in on it already?

Well, beware of thinking that you can move yourself from one category to the other category. I was careful not to point at anybody when I did that. Beware of thinking that you can say to yourself, you know, I’ve lived a pretty wicked life, but I’m going to change.

Because in all of human history, no one has ever been able to make that transaction. Ever. No one has ever successfully conquered their own heart Jeremiah said, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? You can’t even know what’s in your heart, let alone conquer it.

And so no one has ever caused himself to stop being an object of God’s hatred and begin being an object of God’s righteousness. Never happened. No one has ever removed himself from the category of wickedness and placed himself in the category of righteousness, no person can overcome sin on his own. So if you’re righteous, you have nothing to fear. But how do you become righteous? Well, the truth revealed in scripture is that you have to get your righteousness from God himself. You can’t produce it. We can’t all get together and produce it. We can’t gradually work ourselves out of it even in an extended life between here and heaven. It doesn’t happen. You can’t conquer it. The righteous who are loved and cared for by God are those who have been made righteous by God himself. We didn’t do that for ourselves. That was a work of God.

This is a transaction that God works from the inside out when a person turns from a life of sin and embraces Jesus as Lord and Savior. Jesus alone who can make you righteous. And it can happen because of his work of substitution on the cross where he died to pay for the sins and quench the wrath of God over all of the sins committed by those who would trust him. And then God causes this transaction to happen when we believe, causes us to become righteous, imputes to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ himself.

And David, the human author of this psalm, had been saved that way. He was looking forward to what God would do. He knew that God was going to send the Messiah. He knew that God had to produce the salvation and he trusted and he was saved by the same faith and the same Lord that we’re saved by. Everyone who trusts God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ undergoes the same change.

If it isn’t true of you already, it can be true today. There’s a promise in scripture, it’s in Romans 10, 9, and it says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. Now there’s a lot more in there than it sounds like in one sentence.

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, then you are acknowledging that he is your Lord, that you’ve ceased fighting against his authority over your life. You’re not making him Lord of your life, You don’t make him anything. He is Lord. And you’re turning from a life fighting against his Lordship to a life where you’re embracing it and believing it and you’re rejoicing in it. You can confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. You’re changing from what you were.

And then if you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, well, why was he dead? Because he sacrificed his life as a substitution for all who would believe his gospel. And God raised him up from the dead, proving that the sacrifice was acceptable. And so if you believe that God raised him from the dead, that’s the package. You’re believing that the gospel worked, that he is who he said he was, and that you’re gonna trust him and nothing else for your salvation. Confess him as Lord, Believe in his provision for you on the cross, and you shall be saved.

Let today be the day. You have not known him before. Let today be the day that you say, the Lord, I take refuge. And if you do belong to him, as many of you do, this psalm is showing us how to enjoy the privileges that we have. The privileges that a wicked world is trying to take away from us. We don’t need to run away and hide. We don’t need to be afraid. We don’t need to keep our mouths shut. For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his faith. Let us live in the power that God has given us.

Our Father, we thank you so much for this song, for the rich treasure it is for us, for how contemporary it is and how needed it is. Help us to embrace it in its fullness. Help us to live more hopeful lives, impervious to the wicked message of this world. Let us say with David, how can you even say that? Father, for those who don’t yet know you, we beg your mercy. We pray you would cause your word to do its work in them that they might see the truth, be gloriously saved. Lord, may our response to this passage of scripture be pleasing in your sight. We pray in Jesus’ name.