God Is on His Throne

Dannah Gresh: When we turn on the news, it's tempting to get discouraged. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth challenges us to raise our sights.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Look at what's going on in the world around you—enemies everywhere, lies everywhere, and it looks like evil is winning the battle. The reminder we have in Psalm 92 and throughout the Scripture is Christ is Lord. Christ is King. 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules for December 6, 2023. I'm Dannah Gresh.

You sure don't have to look far to see evidence of wickedness in our world. But even when it seems like evil is winning, that's actually not the case. Here's Nancy with a message of hope, as she continues in her series over Psalm 92. If you missed any episodes so far, be sure to check them out at ReviveOurHearts.com, or on the Revive Our Hearts app. Here's Nancy.

Nancy: Well, we're camping out in Psalm 92 all this week, being encouraged by the faithfulness of the Lord, the loving kindness of the Lord, so many reasons for joy and for praise and for thanksgiving. 

I hope you're not just letting me spoon feed you from this passage, but that you're reading it yourself—maybe memorizing it over these next days and weeks, meditating on it. Because all the work that I've done in this passage, to learn it, to revel in it, to soak in it over a course of months now has been such a huge gift and blessing to my own heart. The more you soak in the Scripture and let it speak to you, the more you're going to find yourself rejoicing in the same kinds of things that are making my heart sing. 

Derek Kidner is a commentator on the Scripture and his book on the Psalms has been such a blessing to me. He breaks this psalm into three sections. 

The first being “Tireless Praise.” The tireless praise is for our great God. So it's lifting up the greatness of God. 

And then the middle section he calls “Heedless Arrogance.” It's the heedless arrogance of the wicked. And that's the section we're going to look at today. 

And then at the end of this series, we'll come to that third section that Kidner calls “Endless Vitality,” the endless vitality of the righteous. So, tireless praise for our great God, heedless arrogance of the wicked, and the endless vitality of the righteous that we'll look at over the next couple of days. 

So, I want to begin by reading verses 1–5, just recapping where we've been—the greatness of God. See it here as we worship Him together. Psalm 92. 

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praise to your name, Most High,
to declare your faithful love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
with a ten-stringed harp
and the music of a lyre.

For you have made me rejoice, Lord,
by what you have done;
I will shout for joy
because of the works of your hands.
How magnificent are your works, Lord,
how profound your thoughts!

So here we have tireless praise for our great God. Then we come to verse six, and there's a huge shift. There's a huge contrast. Look at verse 6:

A stupid person does not know,
a fool does not understand this.

This introduces a section that Kidner called “Heedless Arrogance.” Oh, the pride of man thinking that he has something and God is nothing. It calls him in the CSB translation I'm using, a stupid person. 

Now, that's a word we weren't allowed to say growing up, and it still is a little hard to get out of my mouth, especially with a lot of people listening to what I'm talking about. But it's right here in the Scripture. This stupid person. It's a word that in some translations is “senseless.” They don't have any sense. The senseless man does not know, a fool does not understand these words. It speaks of brutishness, stupidity, arrogance. 

And in fact, in this section, you're going to hear them called stupid, fools, wicked, evil doers, and enemies. They're called first God's enemies. And then toward the end of the psalm, they're called My enemies. This is a category you don't want to be in. This is the opposite of who God is, and the opposite of who His righteous ones are. We'll see more about them in the next session. 

But this senseless person, it reminds me of Psalm 73, verse 22, where the psalmist says when he began to focus on what's going on around him, on the prosperity of the wicked, he lost sight of who God is. He says, “I was stupid and didn't understand. I was an unthinking animal towards you.” 

You see, when we get our focus off of God, when we forget tireless praise, when we get tired of praise, when we forget to focus on the works and the thoughts of God and how magnificent and profound they are; we start to focus on ourselves on the brokenness of our world, on the foolishness of others, on the sins of others, and we become like senseless animals. 

We lose our heart toward God, we lose our relational capacity, our capacity to rejoice to enjoy God's creation. We don't understand our thinking, and our minds are blinded, as Romans 1 says, about those who reject God and fail to be thankful. 

We become as senseless animals who operate on their instincts. They don't do things because they love someone else, or they love God, or they're enjoying God's creation. They're brutish, That's an animal. 

And the psalmist says, “When I forget God, I become brutish. I become like an animal. I become stupid, foolish.” I've often said sin makes us stupid. It makes us do stupid things. But it also causes us to lose our moorings, our bearings, to forget what's true, what's good, what's real. 

We begin to exalt things that are puny and worthless, and to bring down if we could, the beauty and the majesty and the wonder of who God is and His works. So verse 6, “A stupid person does not know, a fool does not understand this.” 

Now, that raises the question, what does a stupid person not know? And what does this fool not understand? Well, commentators are divided on what is meant here. Some think it refers to the verse preceding verse 6. Some think that refers to the verse following verse 6. I actually think it's both. Certainly, both are true. 

So, when we look at verse 5, “How magnificent are your works, LORD, how profound your thoughts!” the greatness of God; a fool, a stupid person doesn't understand that, doesn't get it, doesn't remember it, doesn't believe it. A fool does not know how great God is. That's what Romans 1 says: 

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four- footed animals, and reptiles. (v. 22)

Romans 1, verse 25 says: 

They exchanged the truth of God [the magnificence of God, the glory of God] for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. 

That's stupid. That's foolish to forget God, to trade in the belief of God for a lie, to worship creative beings instead of God, the Creator. That's foolish. 

The American novelist David Foster Wallace was a university professor. He was a very brilliant man. In one of his essays, he talked about “the freedom to be lords [lowercase L] of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.” 

That's a foolish way to live. Yeah, we're free. We can be lords, have our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, just our tiny little kingdoms, all we can think about, all we can understand. That's foolish, alone at the center of all creation. That's a foolish way of thinking. 

And David Foster Wallace never got to the knowledge of the true and living great God. He battled with depression for most of his life, and in his mid-forties, ended up taking his own life by hanging. Because this is a depressing and depressed way to live with our own skull-sized kingdoms, being all we recognize, alone at the center of all creation, and thinking we are the center of creation.

A stupid, senseless person does not know how great God is, doesn't recognize it, doesn't worship God as being magnificent. But if you go to verse 7, you see something else the stupid, senseless person, the fool does not know and understand. Not only do they not know and understand the greatness of God, but they also don't know and understand the smallness of man and the outcome of the wicked. 

Look at verse 7. In fact, let me just read verse 6 again: 

A stupid person does not know,
a fool does not understand this:
[What don't they understand] though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be eternally destroyed. 

You see this theme throughout Scripture— just how frail is man, how short is life. Isaiah 40:6 as all humanity is grass, and all its goodness is like the flower of the field: “The grass withers, the flowers fade” when the breath of the Lord blows on them. Now who's great? The grass and the flowers are the breath of the Lord that blows on them and blows them away. 

See, grass is beautiful. Well, grass in Michigan appears about April and is gone by November. Who places any value or worth on last year's grass? Who cares about it? It's cut up; it's gone; it's dead. It's gone, and there will be new grass. But it's frail; it’s fragile; it's fleeting.

And so, Scripture says though the wicked sprout like grass, they crop fast, just like you were planting sod. It grows up fast. And all evildoers flourish. That word means “to bloom; to blossom.” Evildoers sprout up; they grow up. You think they're doing a great work, but you're a fool if you don't understand that they will be eternally destroyed. Their flourishing is temporal, it doesn't last. 

So, a fool, a stupid person doesn't understand this, doesn't get it, that God is great. That man is frail and fragile, like grass. Even those wicked people who sprout up and do big things, big evil things. They sprout up with their evil works, their wicked works, but they will be eternally destroyed, verse 7 tells us. 

But then we come to another contrast in verse 8. I love the back and forth of this song, the first five verses, of the greatness, the magnificence of God, his works, His thoughts, His ways to be praised forever. Verse 6, a stupid person, a fool does not know this, how great God is; or verse 7, how frail and fleeting man is. 

Then you come to verse 8, “But you, Lord, are exalted forever.” These wicked sprout like grass, they flourish, but they will be eternally destroyed by You, Lord. Back to the beginning, ceaseless, tireless praise, You, Lord, are exalted forever. Look at that contrast: The wicked are eternally destroyed; God is exalted forever. 

That's what Isaiah 40:7 tells us. Indeed, “the people are grass. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God remains forever.” Grass flowers, they're weak, they're frail, they don't last. They get cut down; they get mowed down. But the Word of our God, the character of our God, the works of our God, those will remain forever. 

And then we have another swing in verse 9, back to the wicked. It’s another contrast here, verse 8, “You, Lord are exalted forever.” And then verse 9, 

For indeed Lord your enemies,
[these foolish, stupid people who take no heed for God, who are arrogant]
your enemies will perish;
all evil doers will be scattered.

You see, these people he's talking about here flourish now. They're multiplying. They're multiplying like rabbits. I mean, it just seems like the proliferation of evil and evil people around the world—oth those who do overtly evil acts, but those whose evil is in their hearts and they just insidiously infuse evil ways of thinking, foolish thinking, lies . . . They infuse it into books and songs and TV programs and movies. These evil doers are impressive in this world. They make a lot of money. They may have a lot of achievements. They may get a lot of awards. But they are fools, and they will perish. They will be eternally destroyed. They will be scattered. 

I was reading recently about a man named Natan Sharansky, who was a Jew who grew up in Ukraine and Russia. He became a human rights activist. He was imprisoned in the Soviet gulag for nine years and faced intense pressure from the KGB—the feared, dreaded KGB—in Russia. He went through horrible interrogations. He was persecuted. Eventually he was released from prison though, and he was allowed to immigrate to Israel to rejoin his wife. 

During his years in Israel, he was for nine years a member of the Knesset. He served as a deputy prime minister in Israel. He served nine years as the head of the Jewish Agency. And recently, Mr. Sharansky met with a delegation of forty evangelical pastors and their wives who came to tour Israel. 

My friend Joel Rosenberg talked with Natan Sharansky at a luncheon with these pastors and their wives. He talked about Vladimir Putin. Now, Sharansky knew Putin personally, because Sharansky had been a prisoner of the KGB, and Putin was the head of the KGB, and Putin wanted to get into the mind, into thinking of this KGB prisoner. So, they came to know each other. 

As Sharansky talked to this group of pastors in Israel. The comments he made that day were published in Joel Rosenberg's paper, All Israel News, and the headline was this: “Natan Sharansky warns evangelicalism that Putin vows to rebuild Russian Empire rule forever, and must be stopped.” 

Now, unless you wonder why I'm getting into politics and geopolitics and whatever, there's a point to this that relates importantly to the psalm we're looking at. Sharansky said in that talk, and I'm abridging this and taking it from the written transcript of his notes. 

He said, Putin sees himself as, quote, “The only eternal leader in this political world.” He said, “All these western world leaders, they can be in office four years, then they can be in for eight years, and then they go. Putin can stay forever.” 

Sharansky said from the very first year of Putin being a president, he built a system like this, that he will be in power forever. First of all, Sharansky said, he took care of the press. Even those who were strongly supporting him, owners of the TV stations, he threw them away and he put in his own people. Then he took care of the businessman. Any businessman who was good to him but who was daring to give money to somebody else, he simply threw them away. Then he took care of the courts. Every judge has to remember who appointed him and for whom he has to work. Then Putin changed the constitution. So, he is forever, not like all the others. 

And as the only leader who is forever, said Sharansky, Putin has to think about eternal values. He has never made it a secret about what he wants. He feels that it's guaranteed that he's not like all the other leaders in the Western democracies who are speaking against him and then disappear. Instead, Putin is certain that he is the one who will not disappear. His aim is now to rebuild the Russian Empire. He started doing it quietly. He started by invading the Caucasus in Georgia. And of course, then there was Chechnya, then Belarus became his puppet, now Ukraine. He went on talking about this powerful man, Putin, who thinks that he will reign forever and ever, amen. 

He seems so powerful. It seems like he will be in office forever. He has moved all the chess pieces on the board and arranged them so that he can be, so he thinks, in charge forever. 

Fools do not know, stupid people do not understand this from Psalm 92: “though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be eternally . . .” not in charge, but eternally what? “Eternally destroyed.” That's what God's Word says. 

Verse 8 tells us, “But you, Lord, are exalted forever.” There's only one ruler who lives forever . . . and it's not Putin. And it's no other king or prime minister or potentate in all of this world. It is the Lord Most High who reigns forever. Verse 9 of Psalm 92: 

For indeed Lord your enemies—
[those who make themselves your enemies because they reject you, and they reject your truth]
indeed, your enemies will perish;
all evildoers will be scattered. 

Does that apply to Vladimir Putin? Yes, it does . . . and to every other evil ruler who has ever lived or operated in a high position or low position in all of creation—all evil doers, terrorists, rulers of nations and states, social media influencers who influence for evil, evil bosses, husbands, like Nabal in the Old Testament, who are foolish men—these people will not last. 

They may flourish, they may sprout, but they will be eternally destroyed, they will perish. Their days are numbered. The extent and duration of their evil works is determined by God, and it's limited by the Most High God who is exalted forever, forever. 

We get so bothered and so upset and uptight about evil doers in this world who look like they are entrenched. Some of them last a long time by the way we measure time. We need to lift our eyes up and say, “Oh Lord, You are exalted forever.” These evil people in my life or in this world or in our world, they will not last forever. They will not live or operate one moment longer than what God allows. And after they are long dead and gone, God will still be ruling on His throne.

Now, as we come to the next two verses, we see another description and character or outcome of the righteous, another contrast. We've seen about the wicked that they sprout, they flourish, but they will be destroyed, they will perish, they will be scattered. 

And then we see the righteous beginning in verse 10. Their character and their outcome is totally the opposite of the wicked. Look at verse 10 of Psalm 92, 

You have lifted up my horn
like that of a wild ox;
I have been anointed with the finest oil.

Most translations say there, “fresh oil.” And if you've listened to me for any length of time, you know how much I love that term, and how much I pray and ask God would You anoint me with fresh oil. That word “fresh” or “finest” means “to be green; to be new; to be prosperous; to be flourishing.” 

And the psalmist says, it’s not me who lifted myself up. I can't give myself the strength of the vitality that I need to continue on in every season of life. But God can. He gives it to us. He lifts us up. He makes us strong. He anoints us with fresh oil, the oil of His Spirit.

Look at verse 11. “My eyes look at my enemies . . .” Some say that should be translated, “my eyes look in triumph at my enemies.

My eyes looks at my enemies;
when evildoers rise against me,
my ears hear them.

I want to read verse 11 from the English Standard Version, because I think it's helpful to understand what he's saying there. “My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies.” Earlier they were called in verse 9 your enemies God, but they've made themselves the enemies of God's people. And the psalmist says, my eyes, the eyes of the righteous have seen the downfall of my enemies. “My ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.” 

And just a few verses back, the wicked were sprouting like grass, evildoers were flourishing. But here's the outcome: the righteous will flourish. We'll see more about that in the last paragraph of this psalm over the next couple of days. But all who are evil doers will be destroyed and the eyes of the righteous will look at the downfall of their enemies. We will hear the doom of those who have assailed God and His people. And here's the problem: it doesn't look that way. 

Now, we look around, and we see the enemies of God opposing His viewpoint. Just pull up the news headlines, or look at what's going on in the world around you. Enemies are everywhere, lies everywhere, and it looks like evil is thriving and flourishing. It looks like evil is winning the battle. But the reminder we have in this psalm and throughout the Scripture is heaven rules. Christ is Lord. Christ is king.

Those who trust Him, those who are the righteous ones, because they've placed their faith in Christ Jesus, those who worship and praise God and not mankind, they will share in His victory. Mark it down. Every enemy of God's people, including that archenemy, Satan himself, is doomed and will one day be defeated. The righteous will stand and see it. 

As Christ puts His foot on the neck of the wicked, they perish and are destroyed forever. All those evil forces, those evil ways of thinking that seem to be flourishing on earth, they will be gone, they will perish. They will not last forever. And the people of God who were the targets of God's enemies, they may seem to be perishing now. But for all eternity, they will flourish. 

That's what we're going to look at in the last paragraph of this psalm over the next couple of days. We will flourish; the enemies of God will perish, and He will reign forever and ever and ever. No evil, no stupidity, no foolishness, only beauty and holiness and goodness and the greatness of God and the forever joy of His people. Amen.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been reminding us of the truth that Christ is king. And doesn't that powerful truth change how you view your circumstances? Our hope at Revive Our Hearts is to bring you biblical messages to help you be fruitful in every season of life. If you found that to be true and you want more women to experience what it means to thrive in Christ, I want to invite you to partner with us this season. 

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Now, what does it mean to really thrive in Christ? Nancy will take us deeper into that topic as she continues this series tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is helping you experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB unless otherwise noted.
 

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