Speaker 1: 0:02

We're in a sermon series called the Songs of Summer where we're going through different Psalms and there's different categories of Psalms, and so this week we're actually on a royal Psalm, a Psalm that exalts God as king. We'll be looking at Psalm 97. It's kind of ironic that we preach on a royal Psalm Two days before we celebrate America's rejection of a king. We, long ago, the Colonials, thought it's not a good idea to have a king anymore. We didn't like the way things were going under old King George, and so I imagine if you were to poll most Americans today, that's probably one thing that we'd still be pretty united on. We still don't want a king. It's about as popular as your air conditioner going out right now. So we don't just don't like the idea of being told what to do right. We don't like the idea of giving up our freedom, of giving one person control over everything in our lives. We think that's a terrible idea, even with a good king, let alone an evil king. The Psalm 97 is about a different kind of king. Psalm 97 is going to tell us that for God to be king is the best thing for our world, but it's good for God to be the king. We'll start just by looking at verses one and two and verse six. The Lord reigns. Let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlands be glad. clouds and thick darkness are all around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne. The heavens proclaim his righteousness and all the peoples see his glory. So he starts off with just plain fact. He says God reigns, god is king. This is not up for debate. He is king of the universe And this is cause for great rejoicing because he's an all powerful king. Verse two says that clouds and thick darkness surround him. Later on in verse four it's going to say like how his lightnings light up the world.

Speaker 1: 2:16

The Bible often uses storm imagery to communicate God's awesome power and glory and majesty, like in Job 38, verse one. It says then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, out of a tornado. This is to communicate again how powerful he is. I have a friend who lives in Sarasota and he talks about how, when Hurricane Ian came through and they actually experienced a lot of hurricane force when they're he was just thinking the whole time if this storm is this powerful, imagine how powerful is the God who controls it. So the storm imagery teaches us how powerful God is, and yet, at the same time, we know that God is the one who can control these storms too. Jesus stepped onto a boat in the middle of a raging storm in the Sea of Galilee and spoke a word to it, and it completely stopped. The wind ceased, the sea was glassy, because why The storm has to obey its creator. And this is how powerful our God is.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Yet he's also mysterious. That's what it means when it says thick darkness surrounds him. So it's saying that God is knowable. We can know certain things about him, especially from his word, but we can't know him completely. We can't know everything about God, because he's infinite and we are finite. I've heard people talk about belief in God saying if I could just completely understand him, if I could know everything about him, then I could believe in him. But actually, if you could understand him completely and know everything about him, he wouldn't even be God. He wouldn't be worth believing in, because he'd be just like you and me. So for him to be God, he must be mysterious. There must be things about him that we can't understand, because he has to be on a higher level than we are. Well, it's not enough for him to be powerful and mysterious, that doesn't make him, that doesn't make us want to rejoice that he's king.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Necessarily, there are a lot of very powerful but evil kings. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that King George III of England was evil, but he certainly wasn't well liked by the colonists and was doing a poor job of governing the American colonies, and so they would say that it was not good to live under his absolute authority. I think this is probably why he looks like such a buffoon in Hamilton, but I also think about the movie The Man in the Iron Mask. King Louis XIV, who's played by Leo de Caprio, is a very young and foolish king. He says to his bodyguard, d'artagnan he says I am a young king, but I am king, emphasizing, he can do whatever he wants. And D'Artagnan says to him then be a good king. Your majesty Spoiler, alert. He was a terrible king, and the people suffered greatly under his rule. And so what we want is not just a king who's powerful, but a king who's powerful and good at the same time, and that is what we have in our God.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Verse two says that the foundations of his throne are righteousness and justice. This is what ultimately gives him his royal authority. He is righteous in that everything he does and everything he says is right. Some of you are like, yeah, sounds kind of like me, i'm sort of that way. But listen, there's a complete difference between maybe you're right a lot of the time, maybe you're one of those people that's like man, they really are always right. But with God there is absolutely no possibility of him being wrong ever. He is, he's not just right all the time, but it's righteousness is who he is, is his character. It's a character attribute of his to be righteous.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Psalm 117 says for the Lord is righteous and he loves righteous deeds. The upright shall behold his face. So not only is he righteous, just righteous, but then everything else that is righteous in our world is only deemed righteous because God says it is, because everything in our world is judged by this standard, by God's righteousness. So along with his righteousness, though, he's also perfectly just. He loves justice, again, because that's part of his character. So this is why he cannot let sin or evil go unpunished. He must punish evil, because if he did not, it would be to both approve of it and then also deny his character. That doesn't mean that he punishes evil immediately. In fact, god I would say most of the time is patient with evil, like in the Old Testament, in Genesis, when Israel is sent into slavery in Egypt, he actually says it's because he's going to give the peoples of Canaan 430 years to repent of their idolatry. God is patient with evil, but he will punish it. He will exact justice against it eventually. He must, because it is part of his character. So God is both powerful and good and this means that we can trust him implicitly.

Speaker 1: 7:55

We never have to wonder if God is doing us wrong. We know, at least from his word, that he always does what is right, what he knows is right for his people. Now, that doesn't mean that we won't feel like we're being done wrong. Sometimes Maybe you're going through a really difficult time and you wonder does God even care? Maybe you've been praying for something for years and years and years and you feel like God has always just said no and you wonder why Doesn't necessarily feel like God is king right now. But we have to remember that God is doing for us, for his people. What he knows is best, not necessarily what we think is best, because he's God. We are not. So it's like Tim Keller said. One of my favorite Tim Keller quotes is that if we knew everything God knows, we would always want whatever God wants for us. So, because God is both powerful and good, we have great reason to rejoice if we belong to Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 9:03

And that if is crucial, because this text also carries a grave warning with it that those who oppose King Jesus face an eternity of shame and ruin. Verses three through five fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. His lightnings light up the world. The earth sees and trembles, the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. And in verse seven, all worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boasts and worthless idols worship him, all you gods. So who are God's adversaries? It's all of us, unless we are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, every single one of us. Look at what Psalm 14, 2-3 say the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. We are God's adversaries because of our sin and because of our idolatry.

Speaker 1: 10:07

Sin is not just doing or thinking the wrong thing, it's the fact that we have a sin nature. We are born in opposition to the King And, surprisingly, i'm going to give you a Lord of the Rings illustration here. I was told I do that sometimes, but it just really fits. So Boromir is a character from the fictional country of Gondor And he meets Aragorn, who is the rightful king of Gondor, and he's told you need to give him your allegiance. And Boromir says Gondor has no king, gondor needs no king. And because of our sin nature, we say the same thing to Jesus I have no king and I need no king. Hands off, i am the captain of my own soul". To quote the poem Invictus Sin.

Speaker 1: 11:03

You see, sin makes us think that we can be our own autonomous authority. But it's a cruel trick, because as soon as we reject Jesus, we just end up bowing the knee to something else, an idol. And the text here calls it not just an idol, not just an image, but a worthless idol. It's worthless because it's false, it's not real, it's dead, it can't do anything for us. Scripture even goes so far as to say is how ludicrous is it that you would fashion a wood or stone or metal statue. You make it and then you worship that thing that you made. That's ludicrous, but that's what we do Now. We don't worship statues anymore, really, in this culture. They do in other parts of the world, but in Western culture our idols are different. They're not statues, but they're still idols.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Think about how we're talking about giving allegiance to King Jesus. That's, ultimately, what this is about. He's our King and we owe him our allegiance in every area of our life. We owe him. We should give control of our goals. Our career, our family, our kids belong to Jesus. Yes, they are our kids, but they're on loan. They belong to Jesus. We must give Jesus control of our calendars, of our finances, of our relationships, of our identity. In other words, who you are is who Jesus says. You are, not who you decide you are. We must give King Jesus control of our sexuality. These are all areas of our lives that and there are many more that we must give control of to Jesus. And if you're saying, yes, i'll give control of some of those things to him, but others I will hold back for myself. And that's probably something that you are making into an idol, and we all do it.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Christians and non-Christians do this. If you're a Christian, you're still struggling with idolatry. I'm still struggling with idolatry. It's impossible to escape it until we're with Jesus. But the hope is that for a Christian, when we struggle with idolatry, we're going back to Jesus in repentance And we're saying please help me, free me from this. I don't want this, and we're experiencing his grace anew.

Speaker 1: 13:30

But for the non-Christian, there is a very serious warning here. The serious warning is that God is perfectly righteous, and sin and idolatry separate us from God. This is a separation that we are incapable of dealing with. And he's also perfectly just, which means he can't again, he cannot let sin and idolatry go unpunished. Many would say well, why doesn't God just forget about our sin? Why doesn't he just sweep it under the rug? Why can't he just make it disappear? He cannot because, again, it's part of his character to be completely and perfectly just, which means he must punish sin. And so the warning is that if a person persists in sin and idolatry and never bowed to the need of King Jesus, never repents and trusts Jesus for salvation, you will be consumed by the wrath of God. On the day of judgment, you will bow your knee to King Jesus, because it says in Philippians that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. But the warning is that some people will do so out of terror of him, not out of love for him. But there's also hope. There's a greater hope, because there's always hope with Jesus.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Look at what verses eight and nine say. Zion hears and is glad and the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, o Lord. For you, o Lord, are most high over all the earth. You were exalted far above all gods. Why what is Zion hearing and being glad? What is making the daughters of Judah rejoice? It's the good news of the gospel. It's that Jesus has satisfied God's justice, and this is the greatest news we could ever hear.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Romans five, nine and 10 say since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. As enemies of God, we can do nothing about our sin and idolatry. It is. We are incapable of changing our position with him. But Jesus has reconciled us to God. He has canceled the debt of our sin, he has freed us from our idolatry and he has secured our place in the family of God as his children.

Speaker 1: 15:56

How could he do this? Well, because he is perfectly righteous, because he's God, and so his life, his perfect life, offered up on the cross as a sacrifice for us atones, for our sin. In other words, he takes our place on the cross. He became God's adversary in our place, so that all of the wrath of God for all of the sin past, present and future of anybody who will ever believe in God was placed on Christ. As he was on the cross, he satisfied God's justice.

Speaker 1: 16:31

There is no more, as Romans 8.1 says. There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the good news. How do we receive this good news? Not by working for it, not by doing more religious works, not by going out into the community and doing good things. That's a result of being saved. We become believers in Christ only by grace. It is a gift given to us by Jesus Christ When we confess that we are sinners and idolaters and believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, that he died on the cross and rose again from the grave, victorious over sin, satan and death. When we believe this and then repent of a rebellion against God, then he will save us and give us the gift of eternal life. This is what the Scripture says. This is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it produces a complete change in us, so much so that the Scripture calls us new creations in Christ.

Speaker 1: 17:38

So at the end of the movie, the Fellowship of the Ring, boromir changes. He sacrifices his life to save two of the hobbits and he's alive, dying. Aragorn the king is holding him in his arms and he said. Boromir says to Aragorn I would have followed you anywhere, my brother, my captain, my king. You see, this is what Jesus does for us. He changes us to new creations. So we no longer say I don't need you, i don't need a king, i'm the captain of my own soul. And now we say I will follow you anywhere because you are my king and you are the captain of my soul. This is the change Jesus produces in us.

Speaker 1: 18:22

And so what does that look like practically, as we live our lives? Look at verses 10 through 12. It says O ye who love the Lord hate evil. He preserves the lives of his saints, he delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, o ye righteous, and give thanks to his holy name. So you see, allegiance to King Jesus, practically speaking, means that we will hate what he hates because he love, because we love what he loves.

Speaker 1: 18:57

It might surprise you to hear that Jesus hates anything, but the scriptures are clear that he does Remember that God is perfectly righteous. He's righteous not just in that he does righteous things, but that he is righteous in his character. He defines what righteousness is, and so, by necessity, he also defines what evil is, because anything that is contrary to him and his character and his actions is by nature going to be evil, and so he must hate what is contrary to himself, because it is for the benefit of all creation that God is glorified in whatever he does. And so, then, not only this, but those who love God, those who follow God, must also reflect this hatred of evil. Sorry, proverbs 8, 13 starts off by saying the fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. So you can't love God. You can't claim to love God and then also love evil at the same time. It doesn't work. Jesus would say you are trying to serve two men or serve two masters, and you can't do that. You can't love both. You will love one and you will hate the other. So we who follow Jesus Christ must hate evil, but that means we have to be very clear on what God considers evil. We can't make this something that's subjective.

Speaker 1: 20:18

When the Super Bowl was here a couple of years ago, i went with Isaac to the Super Bowl experience downtown and we had a great time. And as we were leaving there was a street preacher by the exit area and I had to stop to listen, because I find street preachers they're awkward but fascinating, you know. But he starts preaching that football is a sin and loving football is a sin and you should repent of your love for football or you're going to hell. And I'm like man. You're really preaching to the wrong audience here. Maybe I guess you think it's the right audience, but this is awful because it's nonsense. I mean, sure you can turn football into an idol. Everybody has some way of turning something into an idol, and football can be one of those things. But football in and of itself is not evil, it's. That's a subjective truth. I mean he might think it's evil at whatever, but we can do that all day long.

Speaker 1: 21:17

We can say anything is evil if we want. So how do we know what actually is evil? We have to look to the scriptures. We have to look to what God actually says he loves and what God actually says he hates. And in the scriptures you find that God hates pride, he hates deceit, he hates discord. He hates things like child sacrifice. He hates it when we hate other people, like in 1 John he says if you hate your brother but you say you love God, you're a liar. He hates it when we love violence and we're quick to come up with evil schemes. Simply put God hates sin and God hates idolatry.

Speaker 1: 22:02

I know there are pastors even now who will claim that God doesn't hate anything, that God doesn't hate sin, that sin is okay. But you have to check that against the truth of God's word. And God's word is saying overwhelmingly, old and New Testament across the board God hates sin. He must because he is a just God. If he did not hate sin and evil, he would cease to be God.

Speaker 1: 22:31

So allegiance to King Jesus for us means that first we must allow the Bible to define what is evil, so that we know what it is that we must hate or oppose. And then we have to ask how do we do that? Well, i think we start by going back to the idea of God's righteousness. Matthew 6.33 says seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well. Life in Jesus' kingdom is characterized by righteousness. We are to pursue Jesus and his righteousness, and that is our highest aim, our greatest priority. And as we do that, we will more and more find that we are distressed by evil, that we do not want to participate with evil, that we will even hate evil. But Jesus would also say take the plank out of your own eye before you examine the speck in your brother's eye. So that means we have to start by hating the evil that is within us. Colossians 3.5 through 6 say put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming.

Speaker 1: 23:52

The Bible is saying that we must take our sin, the sin that is within us, the idolatry that is within us so seriously that we hunt it down and we slay it. We're not to downplay our sin, we're not to justify our sin or seek affirmation for our sin. It is too dangerous and too serious a thing. Rosaria Butterfield says that to downplay our sin or to justify our sin would be like to have a tiger cub as a pet. So tiger cubs are so cute, man Like they are adorable. Take it home and feed it from the bottle. It's so sweet. And then it grows up and it what does it do? It will kill you and eat you. Why? Because it's what a tiger does. They're not domesticated. We laugh. But when we take our sin home with us and we think it's cute and cuddly, and we play around with it and we downplay it and we start to justify it, before long it will destroy us, because that is what sin does. Sin has no other objective but to destroy us. And so John O in the Puritson said be killing sin or it will be killing you. So how do you kill sin? It's not like something that you can just shoot with an arrow or cut its head off with a sword. Well, i guess you could use the sword of the Spirit.

Speaker 1: 25:21

We bring it into the light of Christ right. We spend time in the Word, knowing not just knowing God's Word, but knowing God through His Word. As we come to know God more and more, we come to find that He is more and more incredible and more and more amazing. We find that we love Him more and more. And the more we love God and are amazed by God, the less we will desire sin. It's not going to ever be erased from us completely.

Speaker 1: 25:49

Don't believe in anybody that tells you they don't sin anymore. They're sinning because they're lying to you. But we can decrease by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can decrease its hold on us. But we also need the Holy Spirit. We need to confess our sin to Him. We need to ask Him to reveal the sin in us that maybe we don't even see. Sometimes our sin is so hidden that we don't. We're blind to it. We need the Holy Spirit's help in identifying the sin underneath the sin. Quite often when I do that I find okay, it comes back to pride. I'm being prideful. This is what's causing me to sin. The Holy Spirit helped me repent of my pride.

Speaker 1: 26:34

We need help from other believers in the church, not saying we confess our sin to everybody in this room, but we certainly must find some who we trust, who will hold us accountable, that we confess our sins to one another And we get wise to Satan's schemes. You know, satan is going to tempt you in certain ways. He's got a history of tempting you with certain sins. If we know this and we understand this, then we can actually prevent it by removing it if possible. So we take our sins seriously, we hate the evil in us and then we can hate the evil in our world, but always in a godly way. This is key. Look at 1 Peter 3.9. It says do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. It's saying that we repay evil.

Speaker 1: 27:33

We hate evil with the gospel, with righteousness and with justice. In the book of Daniel, shadrach, meshach and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace because they wouldn't worship King Nebuchadnezzar. They opposed evil by being righteous, by pursuing the righteousness of God. They were courageous, just to be obedient to the Lord's commands. And they were hated. and they were. They thought they were put to death for it. But of course God intervened in a miraculous way And we must oppose evil this same way, because it's how God opposed evil. God opposed the evil of sin and idolatry through righteousness and justice, through the righteousness and justice of Jesus Christ. And we, as we are able, must do the same. We must be unafraid of the truth, we must stand up for those who are wronged And we must do so sacrificially if need be.

Speaker 1: 28:33

I mentioned Rosaria Butterfield earlier. She's a Christian author but she was once an anti-Christian lesbian activist until she met a pastor named Ken Smith and his wife. The Smiths invited Rosaria over for dinner, had conversation with her, open, free conversation with her, and then they kept inviting her over and she kept coming And as they would talk and as the Smiths would share the truth and the scriptures with her, she began to feel the call of the Holy Spirit and she repented of her sin and became a believer in Jesus Christ, and she is to this day. How did that happen? Not through condemnation, not through straight preachers holding signs and using megaphones, but through hospitality, through gospel truth, through a willingness to have hard but loving conversations, and we must be willing to do the same.

Speaker 1: 29:31

We must know that the Bible defines all sexual immorality as evil. Just to mention this, all sexual immorality is evil. But of course, in our day and age we are in a time when the world has said that's not the case and that especially homosexuality is fine and should be affirmed. But the Bible is saying no, this is sin. Why is it saying that? Why do we have to keep harping on about this? Because the scriptures do, because Romans one says that it is idolatry.

Speaker 1: 30:06

Sexual immorality of all kinds are idolatry because they oppose the framework of how God designed our creation. God designed us, god designed our creation with marriage being for one man and one woman And sexuality and sex being meant only for within the scope of that marriage. It's for the good of humanity. If you go to Ephesians five, you see it's also a metaphor of the gospel, of the union between Christ and his church. So we must stand up and define this as evil and oppose this as evil, but in a godly way, because those who believe and those who struggle or sexual struggle are enslaved to an idolatry. And I would be willing to bet that all of us in some ways are sexual struggleers and we all need to hear this. We all need to hear the hope that King Jesus offers a far better way. So in following Jesus, we must oppose evil, we must stand up for the truth, we must show that life in the kingdom of God is a far better way.

Speaker 1: 31:22

And this likely will require sacrifice. It will cost us social standing, it will cost us jobs. Is it worth it? I believe it is. I believe it is worth it for us to be willing to lose and sacrifice these things so that we might proclaim the truth of the gospel to those who need to hear it So desperately. It's worth it, partly because oftentimes sacrifices are what makes people notice the gospel. When Christians are willing to suffer for what they believe, people take notice of that and they start to consider maybe this is, maybe there is something to this.

Speaker 1: 32:03

Psalm 97 says that when we experience this kind of evil, when we experience persecution from the world, we must not despair. It says that God will preserve our lives, that God will deliver us, that even in the midst of these things we can rejoice. He might deliver us, like He did with Shadrach, meshach and Abednego, in a miraculous way, or He may not. He may allow us to continue in affliction, but the scriptures say that it's a light and momentary affliction. Why? Because we know it awaits us. We know that we are beloved citizens of the kingdom of God, that we are His children And that, even if this life is disappointing, even if this life is hard, even if this life is full of suffering for us, we can rejoice, we can give thanks because we know that we will enjoy eternity with our King. Let's pray.