Psalm 58 - Violent Movies and Bloody Feet

Well, hope that you're having a good week this week, and we are back on Tabernacle Talk. I am looking forward to being in Psalm 58 today.

This is a little bit of a simpler Psalm, as we don't have a special point in David's life for this one. The next one that we have that will be like that will be over in Psalm 61.

So in Psalm 58, this one is one of those super interesting parts of Scripture, where David puts in like a ton of random, this is like this, a bunch of illustrations, metaphors, similes, and you'll see what I'm talking about as we interact here with

it. The inscription for this Psalm says, for the choir director, to the tune, do not destroy, which was the tune for the last song as well, and the tune for this upcoming song on Psalm 59 as well.

So, that's the tune name and it is a mick tom of David. David says, do you really speak righteously, you mighty ones? Do you judge people fairly?

No, you practice injustice in your hearts. With your hands, you weigh out violence in the land. The wicked go astray from the womb.

Liars wander about from birth. They have venom like the venom of a snake, like the deaf cobra that stops up its ears, that does not listen to the sound of the charmers who skillfully weave spells. God knock the teeth out of their mouths.

Yahweh, tear out the young lion's fangs. May they vanish like water that flows by. May they aim their blunted arrows.

Like a slug that moves along in slime. Like a woman's miscarried child. May they not see the sun.

Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, whether green or burning, he will sweep them away. The righteous one will rejoice when he sees the retribution. He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

Then people will say, yes, there is a reward for the righteous. There is a God who judges on earth. Okay, this is a weird one.

There are many things that back in David's Culture's Day, things they would say, expressions that they would use that we don't use today. And so as we look at this, we feel predominantly, this is a different time and age.

I don't get everything that's happening here. Well, let's go piece by piece and we'll look at even some ways in which this connects with other portions of Scripture. And we will see what we have for our lives today.

Start with verses 1 and 2. Do you really speak righteously, you mighty ones? So these people that are in charge of different areas of Israel and their job was to be righteous.

Their job was to be fair in how they treated people. A lot of Israel's kind of like judicial system, we went over much of it in Leviticus. But there was a lot of just like interpersonal, hey, I think that this person deserves this punishment.

You owe this other person that you wronged this amount of money, or you deserve for them to get this amount of service.

And here David says, do you think in what you are doing and how you are treating people under your power, do you think that you're doing so righteously with justice? Are you doing this fairly? He says, no, you practice injustice in your hearts.

And with your hands, you weigh out violence in the land. I will say that's one thing for America that I think we don't often as Christians notice as much is we have a love for violence for two reasons.

Number one, Hollywood and movies and TV shows have kind of desensitized us to violence, that we can see incredibly graphic and horrible things, and there's no consequences for it. It's just all fake. It's pretend.

But I don't think that it shapes us well. It doesn't form us to think rightly about the cost of violence or what it means to harm other people made in the image of God. We have a glorification of warfare, of even violence in law enforcement.

And I say this not as like a, how dare all the rest of you think this. I know for me, like I love the Lord of the Rings movies. I love Batman, The Dark Knight.

I love seeing a video where there's some bad guy and a police officer does like a full take down, you know, a pile drive, whatever. I love seeing those. But I don't always know that that is a healthy outlook to have.

Here these judges with their hands, they're weighing out violence in the land over and over and over again. As you look at the Old Testament prophets, one of the things that God condemns is violence.

And certainly we would think it would be a bad thing for us to treat others in a violent manner. But I also think we shouldn't love or relish seeing those types of things happen to other people.

It shouldn't be something that we maybe have in a steady diet of, I'm just going to look all the time at people being harmed or shot or maimed or dismembered in some way.

Because through the lens of Philippians 4 and verse number 8, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, just lovely, pure, of good report, if there be any virtue or if there's any praise, if there's anything praise worthy about it, thing

on these things. I don't know that violence always fits in with that. Now, as we'll see at the end of the chapter, it's not that all violence is bad. It's not that warfare can never happen.

There are times when it's necessary. You can look back at human history to see many of those instances. Even with our law enforcement, you can tie in with different things from Proverbs.

Because justice is not speedily executed, it is in the hearts of mankind to do evil. That's not Proverbs. It's Ecclesiastes.

So it's something that should be done on occasion in accordance with the seriousness of the crime. That goes back to Leviticus. And if someone knocks out a tooth, you can't kill them or take their eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth isn't...

It's not escalation in punishment for a crime that didn't reach that level. But there are times when our officers or different people like that have to lay down the law, so to speak.

And that is a right and a justice thing for them to do, that they're not letting people get away with wickedness and allowing people to be wronged.

But that doesn't mean that we, as just random bystanders, YouTube watchers, whatever, need to revel in violence. Just something that maybe think about for your life. I'm mulling through this in my own head.

What is good for me to meditate on? What is right for me to think about consistently as it relates to violence? So, that's just my two cents that I have for you from those first couple of verses.

The next section, the wicked go astray from the womb. Liars wander about from birth here. David mentions basically our total depravity.

I actually preached about it this morning at Tabernacle. No one has to teach babies how to do sin, how to do wrong, how to lie, how to hit their siblings. My toddlers do that.

Liars wander about from birth. Right now, I'm dealing with my four-year-old, and I'm trying to teach him about truth and always saying what is true and not lying because he is a natural little liar.

He says, verse number four, they have venom like the venom of a snake, like the deaf cobra that stops up its ears, that does not listen to the sound of the charmers who skillfully weave spells.

Here, he's saying that the words that these people say, they are poisonous and they dig into people and they're not listening to anyone else. Like, they can't be tamed.

They're not going to allow what anyone else, they're not going to allow what anyone else says to influence them.

And so that's why it says a deaf cobra that you can't even do like the, you know, snake charming that's more popular in like the Middle East, India, places like that.

He says, these are terrible cobras that they won't even listen to, you know, the snake charmers. They're going to bite and they're going to hurt and nothing is going to stop these people.

So to those snakes, he says, God, knock the teeth out of their mouths. Make it so that they can't harm people. They can't put their venom into people's lives.

Says, Yahweh, tear out the young lion's fangs. Basically saying like, you know, detooth them, God, so that they no longer hurt. Then there's kind of an odd section here in verses seven and eight.

May they vanish like water that flows by. May they aim their blunted arrows. There there's a note in my Bible that says the Hebrew here is a little bit obscure or just as Hebrew obscure.

Here David's saying like, can you have it so that these people are no longer here doing these actions in this place anymore? And certainly we can pray for peace. We can pray for better circumstances.

I think in light of Jesus' coming to earth, we can also pray like, hey Lord, would you save these people?

And maybe, you know, depending on what kind of person in days and what they're doing, it might be God save them as they are in prison, or God save them through, you know, maybe one of their coworkers.

I'm not able to be one of their close friends because of just some of the toxicity and evil that they pour out, but God, I want them to be saved. I think that should come into our thinking as well. Then he says, may they aim their blunted arrows.

He says, God, like make what they try and do for evil on others, make their plans to harm or degrade or to get a leg up on other people. Just make it not happen, God, that the arrows that they're shooting, they're blunt. They can't do anything.

They're not going to go through. Then he says, like a slug that moves along in slime, like a woman's miscarried child, may they not see the sun. And here, though, a very vivid word picture, is someone that suffered a miscarriage before.

Even when I read it, I was like, oh, my goodness, that doesn't feel particularly good. Here he's saying, like, don't let their wickedness see the light of day. Let the plans fall in on themselves.

Don't let it happen, God. There, in verse number nine, before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns, whether green or burning, he will sweep them away. There you have kind of the thorns that would burn up.

It'd be firewood. And before, there can even be that fire and the pot starts cooking. That's kind of a phrase that some of the kids use today.

You know, let him cook is a way to say like, hey, let him figure out the plan and hear David saying like, before the pot can even begin to cook, before the thorns underneath that you would light on fire, that would burn to give you the heat, God will

sweep away all of those thorns. He will take away your ability to be able to concoct these evil plans and to have injustice. And let's pray for that.

Like, that's a great thing, I think, for our local area, for our city, for our state and for our nation. That is a great thing that we can pray as God. There will be unjust people.

There will be people that are trying to scheme to get themselves rich, to do things that would be wrong against other people, that would devalue other people's lives and demean them and do them harm.

There are things that people would do just to line their own pockets. So God, foil the plans of the wicked. Sweep away.

It's something like, I've got a gas stove at my apartment, and it would be like, before the pot starts to feel the heat from the gas stove, God turns the position to off.

And that's what I am praying that God undoes, makes it so that the plans and schemes are not possible to be done.

And I'm thankful that God can do that because of his providence, because of his sovereignty, that he can do amazing things that we can't do. Verse number 10, The righteous one will rejoice when he sees the retribution.

He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. So, all right, first part of that verse, super easy to understand. Second part of that verse seems real creepy to us today.

Okay, first part, righteous one will rejoice when he sees the retribution, when he sees God work and that God has undone evil, that God has thwarted debauchery and wicked plans. A righteous person rejoices in that. It was God like, thank you.

That would have not been good for me. It would not have been good for the people I love. It wouldn't have been good for my nation.

So God, thank you for bringing retribution on this person. Then the second part of the verse, he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.

This is a very violent statement that we don't we don't talk like this anymore, but this is something that is even said about Jesus when he returns, that he is going to bring final judgment on this world in that valley of Armageddon, in that final

battle. As he descends from heaven, he will speak, and the words of his mouth will be like a sword. And it says that the armies of the earth that have gathered to destroy Jerusalem and Israel and God's people, they will be torn asunder.

And the blood from all of the armies and animals and things, it will reach up to the horses' bridles in that valley of Maggedo. And it's a very vivid picture. And as Jesus goes, he brings total justice.

The enemy is not going to get back up to fight him another day. When God works, that justice is final. And we can be thankful for that, because it means that the justice that was poured out on Christ, it was final.

And there's no justice, there's no condemnation left over to give us. It was all poured out on Christ. And so that's why Paul can say, there's therefore now no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus.

Then lastly, in verse number 11, then people will say, yes, there is a reward for the righteous. There is a God who judges on earth.

What a wonderful thing that what we go through in life are good times, the effort that we put in, the suffering that we endure, maybe the persecution that we occasionally have from others, whether family or friends, co-workers, neighbors or whoever

else, that there is a reward for the righteous. And that is something that we can look forward to. It's that crown of life that Paul says in 2 Timothy 4 that he's looking forward to. He says, I fought a good fight.

I've run my course. I've kept the faith. He says, henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day.

And not to me only, but also to all them that love his appearing. And I certainly think he might have Psalm 58 and verse 11 in mind when he says that. The reward for the righteous with a God who judges on earth.

Where he says, he's the Lord, the righteous judge will give me this crown on that day. And there is a God who judges on earth. So let's like, let's follow him.

Let's do what's right. Let's think what's right. Let's say what's right.

Let's love others. Let us follow Jesus in every way we can. Because there is a God who will judge the earth.

Let us know Jesus first and foremost. Let him be our Savior and our Lord. And when he returns, we will rejoice at his coming.

We will not fear it. Thank you for tuning in today. And hope that Psalm 58 was a interesting encouragement to you.

I know it was for me. This has given me some stuff to kind of think about and ponder for my own life. And hope that you would allow the Spirit to do that in your life as well.

Thanks for tuning in. See you next episode.