"You're Goin' Down, Evil Man!"

Scripture Passage

Psalm 92; Psalm 93; Psalm 94; Psalm 95; Psalm 96; Psalm 97

Scripture Focus

Though the wicked sprout like weeds
     and evildoers flourish,
     they will be destroyed forever.
But you, O LORD, will be exalted forever.
                              (Psalm 92:7-8 NLT)

Observation

What a great group of psalms—Psalm 95 is one of my favorites! But my attention, this morning, is drawn to a point of contrast in Psalm 92.

[The wicked] will be destroyed forever.
     But you, O Lord, will be exalted forever.
                              (Psalm 92:7-8 NLT)

That’s really the bottom line. That’s really what it all boils down to in the big scheme of things. There is a God—an eternal God, an all-powerful God, a fully righteous and just God—who will rule forever while those who are wicked and unjust will be destroyed forever!

This truth is immutable. Unchangeable. Any indications to the contrary are misleading. Any flourishing of the wicked…any injustice in our world…is only a temporary condition that shall be corrected!  There is a God—one true God—and Jehovah is his name!

I listened with interest the other day when a well-known sports figure, at the conclusion of a victory, gave thanks to “my God, Jehovah.” I thought it was interesting that this person identified the God of the Bible by His name…and how infrequently we identify God by name!  I wonder if that's because most of us have never lived in a culture that seriously gives any public credence to the possibility of any god other than the God of the Christian Bible.

I’m not saying other gods aren’t (or haven't been) worshiped among us—to the contrary, our culture has been deeply marked by the worship of gods like materialism, hedonism, and fortune (or chance). I’m only saying that those gods have not been rightly and proudly identified—they’ve not been “called out of the lineup.” They’ve been broadly worshipped incognito.  We speak of God in terms too generic.

I think that’s changing. I think we’re shifting to a culture where people are more willing to identify the god they’ve chosen to align themselves with. And, at least for me, in a context where people are more willing to actually say, “This is the god I worship”—whatever god that might be—verses like these from the Scriptures become all the more powerful. This really is a “my God is bigger than your god” declaration—a declaration strong enough and clear enough and distinctive enough that one’s whole life can be built on it.

Because this is the bottom line for anyone who takes the Christian Bible seriously:

[The wicked] will be destroyed forever.
     But you, O Lord, will be exalted forever.
                             (Psalm 92:7-8 NLT)

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