The Third Sunday after Easter
Psalm 36
The Wicked and the Righteous
King David is the author of Psalm 36, our Psalm for this third Sunday after Easter. The introduction says, “a Psalm of David.” He composed it for the chief musician in order that the Levite choir might sing it during Temple worship. David starts out the Psalm with comments about the wicked, they have no fear of God. “There is no fear of God before his eyes.” Why a fear defect? Unbelief must be part of it. Atheistic unbelief leads to a fearless disregard for the Triune God. If you know that God is present everywhere, and you believe in Him to be the Governor of the universe, and at the end of time you expect His to sit on the great throne and judge humanity, you would naturally fear to break His laws? On the other hand, a heart of atheism and godlessness cancels out that reality, and a healthy fear of the Lord vanishes. To have no fear of God is foolish. If you are in a jewelry store and an armed guard is staring at you, you don’t grab a diamond necklace and run. The guard might shoot. Nor do you enter the palace of a king, stand before him and insult his court. There may be consequences. The person who sins constantly, flagrantly and intentionally must disbelieve that God is watching and will some day judge. There is no fear of the terror of Hell that lasts forever.
Verse two says the wicked man, “flatters himself.” Self-flattery is a big problem for the wicked. It is similar to self-delusion. The alcoholic is often in denial about his addiction. In a drunken stupor he will insist he has no problem. At the same time the wicked man is mocking the Lord with his words and behavior, he considers himself a person of elevated virtue, superior to most.
Let’s take as an example a very evil man of history, Joseph Mengele. During World War II Mengele was put in charge of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Since he exercised the power of life and death over so many people he was given the title, “the Angel of Death.” As the cattle cars arrived at Auschwitz and disgorged their cargo of Jewish prisoners, Mengele ordered them into lines. Accompanied by gun-wielding soldiers he made his way down the lines and with his cane pointed at each person and directed them with one word: “right” or “left.” The ones on the right lived; the ones on the left got gassed. He seemed to enjoy his grisly task. Nine tenths shortly suffocated in the gas chambers; the number reached hundreds of thousands.
Even those who were allowed to live survived in a place out of Dante’s Inferno. Mengele performed a variety of bizarre experiments in order to perfect the Aryan super-race. The goal was to create a white-skinned species with blue eyes, blond hair, and beautiful bodies. For example, in his attempt to perfect the ideal German speciman, he tried to change the pigmentation of eyes by injecting different colored dyes. Thirty-six children from one barrack were used for one of these eye tests. The injection of blue dye into the kids’ pupils resulted in painful infectons and sometimes blindness. After the tests the children served no further use to Mengele, so they were gassed. This kind of thing was nearly perpetual at Auschwitz. [For more details see the book by Gerald Posner and John Ware, Mengele; the Complete Story.]
Yet Mengele justified his behavior. This is the self-flattery and self-delusion that David refers to. Joseph Mengele believed his work noble; his experiments on the cutting edge. The Nazi agenda took on a messianic cast. Besides that, Mengele could flatter himself that he and his ilk were cultured, sophisticated and educated; bad people crude, dumb and ignorant. He listened to and appreciated classical music, a symphony orchestra performed at the concentration camp. The Nazis built a soccer stadium on the grounds too. The place was very modern, and ran smoothly. Consequently, anyone who opposed the plan for a super-race lacked the maturity, greatness and a sense of proportion that he, a medical doctor and scientist, possessed. The thinking was delusional.
King David makes another observation about the wicked: “He devises wickedness on his bed” (v. 4). God is so far from his thoughts that he schemes how to sin even when he is lying down. That is the impression you get when you read about Mengele. He must have laid in bed thinking up experiments for his human guinea pigs. When he got up out of bed he put into practice the mischief he had planned on his bed, dedicating himself to the worst things.
“He does not abhor evil.” Here is another characteristic. “He does not abhor evil.” Instead of hating evil, the wicked man rejoices in it. St. Paul says a similar thing in Romans 1. After a listing the sins deserving of death Paul says that not only do wicked men do these things, they “approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). Mengele approved of genocide. The people close to him claim he never suffered feelings of guilt at any stage of his life after Auschwitz. In the chaos of post-war Germany, he was able to cross the Alps into Italy and board a ship for Argentina. When the Israeli Moussad nearly caught up with him in Argentina, He escaped to Paraguay, and from Paraguay to Brazil. Loyal Nazis helped him throughout those years until he finally drowned in 1979. While swimming in the Atlantic Ocean he suffered a stroke.
What caused Mengele to become such an abomination? It wasn’t poverty. He was raised by a wealthy and privileged family. Once he rejected Christianity, the world, the flesh, and the devil carried him down to the bottom. After exterminating the Jews it is possible that Hitler and Mengele would have gone after Christians next. Mengele’s life is an example of what David was talking about in this Psalm. There is a dark side to human nature. Anybody with a biblical worldview has to accept the near ubiquity of human evil. In general, man is bad, not good. Are there Mengele types among the Islamic terrorists of today? It seems that there are. Like Joseph Mengele, Satan has blinded them to a frightening degree.
The wicked commit sins and transgressions without fear before the Dreadful Judge. They are characterized by self-flattery, rationalizations of evil, a constant dreaming up of evil schemes on their beds, lying lips and evil deeds, then they applaud those who practice the same. May God protect us from people like this! May God save us from turning out like this!
The next verses speak of creation, God’s control over it and how it reveals Him. [Read Psalm 36:5-9.]
Here David lauds the vastness of the heavens, the grace of cotton-like clouds against a bright blue sky, the grandeur of mountains, the mysteries of the deep, indeed all animals. In other words, David is summing up creation. Nature reveals the attributes of God. It shows us what God is like. David spent his youth with the flocks, seeking green pastures, leading them beside still waters. He fought bears and lions. After His shepherd years David became a soldier and general. As such he hid from Saul in the desert. Therefore, David was close to creation and it thrilled him. The same should hold for believers today. Just as a the stained-glass windows and high ceiling of a cathedral calls to mind the greatness and beauty of God, so should a walk outdoors, or a stroll through a garden. One retired Anglican Bishop wrote: “I still go on in my simple, superficial way, loving flowers and birds and the sunlight on the apples, and the sunset, and I like to think more and more of the verses, “For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.”
For the Christian who uses his imagination, nature can serve as a sort of sacrament, strengthening his faith, and bringing him closer to God. Sermons and Bible reading are good, but as an exclusive diet they are inadequate and one-sided. God has given us two books to reveal who He is: the Bible and creation. Hence it is supremely important for the child of God to read the signs of nature. Like Jesus, we should continually consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air (Matthew 6:26-30). Every time we look out on the green trees and fields, or up at the stars, we should detect some clue to the secrets of God and, some revelation of the Father’s will.
Creation helps us avoid a couple common pitfalls about God. People tend to shrink Him. The like a small God they can manipulate. The vastness of the galaxies and the majesty of the mountains foil the God-shrinkers. Also people tend to tame God, making Him sweet and nice. But then God created spitting cobras, scorpions, leeches, polar bears, vampire bats, ticks, stingrays, and piranha. God is good, but He is not tame. He is to be feared.
David saw God and learned about God in every part of creation. If David was hushed in the presence of the glory of God in the heavens, stirred by the voice of God in the storm, and thrilled with a sense of the wisdom and goodness of God in fruitful fields and the Lord’s provision of food for hawks and mountain sheep, then we too should strive to attain such insights into the handiwork of the Heavenly Father.
“The children of men are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house.” This comes from verse eight. “God’s house was the Tabernacle and Temple in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament. Abundant satisfaction in the House of God speaks to corporate worship in the church. The members of the congregation have reason to celebrate God’s goodness. We have access to good things. The same God who takes us under His wings shading us against the heat of affliction, then takes us to His holy table and provides us with heavenly bread and wine. The sacrament of Holy Communion is implicit here. Psalm 36:7-9. [Read them.]
At the Eucharistic feast God provides us beyond our expectation and understanding. In communion with God alone is the true and inexhaustible fountain of life and light. If you are feeling unhappy it may be self-inflicted. You may be eating and drinking at the wrong place. This is not a question of restaurants, it is a question of faith. It has been said, “You are what you eat,” and David hints at the Lord’s Supper when he states that deep satisfaction and fullness can be experienced in God’s house. And true pleasures are experienced as we drink from the fountain of life. So if you are feeling miserable due to self-pity, or sin, go to Christ in prayer and fellowship. Such encounters are a river of pleasures.
The last verse of Psalm 36 says, “The workers of iniquity have fallen. They have been cast down and are not able to rise.” In the aftermath of the battle the enemy lies scattered on the plain. Before our eyes sin, death, and hell lie prostrate; the foes vanquished! “They have been cast down and are not able to rise.” David’s words come to fulfillment when Jesus threw down His adversaries at His death, resurrection and ascension. Since then, over time, all sinners who reject the Savior come to defeat. David says, “they shall not be able to rise.” This is just the opposite of Ezekiel’s vision. Remember the valley of dry bones of Ezekiel 37? As Ezekiel looked on flesh and blood slowly grew on those dry bones and they revived. Not so the wicked. David’s vision is a total contrast: “…the workers of iniquity have fallen; they have been cast down and are not able to rise.” The defeat of the ungodly and of the powers of evil is final, total, and irretrievable. This is a message of hope to the Church. No matter how pervasive and powerful the darkness may appear at the present, the light of Christ will eventually overpower it. That is what the future holds for the wicked and the righteous.
This vision of victory is no naive optimism. David was fully aware of the human evil that permeates the world without, and the wickedness that infects the heart of man within. In addition, there was no clear evidence that he expected to see the defeat of evil in his own lifetime. But David knew it would happen. We too don’t expect to witness the visible victory of Jesus in our own lifetimes. But we hope that future generations will see that day. The vision of the fallen wicked helped David trust in God in inspite of the current situation. Even here and now we enjoy a small portion of the victory and goodness and wonder of God’s kingdom. Christ said something similar to David in Luke 18:29. Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Our hope is only partial in this life, but it is total in the hereafter. By serving Christ, we shall receive more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life (Luke 18:29-30).
Let us pray.
