When evil seems to be prospering, the temptation can be to find a backup plan instead of God’s way. Do we need one?
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My internet is reliable. Reliable at going down at 7 p.m. every Monday night. Yes, we’re on Steadfast at 7 p.m. Welcome to Steadfast. It’s so good to have you here. And you might say, well those two seem to contradict each other, don’t they? Yeah, how am I with you if my internet goes down? Well, that was a problem over the first part of this time that we’ve spent together over these last six years.
How do we do it when my internet seems to love to go down at 7 p.m. every week like clockwork? Again and again and again and again. How do I deal with that? Well, I need a backup internet connection. And when I’m with you, frequently I’m actually probably connected to you more through my cell phone than through the connection to my home, which you would hope would be pretty reliable. And I’ve talked to Spectrum a lot about it. I’ve called them up so many times, talked to them for so many hours, and they’ve sent someone out and looked at it. And it’s fine because it’s not 7 p.m. But come back to 7 p.m. and it fails.
Sometimes when we read God’s Word, I think we feel like we’ve called out the technician. Because people say, God is reliable, and he’s faithful, and he’s always there for us. And we say, but you don’t know what it’s like at 7 p.m. You don’t know all the backup plans I have to come up with. I have to come up with them because when it goes down, what do I do? If I didn’t come up with a backup plan for the Internet, I wouldn’t be with you right now. Because it would surely be down. I’m not looking at statistics right now. I don’t even count on it anymore. I just have my backup plan in place already ready to kick in before we even start. So they don’t have to think about it. But there it is going up and down. And again, if you’ve been with us for a long time, you remember those times where it used to pixelate and just go out regularly because of that.
And when our lives feel like they pixelate and go out, we say, well, maybe I also need that backup plan. Maybe I need to go and do something else. Because it seems like sometimes God’s service just goes out. When we face evil, we think, I must need a backup plan. But as we wrap up Psalm 12 tonight, what God wants us to know is, no, you don’t need a backup plan. Because unlike Spectrum, God isn’t denying the presence of evil in the world. I call it Spectrum. They say the signal’s great. There’s nothing wrong. Have you rebooted your router? Maybe it’s your computer. I’ll go over all the reasons it’s not. God isn’t doing that to you and to me. He’s not saying, well, just reboot your life router and it will be okay. He’s saying, I know it’s there, but let me tell you what I’m doing about it. Let’s pray tonight that we can see that.
Will you join me? Father, thank you for this evening. We thank you for your Word. Would you help us to have the truth of your Word applied to our hearts, that we have confidence, that we don’t feel like we’re just on tech support being told to reboot once again. That we see that you actually are dealing with the problems that we face. That the reliability of evil showing up doesn’t mean that evil is ultimately triumphant or even reliable. Pray that you’d help us to see this today. I ask this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Well, let’s go ahead. We’re going to look at those last few verses. Start at verse 6 tonight. Here is what David says: The Lord’s words are absolutely reliable. They are untainted as silver, purified in a furnace on the ground where it is thoroughly refined. Here’s the beauty of God’s Word. God says and he does.
Now, I hear the commercials for Spectrum, and they say, they say, and they do, that they provide everything you could need. Sounds kind of boastful, because hopefully we need a lot more than internet and TV, but nonetheless, even when it comes to that, it feels like, I don’t know that they’re really providing everything I need. I’d like it to be up at 7 p.m. So we say, God, I see your Word says you provide everything I need, but what about 7 p.m.?
Well, we have lots of competing things in the world, people and things that want to say they are what’s going to provide for us, and they do what we don’t do. And we saw part of that back at the beginning of this psalm. Let’s just review there. Verse 2: People lie to one another. They flatter and deceive. May the Lord cut off all the flattering lips and the tongue that boasts. They say we speak persuasively. We know how to flatter and boast. Who is our master? We’ve got it all under control.
We see this in the world, right? We see people liking to boast, liking to build themselves up, liking to say they’re the hero, that they’re the one doing things. Sometimes we like to do it, and sometimes we like to listen to people who say it, because it gives us confidence. And that’s why internet service providers, I shouldn’t just pick on Spectrum, because wherever you are, I bet you could tell the same story, that you run into those same sorts of problems. They like to boast about the reliability, and they say, don’t pay attention to the fact that you can’t get on the internet to read about our reliability statistics. It’s really great! That’s what we hear over and over again in the world.
And the world loves to come up with excuses for why the times it isn’t reliable are not really what they see. And we read God’s Word, and we think, well, maybe it’s the same. But the reason God gives us this overarching story is to say, but look at the overall trajectory. There are times in anyone’s life that we’re going to wonder, is God really going to come through? God says, look at my track record. I always come through. It might not be exactly how you imagined it, but I always, always come through. His Word is pure, unlike what we hear from the world.
The world makes those claims and sometimes seems to back them up, right? Monday at 5 p.m., my internet, the claims around it feel like they’ve been backed up. It’s there. 7 p.m., not so much. It’s funny, I think in our own human failings, oftentimes we notice when God isn’t there coming through more than we notice when the things we want to replace God with aren’t coming through. We don’t notice the impurities, the failings, the weaknesses of those things we’re inclined to do to be the backup plan. But they fail us. Maybe not every time, but enough. And God says, well, look at my Word. Whatever backup plan you come up with, it doesn’t have thousands of years of track record for you to see if it really comes through over and over again. Look at my Word and see what I do over time. And see that I do come through.
And David here, as he’s reflecting on what God does, what does he say here? He’s saying, look at how God’s Word is refined and pure. The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. It’s refined over and over again. Everything about God’s Word has all the impurities removed. That’s why you put metal into that furnace to purify it. You’re getting all the impurities out, so you just have, say, pure silver.
Now, depending on your translation, it might say silver and gold. It might say in the ground or of the ground. Lots of debate on that exact wording there. And it doesn’t seem to actually be referring to gold. It seems to be basically stating how an ancient furnace worked. And so, if you want to deal with purifying metal, oftentimes they would dig into the ground and use the ground as part of the furnace. Why? Because you’re not going to catch the ground on fire. If you really want to get hot, you can actually use the dirt as part of how you do the purification process. And most commentators think that’s what David has in mind here.
He’s saying the Word of God is not just pure. It is as pure as it can be. It’s been put into the ground in the furnace where you can turn that furnace up as hot as it can go so all the impurities melt out. That’s how pure it is. In fact, it’s been done seven times. Why seven times? Well, we know in Scripture over and over again, seven is representative of perfection. And the point here seems to be it’s been purified as much as it possibly could be. God’s Word is pure. It’s clean. It’s dependable. You can count on it. And you can look at it and it’s what’s there that stands up to the heat. The impurities that sometimes surround it, sometimes because of us believers that don’t get things right, well those will melt away. But God’s Word, it’s still there. It’s still dependable. It always holds up.
It holds up when the Egyptians opposed God. It holds up when the Assyrians opposed God. It holds up when the Babylonians opposed God. The Romans opposed God. In the history of the church thereafter, when various empires have risen and fallen, guess what? They always fall. Wherever we happen to be situated tonight, unless Jesus returns first, we can count on those places, their governments, at some point will fail too. And all the boasting and claims that they can make that somehow they are in power, they will fall. God will still be in charge. And it can feel disconcerting at first to say the stuff around us will fail. But when we really think about it, we already know the stuff around us fails us. Our own lives fail us. Certainly our society fails us at times. So isn’t it comforting when you really think about it to say, all that stuff will fail, but God’s Word won’t. God won’t. It might look like it. Over and over again, when it really matters, God comes through. And that’s what we need to hold on to. That’s what’s going to get us through.
Hold on to anything else is going to ultimately fail us. When we hold on to the Lord. Last night, I shared part of an interview with Senator Ben Sasse. And just a remarkable story. I’d actually encourage you, it was in the New York Times last week. Go and read it. It’s just, it’s profound from beginning to end. It’s just exactly an example of he’s modeling what it looks like to really have our hope in the Lord in a very, very dark time as he battles terminal cancer.
Something really struck me though. The interviewer, who’s also a Christian, asked him, surely if you’re not ready to die, and Sasse says he’s not, surely you’ve prayed for healing. God isn’t healing you. Are you mad at God? Sounds like one of these times we’ve been talking about, right? The time where God says, I’m here, I’m strong. And then what do we see? The evil of cancer seems to be winning in this man’s life. And we see that kind of thing over and over.
We’ve prayed for people and prayed they’d be healed. And maybe even praying for something for yourself, and it doesn’t seem to be happening. But I thought Sasse’s answer was incredibly profound. He said he wasn’t angry at God. He said, he was asked why. Why aren’t you angry about that? He said because he sees that God is more powerful than he is. And if God just always does what he thinks he should do, that’s not actually what he needs. He said one of the things that the cancers taught him is that he always thinks that Ben should be God, and he doesn’t want that to be the case. He knows that’s not actually the case. His own life is showing him that that’s not the case. And so while he’d like to be healed, if it’s God’s will not to heal him from this physical ailment, he has enough confidence in who God is. And the very fact that he can enter into God’s presence like we talked about when I quoted him last night. That if he doesn’t heal him, but he can be used for God’s purposes right now, he has confidence that God is ultimately going to do what he’s promised, even if it’s not exactly the way he’d like it to play out.
I think, wow, that takes some faith to say that. I hope if I were in his shoes, and all of us at some point will be to some degree in his shoes, I hope I could handle it with the sort of grace that he is handling it with. I don’t know that I will. But he’s right.
Where are we wandering from the Lord? Because oftentimes it’s we’ve been facing that evil and we’re trying to come up with that backup plan. How tempting would it be to say, you know, I prayed to God, he didn’t heal me. I’m going to apply the best of modern medicine, which incidentally isn’t prohibited. And he’s doing that. It’s perfectly good to go and take advantage of the glorious discoveries that God has enabled people to come up with. But I’m going to put my trust in that. That’s where I’m going to find my purpose. I’m somehow going to beat this. I’m going to beat this with this modern technology. And that’s where my purpose is.
No, because I’m going to do those things because that’s a good gift from God. But I’m going to trust that God’s plan is what really matters. God’s plan is where I’m really going. He knows better than me. That’s a hard thing to say. But it’s exactly where David is here in this psalm too. He doesn’t have the answer where everything has immediately gone right. He’s facing those who are opposing him. But he says, but God’s bigger than me. We know his word is pure. And so if I’m waiting in this moment, it’s not the technician saying reboot, even though there’s clearly a different problem. It’s God saying, wait, because I really do have a better plan.
Where again, it’s a good question to ask ourselves, are we wandering? Because of that, where we’re facing that, where are we wandering? Where are we confused? Where are we hurting? And in those places, do we see that God is more powerful than we are? Because a lot of times we might say it intellectually, but we don’t feel it. We say I need that backup plan because God apparently doesn’t realize how serious this is. And the psalm says, no, you can trust that God’s word is pure. It might not always be that everything comes together in the moment like we want. But if we’re trusting in the good promises of our God, we know that ultimately they will come together.
The Israelites in Egypt, did it come together for them immediately how they wanted, where God said, I’m going to rescue you. And immediately everything just goes great. No, they suffered under the Egyptians longer first. But did that mean God’s plan wasn’t happening? Not at all. It was actually the path that God was sending them through to demonstrate his power. They were being used to point to him in glory. And whatever suffering we’re going in, can we have that same attitude where when we’re praying and God doesn’t answer the prayer the way we want, say, but I know he’s bigger than me. He’s better than me. He is wiser than me. And so even if he’s saying, no, I’m not angry, I just want to understand better what he’s going to use me for in this moment. Can we get to that point? It’s hard. That’s why we need to keep in his promises. Because once we’re in his promises, when we realize that’s what’s going on, and then, yes, I’d like to understand this. God, it’s perfectly fine to say, God, I don’t understand why you’re not doing this. But if we can make sure even in that we’re saying, but I know that you are the one who has good intended for me and for everyone. You intend good, you do good, and your intentions actually happen.
If we can hold on to that, what do we realize about the evil that is being spoken around us? Yes, evil speaks, but it will be thwarted. It won’t ultimately overcome. Take a look at verse 7. You, Lord, will protect them. You will continually shelter each one from these evil people. For the wicked seem to be everywhere when people promote evil.
That’s how the psalm ends. Doesn’t sound like a very helpful note, does it? On every side, the wicked prowl as vileness is exalted among the children of man, as ESV says. Doesn’t sound particularly hopeful, does it?
Why isn’t this psalm then considered to be a psalm that ends in a depressed fashion? Well, it’s because of verse 6. You see, David doesn’t just say that as the conclusion. He says that as the conclusion of his thought that we looked at earlier, that God’s word is purified like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. That’s the context. So that then he can say, you, O Lord, will keep them. You will guard us from this generation forever.
Essentially, we can insert, even though on every side, the wicked prowl and violence is exalted. David’s saying, all that’s there, but I know that you are good in that. That your promises are true in that situation. And this is where God’s word is profoundly different from that technician that I talk to every so often. Not the same one, but those technicians, I should say, at Spectrum, or I’ve talked to at the various cell phone companies. You’ve talked to at various cell phone companies. You’ve talked to at various companies. They often deny that there’s a problem. It must be us. We’re not handling things right. We don’t understand how to use our computer or our cell phone or whatever it might be.
No, I actually do know. No, no, it must be you. God’s not saying, it must be you. You think there’s evil out there. It’s just you. You don’t realize that there’s no evil out there. It’s not really there. It’s just in your imagination. If you just had more faith, everything would be fine. No, God doesn’t say that.
It’s one of the most vile things, actually, that we hear from certain preachers. They say, if you just had more faith, it’d be okay. David had a lot of faith. Was it always okay? No. The disciples had an incredible amount of faith after the resurrection, at least. They struggled before that. But I mean, look in the book of Acts. Incredible integrity and faith. Was everything always okay? No. But they knew it would ultimately be okay.
You see, God doesn’t promise everything’s going to go okay in the moment, and he doesn’t imply that it is okay in the moment. When you call and talk to that tech support person, they imply it’s okay in the moment. It’s not really broken, even though it is. God doesn’t say that right here. David says, I can affirm that you have us under your control, that you are with us. And also, the evil speaking loudly right now.
Psalm doesn’t even just say that there’s evil out there, but evil can clearly be heard. It is loud. But God guards his people in the midst of it.
Whom does he guard? Well, it says that he guards. Your translation, again, there’s different ways of translating this. It may say guard us. Probably better guard him. That would be the more direct translation. Well, who’s the him? Well, if we look back at verse 5, we have a description of the him. Because the poor are plundered, because the needy grow. God says he’s going to arise for that person. A person who suffered. A person who feels like there’s every reason to wander into doubt, to find a backup plan. That’s the person God guards.
The person who’s suffering, God guards. Is that us? Well, when we’re suffering, yes, it is us. But I kind of like that it directly ties to the person suffering, because the us, we might misinterpret. If we translate it as us, we might think, well, the person who has enough faith, he guards. No. The person who calls on the name of the Lord, even as he struggles, even as he doubts, even as he can’t figure it out, even as we can’t have that beautiful testimony as we face an insurmountable battle for our lives. We don’t have that platform in the New York Times, and we don’t answer it so eloquently. We just struggle, and we say, I don’t understand God. Even then, God guards.
What did Jesus do for his disciples as they fled? He called them back to himself. So it’s not about us. It’s about his faithfulness over and over again.
And evil thinks it has the upper hand, but it’s not going to ultimately. It won’t last. It won’t stay where it is in control. That’s the thing we need to understand. It seems like evil is triumphing, but it’s only for a time.
Do you remember Baghdad Bob, as people nicknamed him? Muhammad Sayyid al-Sahaf. He was the Iraqi information minister during the war in Iraq in 2003. And there have been lots of propaganda people for different governments over the years when there’s wars going on. But the man who gained the nickname Baghdad Bob, the reason people bothered to nickname him, they also nicknamed him Comical Ali. Why did they do that? Why did we pay attention to him at all? Well, because his pronouncements were so ultimately absurd.
Just hours before American tanks rolled into Baghdad, he claimed that there weren’t any Americans anywhere near Baghdad. Everyone was dying in the desert, or all the soldiers were committing suicide. He had all these incredibly wild claims. And so even as we looked at this vile regime, it was almost, I don’t mean to make light of it, almost a humorous moment in the midst of it. Because this man wasn’t just saying the Americans were wrong to be there. Well, we expect that when there’s a war. What was he saying? They’re not there. They’re not there.
We could see on the cameras because there were embedded reporters. This was a fascinating thing at the time that the news media was reporting live as it was happening on location. We could see that they were there. And he would talk to reporters and say, oh, they’re not there. It was just absurd. And he could come up with these furious protestations that nothing was happening. The Iraqis were winning. The Americans weren’t anywhere near. And all of us knew, no, actually, they’re right there.
And so you have Baghdad Bob. Every bit of evil will become Baghdad Bob. It claims it’s in control. It claims that God’s power isn’t anywhere near, that God’s people are being defeated, that they should all give up and turn to the other side. They should act like the world. They should do as the world. They should just reject God or somehow make God more like the world or any other number of distortions.
And in the scheme of things, it’s as absurd as that Iraqi information minister claiming that the Americans weren’t near Baghdad, when in fact they obviously unequivocally were. The regime fell. And of course, it was all the aftermath. It was a huge mess.
But the difference with God is he knows exactly how to do it. He actually can do it all the way to victory. There won’t be any rogue groups, guerrilla warfare, none of that. God’s victory will be utterly complete. As we’ve talked about before, in his patience, he hasn’t made it complete yet, that more can hear, that more will believe.
But what we need to remember when we hear, as David ends the psalm with, the people speaking loudly and vilely and claiming they are great and they are powerful and they are the way of victory. As absurd in the scheme of history is that man claiming that the Americans weren’t near Baghdad. Actually more absurd.
Because as absurd as it was and as unstoppable as the American army appeared at that moment, and in reality basically was, it wasn’t completely unstoppable. They could have made a horrible miscalculation. They could have just decided not to. And that’s the difference. God’s not going to decide not to. He’s not going to say, you know, I’m not sure that it’s ever worth returning to that earth. Maybe I’ll just leave them to their own devices until the earth explodes and is gone. Maybe I’ll just do that. God’s not going to do that.
That’s why we need to keep in God’s promises. That’s how we grow in him and how we testify to him in our darkest moments, in our most uncertain moments. It’s not because we’re so strong. It’s not because we have so much faith that we don’t have those dark moments or face those seemingly undefeatable enemies. It’s that we know his promises so well that we realize that indeed his promises, his word, is the exact opposite of those empty words of those who are evil. His words are unstoppable. His words are pure.
I think sometimes we believe our hope is that there isn’t any evil or there won’t be any evil, that we won’t encounter any evil, any pain. It’s not wrong to want that, right? Someday in God’s presence it will be true. But in the moment that we live in right now, our hope is not that. Our hope isn’t that there’s no evil about. Our hope is that we know that evil will ultimately lose.
We can know that with confidence. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Would you help us to live as those who know with confidence, who in our darkest moments can say, even when our prayers don’t seem to be answered in the moment, that we know that your plans are good, that you know better than we do. But that’s what we see in this psalm as David faces so much that’s painful. And yet he looks to your promises and says he knows that they’re pure, that you always come through. Would you help us to have that confidence, to live in that confidence? We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Whatever you’re facing today, if you’re wondering, how do I make sense of it? Does God really have those sorts of promises for me? No, but the answer is yes. That’s why we have these psalms. God gave us these authorized prayers as the wise person once referred to them to me. These are his authorized prayers. He gave these cries to him and said, these are the things you’re going to experience. And I want you to know it’s okay to be in this place and to know that I haven’t abandoned you in this place. And so that’s why these are here.
And I hope you’ll join me next week. We’re going to continue with part two of this series as we turn to Psalm 13. David continues in a very similar theme, some different interesting nuances that we’ll see over the next few weeks. But David continues. And it’s important for us to dwell in these psalms because, well, we experience the things that are in these psalms. This is what life often feels like. And we need to know God’s strong promises so we know he is with us in whatever we face.
If there’s some question, if there’s someplace you’re struggling, someplace you could use prayer, you can always use the comments below or you can text in to 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. Just send a text in. Our prayer team would love to pray with you. If you’re in the comments, all of us would love to talk to you there as well. It’s always great when we can pray for each other, when we can wrestle through a problem together. What a blessing it is to get to do that. So please do.
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