I know you wouldn't believe it to look at me now, but you've heard me say a few years ago I got really into long distance running.
And at the time that I started to get into long distance running was about the same time that I became a girl dad.
So coinciding with this new passion for torturous exercise was also our family's really kind of love for Disney vacations, Disney parks.
And it didn't take very long through that process for me to find an avenue in which those two interests could be brought together.
I joined a running group. It was started by a man who runs a podcast and travel agency for Disney vacations in particular.
And the group, it grew to several hundred people at one point.
Here's the point of me telling you that. Everything about that group had a very narrow focus.
It was narrowly focused on bringing together those two interests that I just mentioned to you.
It was focused on running distance races at Disney parks.
The discussions in the Facebook group, they were all about general information related to these Disney races.
In-person meetups of the group, they took place at Disney parks and at Run Disney events.
There was a strong community of people whose entire relationship was built around one thing.
Running races at Disney World.
And from the outside looking in, you might think or others probably think that this group is a bit obsessive.
Obsessive about one interest or the other.
But the fact remains, the very existence of the group, the very function of the group, was fundamentally about Run Disney races.
So everything that it did and the interaction that the people had within it centered on that particular thing.
Now, in a similar way to that group, Christianity also has a central, all-consuming focus.
It is fundamentally about the gospel.
The good news that God has provided eternal salvation to sinners through Jesus Christ, his sinless son.
We could say Christians are essentially gospel people.
Our covenant together is built entirely on a shared confession of faith in the gospel message.
When we gather, we celebrate that gospel.
That's the purpose of our gathering today.
At times, we partake in gospel ordinances.
Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
Covenant signs of our belonging to God through the gospel of Christ.
We have God's word, the Bible.
Which has a grand message.
One really central, focused message.
Entirely, the gospel.
And the gospel is all about Jesus Christ.
So we understand then that all of the Bible is then intrinsically about Jesus.
Jesus Christ.
And of course, while the gospel's truth is unchanging, it is variously expressed through the scriptures based on God's progressive revelation in history.
In other words, the gospel message is the same from Genesis to Revelation.
But where you read of the gospel in, let's say, Paul's epistles is expressed differently than the way that you read that same gospel, let's say, in the Psalms of David.
Alistair Begg has a helpful statement here.
We find Christ in all the scriptures.
In the Old Testament, he is predicted.
In the gospels, he's revealed.
In Acts, he is preached.
In the epistles, he's explained.
And in Revelation, he is expected.
Indeed, the Bible is about Jesus and his gospel from beginning to end.
Therefore, Christians are all about the gospel from beginning to end and everything that we are and everything that we do.
There's core tenets of this gospel message that Christians tend to explain in different ways.
Right now, you're learning in Lakeside Connect on Sunday mornings, a presentation of the gospel essentially that follows four things.
God, the righteous creator, that was the focus this morning, right?
Man next week as the sinner.
Christ as the Savior.
You'll have the response of repentance and faith.
But then, ultimately, you get to redemption, final redemption, right?
Another way of using kind of that same framework that's very common among Christians is to follow this.
Creation, fall, redemption, restoration, right?
It's a framework for presenting the gospel.
We might preach the same gospel using questions.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Answer, there's a creator that put it there.
Well, what went wrong with it?
Answer, sin.
Is there any hope?
Answer, Christ.
Where's all of this going?
Answer, judgment.
Great judgment.
Great judgment for the unbelief.
No matter which approach you take in sharing or explaining the gospel, for it to be the true gospel, it must begin with God.
It must address man's sin.
It must proclaim Christ's atoning death and resurrection.
It must call for sinners to respond in repentance and faith.
And it must look forward to the great day of judgment and the eternal kingdom of God.
And wherever you go in the scripture, that gospel is present in different ways.
But it's there.
And when we come to Psalm 14, guess what we have again?
We have the gospel.
It's the gospel according to David.
His historical context was such that Jesus is not explicitly named in Psalm 14.
But that doesn't mean that Jesus isn't explicitly preached in Psalm 14.
For he is.
What we look back to in redemptive history, David was looking forward to in redemptive history.
Placing his faith and trust in the promises of God that would come through God's King and Messiah.
We do the same exact thing.
Salvation functions exactly the same no matter where you look.
We look back and we know that that Savior and Messiah is Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
David looks forward, unknowing of exactly who that would be.
Not knowing exactly how that would unfold.
But his faith is the same.
His trust is the same.
The gospel is there.
All the core tenets of the gospel are present in Psalm 14.
David addresses the universal human condition.
Rebellion against the creator.
He speaks of two groups with two distinct ends.
And then he emphasizes salvation for God's people through the work of God's King.
Okay?
So that's what we want to see here.
We want to see the gospel according to David using those three things.
First, notice the universal human condition.
The universal human condition.
Verse 1.
The fool says in his heart, there is no God.
They are corrupt.
They do abominable deeds.
There is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, literally the sons of Adam,
to see if there are any who understand.
Understanding them being described as seeking God, who seek after God.
They have all turned aside.
Together they've become corrupt.
There is none who does good.
Not even one.
Harsh words, right?
True words.
So in the opening stanza here, David introduces us to the atheist creed.
There is no God.
But still we need to understand this within its historical context.
Today, an atheist is someone who rejects all notions of supernatural.
It's not just about a rejection of God.
It's a rejection of all things that are supernatural, including God, including any divine being.
But did you know that in the early centuries of the church, those who were labeled and persecuted as atheists were the Jews and the Christians?
It's not because they denied the supernatural.
Of course they didn't.
It's not because they said there's no God.
Of course they believe that.
It's because they believe there was one exclusive God.
They denied the pluralism of their age.
And in their Greco-Roman culture, that brought great persecution.
It wasn't that their culture had a problem with them following Jesus.
It wasn't that their culture had a problem with them worshiping the Jewish God or the God of the Hebrew Bible.
It's that they did that exclusively and they proclaimed that unless everybody else did that exclusively, they would be judged by God.
So they were labeled as atheists.
And they were persecuted as such.
When David wrote this psalm, it is highly improbable that atheism as we know it today even existed.
Everyone had at least one God they worshipped and appealed to for blessing.
All of Israel's enemies were linked to some false deity, be it Bel or Dagon, Molech,
some other variation of what the Bible calls demonic influences.
So then who exactly is David talking about when he says the fool says in his heart there is no God?
David probably didn't have much of a category for somebody like we would in that sense, using that particular phrase.
A few observations here I think will help us.
The first observation is this.
This is defiance more than it is denial.
Okay?
It's defiance more than it is denial.
The fool's creed is not so much a denial of God's existence.
It is a rejection of God's rule.
His sovereignty over them.
They declare that there is no God to which they will ultimately be accountable.
That's really what we're dealing with here.
No divine being that cares enough to actually look on humanity and judge those who displease him,
or at least in the way that the Hebrew Bible was declaring there was a God who must be appeased.
Derek Kidner helps here.
The assertion there is no God is in fact treated in Scripture not as a sincere if misguided conviction,
but as an irresponsible gesture of defiance.
And this feature of the sinner's attitude has already been addressed in many of the Psalms we've dealt with,
particularly in Psalm 10.
Psalm 10, verses 4 and verse 11.
In the pride of his face, the wicked does not seek God.
All his thoughts are, there is no God.
And this is further explained in verse 11 when David says,
he says in his heart, God has forgotten.
He has hidden his face.
He will never see it.
Do you see?
This is more of a defiance than it is a denial.
Which helps us to understand the universality of this human condition.
We're not looking simply at people through this verse that say there is no such thing as a God.
There is no such thing as the supernatural.
We're looking at all people who, by nature, defy the rule of God in their life.
That's who this is addressing.
Interestingly, while a modern atheist claims to deny God's existence,
God's word denies the existence of a true atheist.
Interesting, isn't it?
Instead, the Bible describes them as rebels who suppress the truth.
That God says is evident everywhere.
That's Romans 1, isn't it?
So before he quotes this particular psalm in Romans chapter 3,
Paul makes his point clear in Romans 1.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who do what?
Who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them.
Because God has shown it to them.
Do you see?
Paul's dealing with the same category that David's dealing with.
In Psalm 14 here.
For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
So they are then without excuse.
No person claiming to be an atheist will have an excuse before the Lord to say,
well, there was no sign that you existed.
Paul says, no, it's there.
They're just suppressing the truth of it.
And he continues.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
What did they do?
They defied him.
They became futile in their thinking.
Their foolishness, in other words, grew.
It went deeper as they continued to suppress the truth.
So this form of atheism that David deals with in Psalm 14 continues to grow progressively
into the atheism that we understand today.
Their foolish hearts, Paul says, were darkened.
They became fools, claiming to be wise, the intellectual elite.
They actually became fools.
Same word David uses.
And they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds
and animals and creeping things.
This is the progression of the suppression of the truth.
And according to the scripture, the fool's creed is fundamentally an act of defiance against God
more than it is an intellectually credible conviction about his existence.
As men and women have continued to do this, the futility of their thinking has deepened.
Their hearts have darkened further.
And that has produced more blatant expressions of the foolish creed that David refers to.
So the first observation of this here is that this is defiance more than it is denial.
But there's a second observation.
We are all fools by nature.
By our nature, we fit the description of verse 1.
This form of atheism, if we even want to call it that, it's expressed through universal corruption.
By nature, we all live in rebellion against our creator.
Though we may be open to his existence, we reject his sovereign rule over us.
He gives us his word.
We say, no thank you.
I'm good with you being there.
I certainly want your blessings.
When I do something good, I want you to reward that.
But when it comes to all the other things, no thanks.
That's our nature.
Every person by nature functions with that disposition towards God.
Therefore, we enjoy what God calls, according to David here, abominable.
We refuse to do those things that is the most essential good.
To love, obey, and worship the Lord.
David isn't saying here that no person can do a good thing.
That's not what he's saying.
He's saying we are incapable in our nature of doing the most basic good.
That even the goodness that we perform is tainted by our disposition towards God.
Our rebellion towards God.
Certainly, some people are more blatant in their rebellion than others.
Still, the fact remains that in our natural state, we belong to the plotting peoples and the raging nations of Psalm 2.
Who set themselves against the Lord and his anointed son and king.
We know to be Jesus Christ.
So then David's assessment in verse 1, we're all fools by nature, is then affirmed by God in verses 2 and 3.
Despite the fool's claim that God will not see and judge, the Lord indeed does look on the children of Adam.
He has discerned that all are corrupt and sinful by nature.
No one naturally acts with true understanding and seeks after God, the Lord says.
All people have been corrupted so that not a single individual is viewed by God as good.
Now while we may discern levels of goodness as we relate to one another, certainly we can do that.
God judges according to his perfect standard.
And when it comes to his perfect standard, every single one of us falls short.
He cannot look on any person and say that he is truly good.
And this truth that all people are corrupt by nature is precisely the point Paul made when he quoted these verses to the church in Rome in Romans chapter 3.
And that whole discussion, the quotations that Paul puts in Romans chapter 3, it all culminates in verse 23, which you probably know well.
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
A final observation should be made here before we move on.
Remember, we're thinking the universal human condition.
It's really a reference to defiance more than denial.
All of us fit that description by nature.
And here's the third thing that we have to acknowledge.
Our corruption is a matter of the heart.
This is a heart level corruption.
Psalm 14, 1.
The fool says where?
In his heart, there is no God.
This creed, it is not first the language of the tongue.
It is the expression of the heart.
The sinner's rebellion, it does not result from his circumstances.
It reflects who he truly is inside, within himself.
This is biblical anthropology.
The biblical anthropology has been rejected by our therapeutic culture.
And it's even being abandoned by professing Christians who want to understand the human condition through secular psychology rather than biblical Christianity.
Christianity.
The lie of the world tells us that all of our problems are outside of us.
And the implication of that is that we are not then personally culpable and responsible for the attitudes and the behaviors that we demonstrate.
There's always a father issue that we can point to.
There's always a class system.
Well, I didn't have the advantages.
I didn't have the privileges of somebody else.
That's why I am who I am.
And that's why I act the way that I act.
The Bible says, no, that's not how this works.
You are who you are.
You act how you act.
Because you are by nature, in your heart, at the deepest person of who you are, in corrupt rebellion against God.
And therefore, you are culpable.
The Bible insists that the problem is the sinfulness inside of us.
That we are personally responsible for our sin.
That God is angry about our sin.
That he's determined to judge sinners.
That our greatest need is the redemption of the whole person.
Leading to transformation from the inside out.
This is the actual human condition.
And it is universal in scope.
That's not my discernment.
That's what the Bible says.
Over and over and over.
Not in one or two places.
Everywhere.
It says, this is our condition.
We are sinners.
sinners.
That's the first thing.
Second thing we find here.
In the gospel, according to David.
Is we find the presentation of two groups of people.
With two distinct ends.
Two groups of people.
With two distinct ends.
Look at verses 4 through 6.
Have they no knowledge?
All the evildoers.
Who eat up my people as they eat bread.
And do not call upon the Lord.
There, they are in great terror.
For God is with the generation of the righteous.
You would shame the plans of the poor.
But the Lord is his refuge.
So in the first section.
David reveals the universal human condition.
That we are all set by nature.
In rebellion against God's authority over us.
It's not that we deny him.
It's that we defy him.
That's our human condition.
This part of the psalm.
Shows that within fallen humanity.
Within all humans who have that universal condition.
There are two groups of people.
There are evildoers.
He says.
Who are contrasted then with those.
Whom God has made his own possession.
Because the my people.
In this verse.
There's the generation of the righteous.
In verse 5.
That's set against what is implied.
To be the generation of the wicked.
Generation.
Not speaking of a time frame.
In which you're born.
Generation.
That's group of person.
Group of people.
There's the generation of the righteous.
There's the generation of the wicked.
There are the proverbial poor.
In verse 6.
Who take refuge in God.
And they are being made distinct.
In this verse.
From those who abuse them.
Two groups.
Two different ends.
For these groups.
And you should notice.
There's no middle ground here.
There's no third way.
We each belong to one group.
Or the other.
As Jesus put it.
You're either on the narrow way.
Or you're on the broad way.
You're either headed toward the narrow gate.
Or toward the wide gate.
You're either building your life on the rock.
Or on the sand.
You're either in the kingdom.
Or out of the kingdom.
You're either the seed of the serpent.
Or the seed of the woman.
You're either destined for heaven.
Or you're condemned to hell.
Psalm 14 is consistent with all of the Bible.
In reducing man's existence.
Man's direction.
And man's destination.
To only two possible categories.
No matter how hard you try.
There's no possibility of having one foot in each camp.
And any attempt to do that.
Puts you squarely in the camp.
That's what the plotting peoples.
And the raging nations of Psalm 2.
Who are actually set against God.
Now why would we say that?
Because God is the one who has told us this.
And to fall short of any of his program.
Is to be against him.
There's no middle ground here.
So let's look a little closer.
At the two possibilities presented.
First.
There's rebels.
And those rebels are judged.
Rebels are judged.
Most of the section here.
It focuses on those who continue in defiance against God.
We all begin in defiance.
But most of the focus here is on those who continue in this defiance.
And the emphasis is on their future judgment.
A judgment of which David says they seem willfully ignorant of.
Verse 4.
It categorizes the group in two ways.
They do not call upon the Lord.
They refuse to trust and obey him.
And they devour the people who do trust and obey the Lord.
Interesting characteristics.
But because they have suppressed the truth.
God says they behave as if they don't even realize that there is a coming judgment.
Isn't that what he says in verse 4?
Have they no knowledge?
Do they not realize?
Are they truly that foolish?
To think that all of this isn't heading somewhere?
We go back to the four questions we asked in the introduction.
The gospel questions.
Where is all of this headed?
The first half of that answer is judgment.
It's all headed to judgment.
God says are they really that foolish?
That they behave as if there is no judgment.
Nature itself teaches us that there is a creator to which we are accountable.
We reject that truth.
We live in opposition to it.
And we store up more of God's wrath for the day of judgment.
Calling them fools here is not a put down.
David's not being aggressive just to agitate these people.
That's not what he's doing here.
He's speaking of their reality.
This really is foolishness.
It's ignorance.
They're willfully ignorant of their coming judgment.
They have deceived themselves.
And the reality of the coming judgment is made explicit in verse 5.
Here's how Christopher Ashe puts it.
There vividly opens up a vision of judgment to come.
Quoting Calvin, he says,
It is as if the psalmist pointed to it with his finger.
There, in the place of judgment, that's where they will be seen.
There they are.
Those who so casually despised God's people in great terror.
That's where they are.
That is their destiny if they do not repent.
Of course, in the setting of Psalm 14, they're not in terror at the moment.
They think they're doing great in the moment.
No, the psalmist, he's pointing to a future.
He's saying there, at that judgment, at that final reckoning,
that is when they will fear, feel the terror that they put on the people of God in David's context.
Friends, don't suppress the truth.
Don't do it any longer.
Don't you know?
There is judgment coming.
It's coming.
You may not be in terror now.
But a judgment is coming.
And at that judgment, you will, on your own,
you will stand before the God that you have defied.
That you have continued to defy.
And you will face his wrath.
There, in that place, he will judge your disobedience.
And apart from repentance and faith in Christ, he will cast you into eternal hell.
Rebels are judged.
There's a second group, though.
Oh, there's gospel hope.
Gospel means good news.
All we've talked about is bad news.
Is there any good news here?
Yeah, of course there is.
Not only will rebels be judged, but he says, no, believers will be saved.
There is a hope here.
Despite our universal corruption, there's a second group of sinners in this passage
who will not face God's wrath as the first group will.
My people, in verse 4, is the first hint, apart from David himself,
that the Lord takes some corrupt humans for his own possession.
Do they have the same condition as the wicked?
Yes.
But they're in a different group.
They have a different end.
Wrath is not their end.
Salvation is their end.
Still, we must acknowledge this group does not represent people who are morally superior to the others.
It's not that they've committed fewer sins or obtained a higher level of goodness that merits God's favor.
No.
The covenant saving relationship that they enjoy with God is made possible only by his grace.
It is grace-powered.
And what is grace?
It's favor that is not merited.
If it's merited by our goodness or our morality, then it isn't grace.
And yet, over and over and over, the Bible emphasizes not what we do.
It emphasizes the grace of God.
We receive it how?
We receive it by faith.
Verse 6.
What do they do?
They take refuge in God.
They trust him rather than defy him.
They submit to him rather than rebel against him.
They believe him.
And their belief is counted as righteousness.
That's what Romans 4 tells us when addressing Abraham in particular.
Paul says,
For if Abraham was justified by his works, he has something to boast about.
Except before God.
For what does the scripture say?
Abraham believed God, faith, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
It is not actual righteousness.
It is credited to him as if it is true righteousness.
This is the generation of the righteous in verse 5.
But as we noted in Psalm 1, their righteousness is not actual.
The theological word is imputed, which just means credited.
If you get paid by your employer through direct deposit, and however long or however often you get paid, there is a set of money that is credited to your account.
You don't put it there.
Someone else puts it there.
That's justification by faith.
It is credited to us.
In other words, though we are naturally corrupt sinners, God declares that we are righteous instead.
That's the good news of the gospel.
That though this is your true condition, it doesn't have to remain so.
That God will declare you righteous by his grace through faith.
And the biblical word for this is justification.
It means to be declared in a legal sense.
It's a courtroom.
Declared righteous.
Though you are guilty, he says not guilty.
But what's the basis of the righteousness?
When we stand at that great judgment, does God just lie about us?
Is that what this justification is?
Does he acknowledge that we are sinners, but he just kind of has an affinity for us, so he's going to say, never mind.
I'm just going to say you're not guilty.
No, that's not what he does.
That's why Jesus is so important.
That's why he's the central focus of all of the Bible.
He's the central focus of our salvation.
Without him, there is no justification.
Without him, there is no true righteousness.
Without him, there is no grace.
In love, God becomes man.
Jesus Christ, born of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary.
Meaning that though he was truly a man, he did not have our corrupt nature.
He's sinless.
And he perfectly fulfilled God's law, living the life that we were supposed to live.
And then he died the death that we deserve to die.
Having never sinned, he becomes the perfect substitute for sinners.
So when God declares a sinner righteous, it's not because they're actually righteous, and it's not that he lies about them.
When he declares them righteous, it's because Christ took the punishment for their sin and bestowed upon them his perfect righteousness.
A transaction has taken place by God's grace through faith, whereby God says, my son will pay the punishment for your sin, and he will in return give you his righteousness.
So as Romans says, God then becomes just and the justifier.
And we've said this so many times before.
When you come to Christ for salvation, it's not as if God says, okay, thanks for filling out this plan of things that I told you to do.
Now that you've done that, I'm just going to kind of turn a blind eye to what you've done.
That's not what salvation is.
No, it must be paid.
Every sin must be judged.
But for those who come to Christ, Jesus takes that judgment for us.
He is judged for our sins rather than we being judged for our sins, which means that imputed to us and credited to our account before God is not our righteousness.
It's the perfection of Christ.
God looks at us and he sees Jesus rather than us.
He who makes the many righteous brings us back to life again.
Dying, he reversed the curse, rising, crushed the serpent's head.
That's what we sing.
The good news of the gospel is that though you are a sinner who deserves God's wrath, he will forgive your sin.
He will make peace with you.
He will adopt you into his family.
He will give you eternal life.
And he will do it only through Jesus Christ.
You can't receive any of those things by cleaning up your morals or finding some kind of middle ground between the two groups in this psalm.
It won't work that way.
It doesn't work.
You receive it by turning away from your defiance.
You say, I still got a bunch of questions.
Great, so do I.
And I've been a Christian a long time.
But I trust him.
I'm turning away from that defiance.
Repenting of my sin and rebellion.
And I'm taking refuge in Jesus Christ.
I'm trusting that what he has done is sufficient for my salvation.
And I will follow him as Savior and as Lord.
Again, we sing.
Oh, fill the Spirit's gentle work.
Who breaks with love the fortress heart.
Then speaks to it the sweetest word.
Stand forgiven, child of God.
Only trust him.
Turn to Jesus now.
He will save you.
With simple faith.
And childlike trust.
We see the universal human condition.
We see two groups with two destinies.
Two ends.
But then this gospel presentation is completed.
The gospel according to David in verse 7.
We have salvation through God's king.
Salvation through God's king.
Again, verse 7.
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion.
When the Lord restores the fortune of his people.
Let Jacob rejoice.
Let Israel be glad.
Much of this psalm is a callback to Psalm 2.
If you were here for our study in those first two psalms, you'll remember.
Those two psalms are introductory to the entire Psalter.
Every psalm should be interpreted through the lens of those first two psalms.
Okay?
This psalm in particular brings us back to Psalm 2 over and over again.
It's in Psalm 2 that we're presented with the raging nations.
With the plotting peoples who set themselves against God and his anointed king.
Those who say there is no God in the sense as David means it here.
Most of what we've studied in Psalm 14 continues to reflect on that human corruption and rebellion that's first presented in Psalm 2.
But this final verse, this is the most explicit statement of hope in the passage.
It's also linked to Psalm 2.
Psalm 2 verses 4 through 9.
He who sits in the heavens laughs.
The Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying,
As for me, I have set my king on where?
Zion, my holy hill.
I will tell of the decree.
The Lord said to me, You are my son.
This is the king.
Today I have begotten you.
Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
You can go back to Psalm 2 and see how we unpacked all of that.
But just briefly in connection with Psalm 14.
Zion, this is poetic language here.
This isn't referring to a specific place in Jerusalem.
This isn't even speaking of Jerusalem itself.
This is speaking of the place where God is.
This is heaven.
This is the place of God's throne.
The place from which he sovereignly rules and judges his creation.
Jesus Christ is the messianic king and son of God here.
Through which the world is judged and God's people are saved.
You can go all the way to the end of the Bible in Revelation.
He quotes these Psalms, pointing us to Jesus.
That Jesus is the fulfillment of them in this judgment.
So what does David do here?
He prays for and he longs for God to send forth his king from Zion to fulfill the promise of Psalm 2.
And I've already told you how Jesus came to deliver us from God's wrath and bless his people.
What David prayed for here, at least in part, has already happened.
The Christ has come.
He has provided salvation.
But just as David prays in Psalm 14, 7, longing that one day the Christ would come,
we too now pray that he would come back, that he would return in glory and in judgment.
Salvation has come through Jesus' death and resurrection.
And salvation will come through his glorious return.
In both cases, salvation comes only through God's king, Jesus, his son.
Through him alone, God's people, Jew and Gentile, rejoice and are made glad.
Amen.
While it's expressed through the lens of David's place in redemptive history, we can't discount that.
The gospel, according to David, is the same gospel that's preached everywhere else in the Bible.
There is no other gospel.
This is it.
You and I are, by nature, rebels against our creator.
We deserve his wrath.
But in his great love, God made a way for us to be forgiven.
A way for us to be redeemed through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
And all who turn away from their inerrant rebellion to trust and follow Christ can be sure of God's eternal blessings in heaven.
You will rejoice.
You will be glad.
You have a foretaste of that now.
It will be made complete then at his return.
But the inverse is also true.
All who continue in their rebellion, through outright defiance, or maybe a more subtle approach in trying to mix various things together,
they will face God's eternal wrath.
We don't gloat in that.
But it is given to us as a warning.
No one in this room will stand before the Lord one day and be able to say, no one told me or I didn't get it.
You'll stand before the Lord and you'll have to say, I just denied it.
I just suppressed it.
But you don't have to do that any longer.
There's an open invitation from Christ to all people.
Come to me, all who are weak and heavy laden.
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, he says, and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.
Turn from your sin.
Confess Christ today.
He really is your only hope.
And he's a certain hope.