A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on February 25, 2024.
Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
The LORD is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more (Psalm 10).[1]
If you forget that we live in a world under God’s curse, amongst the fallen in sin, you can get discouraged in a hurry (Many of us do from time to time, don’t we?). Sometimes I wonder about Noah, whom Scripture says, “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation” who “walked with God” (Gen. 6:9): What did it feel like then for Noah to live surrounded by the wicked, where “every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5 NET). Was it discouraging for a man who walked with God to witness mass faithlessness? God did reveal to Noah the judgment to come in the flood, but Noah worked daily toward an unfathomable event, amidst a people in rebellion against God.
The writer of Hebrews says, “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Heb 11:7). Noah lived by faith, listened to God’s Word and obeyed it, condemning a perilous age of human depravity. And God sustained him by his grace, saving him and his family from judgment.
Likewise, God has given us his Word, and sustains us by his grace through faith. We too are called to live obediently amidst the wicked. But, in living out our faith, it is easy to look around and get discouraged. And it is here that we may cry out, with the psalmist,
Why, O LORD, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (1)
The Mystery of God’s Silence
Where is God when it seems that wickedness prevails? Has he turned a blind eye to evil? In our backyard and around the world, we witness the arrogance of the wicked as they prey not upon the able and powerful but the vulnerable. We see it and wonder: Why does God let it continue? We know he can thwart the ways of the wicked, but while they deny God’s authority, despise his truth, and renounce his reign, they seemingly get what they want, when they want it. They are worshipers indeed, of themselves, relishing the rewards of their prosperity with no regard for their provider.
The psalmist says, “[The wicked’s] ways prosper at all times” (5a), which is poetic hyperbole, to be sure, but it emphasizes the conundrum: Why do the wicked prosper at all? If God judged the sinful world with flood and Sodom with fire, why does he allow the wicked to continue to populate and prosper? Why does he seem silent when justice should be served? Why doesn’t he immediately destroy what is offensive to him and an affront to his holiness? Such are the mysteries of God’s providence.
Though what we witness troubles us, it is nothing new but has been part of life on earth since the Fall. And while the flood wiped out most of mankind, those God preserved were sinners by nature too, and so progenerated more sinners. This is the world in which we live, but it is not how it will always be. The apostle Peter explains that “the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Pet. 3:6). Though we do not witness God’s judgment when we expect it, its certainty is no less sure.
We must remember that our impatience often jades our perspective, not realizing that what we presume to be God’s silence is in fact his patience. Peter says, “But do not overlook this one fact … with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:8-9). God’s presumed silence does not prove his absence, nor does he play hide and seek. Regardless of how we feel, to be sure, he is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1).
The Conundrum of Wicked Prosperity
In a litany of examples, the psalmist recounts the way of the wicked. The wicked live as if they have no need of God and are happy to live without him. The wicked use their tongues like weapons, twisting and turning the truth for their gain. It’s as if the more they lie the more they are rewarded, and their worldly success seemingly justifies it. The world says, look at them and their success, who cares about their wickedness? Trouble and evil seem to work to their advantage. When you look at them it really seems like “might makes right.”[2] Why do the wicked seem to prosper?
First, to be clear, the wicked do not always prosper and all who prosper are not wicked. Abraham prospered and faithfully feared the Lord. Saul prospered and fell into sin and spiraled downward. Proverbs is full of truisms about the benefits of righteous living and the consequences of sin. Righteousness wins, not every day in every way but in the end.
Furthermore, we should be careful not to readily accept the world’s definition of prosperity. If we do, it can seem like wickedness is rewarded, but this is shortsighted. The gospel that the world considers worthless is of infinite value to us. Through faith in Christ, God has “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6-7). For this reason, when Paul compares worldly and heavenly prosperity, he confesses, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). When we consider prosperity, let us not think of the wicked but of “the unfathomable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8 NET).
It is also helpful to remind ourselves what God said through Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9). We do not, cannot, and will not understand all that God has purposed and planned.
Why would God allow Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery (Gen. 37:26-28)? Why would God bless a pagan, idolatrous nation like Egypt through a worldwide famine (Gen. 41:53-57)? Why would God permit Israel’s children to be enslaved in Egypt (Ex. 1:8-14)? We only know today because Scripture reveals that God intended to judge Egypt (Gen. 15:13), bring Israel into the Promised Land, and destroy the Amorites (Num. 21:31-32). But what takes seconds to read in the Bible took 400 years to unfold. Don’t interpret God’s patience by your watch, your calendar, or your lifespan.
Everything that happens every second of every day is according to the eternal purpose of God and the counsel of his will, for his own glory.[3] We may not understand it all, but that does not change the fact that God preserves and governs all things in his holiness, wisdom, and power.[4] And so, when we read in Proverbs, “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble” (Prov. 16:4), we know that there is purpose even in the prosperity of the wicked. When we are tempted to look at the world and deduce that we are spinning out of control, let us instead, like Noah, listen to and obey God’s Word, trusting that he who asks us to build an ark will bring the rain.
Such trust does not, however, make us determinists. We are to call out to God, as God works through the prayers of his people. Let us remember that at the end of his parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-5), Jesus said, “will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily” (18:7-8a). Rightly do we pray that God’s justice will prevail over wickedness, praying with the psalmist “let [the wicked] be caught in the schemes that they have devised” (2b). We too may plea, “Arise, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand,” which is an appeal to God’s strength, to act powerfully on behalf of “the afflicted” (12). And we may even petition the Lord like the psalmist, “Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer” (15a), which is an appeal for God to break the power of the wicked in their evildoing, that they be held accountable, down to the very last one. And so, we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).
The Surety of Divine Justice
The wicked man deceives himself when he says in his heart, “I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity” (6). For, he lives, and breathes, and has his being by the common grace of God. Any prosperity he has enjoyed in this life has been under the authority and ordination of God. And though he may think God has “hidden his face” (11), the truth is “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). The wicked deny or ignore that such a day will come.
Peter says, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Pet. 3:10). On that day, every knee shall bow to the Lord, and every tongue shall confess, “The LORD is king forever and ever” (16). Though the wicked scorn God’s patience, he will purge the land of the wicked and faithlessness, “so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more” (18b).
“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved,” Peter reasons, “what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:11-13). And so we are, knowing that until that day, we can be sure that he inclines his ear to us, hearing our desires, strengthening our hearts, and preserving us in the righteousness of Christ till the end.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] Willem A. Vangemeren, Psalms (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 156.
[3] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 7, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 361.
[4] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 11, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 362-363.
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