Psalm 52, as expounded in It, contrasts the destructive pride and deceit of the "mighty man" Doeg with the enduring goodness of God. The sermon details Doeg's betrayal of David and his role in the slaughter of the priests, highlighting his fatal mistakes: making God dispensable, trusting in riches, and strengthening himself in wickedness. In contrast, the psalm's speaker finds refuge in God's mercy and faithfulness. The core lesson emphasizes that true strength comes from trusting in God, not in material wealth or personal sin, and that a life without God is directionless and ultimately disastrous, urging listeners to make Christ their Savior before it is too late.
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Oh, Lord. Glory for our guilt to atone. One of God, eternal, he the sinner, sure to sin. This sinner's ransom in his precious blood. Glory, glory, glory unto Jesus. Anyone, everyone, he can fully save. Glory, glory, glory unto Jesus. Hallelujah, for whom he will sing.
For death triumphant he is risen from the grave. And to heaven ascended, Jesus now lives to save. Nothing else remains but salvation to receive. And the way to get it is to just be with glory, glory, glory unto thee, Lord. Anyone, everyone, he can fully sing.
Glory, glory, glory unto thee. Alleluia, all of us in him will take it. Come then to Jesus, do no longer say your way. Come and take salvation, take it now, for you may. There will be voices for you and the Savior's way. How could he be believing in his name, Father and Father?
Glory, glory, glory unto Jesus, and love everyone. He will pray. Glory, glory, glory unto Jesus. Hallelujah, hallelujah, he will pray. Psalm number fifty-two. Psalm number fifty-two. And we're going to begin the reading before the first verse. Now that baffles you, doesn't it?
Do you have a heading to this psalm? Psalm fifty-two in my Bible has a heading which says, To the chief musician, Maskell, A psalm of David, when Doeg the Edomite came and told Saul and said unto him, David is come to the house of Ahimelech. Now that is the setting for the psalm. I want to speak just for a minute or two about that. But let's read the psalm. Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, almighty man? The goodness of God endures continually.
Perhaps we should get the background in our mind before we read the psalm. Doreg was come to the house of Ahimelech. Now the story goes way back to when Saul had a harpist by the name of David, and when he was upset and when he was put out, David would play the harp and it would calm him. But Saul was a man with a very bad temper. He was a man who was very unappreciative, and he was a very jealous man. It came a day when David went out, when the armies of Israel were absolutely devastated.
A giant had come forth and challenged them, send one of your men to come and fight me, and if you lose, then we win. If we lose, then you win. And there wasn't a sword. You know the story. Till David came with his slings round and round and round and round and round and round and round. One and the stone went up in the air and the giant came to the ground. You know the story of Goliath. It was such a victory for Israel, but the people upset King Saul because they sang David. or saw the strange thousands, but David his tens of thousands.
And the king didn't like being in second place. But however, he got more and more discontented with David. David's life showed up his life until one day David had to flee for his life, and the king sought him to put him to death. And there were a band of men that surrounded him and fled with him to the cave of Delam. Most of you know these stories. But in the meantime, Saul was looking for David, and nobody had any news of David.
And then Doeggs suddenly learned that David had come into the house of a Himalek. And so he goes to the king and says, Now, you've got your opportunity to get him. Now, if you want to read the story, it's in First Samuel, I think it's chapter twenty-two. And you'll find that the king says, Why are all you against me? He says to the people. And then he commands some of them to slay the priests because It was a priest that had sheltered David, and when the people would not touch the priest, he said to Doeg, you kill them.
And Doeg slew all the priests. But Saul didn't still get a chance at that time to lay a hand on David, and in the end we know that David lived long enough to see the king slain. Think about that background as we read. I'll start again with the first verse. Why boastest thou thyself in mischief, O mighty man, the goodness of God endures continually? Thy tongue diviseth mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good and lying rather than to speak righteousness.
Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever. He shall take thee away and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living. Thela. The righteous also shall see and fear and shall laugh at him. Lo, this. is the man. That's the phrase I want you to notice. This is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and strengthened himself in his wickedness.
But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will praise thee forever, and now he's speaking to God, because thou hast done it, and I will wait on my name, for it is good before thy saints. Now I read what I could find about Doe. I noted that in the Bible he's called Saul's mightiest herdsman. But you don't think of a herdsman as being a very, very important person.
You think of somebody looking after the sheep or looking after the cows. But this man, rabbinical writings tell us, was the foremost scholar of his day. And when he says he was the mightiest herdsman of souls, it was because he was in charge of all of the livestock. And when I say that, I include the hundreds upon hundreds, even thousands of horses at the disposal of the king.
So he was no ordinary man, do it. But when he was commanded to slay the priests, he dared to do it. But I want you to notice in these verses an expression I have already pointed it out to you. This is the man. This is the man that made nothing. You know, men have all down through time been making. Even Neolithic man made, we find axe handles or axe heads made out of flint, we find tools, we find things of that nature.
In those days men made clubs and chased one another. And then the Bronze Age came and they made swords and did the same thing. Then came the Machine Age and then they made tanks and airplanes and continued to chase one another. Now it's the Atomic Age and we've all learned the fear, the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb. And I was reading just last week that they are getting close to perfecting a destructive ray. or how long this has eluded them. It's a good thing that the United States of America has this knowledge.
Whether they have actually professed it or not, I do not really know. When I was young, many, many, many years ago, I went to school to become... a draftsman. I never did become a draftsman, because before my eight-year apprenticeship began, God called me into his work, and so I stepped out and found myself a much, much more wonderful vocation. But I used to sit at a bench, and watch the jewelers on either side of me.
They had a bench that was shaped like this. And a man sat in each of those places with a sheepskin actually slung under the peg on which he worked. So when he would file and file the gold droppings and the silver droppings would fall into a tray held there by the sheepskin and eventually it would be sent to the assay office and melted down and purchased. by the office. But I used to watch these men take crude pieces of gold, nuggets, and then work with them.
And it seemed almost magical to me to see how the out of something that was looking gnawed and anything but attractive, they would be able to make a thing of beauty. Shakespeare says a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases. It will never pass into nothingness. Men have always been making. Men make history. I'm afraid it's all too short, but they make it. Men make progress. Not very much, but they make it.
But man's abilities and talents that enable him to make the tangibles are only outdone by his propensity for making mistakes. Now I know that it's said that the man who never made a mistake never made anything, and we all of us know what it is to make mistakes. But this man made three mistakes. fatal mistakes. And the first one is that he made God dispensable. Look at the verse of the next psalm, will you?
It says, The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. Now that is not a denial of God's existence. What he says is this. There is no God for me. A choice has been made. And a man who makes a choice like that, God says, is a fool. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God for me. And Doig was a fool. His first mistake was to make God dispensable. It says, this is the man that made not God his strength.
His second mistake was that he made material things his trust. He trusted in the abundance of his riches. And the last one is this, that he made himself strong in his sin. He strengthened himself in his wickedness. He made God dispensable. He made material things his trust. And he made himself strong in his sin. Now think about the first of these. The first was a mistake concerning his maker.
The second was a mistake concerning his goods. The third was a mistake concerning his soul. When he made his mistake concerning his maker, he robbed himself of all support that he might have known in the eternal future. And when he made a mistake with concerning his goods, he exposed himself to utter disaster. Man is weak, has to lean on something, but the man who tries to lean upon his riches finds that they have a way of taking to themselves wings and flying away.
When he made the mistake concerning his soul, He consigned himself to hell. This is the man that made not God his strength. Every man, every woman, has a choice to make with regard to God. You can either say, I want God to be my God, or you can say, there is no God. for me. It's just our own thing to be faced with a choice like that, and there's not one of us here can avoid it.
The Word of God tells us clearly that in the final analysis our own condition in the future lies in our own hands. What determines it? Determines whether or not we make God Now God has made himself available through his son. We were reading a very lovely verse this morning in our communion service that God went forth, that the Lord Jesus went forth from the Father. He came to the Essenes, then he went back from the earth to the Father. Why did he come?
He came to die on the cross. That was not an accident. That was not something mistaken. That was something that God knew all about. And without which there could have been no salvation for you and me. We would have no personal contact with God. And we could know nothing of God's salvation if Jesus hadn't come, died upon the cross, shed his blood, been a sacrifice for our sins. and then rose from the dead as the Savior who was able to save to the uttermost. But when you turn your back upon the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are making God dispensable because there is no other approach to God.
You cannot afford to do it. When Doeg said goodbye to God, he said goodbye to the only thing, and I use that word in a very special way, in the universes. He said goodbye to his only hope for the future. Life without God is like a sundial without the sun. Did you ever go out at midnight to see what time it was by the sundial? You weren't very successful in finding out, were you?
A life without God is like a compass without a needle. Can you imagine trying to find your direction with a compass that has no needle turning on its pivot? A life without God is like a ship. without a rudder. I came to this country way back in nineteen forty six and I was fortunate to get here because it was right after the war all travel for civilians was over was was suspended and there was no ship coming and going that I that I qualified for.
But fortunately Somebody in high places acquainted the chairman of the canard lines for first evades who was a believer, or his wife it was that they told, who was a more aggressive believer, that we needed to come over here for meetings and we were not eligible. So I got a letter from his personal secretary which said, we understand that you're going for services. to the United States of America, and I'm making arrangements for you. But you must be ready to leave within forty-eight hours. I wrote back, said I can be ready to leave within twenty-four hours, and so I got here.
But I came on a merchant aircraft carrier. It was a little aircraft carrier, only held five planes, and its work was to accompany the convoy as they went between Britain and the United States of America, and because a convoy always went at the slowest speed, or the speed of the slowest ship, that ship wasn't built to go fast, and it took me ten days to get here on the Empire in the trade. But in mid-ocean, do you know what happened? We lost our rudder. Well, that's not really true.
It just ceased to function. And that ship just wallows. And I tell you, when the wind gets under a flat top, it holds like that. And everything slides to one side. And then it holds like that. And it comes up this way. And it goes that way. Fortunately, they sent men down to find out what was wrong. And they were able to fix it. But I can tell you it's a fearful thing to be in a ship. in the middle of the ocean that has no rudder. And a life without God is like a ship without a rudder.
But when you have the Lord Jesus and you know God, you can lose everything else and you've really lost nothing. Like the woman dying on the Garrett floor in her poverty. was asked by someone as she was dying, can I get anything for you? And her reply was, I have Christ. What want I more? With Christ you everything. Without him you have absolutely nothing. Nothing that's worth nothing.
This is the man who made mistake, number one, he made God dispensable. Now I don't know what kind of place God has in your life. I don't know what kind of place God has in your thoughts. I don't know how much of your time is spent with God or for God or whether really and truly you don't... think very often about God. I reminded you there's only one way that you can be right with God and that by accepting Christ as your Savior.
Many times I've knelt with little boys and little girls in a front pew and heard little voices Pray, Lord Jesus, will you please come into my heart and be my Savior. I met with a little boy in the community church day school. He came to me after I talked at the assembly in the morning at the school assembly, and he said, Mr. Woodhouse, I need to be saved. thrilled my heart a little child shall lead them and the Bible says except you become as little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven because you've got to lay everything else aside doesn't matter how much scholarship you have it doesn't matter how energetic a person you are it doesn't matter how how wealthy a person you may be you've got to become like a little child and say Lord Jesus I'm a sinner It was my sin that caused your death upon the cross.
I realize that you have a right to my life, and I'm not going to hold it from you any longer. I want you to come into my heart. Be my Savior, and I want you to enable me to live a life that will honor you and honor your Father. Don't make God dispensable. And don't think that the fact that you sometimes think about God... and maybe sometimes even occasionally read the Bible, or you sing a hymn, or you go to church occasionally. Don't look upon that as delivering you from making God dispensable. There's much more than that.
You've got to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, because this man may not have his strength, it says, He trusted in the abundance of his riches. Now you see what being Saul's mightiest herdsman was all about. He had riches. He was a, if we believe the rabbinical writings, he was a very educated scholar, this man. But he needed something to lean on. He needed something to trust him.
He said, I don't want God, but I have plenty of money and wherewithal and goods and so on. Like that foolish man that Jesus spoke of, who said, I've got so many crops, I'm going to have to pull down my barns and build bigger ones so that I can put all this stuff in there and guarantee my future. And God said, thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of God. It doesn't pay to trifle with God. It doesn't pay to put off the matter of getting right with God. And to lean upon material things is for you bound to be let down.
Why is it foolish to lean upon these things? Because they are transient and they are unsatisfying. They don't do anything for you as far as the need of your soul is concerned, as far as keeping you from making God dispensable. Don't make material things your trust. I remember hearing about a man who in an open air service in Scotland. took out of his pocket an English pound note. You can spend an English pound note in Scotland and it's worth a pound.
And tantalizingly he waved it in front of his Scottish congregation and he said, I am willing to give this pound note to anyone in my audience here who's not a Christian and yet who's perfectly satisfied. There was a pause for a moment. Then a little Scott raised his hand. He said, I'll have your money. The preacher said, you're not a Christian. He said, no, I know what a Christian is. I'm not a Christian. Well, he said, you're perfectly satisfied? Yes, I'm perfectly satisfied. Then said, he, what do you want my pound note for? You see, I'll tell you how much money it takes to satisfy you.
Just a little bit more. That's it. Just always, just a little bit more. You don't quite have enough. This is a man that may not God his strength but trusted in the abundance of his riches. What you have is not going to send you in good stead for the future. Your eternal future. And you don't know how far away or how near. The moment of your ushering, being ushered into that future is concerned.
He made material things his trust. But the last mistake was even worse. It says this. He strengthened himself in his wickedness. The man who made God dispensable... and made material things his trust, was the man who made himself strong in his sins. The word of God says, a man shall be holden with the cords of his sins. A man shall be holden with the cords of his sins. How many times do you say things that you don't want to say and you're ashamed that you've said them?
How many times do you think things that you don't want to think but they come and you're ashamed of them. How many times do you do things in spite of yourself? You don't want to do them but you do them because you're a slave to them. And you need deliverance. We need to be delivered from these things. We can't deliver ourselves. And every day that we go on leaning upon something or somebody else Turning our backs upon God, the closer and closer and closer we get with every day to the eternity for which we are not prepared and which must eventually land us in hell.
It's as clear and plain as it can be. He made himself strong in his sin. Now to be in sin is bad enough. When God looks at men and women, boys and girls, he doesn't say these are good and those are bad. He doesn't say these are male and those are female. He doesn't say these are clever and these are ignoramuses. God looks down and he says you're either in sin or you're in crime. You know there was a time when a person had a baby out of wedlock.
that she was looked upon with shame. Would to God that day would come back. I read in Time Magazine an article about what we need again is old-fashioned shame. It's not a shame anymore. It's not a shame anymore. The country subsidizes it. I remember being in Lend-Edna. Actually, the Welsh call that standard. It's a seaside place in Wales, right out on the point there, or close to the point.
One day, and I used to use on the beach there my piano accordion and have open air services on the beach. And I would gather the children together and have a children's meeting, and then we'd have an adult service. along with my colleagues, we used to do this every summer for eleven years. One day, and I used to store my accordion in a dairy bar owned by a Christian who didn't actually live in that town. But however, I used to take my instrument and they would store it for me overnight so I didn't have to keep bringing it to and fro. And I would go and pick it up. One day I walked into that dairy bar and there was a little girl behind the counter. I think her nose might have just been above the counter, but not much more.
And so I said to the other girl, you're going in for young waitresses these days, aren't you? She said, this is my daughter. And school is out and she doesn't know what to do with herself. So she comes down to the bar here. So I said to her, I'll adopt her. I'm having a children's service on the beach. She can come down with me. The name was Sally. And so she did, and she enjoyed it. And each day on the beach she would come down. And one day she got there before the kids had gathered, and she was sitting there.
And she said, Mr. Woodhouse, I've learned how to braid, I think she said, four braids together. And she said, if we can find a piece of rope, I'll show you. And so we went to scout it around the beach, and sure enough, we came up with a piece of rope about like this. And she took it, and she took the strands apart like this. And then she said, now you hold these four. There were little bunches of strands actually, and I was holding them there. And very desperately, she rolled them all together. Now, I've been talking to it about the Lord Jesus on other occasions during her holiday there and our visit.
And when she had finished, she tied a knot at both ends, and there it was. So I said, Sally, put your feet together. So she put her feet together. So I took that song that she'd made, and I tied it around her feet, and I said, I want you to escape. So she struggled, and you know, a youngster like that can really squirm. And she struggled, and she pushed her feet, and she ground her ankles, and she tried like this, but she couldn't get out of it. And I said to her, Sally, that's just like your sin. You're responsible for your own.
You made this better, and I bound you with it, and you can't escape from it. Now that's what sin will do to boys and girls. Their own sin, because it grows into a bond that holds them until they can't escape from it. And only Jesus can set them free. She grabbed a pebble nearby, which had a little sharp edge, and she said, I'll spoil your story. And so she sawed that thing until her feet flew apart, and said, you didn't spoil it. You finished it. What you couldn't do, you didn't have the strength to do, and you didn't know how to do it.
That stone. Something outside of yourself did it for you. Cut the strands and set you free. You can't save yourself. But Jesus can cut the fetters. Jesus can set you free. You know, we're not really very willing to admit. that our sin binds us. That we are sinners who sin every day of our lives and whose sin gets more and more and more insistent with the passage of time. This is the man who strengthened himself in his wickedness.
He made the cords of his sin and they bound him. To be in sin is bad enough. But you'll be Strengthened in sin, to be strong in sin, is a cause for horror. Because it means a man gets to the place where he no longer dictates to his sin, but his sin dictates to him, and he has nobody to blame but himself. He strengthened himself in his wickedness. He made himself strong in sin. But the word of God tells us that that man, who strengthened himself in sin, strengthened himself in his sin.
It's bad enough to be in sin. It's worse to be strong in sin. It's worse because it's strong in his, your very own sin. to think that your own sin and way of life and inability to walk side by side with God with a perfect knowledge of his salvation that you're saved. To be able to do that is to be free. If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. You're bound and you can blame nobody else. A man shall be holden by the cords of his, his very own sins.
And there is no deliverance, would. Going to church won't do it. Being good, as good as you can, won't do it. Having a father who is a preacher won't do it. And being a religious person, even though you don't go to church once, you've got to come like the silly one and confess to God that you're lost and hopeless and quit trying to pick this up and pick this up and say, well, God must be pleased with this and God must be pleased with this and God must be pleased with the other. God is not pleased because you have no contact with him because of your sin.
You've got to get rid of it. And Jesus gave his life for you. He shed his blood for you. And you've got to be broken down to the point where you say, Lord Jesus, I'm turning my back on everything else. I want to look into your face and acknowledge that you died for me and I need my sins forgiven. And I cannot get rid of the penalty of my sin myself. I want you to come into my life. and be my Savior so that I can really learn to know you and walk with you and have no fear when I look into the future.
You know, that is a wonderful experience. And every day the believer gets up and looks into the future, he says, things are better on before. You know, you say, well, I'm strong and healthy. I've got plenty of time yet. You know, I'm not as old as some of these other folks here. Well, just don't boast too hard because the fact is, Jesus is coming. And there's absolutely no unfulfilled scripture prophecy that would prevent him from coming today. Jesus could come today, and then, where's that going to leave you? It's going to leave you right behind here because other believers will be caught away.
You say, where did you get that from? Let me give you the scripture. The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel and the trump of God. The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. It's not enough to be scared of dying. You've got to be scared about Jesus coming if you're not saved. You've got to be scared about it. Because while death may seem a long way away, there's no guarantee that before this service is over, Jesus may not come.
He may come before my voice as the preacher is no longer operative in the service. If you're sitting in this service, And Jesus goes, you can take a look around at these people, and by far the great majority, maybe all of them, will be gone in, not in a chick, in the twinkling, not even the blinking, the twinkling of an eye is going to happen, and away they'll be gone.
You'll suddenly realize that there's nobody here. And then you'll remember what I said to you. Jesus is coming, and he could come today, but if you're still sitting here when the rest are gone, there's no hope for you. There is no second chance. That's why the Bible pleads, behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. That's the reason why the Bible warns, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. When Jesus comes, it'll be a day of utter delight for us who are saved.
It'll be a day of utter despair for you because you'll never be saved again after that. You won't be able to. Let's quietly pray, shall we? And in the quietness, think about these things. Just ask yourself some quiet questions. What am I leaning on instead of trusting Christ and leaning on God's own? What is it that keeps me from coming to the Lord Jesus? What is it that stands like a barrier in my way?
Am I selfish? Am I self-centered? Are there things that I love, that I own, and I don't want to let them go? Am I living your way of life that although it's wicked, I like it and I want to stay with it? Or can it be there's something and you're saying to yourself, I hope that this is enough. This is a little bit of my life that's given to God in a sense, or I think about God, I hope it's enough. Lord, we pray you'll make us realize it's not enough. We've got to make a bold... Confession of the Lord Jesus as failure and ending into risk again.
Bless this congregation, Lord. Every heart has a different need. The time is short. The situation is urgent. Lord, will it please you to reach out in deep conviction to the heart of everyone here who has not trusted Christ as failure and is not yet born again? We ask to speak in his glory and ask in him in his name. Amen.