Believers should find it instructive that the Book of Psalms—the book we go to when we want comfort, peace, and assurance; the book we go to when everything around us seems to be falling apart; the book we go to when we feel like rejoicing; the book we go to when we are thankful; the book that is filled with praise for the greatness and goodness of God—begins with a psalm, the second half of which paints a horrendous picture of God’s judgment on the wicked.  Having started with a description of the righteous and the sure fruit of righteousness, the Spirit of God turns the focus of the psalmist to the contrasting plight of sinners, noting five truths concerning those he describes as “wicked.”

            1.  “The wicked are not so” (v. 4).  Though introductory, the remark contains a summation.  Whatever the blessings God promises to the righteous, whatever the state of their lives, “the wicked are not so.”  With regard to God’s dealings, there is no point of intersection between the righteous and the wicked.  No points are scored for a near miss.  God anchors and fructifies the righteous with eternal blessings, not so the wicked.  What follows in the psalm elaborates.

            2.  “They are like chaff which the wind drives away” (v. 4).  Unlike the righteous, who are depicted as deep-rooted “tree[s] firmly planted by streams of water” (v. 3), sinners have no root.  They find themselves blown about by every wind of circumstance.  Whereas trials in the lives of believers loosen the soil around their roots so that they sink deeper and stand more securely, trials serve only to disrupt and unnerve the lost.  They serve no remedial or edifying purpose but are only something to be endured.

            3.  “The wicked will not stand in the judgment” (v. 5).  As bad as troubles in this earth may be, they are at least temporary.  But what awaits sinners thereafter is immeasurably worse.  When Christ sets up His “Great White Throne” and brings to final and eternal judgment all those who have rejected God, they will be without plea—no hope, no mitigating argument.  They will collapse before the awful wrath of the holy, righteous God in the Person of Jesus Christ.

            4.  “Sinners [will not stand] in the assembly of the righteous” (v. 5).  If any unbeliever were so misled as to believe that the previous malediction left any hope, the present one is intended to crush it.  One is either saved by grace through faith, or he is lost.  The one who is judged at the Great White Throne judgment will not discover a purgatory that will allow him to pay for his sins and eventually enter the assembly of the righteous.  Salvation is offered through Christ alone—and that, during time.  Eternity will not be long enough to erase the sinner’s guilty verdict or change his sentence of eternal punishment.

            5.  “The way of the wicked will perish” (v. 6).   The sixth verse begins with the assurance that “the Lord knows the way of the righteous.”  Their lives are ever before Him; He orders and directs their circumstances, bringing them to the blessed end He desires for them.  Contrariwise, the wicked are battered from pillar to post in this life only to end up by perishing, which is not to be annihilated but to exist in hell in eternal separation from God.

            No theology that denies or even ignores the righteousness of God and His holy wrath toward sin and unrepentant sinners is worth the powder it would take to blow it up.  The Word of God is replete with both statements and examples of God’s holiness, hatred of sin, and just and sure punishment of sinners.  Everywhere in The Book we read of God’s love, kindness, mercy, and grace.  But the same Book reveals God’s holiness, His hatred of sin, and His wrath toward sinners.  The one who blanches at the thought of God’s holiness and justice cannot truly appreciate or express His goodness and grace.  May we reverence, worship, love, and proclaim the one true God as He is accurately portrayed in His Word.  May we be among the “true worshipers” who “worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers” (John 4:23).