How is it possible to renounce God or not believe in His judgment?  As believers, we know that God sees, and will work justice.  On the one hand we know that Romans chapter one teaches us that fallen men suppress the truth.  On the other hand, as those whose eyes have been opened by the grace of God, it should strike us as incredible that someone can spit in the face of God with such audacity!

“There is not, in my judgment, a psalm which describes the mind, the manners, the works, the words, the feelings and the fate of the ungodly with so much propriety, fullness and light, as this psalm.”  Martin Luther

We live in an increasingly rebellious and arrogant culture. In 1982, the pollster George Gallup found that while a majority of Americans believed in God (95%), only 20% said that religion was the most influential factor in their lives.  The language and the practice of Americans did not match! They lived, as it were, as practical atheists.  These numbers seem like the “good old days”, in comparison to our present cultural. So, the question of the hour becomes: “How is the church of Jesus Christ to respond to a culture that is arrogantly atheistic?”  Psalm 10 offers practical help.

First:  We must recognize that wicked and sinful men are breathtakingly arrogant.

There is a progression in the development of the wicked.  Verse 2: “In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor”.  The attitude of the heart is arrogance, the resulting action is pursuit of the poor.  There is a reason for this attitude:  The wicked are self-centered (v. 3).  The wicked speak of “their” desires, the things “they” will accomplish.  This is a far cry from Psalm 34:2: “My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad”!  This self-centeredness leads to a denial of God.  God’s word (and therefore God Himself) limits how we obtain wealth, satisfy our desires.  The wicked must throw off limitation to achieve their goals, therefore greed leads to the renunciation of God (v. 3b) Thus the wicked achieve the unenviable status of “FOOL”.

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