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The Lord Who Judges the Nations in Righteousness (Psalm 9) | Augustine · Reformed Thinking

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Imagine you are sitting in a theater, right?
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You're watching this massive, elaborate stage production.
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Yeah, like a really high end Broadway show.
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Right, you see the actors delivering their lines.
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The dramatic lighting is shifting across the stage, and
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you know the sudden fall of the curtain to your eyes.
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The reality of the play is entirely contained in what is
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visible on the stage, but behind the curtain there's an entire
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invisible world operating in the dark.
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Oh for sure. The stagehands.
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The Riggers. Yeah, there are stagehands
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pulling massive ropes, directors whispering frantic cues into
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headsets, counterweight silently dropping to Ray's scenery.
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All the stuff you never see, right?
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The visible drama is completely dependent on an invisible
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reality that you cannot perceive from your seat.
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And, well, we tend to view our lives and human history with
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that same limited vision. We really do.
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We just look at what is right in front of us.
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We look at the visible actors, you know, our circumstances,
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political movements, the physical tragedies of our day,
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and we just assume we're seeing the whole picture.
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But we aren't. Not even close.
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No, we aren't. So what if the true reality of
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the universe is happening backstage, entirely out of
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sight? Welcome to reform thinking.
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Glad to be here. You are stepping into a
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diagnostic landscape today that requires us to look past the
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physical world. We have to examine the unseen
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forces acting on our souls. And we have some incredible
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source material to help us do that.
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We really do. We are looking at a text that
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strips away the visible illusion.
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For this deep dive, we have gathered Saint Augustine's
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expositions on the Book of Psalms.
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Specifically, his intense, sweeping analysis of Psalm 9.
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Yeah, Psalm 9. Our mission today is to unpack
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his perspective on what he calls the hidden things of the Sun.
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It is such a heavy phrase, the hidden things.
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It is we are going to examine the nature of divine Providence,
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how God governs the world behind the scenes, and we will walk
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through Augustine's concept of the internal psychological
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cities constructed inside the human mind.
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Augustine looks at the text of this single Psalm and extracts A
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staggering architectural schematic of how God interacts
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with humanity. Yeah, he really pulls back the
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curtain. He does not isolate his analysis
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to grand historical events either.
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He forces the reader to look at the minute invisible affections
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of the individual human heart. He makes it so personal.
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Very personal, he establishes a severe contrast between what we
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perceive with our physical senses and the spiritual reality
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unfolding underneath. OK, so the deep dive starts
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right at the inscription of the Psalm.
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The text reads to the end for the Hidden Things of the Sun, a
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Psalm of David himself. That inscription sets the tone
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for the whole thing. It really does.
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Agustin fixes his attention on that phrase immediately.
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He argues this refers specifically to the only
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begotten Son of God. Which makes sense.
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But I want to point out the grammatical anomaly he
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highlights. The text does not specify whose
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son. Right.
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It just says the son. Yeah, it leaves out the
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possessive pronoun entirely. That omission is highly
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intentional. Augusta notes that elsewhere in
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Scripture, when a son is mentioned, the father is
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explicitly named to avoid any ambiguity.
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Like with David and Absalom. Start on when David is fleeing.
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The text is careful to say he fled from the face of Absalom,
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his son. The writer provides the
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possessive marker so the reader understands the precise
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relationship. But here the text leaves the
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space blank. It simply says the hidden things
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of the sun and assumes the reader's mind will immediately
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supply the correct subject. I think about how that works in
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our normal communication. If a sovereign king issues an
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edict, the Herald does not need to read the King's entire
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genealogy. No, they would just say the king
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commands it. Exactly.
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The eminence of the subject demands no qualification.
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Or, to use Augustine's own illustration, it is like saying
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it is raining. That is a great analogy.
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You do not need to clarify who is doing the raining or what the
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sky is doing. The actor is universal,
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understood without needing a name.
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The Excellency of the doer spontaneously presents itself to
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the mind. But I mean, why does Augustine
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focus so heavily on the hidden nature of Christ's first advent?
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If this is the Supreme King, why does he arrive in secret?
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Well, Augustine builds a framework of history divided by
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the two advents or the two arrivals.
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Of Christ, OK, the first and second coming.
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Yes, the past Advent was hidden. The future Advent will be
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manifest. Meaning obvious to everyone,
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right? In the first Advent, Christ
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arise in a way that actively contradicted human expectation.
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He did not arrive with a visible army.
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He did not conquer Rome. Which is what everyone was
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waiting for. Everyone.
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Because of this deliberate hiddenness, the Jewish people at
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the time largely misunderstood him.
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They were looking for a visible political monarch who would
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rearrange the earthly physical order.
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They wanted the stage production to change.
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That is a brilliant way to put it, but Augustine points out
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that this very failure to recognize the sun was actually
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profitable for the Gentiles. Wait, how so?
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The rejection caused by the hiddenness became the mechanism
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for the gospel to spread outward to the rest of the world.
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Oh, right, he writes. That blindness, in part is
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happened to Israel, that the fullness of the Gentiles might
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come in. Yes.
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So the hiddenness is a feature of how God is operating.
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It is a deliberate sovereign tactic.
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That is correct. This hiddenness reflects God's
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broader sovereign workings in the world.
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God operates continuously in ways that are imperceptible to
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human calculation. Behind the scenes.
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Always, the future Advent will be undeniable, every eye will
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see it, and the visible reality will finally match the spiritual
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reality. But right now, we are living in
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the era of the hidden things. We are.
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To perceive what God is doing requires a completely different
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set of senses. This concept of a hidden advent
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naturally provokes a question about the present moment,
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doesn't it? It definitely does.
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If Christ's first coming was hidden, then it is entirely
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logical that his ongoing present day interactions with the world
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might also be hidden. Which brings us to a massive
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theological concept. Yeah, this.
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Introduces Agustin's theory of the two judgments.
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Adestin observes that most individuals isolate the concept
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of divine judgment to a singular future event at the end of time.
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Like the final courtroom scene? Right, but He identifies 2
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distinct judgments in Scripture. There is the manifest judgment
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which will happen at the end of history, but there is also a
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hidden judgment occurring right now, every single day behind the
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Cretan of mundane reality. God is executing a secret
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judgment upon the earth. I want to illustrate this hidden
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judgment with the analogy of a blacksmith's forge.
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I love this analogy. Imagine a massive blazing
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furnace. You take a piece of raw material
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and thrust it into the intense heat.
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The fire itself is a neutral force, right?
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Yeah, it's just heat. But it causes drastically
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different reactions depending entirely on the nature of the
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material it touches. It exposes what the material
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actually is. Exactly.
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If you put gold covered in impurities into the fire, the
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heat purges the dross, leaving the metal stronger and more
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refined. But if you put dry stubble or
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pure slag into that exact same fire, the material is completely
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consumed. It just burns up.
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The heat of the forge represents the daily afflictions,
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tragedies, and trials of human life.
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The things we all go through. With that mechanism in mind, how
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does Augustine say we're supposed to process everyday
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suffering? Augustine details 3 distinct
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purposes for this current hidden judgment.
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When the fire of affliction enters a person's life, it
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accomplishes one of three specific sovereign ends.
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OK, what was the first one? First, it purifies those who are
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being exercised by it. This is the goal being refined.
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The suffering actively burns away their reliance on worldly
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comforts and strengthens their faith.
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It hurts, but it makes them better, right?
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Second, it warns individuals toward conversion.
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The sudden heat of the fire disrupts their earthly security,
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wakes them up to their frail mortality, and drives them to
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seek God. It's like a wake.
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Up call. A very severe wake up call, but
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the third purpose is incredibly sobering.
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Yeah, the third purpose is blinding.
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Augustine states that if a person aggressively despises the
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calling and discipline of God, this hidden judgment actually
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blinds them unto damnation. The same heat that melts wax
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will harden clay. That is a terrifying thought.
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The suffering hardens them in their rebellion.
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It really does. If a person resists the
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correction of the forge, the hidden judgment is actively
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preparing them for the manifest judgment.
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The final one, yes. Augustine clarifies that passing
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from death to life via affliction is the very essence
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of the hidden judgement. When you suffer, and that
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suffering strips away your pride and drives you to God, you have
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already been judged and you have passed into life.
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You survive the forge. But those who endure the fire
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and are not corrected by it are storing up wrath.
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They will face the manifest judgement at the end of time,
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where everyone will be forced to confess that Christ is Lord.
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But at that future point, the confession will not bring.
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No, it will only secure their damnation.
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Acknowledging that current suffering is an active, divine,
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hidden judgment forces a radical shift in human perspective.
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It changes everything about how you view your life.
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It means you cannot look at a tragedy, a financial collapse or
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a medical diagnosis and write it off as bad luck or random
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chance. No, there is no such thing as
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random chance. Here you are.
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Forced to look at it as a deliberate strike of the
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blacksmith's hammer. And that brings an immense
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weight to what Augustine calls full hearted confession.
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Augustine states that confessing with a whole heart means
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refusing to doubt God's Providence in any particular
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aspect of life. You have to accept the whole
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package. You cannot compartmentalize your
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theology. You cannot say God is sovereign
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over my eternal salvation, but this sudden illness was just a
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biological accident. He is unsparing about this.
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He writes that fools believe things happen by random chance,
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as if the universe is governed by a roll of the dice.
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Which is how a lot of people think, honestly.
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But the wise refer all afflictions to divine
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governance. Now I want to challenge this for
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a second because he pushes this to an extreme that feels
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entirely counterintuitive to human nature.
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Oh, he absolutely. Does he talks about rejoicing
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and tribulation? He's a person with a whole
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heart, sees the hidden things of the wisdom of God, and therefore
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rejoices when things go wrong physically.
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It contradicts every biological instinct we possess.
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The human animal is wired to avoid pain and seek comfort at
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all costs. But Agustin reasons that if you
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truly believe the forge is purifying your eternal soul,
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then the destruction of your temporary comfort is a
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legitimate reason for joy. Because you are watching the
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dross burn away, yes. You are experiencing the hidden
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judgment that leads to life. To illustrate the superiority of
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the invisible over the visible, Augustine makes a staggering
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claim about miracles. This is one of my favorite parts
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of his argument. He compares the invisible
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miracle of the Apostle Paul's conversion on the road to
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Damascus to the highly visible miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus
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from the dead. Two very famous biblical events.
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And Augustine argues that Paul's conversion is actually the
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superior miracle. I read that and had to pause.
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It catches you off guard. It really does.
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Lazarus was dead in a rock tomb for four days.
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He was wrapped in grave clothes. His body was undergoing decay
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and he walked out breathing. A literal zombie scenario
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reversed. Right.
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To the human mind, reanimating A decaying corpse is the absolute
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pinnacle of miraculous activity. From a carnal perspective, LED
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wholly by the eye, Lazarus is the greater spectacle.
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Humans are captivated by the physical reversal of death.
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Because we can see it. But Augustine unpacks a
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hierarchy of miracles here. He points out that visible
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miracles merely call the soul to the light.
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They act as an alarm bell. They just get your attention.
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Exactly. They get the attention of a
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lethargic mind, but invisible miracles actually enlighten the
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soul that responds. OK, break that down for us.
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When Paul, who was breathing murderous threats against the
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early church, suddenly has his entire internal architecture
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rewritten so that he becomes the greatest evangelist for the very
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people he was hunting, that is a resurrection of the human will.
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Lazarus rose from the dead physically, but he eventually
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died again. His physical body still had a
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biological expiration date. That is a crucial point.
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But Paul's soul rising from spiritual death is an eternal
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resurrection. It cannot be reversed.
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This analysis forces us to evaluate the nature of faith
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itself. True faith, according to
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Augustine, requires moving past a desire for visible physical
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interventions. We have to stop looking for the
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stage tricks. Spot on.
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If your belief in God is contingent upon him fixing your
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physical ailments or optimizing your earthly circumstances, your
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faith is anchored entirely to a temporary world.
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To confess with a whole heart, you must perceive and value the
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invisible sovereign workings of God in the soul.
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The internal regeneration of a hostile will is far weightier
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than the external healing of a temporary body.
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This internal invisible focus changes what a person actually
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loves and enjoys. It shifts your entire value
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system. If the visible world is just a
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temporary training ground, seeking your ultimate joy in it
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becomes a logical absurdity. It forces a complete rejection
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of worldly pleasures. Augusta notes that true
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exaltation is not found in earthly pleasures.
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It is not found in the consumption of rich food.
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It is not in the sweetness of perfumes.
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It is not in the accumulation of wealth.
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It is not even in wedlock or perishable offspring.
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Right, all of those things are passing shadows.
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True joy is found exclusively in the hidden things of the sun.
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But the moment you transfer your joy from the visible to the
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invisible, you initiate an act of war with the devil.
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You paint a target on your back. He says something brilliant
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about the mechanics of this war. He says the enemy is turned
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behind. He references Christ's
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temptation in the wilderness where Jesus tells Satan, get
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thee behind me. A very famous command.
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Let's look at the psychology of this if the devil is positioned
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behind us, acting as a persecutor, chasing us with
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malice, why does Augustine view this as a strategic advantage
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compared to the devil acting as a leader in front of.
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Us It is a brilliant psychological insight.
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When the enemy is positioned in front of you as a leader, he
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exerts dominion over earthly men through the mechanism of
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deception. He plays the guide.
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He holds out a counterfeit reward, wealth, fame, bodily
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indulgence, and humans willingly follow him.
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They think he is leading them to the good stuff.
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They assume they are walking toward autonomy and happiness
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while he is quietly leading them toward a precipice.
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They love the things he offers, so they submit to his leadership
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without offering any resistance. They walk into the
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slaughterhouse willingly because they are captivated by the music
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playing in the lobby. Precisely.
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But when the enemy is defeated in his deceptions, when a
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believer sees through the illusion of worldly wealth and
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rejects the bait, the enemy loses his position in front.
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He gets moved to the back. He is turned behind and from
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behind his only remaining tactic is persecution.
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He acts with overt malice. He attempts to destroy the
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believer through external affliction.
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But here is the severe irony of divine Providence.
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His attacks actively Dr. the righteous to seek refuge in God.
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The devil becomes like a violent sheepdog.
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I was just thinking that he's barking and snapping at the
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heels of the flock, but the sheer terror of his attack
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drives the sheep straight into the shepherd's pen.
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Fleeing persecution forces us into a posture of absolute
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reliance on the Creator, whereas following the enemy's deception
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leads to our quiet destruction. This means God is sovereignly
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using the devil's own malice to accomplish the sanctification of
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His people. God doesn't waste anything.
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The devil intends to destroy the Christian with trials, but those
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very trials are the forged fire that purifies the Christian's
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faith. The enemy's dominion relies
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entirely on the temporal passing nature of the earthly realm.
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He only has leverage over things that can rust, rot, or be
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stolen. Which sets up the contrast with
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the eternal reality Augustine describes next.
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He talks about how God effaces the name of the ungodly for the
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world's world. That phrasing in English is
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somewhat clunky, isn't it? The world's world.
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It is. Augustine uses it to distinguish
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between the temporal world we currently inhabit and the
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immutable eternity. Its shadows, right?
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He says. This current world is marked by
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endless cycles, the waning of the moon, the returning of the
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sun, the shift from spring to winter.
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It is a perpetual loop of things forming and passing away.
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The world's world, in contrast, is the eternal reality that sits
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above our shifting timeline. It is the permanent, undisturbed
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realm of God's unchanging wisdom and governance.
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This specific analogy Augustine uses here is masterful.
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He describes a verse in the mind and a verse in the voice.
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Let's unpack that. Think about a master composer
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writing a Symphony. The sheet music residing in the
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composer's mind is permanent. It's concetually perfect.
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It exists as a complete, unchangeable idea.
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That represents the world's world.
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Yes, but then the orchestra performs the music.
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The strings vibrate, the horns blow, and the physical sound
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waves hit your ears. The actual performance.
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Those sound waves are beautiful, but they instantly fade away
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into the air. They exist for a fraction of a
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second before they are gone forever.
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That represents our temporal world.
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That analogy perfectly isolates the tragedy of the ungodly.
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How so? The ungodly are entirely
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invested in the fading sound waves.
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They build their entire identity, their wealth and their
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concept of happiness on things that are actively vanishing into
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the atmosphere. They're trying to hold on to the
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sound. Because they lack eternal
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substance, because they have no anchor in the composer's
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permanent mind, their names are wiped out for eternity.
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God effaces their name. The text says the ungodly will
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not be. You cannot construct a permanent
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identity out of fading echoes. It is just mathematically
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impossible. God's wisdom abides eternally,
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entirely undisturbed by the shifting temporal world.
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The earthly seasons change, massive political empires rise
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and fall, but the sheet music never alters.
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Given that the eternal realm is totally secure and unshakable,
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we are forced to ask how the enemy manages to attack
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individuals right now in this temporal realm.
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Right. If the sheet music is locked in,
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what is the devil doing? If God's sheet music is
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permanently written, how does the devil execute so much
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destruction on earth? He achieves this through
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internal psychological warfare. Augustine introduces the concept
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of the swords of the enemy. He says the devil uses swords to
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destroy souls, but these are not physical weapons manufactured
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from steel. They are bad ideas.
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They are erroneous opinions, false philosophies, and God
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responds by destroying the cities where the devil rules.
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When a modern reader sees the word cities in the Psalms, they
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naturally assume a geographical location.
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Right. We think of physical walls in
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Babylon, Jericho or Rome. But Augustine radically
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internalizes this concept. He defines a city as an entirely
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internal psychological structure erected with any single human
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being. Rays like a hostile corporate
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takeover of the human mind. That is a very accurate way to
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frame it. He maps out the internal anatomy
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of sin using the structural hierarchy of a city government.
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First you have the court, which he says consists of crafty
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councils. The internal lawyers.
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These are the deceitful rationalizations your brain
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generates to justify doing something wrong.
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It is the internal lawyer arguing why you deserve to
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harbor bitterness or indulge a craving.
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Then you have the ministers or officers of this city.
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Those are your physical senses. The eyes scanning for curiosity,
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the ears leaning in to listen to lasciviousness or malicious
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gossip. The hands reaching out for
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violence or theft. The senses are not the
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originators of the sin, they are just the errand boys executing
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the orders drafted by the corrupt internal court.
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And finally you have the commonality, the riotous mob
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filling the city streets, Augustine says.
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These are the soft affections and disturbing emotions of the
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mind. Your daily anxieties, your
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sudden bursts of irrational anger, your intense cravings.
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They are constantly stirring up daily seditions inside your own
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head. It's chaotic.
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So when you have a corrupt intellectual court drafting
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rationalizations, physical senses acting as willing
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accomplices, and a mob of turbulent emotions rioting in
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the streets, you have literally built a thriving city for the
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devil to rule inside your own soul.
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What is so piercing about the psychological analysis is that
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it traces the origin of all massive societal evil directly
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back to the individual human heart.
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It scales up from the individual.
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Bad physical cities, corrupt national governments, violent
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neighborhoods, oppressive systems.
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They only exist in the physical world because these internal
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psychological cities take root in individual men first.
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You cannot generate A corrupt physical society without
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millions of corrupt internal courts operating independently
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in the minds of the citizens. So if the enemy has established
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this internal infrastructure, how do you tear it down?
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You cannot just arrest a thought.
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You cannot physically dismantle A crafty council.
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Deliverance occurs when the word of truth wastes these internal
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kingdoms. The truth of God's Word acts
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like a demolition crew against the crafty councils.
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It comes in with a Wrecking Ball.
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It lays the evil thoughts to sleep.
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It pacifies the rioting affections.
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It takes the senses captive. So instead of your eyes looking
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for opportunities to sin, they are reading the scriptures.
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Instead of your hands reaching for theft, they are extending
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outward in charity. The entire infrastructure of the
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mind is conquered and transferred to the service of
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righteousness. Escaping this internal city of
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sin requires abandoning all worldly attachments.
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The crafty councils and the writing emotions are always
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fighting over temporary worldly things.
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They're fighting over money, social status or physical
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pleasure. And Gustin uses this concept to
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construct his definition of true poverty.
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When the Psalm says the Lord becomes a refuge for the poor, a
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modern reader naturally filters that through a socio economic
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lens. We assume it means individuals
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with zero capital or assets. But Augustine defines a poor man
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using an entirely different metric.
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He says a poor man is someone who loves nothing in this world
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that leaves him when he died. That is a staggering definition.
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By that standard, you could possess immense physical wealth.
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But if you hold that wealth with an open hand, recognizing it as
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a temporary tool rather than your ultimate source of love,
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you are spiritually poor. Yes, and conversely, you could
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be living in absolute destitution, but if you are
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burning with constant envy and idolize the idea of wealth, you
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are spiritually rich in your affections.
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And thereby excluded from this divine refuge.
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The metric relies entirely on the affection of the heart.
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What is the object of your love? Because every physical item in
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this world will either leave you all you live, or you will leave
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it when you die. If your love is intrinsically
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tied to perishable items, your psychological state will be 1 of
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constant terror. You will be perpetually
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terrified of losing what you have acquired.
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Augustine connects this Pacific kind of poverty to knowing God's
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name. I am that I am.
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The name revealed to Moses. If you look at the way temporal
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life operates, it is overwhelmingly stressful.
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The human condition is characterized by massive anxiety
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because we are constantly awaiting the future, worrying
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about what might happen tomorrow, next week or next
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year. Always looking ahead.
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And simultaneously, we are in pain because we are losing the
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past, mourning the things that are slipping through our fingers
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and fading away. Always looking behind.
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Why is understanding God as pure, eternal, present existence
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the key to untethering ourselves from that worldly anxiety?
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Because knowing God's name means knowing what the name signifies,
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absolute eternity in God's nature.
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Nothing will be as if it has not happened yet and needs to be
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anxiously anticipated. And nothing has been as if it is
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gone forever and needs to be mourned.
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He's simply iOS. He is the eternal present.
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Time flows past the human observer like a rushing river,
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but God is the solid rock the river flows around.
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We wait for a future event with eagerness and it arrives and in
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one fraction of a second it becomes the past and we lose it
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with pain. That is the agony of the human
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condition. If you anchor your hope in the
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rushing water of the river, you will be swept away in a
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constant, violent state of anxiety and grief.
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But you cannot serve 2 masters. No, you can't.
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If you apply your hope to the eternal existence of I AM, you
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naturally cease placing your hope in transient perishable
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wealth. You realize that securing
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objects floating in the river is a fool's errand?
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You trans for your citizenship to the rock.
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Those who fix their hope on that eternal name, who established
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their footing on that rock, are gathered into a specific
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community. Augustine identifies this
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community in the text as Zion. The psalmist says Sing to the
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Lord who dwelleth in Zion. Augustine interprets the Hebrew
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word Sion to mean watching. Watching OK.
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This represents the current church on earth.
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We are the watchers. We are standing on the wall
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looking for the dawn. This is sharply contrasted with
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Jerusalem, which he translates as vision of peace.
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Jerusalem represents the future eternal Church in heaven.
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Watching must precede vision. You have to stay awake in the
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dark before you get to see the sunrise.
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And while the church is watching in the dark, she faces severe,
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crushing trials. The text mentions God
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remembering the blood of the martyrs.
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He hears the cry of the poor. But we have to be careful with
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the language here. I'm going to pause on the
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phrasing here because it raises a massive theological issue.
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The psalmist says God hath remembered.
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If God is omniscient, does he actually suffer from
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forgetfulness? It sounds like it doesn't.
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It does. The creator set down a Ledger
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and forget where he placed it. Augustine addresses this
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directly, doesn't he? He does, and he is extremely
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careful to protect the theology of God's omniscience.
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God never forgets. He does not possess A faulty or
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lagging memory. So why say he remembered?
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The phrasing he hath remembered is an accommodation to human
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weakness. It is written in a linguistic
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style that a frail human mind can process and understand.
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Because from a human perspective, when justice takes
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a long time, it feels like God has forgotten us entirely.
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Exactly. God's judgment operates on such
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a massive, eternal timeline that humans who only live a few
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decades naturally assume he must have looked away.
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We want justice by Friday afternoon.
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Right. The wicked flourish, the
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righteous suffer terribly, and the human watcher cries out.
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Did you forget? So when the text says he
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remembers, it is assuring the watcher that the Ledger is still
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perfectly balanced even if the payout is severely deferred.
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That brings a lot of comfort to the watchers.
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Furthermore, Augustine clarifies that the cry of the poor is not
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just a chaotic multitude of individual human voices
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screaming for help. What is it then?
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It is actually Christ interceding for his members.
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The head of the church is actively crying out for the
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body, exalting them from what the text calls the Gates of
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Death. To understand how God saves his
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people from those gates, we have to look the contrast between the
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gates of deaths and the gates of Zion.
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Augustine defines the gates of death as our depraved desires
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and our bodily senses. OK, breakdown the gate metaphor.
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A gate is fundamentally an entrance.
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You walk through a gate to reach a specific destination.
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When you yield to a depraved desire, you are actively walking
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through a gate that leads directly to spiritual death.
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In fact, Augustine argues that the very fulfillment of a wicked
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craving is actually death itself.
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You think getting what you want will bring you life and
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satisfaction, but the fulfillment is the poison.
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In contrast, the Gates of Sion are high purposes, faith and the
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sacraments. You walk through the gates of
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faith to eventually arrive at the vision of peace.
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There is a striking metaphor from the text that perfectly
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illustrates how dangerous these gates of death are, Augustine
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says. The foot of the soul is its
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love, I thought. That was so fascinating.
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Think about the mechanics of that.
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Your physical feet carry your physical body wherever you
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decide to go. The foot of your soul carries
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your spirit toward whatever object you love.
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If you love money, your soul relentlessly walks toward money.
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If you love God, your soul walks toward God.
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Love is the gravitational pull of the inner man.
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This is why sinners are caught in a snare.
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Their foot is tracked by the exact object they've chosen to
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love. God's judgement on the wicked is
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terrifying in its passive nature.
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He does not always strike the wicked with a sudden lightning
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bolt from heaven. Often he executes judgement by
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simply handing them over to the works of their own hands.
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He lets them have exactly what they want.
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It is the terrifying reality of Romans chapter 1.
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God gave them over. When a person's love their foot
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is bound by deceitful delight, God abandons them to the lust of
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their own heart. They step into the trap
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willingly because the bait looks delicious to their corrupted
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affections. But once the trap snap shut, the
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very delight they saw, it becomes the chain that binds
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them. And when they realize they are
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trapped, when the grim reality of their sin sets in, they try
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to pull away. But Augustine points out the
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agonizing psychology of repentance.
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He does not sugarcoat it. He says it hurts.
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It hurts like pulling a physical foot out of a rusty iron fetter.
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Breaking a long term addiction, walking away from a highly
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profitable but toxic relationship, Giving up.
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I'll gotten wealth. It causes immense psychological
29:54
and emotional pain. It is agonizing.
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So, giving way under the pressure of this pain, they
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refuse to withdraw. They choose to stay trapped in
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the snare because ripping their foot free is too agonizing to
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adore. It is a dark psychological
30:07
reality. They choose the familiarity of
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the trap over the pain of liberation.
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This brings a severe internal division which leads to the
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hidden joy of separation and the ultimate test of human history.
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This is marked in the text by the sudden insertion of the word
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diapsalma. A diapsalma is a musical term.
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It indicates an interlude, a pause in the singing of the
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Psalm, but Augustine interprets it as representing the hidden
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joy of separation occurring right now in the human heart.
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He likens it to the agricultural process of separating corn from
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chaff on the threshing floor. The wheat and the weeds.
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Right now, in the temporal world, the corn and the chaff
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are completely mixed together. The righteous and the wicked
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live in the same physical cities.
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They work at the same jobs. They suffer the same weather
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patterns. The.
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Separation is not happening in physical space yet.
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No, it is happening invisibly in the affections of the heart.
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The delay of Psalma is that secret internal sorting process
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where God is marking his own. The Psalm concludes with a plea
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that honestly shocked me when I first read it.
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The psalmist prays to God to place a lawgiver over the
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nations. It is a jarring request.
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And Augustine identifies this Lawgiver figure as the
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Antichrist. I read that and thought, why on
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earth would the psalmist actively pray for that?
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Why ask God to place the ultimate man of sin over the
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nation's? It sounds totally contradictory
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until you view it through the lens of God's absolute sovereign
31:32
design. God is still in control of the
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forge. Permitting this figure to rise,
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allowing him to achieve a massive pitch of empty earthly
31:40
glory and aggressively persecute the Saints, is part of a
31:44
deliberate theological purpose. It is the ultimate operation of
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the blacksmith's forge on a global scale.
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The text says it is designed so the heathen will know that they
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are men. Throughout history, humanity is
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constantly trying to build a tower to heaven, constantly
31:58
inflating its own pride, acting as if we are the autonomous gods
32:01
of our own destiny. The Antichrist represents the
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absolute zenith of human pride and earthly power.
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God allows him to rise to the very top, so that when his
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Kingdom inevitably crumbles under the weight of divine
32:12
judgement, the illusion of human pharmacy is shattered
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permanently. It forces the heathen to look in
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the mirror and realize they are just frail men.
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They are not eternal beings. They are the fading sound waves.
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They are the chaff on the threshing floor, easily blown
32:27
away by the wind. But Augustine notes that this
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immense global trial will cause weak believers to groan when
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they see the wicked prevailing on such a massive scale.
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They will ask why the final judgment is deferred.
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This tension culminates the entire theological framework of
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the Psalm. The massive, agonizing tension
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between the hidden workings of God right now and the manifest,
32:50
undeniable judgment that is rapidly approaching.
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It is an unbelievable intellectual feat to extract
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this much reality from a single piece of scripture.
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We have covered a massive scope of thought today.
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We started with the hidden advent of the Sun, a quiet
33:05
arrival that fundamentally altered the course of human
33:08
history without anyone noticing at first.
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A Secret Invasion. We walked through the internal
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cities of the mind, identifying the corrupt courts and rioting
33:16
emotions operating inside our own heads.
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We looked at the terrifying reality of the soul's foot
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getting trapped in the snare of its own loves.
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And we traced it all the way up to the eternal I am, the solid
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rock standing in the middle of the rushing river of time.
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If we synthesize Augustine's entire framework here, the main
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take away is that reality is not what you observe with your
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physical eyes. The visible world is a temporary
33:41
fading shadow. The true weighty drama of the
33:45
universe is happening invisibly. It is happening in the hidden
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judgments of the Forge, the secret separations of the human
33:52
heart, and the eternal decrees of a sovereign God who does not
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leave a single detail of human history to random chance.
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The forge is always burning and the blacksmith is always
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working. We want to leave you with a
34:03
final, lingering thought, directly building on what we
34:06
have covered today. Agustin says that the foot of
34:08
your soul is your love, and you naturally, inevitably walk
34:11
toward whatever it is you desire.
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It is the law of spiritual gravity.
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So, considering the invisible architecture of your own mind,
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where are your feet taking you right now and what kind of
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internal city are you building?