Psalms 10:4

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God.

The wicked, from pride, refuse to seek God

In this Psalm we have a full-length portrait of a careless, unawakened sinner, drawn by the unerring pencil of truth. Two of the features which compose this portrait are delineated in our text.

1. An unwillingness to seek after God.

2. Pride, which causes that unwillingness.

I. The wicked will not seek after God. They do not, because they will not. To this purpose they obstinately and unalterably adhere, unless their wills are subdued by Divine grace.

1. The wicked will not seek after the knowledge of God. This is evident from Scripture statement, and from the experience of all ages. The wicked will not pray for the knowledge of God, nor improve their opportunities for acquiring the knowledge of God.

2. The wicked will not seek the favour of God. Knowing nothing experimentally of His excellence and perfections, and ignorant of their entire dependence on Him for happiness, they cannot of course realise that the favour of God is life, and His loving kindness is better than life.

3. The wicked will not seek after the likeness of God. That they do not at all resemble Him is certain. They do not wish or endeavour to resemble Him. There is, indeed, in their view, no reason why they should. There are but two motives which can make any being wish to resemble another. A wish to obtain the approbation of the person imitated; or admiration of something in his character, and a consequent desire to inscribe it into our own. But the wicked can be influenced by neither of these motives to seek after conformity to God.

4. The wicked will not seek after communion with God. Communion supposes some degree of resemblance to the being whose communion is sought, and a participation of the same nature, views, and feelings.

II. The reason why the wicked will not seek God.

1. Pride renders God a disagreeable object of contemplation to the wicked, and a knowledge of Him as undesirable. Pride consists in an unduly exalted opinion of one’s self. It is therefore impatient of a rival, hates a superior, and cannot endure a master.

2. The pride of the wicked prevents them from seeking the knowledge of God, by rendering them unwilling to be taught. Pride is almost as impatient of a teacher as of a master.

3. Pride renders the wicked unwilling to use the means by which alone the knowledge of God can be acquired. It renders them unwilling to study the Bible in a proper manner. Pride also renders the man unwilling to pray. And it prevents him from improving public and private opportunities for acquiring religious instruction. The pride of the wicked will not allow them to seek after the favour or the likeness of God. It makes them unwilling to seek after communion with God.

Reflections--

1. How evident it is that salvation is wholly of grace, and that all the wicked, if left to themselves, will certainly perish.

2. How depraved, how infatuated, how unreasonable do the wicked appear!

3. How foolish, absurd, ruinous, blindly destructive of its own object does pride appear! The subject may be applied for purposes of self-examination. (E. Payson, D. D.)

The pride of man restrains seeking after God

Christianity made but few converts amongst the disciples of Zeno. Why should it have been so? With their simple and self-denying habits, why were they not attracted by the purer morals of the Gospel? and with their superiority to the surrounding superstitions, why did they not hail that unknown God whom Cleanthus had sung, and whom Paul now preached? The answer we fear is to be found in that little word pride--that little word which is still so great a hindrance to many wise men after the flesh. Amongst the Greeks and Romans the Stoics occupied the same place as the Pharisees amongst the Jews. The very foundation of their theory was to make the virtuous man self-sufficing, and usually they got so far as to make him self-sufficient. In cutting off all other vices the Stoic, like the cynic before him, fostered to enormous magnitude pride or self-complacency, and, as Archer Butler says in his Ancient Philosophy, sought not so much to please the Deity as to be His equal. (J. Hamilton, D. D.)

God is not in all his thoughts.

The sinfulness of forgetting God

A characteristic mark of the ungodly man. Forgetfulness of God is the concealed spring from which the evil and bitter streams of outward wickedness derive their origin.

I. What is intended by having God in all our thoughts. It is not meant that we should have our meditations constantly and invariably fixed upon God. Nor that the most pious and spiritual state of mind will disqualify a man for transacting the proper business of his station. We are here reminded of the necessity of an abiding and habitual impression of our obligations and accountableness to God. The text implies that we should take God as our portion, and expect our highest and best happiness from Him. Whatever it be from which a man expects his chief good, to that his thoughts naturally revert whenever he is not compelled to fix them upon some other object. It will be the favourite topic of his meditations.

II. The consequence of the want of this principle. The man described here is one who lives in a state of habitual forgetfulness of God; acts without an abiding sense of his obligation and accountableness to Him; lives to please himself, rather than Him who made him. This state of mind is the very thing that leads to every act of gross outward sin. Conclusion:

1. Learn not to be satisfied with ourselves, because men approve of us. They cannot at all look at our motives.

2. If, in order to our being approved of God, it is necessary that we should have such a constant regard to Him, is it not clear that the retrospect of our lives will show us that we have been lamentably defective in His sight? Our subject may remind us of our exceeding sinfulness, and of our need of the mercy and grace of God as revealed in the Gospel of His Son. (T. Scott, MA.)

Who are the wicked

The text says that God is not in their thoughts.

1. This is because of practical atheism. God is put out of the way by various theories. One makes the world ten thousand years old, and another ten million. The Bible is sneered at as an old, antiquated book.

2. Ignorance of God’s character is another reason why God is not in men’s thoughts. We, as sinful and blinded creatures, cannot justly comprehend a holy God. Even Christ’s disciples but poorly comprehended God’s character as revealed in Christ. Much more in the case of the sinner is it true that God is not in his thoughts on account of the blindness of sin. Justice and holiness are obscured.

3. A misconception of their own moral condition follows. They lose sight of God because they are not awake to their own ill-desert.

4. Another reason why God is not in the wicked man’s thought is because of absorption in the things of the world. The demands of business should be met, but those of God are not to be forgotten. Men know that there is a future life, though some may argue against it. The Sabbath is given as one preparative. (J. H. Hamilton, M. D.)

The place where God is not

God is everywhere, and yet the verse tells us where He is not--in the thoughts of wicked men. This is--

1. A notorious fact. Millions live day by day as if God were not.

2. An astounding fact. It is unnatural, impious, calamitous. Why, then, is God not in their thoughts?

I. Negatively.

1. It is not because there can be any doubt as to the importance of thinking of God.

2. Nor because there is any lack of means to remind men of Him. All things are full of Him.

3. Nor because of the unbroken regularity of the material world. In heaven, where there is the same regularity, their minds ever delight in Him.

4. Nor because man has no consciousness of restraint in action. But all holy souls are equally free.

II. Positively. The cause is in the heart.

1. Fear--the guilty conscience.

2. Dislike; hence men exclude God from their thoughts. Learn, the appalling wickedness of man, and his need of Christ. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

A searching description of the wicked

The heart of the wicked is the only place in the creation of God whence, if we may so speak, the Creator is banished. Inquire--

I. Into the causes of such a state of mind. They penetrate deeper than may at first sight appear. It is nothing temporary or accidental that causes the forgetfulness of which the Psalmist complains; the evil is general and radical. It has its source in our original apostasy; it extends to us all by nature; no man is free from its influence. Subordinate to this primary and leading cause there are individual causes which, though but results of the former, become in their turn new and fruitful causes of the same effect. The constant pressure of worldly concerns, even when lawful, tends to banish God from our thoughts. But mere inattention is not the whole cause why God is not more in the hearts of men. They wilfully and deliberately banish Him from their thoughts. They are anxious to forget Him. And the reason is that they do not truly love God. What we love is always welcome to our thoughts.

II. Into the evils resulting therefrom. In fact, all the vice that exists among mankind arises from their not having God in their thoughts. Did men seriously think upon God they would not dare to sin as they too often do.

III. Into the method of overcoming this unhappy state of character.

1. Learn to contemplate the Almighty in the magnitude of His terrors,

2. Let us view God in the abundance of His love. (Christian Observer.)

A discourse on habitual devotion

It is characteristic of a good man that he “sets the Lord always before him,” whereas it is said of the wicked, “God is not in all their thoughts.” This seems to furnish a pretty good test of the state of a man’s mind with respect to virtue and vice. The wicked man is a practical atheist. The good man sees God in everything, and everything in God. An habitual regard of God is the most effectual means of advancing us from the more imperfect to the more perfect state. Recommend this duty by an enumeration of its happy effects.

1. An habitual regard to God in our actions tends greatly to keep us firm in our adherence to our duty. It has pleased Divine Providence to place man in a state of trial and probation. This world is strictly such. God has placed us under laws. We are certainly less liable to forget these laws, and our obligation to observe them, when we keep up an habitual regard to our great Lawgiver and Judge, when we consider Him as present with us.

2. An habitual regard to God promotes an uniform cheerfulness of mind. It tends to dissipate melancholy and anxiety.

3. Fits a man for the business of this life, giving a peculiar presence and intrepidity of mind, and is therefore the best support in difficult enterprises of any kind. Consider the most proper and effectual methods of promoting this temper of mind.

(1) Endeavour to divest your minds of too great a multiplicity of the cares of this world;

(2) Do not omit stated times of worshipping God by prayer, public and private;

(3) Omit no opportunity of turning your thoughts to God;

(4) Never fail to have recourse to God upon every occasion of strong emotion of mind;

(5) Labour to free your minds of all consciousness of guilt and self-reproach;

(6) Cultivate in your minds just ideas of God. (J. Priestley, LL. D.)