The Bible Study Podcast, episode 377. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Psalms with Psalm 36.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. We're going to study Psalm 36 today.

Another Psalm of David. This one may be familiar to you. If you've ever heard the praise song,

Your Steadfast Love, it borrows very heavily in the first verse from this Psalm. The Psalm goes like this.

I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. In their own eyes, they flatter themselves, too much

to detect or hate their sin. The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful. They fail to act

wisely or to do good. Even on their beds, they plot evil.

They commit themselves to a sinful course and do not reject what is wrong.

So David starts this particular Psalm with a message from God, he says, concerning all of those who are evil.

And I don't know that he describes a personality here that is necessarily intentionally or consciously evil.

See if you agree with me or not here.

He talks about people who flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.

And I think what he is saying here is they're not necessarily thinking of themselves as evil. They're not necessarily even,

even though later on he'll say plotting evil. I would say they're not necessarily even

thinking I'm going to go do evil today.

But what I see is in their own eyes, they flatter themselves. In their own eyes, they think of

themselves as so important. And that's an interesting thing. In the society in which I live,

in North America and the U.S., we spent a lot of time here over the last 20 years,

trying to make sure that every child had a good self-image.

And I think that every child should have a good self-image, but not necessarily in the way that we were trying.

I think every child should know what they are capable of. Every child should be able to

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