March 24, 2017
TIME TO CELEBRATE A GOD WHO JUDGES
Psalm 58
Geo Ammerman
Central Truth
The world around us is broken and wicked. People cry out for justice, for judgment, for vengeance. God sees, and He will judge. In fact, His justice will lead us to celebrate. As we look at the cross of Jesus Christ, we already celebrate God's just vengeance.
Key Verse | Psalm 58:10
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
(Psalm 58:10)
Psalm 58
God Who Judges the Earth
To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam 1 58:1 Probably a musical or liturgical term of David.
1
Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
2
58:1
Or you mighty lords (by revocalization; Hebrew in silence)
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
2
No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
your hands deal out violence on earth.
3
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
4
They have venom like the venom of a serpent,
like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
5
so that it does not hear the voice of charmers
or of the cunning enchanter.
6
O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!
7
Let them vanish like water that runs away;
when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.
8
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.
9
Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!
3
58:9
The meaning of the Hebrew verse is uncertain
10
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
11
Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth.”
Dive Deeper | Psalm 58
Do you get excited when you think about God's judgment?
David does. As he looks at the world around him, he sees leaders and people who are wicked—evil from birth, distant from fellow man, lying to each other. They're dangerous, and they don’t even care. They don’t respond to threats or bribes. David wants judgment: break their teeth, tear out their fangs, blunt their arrows, disarm them of the things they would use to attack. Let them disappear like spilled water, dissolve like a snail, never see light like a stillborn child, and do it all faster than a pot heats up. He wants them stopped. He wants them gone—ASAP.
I don't always want judgment on the wicked.
And certainly not the judgment David speaks of. It's grotesque. Let them vanish like water? A stillborn child? Bathing my feet in blood? That's heavy. But wickedness does cause something to stir deep within all of us. There is anger, frustration, and a sense of justice that awakens in us when we consider the Holocaust, child predators, social injustice, poverty, or abortion. We hate evil. We want something to be done about it. Do we trust God to do it? Do we trust His justice?
If you have trusted in Jesus Christ, you already have. What's incredible is that, as Christians, we've already acknowledged that we're the wicked ones David spoke of (Romans 3:23). We're deserving of a harsh punishment (Romans 6:23a). But praise God, He's already made our eternal judgment. We already celebrate the blood flow. At the cross Jesus was rejected, pierced, bruised, and crushed. His blood ran. Our wickedness was laid on Him (Isaiah 53:6). God's judgment is just.
It's not over. There remains a time when all of us will stand before the One who judges rightly, and we will answer for our works. For those of us who have trusted in Christ as our Savior, it will be at the Judgment Seat of Christ where by grace through faith we'll point at the cross and give an account. But for the rest, the picture David paints will be all too real.
Let's get after it. Let's praise God's judgment, trust in His deliverance, and live in response.
Discussion Questions
1. When you think of God's judgment, what comes to mind? What questions does it raise?
2. Looking at the persistent wickedness of the world around us, what's your prayer?
3. What is something you could do to respond to God's judgment?