Sermon for MHBC (8 August 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.
It’s a given that the world is a violent and unjust place. Innocent people are harmed. Bad things happen. Tragic losses occur. Evil people get away with terrible actions. That is the world we live in. It is a world crushed under the weight of sin. While it was created and pronounced good by God, it has been corrupted, and, as a result, it is in desperate need of repair—what we call redemption.
Like many of the preceding psalms, this psalm tells us about the justice and righteousness of the LORD. He will certainly right every wrong. He will redeem corrupted creation—all of it. And this psalm also calls upon us as we read it to repent and turn to Him, offering Him praise and glory for His perfect character.
Let’s begin in v. 1: O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me. Like so many of these psalms, David begins with a request for deliverance. But notice what else he says here. He says, “In you, O LORD my God, I take refuge.”
And why does he need refuge? Because people are after him. Look at v. 2: lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver. Look at David’s situation. He has nowhere to go. He is going to be torn apart by his pursuers and he recognizes that apart from God’s deliverance there is no deliverance.
The next verses are going to require some care so we don’t miss the point. David appeals to his innocence. Later he refers to his righteousness. I’ll say more about that when we get there, but I want you to keep all of this in context. When David appeals to his innocence, the emphasis isn’t on his behavior. The emphasis is on the character of God. This entire psalm is about the justice and righteousness of God. That’s what David is appealing to.
Look at vv. 3–5: O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.
Here’s what he’s saying. “If I’m guilty in this instance, execute justice on me.” Remember the context. He is being pursued wrongfully. His enemies are out to get him without cause. But he appeals to the character of God by saying, “LORD, if I’m in the wrong, then release your hand of protection from me.” He knows the LORD won’t act contrary to the LORD’s character.
Then David petitions the LORD to set wrongs right. Verses 6–7: Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high. Again, he’s asking God to act in a manner consistent with God’s righteous character.
Verse 8: The Lord judges the peoples; judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Now we have to stop here and once again be careful. Remember this is a specific situation. David isn’t merely relying on his good behavior. One writer refers to this as a “relative” or “comparative” righteousness.[1] I think that’s extremely helpful here. David is referring to his rightness in the present context. He knows the LORD is his true righteousness. He says that in Psalm 4:1.
Furthermore, righteousness and wickedness in the psalms do not primarily concern some arbitrary behaviors. Remember Psalms 1 and 2. The contrast between the righteous and wicked is that the righteous are those who embrace the LORD by trusting Him and the wicked are those who openly rebel against the LORD by rejecting Him. We can put this another way and Psalm 2 is a great example of this. The righteous in Scripture are those who embrace Jesus as the Christ, the Savior, the Lord. The wicked are those who reject His lordship. So, to be completely clear, there might be a very nice person, who does many charitable things, and yet they reject Jesus. That person would not be considered righteous.
In v. 9, David prays for something that we can all sympathize with: Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous—you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! We all desire the end of evil. He also asks the LORD to establish the righteous. Remember who the righteous are. They are those who love and fear the LORD. And once more this is all rooted in the character of the LORD—“you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God!”
In fact, notice when we get to v. 11 that there is this repetition of God being righteous. Look at vv. 10–11: My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. Here we find the primary point of this psalm. God is a righteous judge. Now an unrighteous judge is conceivable. That would be a horrible thing. If you went to court, and the judge refused to govern according to the law and applied all sorts of false evidence to your case, that would be an unrighteous judge. And, no doubt, human beings, whether actual judges or not, are often unrighteous in their determinations. But the LORD is a righteous judge.[2] His character is never in question. He also does what is good and right.
Because that is the character of God, the next verses remind us that this is a serious matter. In these verses, we are struck with the urgency of repentance. Verses 12–13: If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Here we see that the righteous judge is a warrior. The God of the Bible is a warrior who strikes terror into the hearts of those who oppose Him.
Notice how the wicked person is described in the next few verses, starting in v. 14: Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends. Ultimately, the wicked person will not get away with their behavior. All things are open and visible to the LORD. Nothing can be hidden. And the actions of those who oppose Him are like those who set a trap for themselves.
And once more, all of this is founded on God’s righteous character. Verse 17: I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High. Notice what David says. “I will give thanks due to his righteousness.” The KJV is probably better here: “I will praise the LORD according to his righteousness.” The standard for the praise is God’s righteousness.[3] God’s character necessitates praise. His righteousness should prompt praise.
Now I’ve tried to work quickly through a lengthy psalm so that we can say a few things about the righteous character of the LORD. The themes of righteousness and justice go together throughout Scripture. The Puritan writer, Stephen Charnock, called the righteousness and justice of the LORD “the engines of Divine dignity which render him glorious and majestic.”[4]
So for example, we read in Psalm 97:2 that “righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.” Or this great promise in Isa 1:27: “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent by righteousness.” Again in Isa 5:16: “The LORD of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.” Plenty of other examples abound. The point is that we see the character of God illustrated in these terms righteousness and justice. Yet, I’m afraid we don’t do as v. 17 describes and praise the LORD for these aspects of His character. But let me say two things about God’s righteous judgment that should prompt us to meditate on His righteousness and justice.
First, God’s righteous judgment gives us hope for the future.
The whole basis for our hope in the future is because God is righteous and just. As Charnock noted, if God were unable to exercise authority over violations of His laws, God would not be sovereign.[5] In fact, the whole world would simply slide into total chaos. Even now, the LORD upholds the world by His righteousness and justice. There are things He has given us such as a sense of right and wrong, laws both natural and judicial, and civil officials to govern and execute justice. These are all expressions of how God governs the world.
Then there are instances of God’s judgment in time. We see this in Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 and in Egypt is judged. In the NT, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem as a sign of judgment. That happened in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans.
But then there is a final judgment when all wrongs will be righted. One writer says, “[God’s righteousness] will one day be the broom that sweeps the universe clean.”[6] We know the world needs this, and those who know the LORD long for this.
Second, God’s righteous judgment calls us to repent.
Remember that this psalm calls us to repent. The consequences for not repenting are dire. Scripture speaks urgently to us on this point. But understand that repentance is not merely saying, “Sorry.” Repentance involves turning away from our rebellion and turning to embrace Christ. Our good works just won’t cut it. God has spoken. He has given laws. Every single one of us is crushed by that law. Romans 3:20 tells us that the law simply condemns us. Galatians 3 makes the same point. But then it makes this amazing statement: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (3:13). That is the gospel. Christ died so that we would not be crushed under the weight of the law.
A man came to me one time who was very disturbed after reading Numbers 15, which is about a man picking up sticks on the Sabbath and is executed for violating the Sabbath law. He said, “I’ve worked a lot of Sundays, so I’m guilty.” Here’s what I told him. “You’re absolutely right. You are guilty. You are a Sabbath-breaker and you deserve death. God is a righteous judge, after all, and you’ve broken His law. But there’s good news. Christ died to free you from the condemnation of the law. You must trust Christ and not your self-righteousness or your belief that you haven’t offended a holy God. The law condemns you, but the cross can save you.”
The appropriate response to this psalm and to the character of a righteous God is repentance. Now there’s one final piece of practical advice. We should meditate on the righteousness of God. This is His character and it makes Him praiseworthy. That’s exactly what the final verse of the psalm said. We should bring to mind the perfect character of God. There is no evil in Him. There is only perfection. This should also lead us to ponder on how serious breaching His law is. And then this should lead us to see how sweet and how amazing the gospel is.
[1] Johnson, The Identity and Attributes of God, 194.
[2] See Gill, A Body of Divinity: “[W]ithout [justice and righteousness], [God] would not be fit to be the Governor of the world, and the Judge of the whole earth; his government would be tyranny, and not yield that pleasure and delight to the inhabitants of it, it does.”
[3] On the Hebrew preposition and its syntactical function, see Williams’ Hebrew Syntax, 102.
[4] Charnock 2:432–33 cited in Johnson, 194.
[5] Existence and Attributes of God, 724.
[6] David F. Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 125, cited by Johnson, 199.