Vengeance is Mine (8-11)

The Psalmist in the opening part of this psalm speaks to God about Sin and injustice and asks him to do something about it.

¹ O LORD, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth.

² Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve.

There are many titles and character descriptions people give to God. Around seventy percent of Australians say they believe in God, and if you were to ask them for a title to go after his name, they would probably come up with things like “The Father; The Creator; The Loving God, the Merciful; and so on. But I wonder how many people would naturally think of God as The Avenger.

The idea that God is a God who avenges is very foreign to our culture and times. But it was not foreign to the Psalmist.

Now it’s important to understand that God is not vengeful in the way that people are. When we talk about God’s vengeance, we are talking about justice, not spite. When people talk of vengeance they are usually thinking of getting RE-venge out of spite and hatred. God is not like that.

Furthermore, that’s the context we should see this in. The alternatives the bible gives us are is those of God’s vengeance versus man’s unrighteous attempts at payback. And this is one reason I chose this passage for today. Because it carries on the theme we saw arising from the story of Jacob and Esau in the last two weeks, and from the commentary on that story given by the New Testament book of Hebrews. Let me remind you of that issue.

Esau wanted to kill his younger brother Jacob because Jacob had managed to obtain both his birthright and the blessing normally given the older child by the patriarch of the clan. Like Cain before him, Esau ignored the fact that the whole situation was due to his own unspiritual attitude towards God and his promises. In bitterness he put the entire blame on Jacob for something that was really his own fault.

And the comment of the book of Hebrews on this situation is “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.”

In Romans chapter 12, the apostle Paul commands: “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” That’s a quote from Deuteronomy, where Israel is entering the promised land, and God is telling them how to live by trusting in Him and not in their own righteousness, wisdom or strength.

But here the songwriter of Israel is becoming a bit impatient for God to keep his promise of coming vengeance. He moans in verse 3:

³ How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant? 

And then in verses 4 to 7 he lays charges before God as to some of the things they seem to be getting away with. Arrogant words, boasting, crushing God’s people, slaying the widow and alien, murdering the fatherless. And even scorning the idea that God sees or cares at all.

Do you ever feel that way? When evil men slander God’s name with impunity? When the atheists or the muslims or the immoral seem to be winning the day around the world and in our own land? When Christians are murdered in the Sudan or Pakistan or another fifty or sixty nations around the world? When our own children are led astray by our secular educationalists or drug pushers or television producers? When big business lines the pockets of politicians to exert undue influence for their causes? There is just so much injustice in the world and in our own lives, and the lives of those we love, isn’t there?

All Fools (8-11)

Sometimes the injustice, real or perceived, will come from those we least expect it to come from. Our own family members. Our friends. Other Christians. And the psalmists were no strangers to that. David was attacked by his own son, Absalom, and betrayed by close friends. Other psalmists had similar experiences. And in this psalm we get the hint that it is not pagan nations he is talking about, but the wicked WITHIN Israel. The things he charges them with are sins against the law of Moses, which says that you must protect the widows and aliens and fatherless. And in verse 8 he says:

⁸ Take heed, you senseless ones among the people;

you fools, when will you become wise?

He is talking about the morally foolish among the people, that is, among the Israelites. Where in the first section he was talking to God about the wicked, here he talks to the wicked about God.

Today is a great day, being All Fools Day, to read these verses, isn’t it? And I must admit, this is another reason I chose this passage for today. He calls those wicked people he is addressing : “you senseless ones among the people, you fools, when will you become wise.”

April Fools Day is just a bit of fun. But there is a coming cosmic All Fools Day the bible promises, when all those who are foolish enough to defy God will pay the price for their folly. They are fools because they think God is not taking notice of them. How many Australians are just like this? They think “I won’t bother God and he won’t bother me.” That’s only fair isn’t it? But what does it say here:

⁹ Does he who implanted the ear not hear?

Does he who formed the eye not see?

¹⁰ Does he who disciplines nations not punish?

Does he who teaches man lack knowledge?

¹¹ The LORD knows the thoughts of man;

he knows that they are futile. 

He is warning those who live as though God were not the Avenger that they cannot get away with it forever.

Accepting Discipline (12-16)

And then in the next verses, he talks to God again, but this time about the righteous, that is, the one who turns back to God in faith and accepts his rebuke and discipline. Verse 12:

¹² Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law;

¹³ you grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.

¹⁴ For the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance.

¹⁵ Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it.

This man is affirming his faith in the justice of God. He believes that in the end righteousness will prevail and those who have been upright in God’s sight will be vindicated. These verses are also a prophecy looking forward to the one truly righteous man to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament reveals him as the one who will return with justice and judgment on the wicked. It also talks about in Hebrews 12, how the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and we read those verses last week.

Thy Kingdom Come (16-23)

The Psalmist has spoken to the avenging God about sinners, to unrepentant sinners about the avenging God who will judge them, and to repentant sinners about the God who is their only hope of justice and righteousness and who disciplines them for their good. And now at the end of the psalm he talks to himself about God.

¹⁶ Who will rise up for me against the wicked?

Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?

¹⁷ Unless the LORD had given me help,

I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.

Here we see the humility of this believer. He doesn’t take the high moral ground or see himself as one who can stand in his own right and might. He admits that if it were not for God, he too would have slipped and fallen. He is saying “there but for the grace of God, go I.”

¹⁸ When I said, ‘‘My foot is slipping,” your love, O LORD, supported me.

¹⁹ When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul. 

Do you have that open, honest, personal relationship with the Lord that freely admits you cannot save yourself and that revels in his salvation and his justice?

The Psalm ends with the consoling thought that it is God, just as he promised in Deuteronomy 32, who will fight our battles and be our fortress against our enemies. No evil, even that of despotic rulers and multinational companies and corrupt evil religions, can in the end prevail.

²⁰ Can a corrupt throne be allied with you— one that brings on misery by its decrees?

²¹ They band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.

²² But the LORD has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.

²³ He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the LORD our God will destroy them. 

Today is both Palm Sunday and All Fools Day. And it is appropriate that we think about the link between the passages we had as our readings today. Because in Luke 19 we see Jesus fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi who said that the Lord himself would come to his temple with judgement and salvation. Jesus comes to bring justice and he angrily condemns those fools who thought that religion was a way to get rich at the expense of those who could not use the court of the Gentiles for the prayer it was meant for. He came to his temple in judgment just as Malachi promised he would. His actions here show that as God come in the flesh amongst his people he was just like the Psalmist describes the God of justice in Psalm 94. He heard the bleating of the sheep and saw the injustice of the moneychangers and turned the tables on them. Literally! One thing that Palm Sunday teaches us is that Jesus is a god of justice. He acted decisively against injustice. He came as an avenging Messiah amongst his people, setting himself against the religious and social oppression of the moneychangers and their bosses, the chief priests who ran the market and turned religion into a way of controlling people and profiting from them. He championed the cause of the ordinary devoted believer who simply wanted to pray in God’s house and seek His face and accept the discipline that Psalm 94 and Hebrews 12 speak of.

Jesus came to his temple with judgement and with salvation. He taught in the courts of this same temple that he was the way to God and the true means of forgiveness that the sacrifice of animals could only hint at. For within a week, his bloodied, battered body was broken for us and his blood shed, so that he could be both the just judge and the one who justifies the wicked. Because of what he did at that first Easter, we can be, not among those fools who do not heed the coming judgement, but amongst those who turn back in faith and trust and accept the discipline that comes to those God loves, and who reserve judgment of others and leave it to the Lord, who alone has the right to judge and to avenge. So may this Easter be a time for putting aside all bitterness and envy and remembering the word of God to us “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”