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Psalm 58
To the choirmaster: according to Do Not Destroy. A Miktam of David.
Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
your hands deal out violence on earth.
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
They have venom like the venom of a serpent,
like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
so that it does not hear the voice of charmers
or of the cunning enchanter.
O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!
Let them vanish like water that runs away;
when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.
Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth.”
Introduction
To fulfill our calling of being a Bible believing church and a group of committed Bible believing followers of Christ we examine the whole Bible. We have a summer through the Psalms and it would be no problem finding 8-10 Psalms that would uplift us, encourage us, teach us, and make us look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, but the book of Psalms is not only songs, prayers, and hymns that seek the encourage and uplift. There are also Psalms that are filled with judgment and wrath. There are Psalms that
We come across one of those Psalms this morning. Psalm 58 presents to us some challenges because whether we like it or not, we have been influenced by the values, morals, and philosophies of this age.
That’s why parts of this Psalm will sound difficult to us, because we live in and have been influenced by a world that is upside down. Think about how quickly the morals of our generation have changed. Theological debate in the church related to practical moral questions have shifted dramatically in the past 50 years. And some of you might argue that 50 years is a long time but it’s not, certainly it isn’t if you examine it in light of the history of the church.
And now we even live at a time that if we question our upside down world and hold it up to the light of the Bible we’re bigots, or worse yet, we’re judgmental.
This morning’s message is going to have a focus on just that - judgment.
So, when we refer to judgment, what does this mean?
Judgment is the verb, justice is the noun. Judgment is the execution of justice in a moral situation. Throughout Scripture we find descriptions of God’s justice. Even in the Psalms there are many descriptions:
Psalm 111:7–8
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
all his precepts are trustworthy;
they are established forever and ever,
to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
Psalm 97:2 (ESV)
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
Justice is righteousness and justice and righteousness is who God is.
But let’s be clear:
God is not just, he is justice.
We were just on a week-long camping trip in the mountains. It was amazing. We saw eagles, hawks, mountain goats, elk, deer, and all sorts of wildlife. We saw evidence of bears but didn’t see the bears themselves. At one of the campsites we were told that there was a bear and two cubs in the area and that we should be very careful about walking around alone or without bear spray.
What if we had seen a bear? What if my family had been walking through the forest and a bear stepped out and bared its teeth? Well, as the husband and father, I would feel compelled to protect my family. I would feel like this is my role.
I jokingly told Amy that if we confronted a bear we should actually send our small dog after it. The bear would get the dog but we would live - that seemed very logical to me - she didn’t like this idea.
So, it would be up to me to protect my family. I would need to act bravely. So in this act I would be brave, but not bravery itself. To be bravery itself means that you are the standard to which everything is compared. It means that you can’t be compelled to bravery because you are the standard, you are what defines bravery.
God can’t be just, he is justice just as God is not loving, he is love.
You sometimes hear it said that justice required God to act. This may be true of something you see on TV or online. Some injustice that is being reported on.
AW Tozer said that, “nothing ever requires God to do anything. If you have a God that is required to do anything, then you have a weak God who has to bow his neck to some yoke, and yield himself to pressure from the outside. But this is an error in speaking for it postulates a principle of justice that lies outside of God and to which God has to conform.
God is the standard by which justice is defined. He is the standard by which judgment is given.
The main point I want to make this morning, grounded in Psalm 58, is that God’s judgements are right and true. So that will be the theological grounding of this morning’s sermon.
Psalm 58 is going to outline what God’s judgements look like, and to our 21st Century ears, it may be challenging. So in light of that, the question we will seek to answer is: should we pray this Psalm today.
Pray
Part 1: We must call out injustice - Psalm 58:1-5
Psalm 58:1
Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
We must first identify who David is addressing in this Psalm. He’s crying out to God, but about whom? Well, we know that often in Hebrew poetry the first verse and the last verse are meant to mirror one another - they’re connected, and in verse 11 we read:
Psalm 58:11
Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth.”
He’s referring to those on earth who decree like gods - lowercase ‘g’ gods. Those who have power to rule and have authority. These are the political and spiritual leaders. He’s calling out the political and spiritual leaders of his day. At this time King Saul is the ruler of Israel and he’s acting in an unjust manner toward David - he’s trying to have David killed. Not only that, but the other political and spiritual leaders who are supposed to advise the king are doing nothing -so David’s calling them out. He’s saying, “God put you in this role - to rule with justice and you’re failing!”
David says, Psalm 58:1-2
Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods?
Do you judge the children of man uprightly?
No, in your hearts you devise wrongs;
your hands deal out violence on earth.
The first two lines of this Psalm are rhetorical. David boldly calls out the injustice of Israel’s leaders.
We should not be surprised when our leaders enact judgments that are unjust. Even king Saul, anointed before God with oil, is being called out by David here as being unjust.
My son was given a British pound a couple of weeks ago. You will notice that on this note are the initials F.D. This is Latin for ‘fidei Defensor’ which means ‘defender of the faith’. And that is a title that our Canadian head of state carries to this day. King Charles carries the title ‘defender of the faith’. Now, in his younger years he was asked about this title. I believe it was a reporter that was asking if the title was outdated or still carried significance. He replied that perhaps the title should be changed from ‘defender of the faith’ to ‘defender of faith’ indicating that all faiths are equally valuable. Now if that doesn’t accurately sum up the current post modern age I don’t know what does.
I explained in the opening that God is justice. He’s the standard. Saul, who knew God, who could hear the direct words of God through the prophet Samuel, even he failed to do justice. What about our leaders today? If you don’t know God, you don’t know true justice. We shouldn’t be surprised when our leaders fail to rule justly.
What do we do? We do what David did:
Point #1 - We must call out injustice...
Though injustice may not surprise us, we still must call it out. Why did David call out the injustice? Because it was happening to him? Certainly, but David was not afraid to call out injustice also because it was right. What was his reaction when the giant Goliath was cursing the name of God? He grabbed his slingshot.
Like David we also are called to recognize injustice and act. It’s your calling as a believer.
God’s character revealed to us throughout Scripture, made flesh in the person of Jesus and revealed through the Gospel compels us to be aggressive advocates of the oppressed. These verses show us that God is far from passive when it comes to injustice.
God defends the oppressed, delivers them, gives them hope, hears their cries, shows them compassion and promises to punish those who punish them. And so we too are called to encourage the oppressed, help victims of injustice, and cry out to God on their behalf.
So what compels our leaders to act unjustly?
Psalm 58:3
The wicked are estranged from the womb;
they go astray from birth, speaking lies.
We should not be surprised by injustice because of the condition of man.
Psalm 51:5
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
From the very beginning, because of the curse of sin, our natural inclination is toward injustice. Justice and righteousness is to make equal, it’s to make the line straight, but we all know that we seek to be selfish.
“G.K. Chesterson said that the doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy that has been empirically validated by thirty-five hundred years of human history.”
Our natural inclination is toward injustice. How much more is this the case when it comes to those who have been given power and authority?
Psalm 58:4–5
They have venom like the venom of a serpent,
like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
so that it does not hear the voice of charmers
or of the cunning enchanter.
These rulers who practise injustice - they can’t be controlled.
They can’t be controlled so what do we do?
Part 2 Psalm 58:6-9: Injustice should provoke us to cry out to the Lord.
Psalm 58:6
O God, break the teeth in their mouths;
tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord!
What does David do after calling out those with authority? He cries out to God.
Point #2 - Injustice should provoke us to cry out to the Lord.
What does it mean to be provoked? Those of you with brothers or sisters, cousins, you know what I’m talking about, right? They may poke you or tease you - they're provoking you to do something.
Injustice should provoke us to pray.
What would our prayer lives look like if we first took seriously the injustices around us, if we first allowed the injustices around us to affect us, if we would allow ourselves to be more sensitive to the injustices around us and then took it all to prayer.
I saw an image yesterday of a young woman with her young son and daughter. They were holding a cupcake with a lit candle. The cake was for her husband who has spent just over 300 days in a tunnel in Gaza - a captive of Hamas. The daughter is less than a year old - he’s never seen her before. They don’t know if he’s alive or dead. It was her husband’s birthday so she was attempting to gain public support to persuade the government to go in and save her husband.
There are currently a number of American captives as well. We might naturally be inclined to think that the most powerful military in the history of the world wouldn’t stand for a group of terrorists to get away with that. But they have.
Now some of you might argue that the people in Gaza too have faced injustice. What about the women and children that have been hurt and killed inside that war zone. And to that I agree. Yes, as it turns out war is full of injustices. So what should we do in the face of this injustice?
How much time have you spent talking with others about the conflict in Gaza, a conflict that only seems to be escalating? How much time have you spent in prayer over this conflict?
When David is confronted with injustice, what does he do? He cries out to God. And it should only seem right and natural that in the face of injustice we turn to the only one capable of enacting true justice.
‘O God’ David cries out. Break their teeth. Why break their teeth? He’s talking about a serpent, their venom comes from their teeth, and then the lion without its teeth loses its ability to devour.
Charles Spurgeon says, “If they have no capacity for good, at least deprive them of their ability for evil.”
He’s saying, at least God stop them from doing harm.
Psalm 58:7–8
Let them vanish like water that runs away;
when he aims his arrows, let them be blunted.
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime,
like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.
Listen closely: this passage is not saying that those who experience a miscarriage or difficulty in childbirth are being judged by God. Put yourself in the point in time that this was written. This was a time when the majority of pregnancies did not lead to a healthy birth. This is normal. So for those families that have gone through a miscarriage, multiple miscarriages, and to those that will, it is not God putting his judgment on you. It is normal. Normal, and incredibly challenging. It’s a difficult image, and that’s why David uses it. He’s reaching for language that will shock, offend, and point to a difficult truth. The truth, as one commentator put it, is that every unregenerate person is a stillborn child. Ephesians 2 makes it clear that all of us, prior to receiving the gift of life in Christ, were dead in our trespasses.
Psalm 58:9
Sooner than your pots can feel the heat of thorns,
whether green or ablaze, may he sweep them away!
David’s language here is quite harsh. He calls for God to make his enemies vanish, to blunt their arrows, to have them dissolve into slime, to make it as if they had never been born, and here in verse 9 David using an expression to plead that God should do this immediately - before the fire can even heat the pot.
This is called an imprecatory psalm. I explained that there are many types of Psalms: psalms of thanksgiving, praise, laments. To imprecate means to pray against something. To call for disaster on one’s enemies. It’s a cry for justice, and to our ears it at times makes us feel uneasy.
I’m going to argue that part of the reason we feel uneasy with this language is because we have not faced injustice, generally speaking, like David is talking about here.
Send in the seals. How about we put our trust in something that is better. Let us learn to pray.
This is an imprecatory psalm. A prayer that calls down disaster on one’s enemies, but don’t miss this important element:
Part 3: Psalm 58:10-11 - Put your hope in the perfect judge
Psalm 58:10
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Notice the language that is used - look closely. It doesn't say ‘we rejoice when we see vengeance’, it doesn’t say ‘we rejoice when we see our vengeance’, ‘we rejoice when we see THE vengeance.’
Wouldn’t it be a scary thing if we were to rejoice in our own vengeance. How many wars have been unjustly fought for vengeance. No, we don’t rejoice in our own vengeance, we rejoice in THE vengeance. God’s vengeance. And we remain righteous in our rejoicing because God is the perfect judge. We rejoice in the actions of the perfect judge.
Point #3 - Put your hope in the perfect judge
We can rest in the fact that we have a perfect judge, and our reaction to his vengeance is the natural reaction of those who are passionate about true justice being served.
These are harsh, biting and difficult words for us, but if God is going to act justly, there must be might behind his judgements. Blaise Pascal, the 17th Century philosopher argued, “Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical…We must then combine justice and might.”
We have the perfect judge, who displays both his justice and might.
Our reaction is to celebrate his acts of justice.
What do you believe the reaction of the unrighteous will be? They might say, ‘How horrible’ or ‘That’s not fair.’ This may be the reaction of some of us this morning.
Psalm 58:10
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Pastor Daryl challenged us to memorize a Psalm as we moved through this series over the summer. It seemed logical for me to memorize the Psalm that I would be speaking on. And now I have Psalm 58 rolling around up here and I’m wondering when do I use this? What would the reaction of those around me be if I pulled out Psalm 58:10?
Let’s not limit the work of the Holy Spirit to use God’s word to stir the hearts of unbelievers around us. Yes, a passage as biting and harsh has this should be used tactfully but should not be hidden or shouldn’t cause embarrassment.
Charles Spurgeon says, ‘There is nothing in Scripture of that sympathy with God's enemies which modern traitors are so fond of parading as the finest species of benevolence. We shall at the last say, "Amen," to the condemnation of the wicked, and feel no disposition to question the ways of God.’
It’s like Spurgeon lived today as he argues that those in the church, who he refers to as traitors - they call themselves Christians but are not following God’s word, hold up God’s enemies, the unrighteous, as a model of love and kindness. The truth however, is that we need to tune our hearts to the point that when God’s judgements come, we feel no inclination to question how God works.
When God’s final judgment comes, we will recognize it as good.
Is that what we’ll say? David agrees. He says:
Psalm 58:11
Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth.”
Man’s response will be a recognition, when perfect justice comes, that God is who he says he is.
David is praying for justice, and he wants justice now, and we should also pray this way, but we know that ultimately perfect justice will only be found when death is ultimately defeated and Christ reigns.
David in this passage is looking forward prophetically to the final judgment where we see that God’s judgements are just and true:
Revelation 15:3–4
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,
“Great and amazing are your deeds,
O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
and worship you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
Revelation 16:5–7
And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say,
“Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was,
for you brought these judgments.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
and you have given them blood to drink.
It is what they deserve!”
And I heard the altar saying,
“Yes, Lord God the Almighty,
true and just are your judgments!”
I told you at the beginning of this message that I wanted to prove to you that God’s judgements are just and true
God’s judgements are right, just and true because he is justice.
We see through this passage that God hates injustice, therefore we as his followers must be sensitive to injustice and call it out.
We learned that God hears the prayers of the oppressed and so when we see injustice we should be provoked to pray.
And in calling out injustice and offering our prayers of intercession to God we can rest in the knowledge that we have a perfect judge.
So, should we still pray this prayer today in 2024? Yes, not only to reveal God’s character but also to point the unrighteous to the hope found in the Gospel.
David in this passage is asking for God to bring justice now, but he’s also prophetically pointing to Christ. The final lines of this Psalm are clearly pointing to Jesus at the final judgement.
Many of us when we explain what the gospel is go immediately to John 3:16, and this is a good place to explain the gospel.
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
But let’s face it, to those that have an elementary understanding of who God is, this passage can spur on more questions than answers, and that is why we need to do our best to present the entire gospel - Genesis to Revelation. The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation.
We often read verse 16 but neglect to move through the passage:
John 3:16–21
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
We hear so much in our society that we need to call for justice. David himself calls out to God for justice. We as a community of believers call on God for justice, to right the wrongs of this world, but we do so in the knowledge that there will come a day when death will be defeated and Christ will reign, and the only reason we as believers call out for this justice is because we already know that while we call out for justice, we don’t get justice, we get something far better. We get grace.
And this grace is offered to everyone.
Titus 2:11–14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
When Jesus went to the cross he bore your sin and mine. And not only our sin but also our wrath. He bore the judgment. Why? Because he’s loving, no, because he is love. He went because that’s who he is. He is love. But he is also justice. The judgment that should rightly fall on us is removed because of what Christ did for us at the cross, to all who believe.
But that judgment is still coming. For the christ-hating, evil loving, the unjust - vengeance is mine says the Lord.