A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan KS on 29 June 2014
1. Why, Yahweh, will You stand in [the] distance [and] ignore [things] at times that include trouble?
2. With arrogance a wicked man hotly-pursues a lowly man.
They will be caught in schemes that they thought up
3. because [the] wicked man boasted over his selfish desires,
and it was the greedy he blessed; Yahweh he despised.
4. A wicked man according to [the] stuck-up-ness of his nose will never be a seeker;
all his schemes [assume] there is no God.
5. His ways are circuitous during every moment;
Your judgments are high above the presence of his [mind].
As for all his adversaries, he blows them off.
6. He said in his heart, “I will never be overthrown
and thus never be in bad [times] for generations and generations!”
7. It is a curse that fills His mouth – also deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are trouble and iniquity.
8. He sits in ambush by the subdivisions.
In the hiding-places he murders an innocent man.
As for his eyes, they single out the weakest.
9. He sets an ambush in the hiding-place like a lion in a den.
He sets an ambush to nab a lowly one.
He nabs a lowly one by drawing him into his net,
10. and the weakest crumple, are brought down, and fall by his powers.
11. He said in his heart, “God forgot! He has hidden His face; He never saw a thing!”
12. Arise, Yahweh! God, lift up Your hand; do not forget the lowly ones.
13. Why did the wicked man despise God?
He said in his heart, “You will not be a seeker.”
14. You saw, for You Yourself will take a look at trouble and grief in order to take charge.
To You the weakest will abandon himself;
[to the] orphan You Yourself have been a helper.
15. Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
search out his wickedness [until] you find none.
16. Yahweh is king forever and ever.
[The] nations perished from His earth.
17. It is the desires of the lowly ones that You, Yahweh heeded.
You will cause their heart to stand firm; You will cause Your ear to be attentive,
18. in order to adjudicate for an orphan or [for] the one who is beaten down;
never again to add to the trembling of mortal-man from the earth.
1. Why, Yahweh, will You stand in [the] distance [and] ignore at times that include trouble?
· In last week’s sermon, we examined verses 2-10 to note the characteristics of these proud bad-guys who look an awful lot like us in some respects:
o They are self-centered and speak highly about their interests and achievements
o They praise wickedness.; They hate God.
o They are stuck up.
o They do not “seek” – they don’t ask for help; they don’t ask for advice; and they don’t wait for God.
o They blow off accountability – they resist having any authority over them.
o They are often ducking and weaving and hiding to avoid accountability, not following a straight course.
o They deceive themselves by telling themselves things that aren’t true, and then they tell lies to deceive others.
o They often wish curses on other people and things, and they harshly criticize anybody that keeps them from getting their way.
o They abuse power by using it to hurt and oppress other people.
o Instead of training their eyes upon God, they keep their eyes on the weak and helpless to compare themselves to them and to take advantage of them.
o And when he has taken advantage of the weak…
11. He said in his heart, “God forgot! He has hidden His face; He never saw a thing[4]!”
· These are fighting words: “Hey God, that bad guy just said that You couldn’t see him when he did that evil thing and that you forget about evil and never punish it. You’re not going to let him get away with saying that, are You?”
· What David is doing is like what my kids do when they see their brother or sister doing something wrong and they know that they can’t stop their sibling, so they come to me and say, “Papa, did you give Aletheia permission to play video games on your computer in the office?” Of course, there’s no question whether I ever gave that permission; my kids know I don’t let them do that kind of thing, but my kid frames the question to me that way in order to get me to do something about it, so I’ll go back to the office and make Aletheia stop playing video games on my computer.
· David is talking to God, describing what he has seen, and what he’s trying to do is provoke God to action, which is what he says in v.12.
12. Arise, Yahweh! God, lift up Your hand; do not forget the [humble, afflicted, helpless] lowly ones.
· This prayer in verse 12 is a resounding counterpoint to the cocky assertion of the proud man in verse 11.
· What does it mean to lift up your hand?[5]
13. Why did the wicked man despise [renounce/contemn/spurn/revile] God? [The second half of the verse gives the answer:] He said in his heart, “You will not be a seeker [you[9] will not require].”
14. You saw, for You Yourself will [behold/observe/note/consider] take a look at trouble and grief[11] [mischief and spite, vexation] in order to [requite/repay/take it in your hand] take charge. To You the weakest will [commit] abandon himself; [to the] orphan/fatherless You Yourself have been a helper.
15. Break the arm of the wicked and evil man[12]; search out [call to account[13]] his wickedness [until] you[14] find none.
– He doesn’t ask God to kill the wicked but just to break an arm – enough to get his attention and get him to stop hurting the weak, but not enough to send him to hell. Just enough to make him realize that he was wrong when he said God wouldn’t hold him accountable (v.13).
– And David doesn’t say “throw the book at him so he gets the maximum punishment,” rather he says, “search out all his wickedness and get rid of it so that the man is not wicked any more.”
– In effect, “Fulfill the wicked man’s careless comment in v.11 about You not seeing his wickedness by really rooting out his wickedness and making him a humble, righteous man whose wickedness is forgiven so that you really don’t see any wickedness in him or her!” Make him the kind of person who realizes he is a man and not God and doesn’t terrorize or oppress people anymore[16].
16. Yahweh is king forever and ever. [The] nations perished from His earth.
– For under Joshua, in the Past, the incredibly wicked Canaanite “nations” “perished” from the Promised Land (Deut. 8:20, Josh. 23:13).
– And in the Present time that David wrote Psalm 10, his army had been very successful in beating back the Philistines and Moabites and Syrians who had encroached upon the Jews and oppressed them such that David and his son Solomon held hegemony over more land than Israel ever did at any other time in history[17].
– And in the Future, when Jesus comes back, He will “strike down the nations with the sword and rule them with a rod of iron,” as it says in Rev. 19:15 (cf. Isa. 60:12), but He will also “heal” nations (Rev. 22:2) and bring nations into His presence (Rev. 21:26) to worship Him forever (Rev. 5:9).
– By the way, the phrase “His land” is not a euphemism for the Promised Land, rather, it means the whole world.
§ In the thirty times the Hebrew word eretzo is used from Genesis through Psalms, it never means “the land of Israel” but rather “the land over which a man rules.”
§ Here we see God as the king forever and ever, and just as He is king over all time, He is also king over all places!
§ The two times in the Old Testament that I found where the phrase “His land” occurs in poetic parallel with another word that further defines it are Job 37:12-13 and Prov. 8:31, and both times, the parallel word is tebel – which means the whole inhabited earth.
§ Listen, God’s conquest over those in rebellion to Him is not going to be merely over a small plot of land called Israel, it will encompass the whole earth!
17. It is the desires of the lowly ones that You, Yahweh heeded. You will [prepare/ strengthen/ encourage] cause their heart to stand firm; You will cause[18] Your ear to be attentive [inclined].
– In 2 Chronicles 12:14 King Rehoboam’s “heart” was not “standing firm” to seek the LORD and therefore he did what was evil.
– Psalm 78:7-8 defines the generation of Israelites who did not have this “prepared heart” as not putting their confidence in God, not remembering the works of God, not keeping His commandments, and not being faithful to God.[20]
– On the other hand, a heart that “stands firm” is one that “trusts in the Lord,” according to Psalm 112:7[21]
– Furthermore, Job 11:13-15 states that a “rightly-established heart” will repent of disobedience and pray to God[22], and
– Psalm 57:7 adds that this “steadfast heart” will also “sing praises” to God[23]
– There are plenty of times when people in the Bible plead with God to hear them, like Psalm 5 – “Give ear to my words, O LORD,”
– and plenty of times when God called people to “pay attention” and “listen to” Him,
– but there is only one other place in the Bible where God promises that He will bend down and listen to somebody else, and once again, it is not the proud; it is the humble!
– Malachi 3:13-17 "Your words have been arrogant against Me," says the LORD. "Yet you say, 'What have we spoken against You?' "You have said, 'It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge…? 'So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up but they also test God and escape.'" Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. "They will be Mine," says the LORD of hosts, "on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him." (NASB)
– It’s like when I scoop up a bowl of ice cream in front of my two-year-old and then tell him, “First you’ve got to say please!” He knows that I want to give him that bowl of ice cream, and he knows what I want him to say to get it, now all he has to do is say, “Please!” and the ice cream is his!
– Of course this is anthropomorphic language, but it is a picture of the relationship God has with those who are humble before Him. He sets them up for success in prayer.
– Do you want a direct hotline to God where whenever you speak, you totally capture His attention and make God want to do what you ask? Then walk humbly and notice what kind of things the lowly ask for and align your desires with those things!
– They come from a righteous person (Prov. 10:24, NASB What the wicked fears will come upon him, But the desire of the righteous will be granted.)
– These desires are for what is good (Prov. 11:23, NASB The desire of the righteous is only good, But the expectation of the wicked is wrath.)
– It includes a desire for God to be present (Isa. 26:8, NASB Indeed, while following the way of Your judgments, O LORD, We have waited for You eagerly; Your name, even Your memory, is the desire of our souls.)
– Verse 18 tells us what the request is that God is so interested in
18. in order to [do justice/vindicate/defend] adjudicate for an orphan [fatherless] or [for] the one who is beaten down [oppressed]; never again to add to the trembling of mortal-man from the earth.
– For instance, it is unclear to me whether this mortal-man here in v.18 is the same as the weak poor, oppressed, and fatherless person who fears he will be wiped off the face of the earth by the wicked,
– or whether he is the mortal-man from the end of Psalm 9 who is a wicked man who disregards God and needs to be terrified by God’s judgment in order that he will “know that he is man” and not God and will therefore stop taking advantage of the poor. Neither interpretation contradicts the rest of Scripture, but most English translations interpret it as the latter.
– In this case, I think that it is the desire of the humble to see orphans treated justly and to see terror eliminated, and that is what the humble person prays to God for.
– At the same time, it is also the purpose of God to see orphans treated justly and to see terrorism eliminated, and so He strengthens the heart of the humble to ask for this and then answers their prayers for these things by judging in favor of orphans and removing our fears.
– In v.14 we just read that God is the “helper of the orphan,” so when we seek help for an orphan, we are aligned with what God already likes to do.
– And in Psalm 9:9, we already learned that God is a “refuge for the oppressed/beaten down,” so when we seek asylum for the oppressed, we are aligned with that God already likes to do. Of course God will be attentive to these kind of requests!
– So let us pray for God to intervene on behalf of the poor and weak and oppressed and fatherless to stop the wicked from exploiting them, and let us pray for God to give His peace and salvation and life to the wicked and the weak alike so that they might not perish.
1. “It is no new thing for God to seem for a while to leave his people to the power of their enemies, v1. This ought not to cast them down. God's servants of former days endured all this, and yet came off conquerors.”
2. “There is not in all the militant church of Christ a case of wrong suffered, or of persecution endured so bad as to render it doubtful whether we should at once bring it before God, v.1. ‘Good people would be undone, if they had not a God to go to, a God to trust in, and a future bliss to hope for.’ Cast all your care on him, for he careth for you. It is God’s office, work and personal delight to help the feeble and defend the injured.” So pray for justice. And finally…
3. “However sore may be the trials of his saints, God never finally, nor totally forsakes them. True, as Matthew Henry says, ‘God's withdrawings are very grievous to his people at any time, but especially in times of trouble.’ But God’s time of coming to the rescue is often the nearest, when we think it furthest off.’ Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ …. [25]Cecil was pacing to and fro in the Botanic Garden at Oxford, when he observed a fine specimen of the pomegranate almost cut through the stem. On asking the gardener the reason, he got an answer which explained the wounds of his own bleeding spirit. ‘Sir, this tree used to shoot so strong, that it bore nothing but leaves. I was, therefore, obliged to cut it in this manner, and when it was almost cut through, then it began to bear plenty of fruit.' Ye suffering members of Christ, be thankful for every sorrow which weakens a lust or strengthens a grace. Though it should be a cut to the heart, be thankful for every sin and idol shorn away. Be thankful for whatever makes your conscience more tender, your thoughts more spiritual, and your character more consistent. Be thankful that it was the pruning-knife and not the weeding-hook which you felt: for if you suffer in Christ, you suffer with him; and if with him you suffer, with him you shall also reign.”
[1] http://nationalblackroberegiment.com/christians-persecuted-group-world-muslim-persecution-christians-february-2014
[2] with the preposition m- rather than b- prefixing rachoq
[3] Alternately, Augustine’s take on this was, “Thou despisest seasonably, and causest tribulations to inflame men’s minds with longing for Thy coming.”
[4] This is my attempt to render the lanetsach at the end of the verse. There is already a strong negative (bal), so lenatsach further intensifies the force of this cocky assertion.
[5] The only other place in the Bible that qum, nasa, and yad occur is Gen. 21:18, when the angel tells Hagar to get up and going with Ishmael because he was not destined to starve in the desert but rather to become a great nation. But here in Psalm 10, David is telling God to “get with the program.”
[6] In Leviticus 9:22, Aaron lifted up his hands to bless the people of Israel after sacrificing the sin offerings and peace offerings, and the people respond by lifting their hands in prayer to God (Psalm 28:2) and lifting up hands to bless the LORD (Psalm 134:2). Also, Isaiah 49:22 uses the phrase “lift hand” in parallel with “send a signal” so it could mean to beckon, but that doesn’t seem to fit the context here any better than praying does (Thus says the Lord Jehovah, “Look, I will lift up my hand to nations and raise my signal to peoples, and they will bring your sons… (NAW)
[7] The Hebrew phrase first occurs in Exodus 6:8, where God swears “with uplifted hand,” as it were, to give Abraham and his descendents the Promised Land (cf. Num. 14:30, Neh. 9:15, Ezek. 47:14). And in Psalm 106:26, this phrase “lift the hand” is used to indicate God taking an oath that the generation of Israelites from the Exodus would all die in the desert before entering the promised land (except, of course, for Joshua and Caleb) (cf. 7 more instances in Ezekiel 20). Once again in Deuteronomy 32:40-41, God swears, saying, “…I lift up My hand to heaven, And say, as I live forever… And My hand takes hold on justice, I will render vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me” (NASB). God did the same thing later in Ezekiel 36:7, after the Jews went into exile in Babylon, promising that He would, in time, punish the nations that harmed the Jews.
[8] 18:28-speaking of Absolom’s rebellion, 20:21-speaking of Sheba’s rebellion.
[9] The Hebrew verbs here are second person, but the NIV goes with the ancient Septuagint and Syriac translations that throw the verbs into the third person: “He” – instead of “you” – won’t call to account. Either way, the subject is obviously God, so the meaning isn’t essentially changed.
[10] Thanks to James M. Boice for this example.
[11] Previously in Ps. 6:7
[12] Curiously, the phrase “wicked and evil” only occurs here and Psalm 28:3. If this were Greek, I would venture to say this is hendiadyses, “the wickedly evil man” but I do not know if the Hebrew language supports this. These parallel nouns are not used in the same sentence in the Pentateuch or Historical books of the O.T.
[13] Nowhere else in the Bible do the verbs “seek” and “find” have the object “wickedness [rasha’].” The closest you get is Amos 5:14, “seek good and not evil [ra’].”
[14] Again the NIV follows the Septuagint which diverges from the Hebrew Masoretic text by substituting a third person passive verb for a second person active verb. It is understandable because of the strangeness of what the Hebrew words say: literally “…you will seek his wickedness, never will you find.” The “until” is added interpretively, and I’m not entirely comfortable with that addition, but I can’t think of any better way to make sense of it. The idea of “that would otherwise not be found out” is attractive as a parallel to the “wicked is getting away with murder while God is aloof” theme.
[15] Although there may be some similarity to Psalm 10:12, “lift up [nasa] your hand [yad],” the words for “lift” [rum] and “arm” [zeroa’] are different in Job 38:15 (although they could be synonyms).
[16] With the exception of Job 41:23, the negative bal shows up for the first three times in the Bible in verses 11 (he never saw a thing), 15 (find nothing), and 18 (never again add to people’s terror/oppression), so I think there is some intentional linkage among these concepts. Augustine, on the other hand, interpreted this verse, “that is he shall be judged for his sins, and himself shall perish because of his sin...” citing the next verse about the wicked perishing from the land as a parallel statement.
[17] However, when the Israelites rebelled against God, it was part of His covenant that He would cause them to “perish” from the “land” too! (Deut. 4:26, 11:17, and Josh 23:16)
[18] I think the two Hiphil verbs in the latter half of this verse are part of the poetic structure, so I tried to make that obvious in my translation by using the word “cause” for both of them.
[19] Delitzsch suggested that this phrase is “equivalent to ‘the single eye’ in the language of the New Testament.”
[20] “That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments, And not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not prepare its heart And whose spirit was not faithful to God.” (NASB)
[21] Psalm 112:7 NASB He will not fear evil tidings; His heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD. (Here we have in incipient form the doctrine of sovereign grace: God causes human hearts to trust Him!)
[22] “If you would direct your heart right And spread out your hand to Him, If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, And do not let wickedness dwell in your tents; “Then, indeed, you could lift up your face without moral defect, And you would be steadfast and not fear. (Zophar in Job 11:13-15, NASB)
[23] My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises! (NASB)
[24] Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible do we find the phrase “man from the earth” or do we find bal negating ysf ‘od, but more puzzlingly, there is no grammatical indicator that tells us that the first noun phrase “the orphan and oppressed” should be the object of “to judge” - it might just as well be the subject “in order that the orphan and oppressed might judge” – that’s how the noun phrase following the second infinitive is treated “in order that man might no longer terrify”. Furthermore, the second infinitive is not in a causative stem, so literally it would be translated “that he will never again tremble” rather than “that he will never again cause trembling.” And then there’s the phrase “from the earth” which reads in Hebrew more like an ablative “shake mortal-man away from the earth” than like an adjective “man who comes from the earth.” Ancient translations like the Septuagint and Vulgate render the second clause along the lines of “that man may no more boast upon the earth.” This lack of clarity should make anyone cautious about being dogmatic about any interpretation.
[25] This story appears to be from another commentator by the name of Cobbin, quoted by Plumer.