Judge Over All
One of the great things about the Psalms (and one of the reasons we do a summer series through the psalms) is because you can drop in on pretty much any psalm and find something immediately helpful.
Y’all ever done that before? You ever “dropped in” on the Psalms? Maybe you need a word from God, you need some encouragement from the Scriptures but you’re not exactly sure where to go to, so you basically close your eyes and pick a random place in the psalms — a “Psalms drop in.”
A lot of us have done that before, and the reason we go to the Psalms is because these are prayers and poems and songs, and they’re about God. Over thousands of years, the people of God have come to this book for help and perspective. Most of the time, reading a Psalm is like running down hill — But that’s “most” of the time, not all the time.
Psalm 82 is different.
I spent most of last week perplexed by this psalm, and I’m tempted in the sermon to spend too much time telling you why. There are all kinds of questions here that send us in different directions — and if we were doing a Bible study, we’d walk through each question, we’d weigh the different interpretations, we’d wrestle for the right meaning, but this is a sermon, and we are in worship, and so I want our main question to be: What do we learn here about God?
Despite some of the interpretive questions, what truths about God and reality can we be sure this psalm is affirming? I have three:
God reigns over everything.
God will judge all moral unrighteousness.
God will get his global glory.
Each of these truths are clear in Psalm 82 and they matter for how we live. So we’re gonna walk through each one, but first let’s pray:
Father in heaven, thank you for the Holy Spirit who illumines your word to our hearts. He gives understanding to the simple, and we confess that we need the power of your Spirit in these moments! Send him, we ask, in Jesus’s name, amen.
1. God reigns over everything.
Look at verse 1:
“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment…”
Right away we’re asking: What is this “divine council” and who are these “gods”?
You don’t see this on every page of Scripture, but the reality is always there, and every now and then we see glimpses of it, that in the presence of God, at least at certain times, there is an assembly of supernatural beings who are involved in the affairs of this world. Sometimes these supernatural beings are called little-g gods; sometimes they’re called sons of God; categorically, they’re angels.
They’re close to God and privy to his will, and they’re active in how his will plays out in the world; but the main thing we should see here is that God is over them. He has a place in their company, and that place is judge. God is judge over all creation, which includes the spiritual realm.
And this is where we might need to stretch our imaginations.
God Over the Material World
We believe, and we say all the time, that God is sovereign. God is in control.
“God has decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to a pass” (3.1).
We believe that, and most of the time when we think about the arena of God’s sovereignty — where God’s sovereignty plays out — we think about this world and the stuff that we can see. And we should think that. It is a right and wonderful thing to apply the sovereignty of God to this material world. More of that, please.
Earlier this week I was coming back from some church planting meetings in Atlanta, driving to the airport at night, and I’m pretty dependent on Google Maps. I need my phone to tell me where to go. Well you know when you get close to an airport, they have way-finder signs that make it pretty much dummy proof. So I see these signs, I’ve seen them before, but my phone is telling me to do something different than what the signs are telling me.
And here’s the deal: I’ve not left myself a lot of time. I have a very thin margin for error, and now I’ve got to decide to follow the signs or follow my phone.
Well, I went with my phone. Bad choice! I was headed to the wrong place. I must have made a glitch when I plugged things in. And by the time I fix that and loop around, it adds half an hour, and now I’m sweating. Then I started to think about how missing my flight would torpedo the rest of my week. So I go from sweating to spiraling, but then the Holy Spirit ministered to me and I remembered the sovereignty of God.
Even if I miss this flight because of my human error, God is looking after that. He’s looking after me. He reigns over every detail, even over glitches in our material world. Well I ended up making my flight because it was delayed, because there was another glitch somewhere else. God knew the whole time.
And the examples like this are endless. And sometimes it goes well for us, sometimes it stays difficult, but we should remember that God is active and in control over the world as we see it. We should apply the fact of God’s sovereignty to the material world in its details. But, it doesn’t stop there.
God Over the Spiritual World
Reality is material and spiritual. There is the seen world and the unseen world — and the unseen world, although it’s unseen to us, it’s just as vast and just as active as the seen world, and some of it is set against us. Paul says in Ephesians 6,
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Now most of the time our senses are aloof to this. It’s out of sight, out of mind — and we don’t even think about it. But behind everything we see, there are unseen spiritual influences and forces. There’s no doubt that as I’m driving to the airport, trying to figure out where to go, the enemy has an agenda to harm me. There was a whole spiritual realm that was doing stuff — and it’s like that all the time, and honestly if we could see more of it, I think it’d be too overwhelming for us. We don’t have the capacity in our fallen bodies to process it, but look, here’s the comfort for us: all of these spiritual beings, good or bad, every supernatural force in existence, reports to God.
This is why Yahweh is called the Most High God. He reports to nobody. There is no one above him and no one equal to him. He reigns over everything.
Even in the spiritual realm, among all the unseen commotion, God sits in the highest place. Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — he is the one who ultimately calls all the shots and every created thing answers to him.
Psalm 82 tells us this.
2. God will judge all moral unrighteousness.
We see this in verse 2, and it gets at a major question in the psalm. We know in verse 1 that God is sitting over these spiritual beings and he’s holding judgment. God speaks that judgment starting in verse 2, but who is the judgment against?
I think this judgment is against Israel, but God is speaking that judgment in the presence of this divine council. And there’s a handful of reasons why that’s the case. I won’t get into them all. But go ahead and look at verse 2 and see what God is saying. Verse 2, God says:
How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
The Connection to Psalm 80
This is all moral behavior that God expects of Israel. We see this in other places in the Bible and we also see that Israel failed here. And the reason these things are brought up in Psalm 82 is because it’s meant to be a response to Psalm 80, verses 18–19. (Remember that oftentimes the psalms are put together on purpose. Each of the psalms are connected to the ones around it, and that connection is part of the message.)
Back in Psalm 80, verse 18, there’s a petition. The psalmist prays, on behalf of Israel: “give us life, and we will call upon your name!” Verse 19, the very last verse of Psalm 80: “Restore us, O Yahweh God of hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!”
And then Psalm 81 and 82 come after Psalm 80 as a reply. In Psalm 81, which we saw last week, we see that God is eager to save, but the problem is the people’s disobedience. Look back at Psalm 81, verse 10. God says,
“I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.”
Look at verse 13. God says: “Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!”
That’s when God says he would subdue their enemies. That’s when God says he would feed them “with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you” (verse 16). See the problem?
The Jelly Roll Dilemma
The reason Israel has experienced the judgment of exile instead of blessing is because they have disobeyed God (see Deuteronomy 28). They’ve rebelled against God’s will. And they would be absolute fools to ask for God’s blessing and deliverance but continue to disobey him. That’s the point here. It’s what we could call the ‘Jelly Roll dilemma.’
Y’all know that country song, “Need a Favor?” It goes:
I only talk to God when I need a favor
And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer
So, who the heck am I, who the heck am I
To expect a Savior, oh
If I only talk to God when I need a favor?
But God, I need a favor
Israel needed a favor too, but they weren’t living right. They were not listening to God. And that’s actually the main thing God wants. God wants our obedience. He wants our hearts. This is a consistent theme in Scripture, and I want to show you this.
God Desires Obedience
So heads up: I’m about to read a lot of verses, but try to hang with me. I want us to track a theme here in Scripture:
1 Samuel 15:22,
“To obey is better than sacrifice.”
Psalm 40:6,
“In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear.”
Jeremiah 7:22–23,
For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’
Everybody see that theme?
God isn’t concerned with the stuff that we might ‘give’ him — what we could call our sacrifices, the ways we might go through the motions of devotion. Instead, God wants our hearts: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”
Obedience Is Showing Mercy
Okay, but now how does that obedience look?
Well get this: there are other places in Scripture that contrast obedience to sacrifice but the word “obedience” is not used, it’s just described. Listen to this:
Proverbs 21:3,
“To do righteousness and justice is more pleasing to Yahweh than sacrifice.”
Isaiah 1:11,
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Yahweh; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
But, verse 16:
“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
Do you hear how obedience is being described?
Micah 6, verses 6–8 — we call this the ‘micah-drop’ passage — the prophet Micah says:
With what shall I come before Yahweh, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
7 Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He’s talking about sacrifices. Is it those things that please God?
Verse 8:
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
In short, obedience to God means loving your neighbor. Obedience to God means we show kindness, especially to those in need. Our obedience to God is displayed in moral righteousness.
Disobedience Displayed
So, if that’s obedience, then disobedience is the opposite of that.
And that’s what Psalm 82:2–4 describes.
Israel’s disobedience to God was displayed in the way they harmed others (or in the ways they simply chose not to help!) — unjust decision-making, favoring the wicked, oppressing endangered children, neglecting the rights of the afflicted and destitute, looking the other way from the weak and needy.
Israel had been doing all of this moral unrighteousness in defiance of God’s word, and yet they’re asking God to bless them! Look, I’ll tell you, I would not want to be standing anywhere near Israel in this situation. God does not bless them in response to their unrighteousness, he brings judgment. God’s answer to the petition of Psalm 80:19 is to call them to account for their evil with Psalm 82:2.
God Bless America?
And there’s a takeaway here for nation-states. When we read the Old Testament and we connect the dots from ancient Israel to our present day, sometimes the connection is straight to the church, the people of God, to us.
And sometimes the connection is to nation-states, to countries. And one lesson here for our country is that before people start praying “God Bless America,” they should get America clean with righteousness and humility.
What I’m saying is this: we should never expect God to bless this country as the laws of our land promote slaughtering babies and mutilating children and destroying families.
God demands moral righteousness in his created world. And of course God expects this from us as a local church and as Christians — God help us! — but beyond us, God demands moral righteousness from every created thing, from people who together call themselves a nation to every single individual to ever exist. God demands moral righteousness and every morally unrighteous act will be accounted for.
Verse 8 says, “Arise, O God, judge the earth.” That means whole earth and every part. No unrighteousness gets swept under the rug. None is ignored. God’s judgment is coming. God will judge all moral unrighteousness.
Psalm 82 tells us this.
3. God will get his global glory.
This is the last half of verse 8. I’m not going to go into verses 6–7. I wrote an article about that on Friday. But look at verse 8. The psalmist concludes:
“Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!”
Judgment and Nations
God’s judgment and inheriting the nations — we should ponder here how these two things are related. We know judgment has been the theme of Psalm 82, but now the psalmist says that God will inherit all the nations! Where’s that come from?
Well, for one, the nations are a big part of the next psalm, Psalm 83, and in Psalm 83 these nations have set themselves against God and his people. The nations are scheming to destroy God’s people and subvert God’s plans, and here Psalm 82:8 sets us up for that. We’re reminded here that actually all these nations, all people groups everywhere, they belong to God too. God will have them.
Psalm 82 says that, but there’s even more going on. God’s judgment and inheriting the nations is a combo we’ve heard before. This is how the Book of Psalms begins, way back in Psalm 2. I think Psalm 82:8 is meant to send us back to Psalm 2. It’s a reminder.
The Psalm 2 Key
In Psalm 2, verse 6, God speaks and says:
“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”
This King is God’s Messiah, and in verse 7 the Messiah himself speaks and says:
I will tell of the decree: Yahweh said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
So God’s Messiah — the King appointed by God who is also God’s Son — the nations are his heritage. In other words, the Messiah will inherit the nations (just like we read in Psalm 82). All people groups everywhere are his, and he sits over them as judge.
So Psalm 2, verse 10 issues a warning:
Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve Yahweh with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son [or honor the Son], lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Psalm 2 is the key to all the rest of the psalms, and it’s really simple. There are only two outcomes in life: God’s judgment or God’s blessing.
And it all has to do with what you do with God’s Messiah, Jesus.
If you reject Jesus, then you die in your sins and face God’s judgment.
If you take refuge in Jesus, then you will be blessed — forgiveness of sin and life with God forever.
Invitation and Evidence
And the invitation is to take refuge. That’s the invitation in the Psalms and in the whole Bible, and it’s an invitation to all peoples. All peoples everywhere, take refuge in Jesus. Trust him!
And get this: they will. In God’s providence, for the glory of his Son, he will be worshiped by those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. God will get his global glory.
And we’re evidence of that.
I felt this in a special way a few weeks ago on vacation. My family was at one of our favorite places in the world — Topsail Island, North Carolina. I grew up going to this beach, and I love it. And one of my favorite things to do is just to look out at the vastness of the ocean. You look out and realize that on the other side of that line is Africa. I’m standing on the edge of the continent, a long ways from Jerusalem. And yet here I am, worshiping Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God says, “The coastlands shall hope for me!” (Isaiah 51:5). And that’s me. And I feel it. I am such a Gentile. I’m a Philistine, and the son of Philistines. And I’m saved … because in the sovereignty of God, by his grace, I trust in Jesus Christ.
God is getting his global glory through us, and he will get his global glory — worshipers from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
Psalm 82 tells us this, and that’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
How is it that by faith in Jesus we are freed from God’s judgment?
It’s because Jesus has taken that judgment for us. That’s what he did when he died on the cross.
When Jesus died, he sacrificed himself for our sin. He took all of our moral unrighteousness and in our place he absorbed the judgment that we deserved — and when we put our faith in him, when we take refuge in him, we’re forgiven and free. We are blessed forever.
You can receive that blessing right now, you can be saved from the judgment of God, if you trust Jesus. Turn from trusting in yourself, put your faith in Jesus Christ.
And for those of you who have trusted in Jesus, we who are part of his global glory, let’s come to this Table and give him thanks.
The bread represents his broken body, the cup represents his shed blood, and when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we’re saying that indeed Jesus is our hope. If Jesus is your hope, we invite you to eat and drink with us.
