Confidence in the King of Justice

Psalms 9-10

Perhaps we take for granted the role the Supreme Court plays in our lives. If a U.S. citizen experiences injustice or receives an unjust sentence in a lower court, he or she may appeal to a higher court to correct the mistreatment. To be sure, even this Court does not always rule as we prefer, yet many nations do not have such an outlet, so their citizens must accept whatever injustice they receive with no hope for a retrial or second chance.

God’s people – those who by faith have submitted to Christ alone as Savior and King – enjoy a far better assurance than the Supreme Court. We know that Yahweh – the one, true God – is King over all people and the entire universe is his jurisdiction. For this reason, we know that whatever injustice we experience, we may appeal to him and know he will make all wrongs right in the end.

• Abraham relied on this fact when he asked God to protect his nephew, Lot, from danger: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25).
• Peter said Christ himself relied on this fact as he endured his ultimate injustice: “Who, when he was reviled, did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously” (1 Pet 2:23).

When you experience injustice against you or see injustice against others, do you have this same confidence in God as the King of Justice? Are you absolutely confident that his justice will prevail? This is the question Psalms 9-10 challenge us to ask and it’s an important question for sure.

We’ll combine Psalms 9 and 10 since they were likely written as a pair. Psa 9 includes an initial tag line, but Psa 10 does not. Also, Psa 9 is written as an acrostic that traces letters from the first half of the Hebrew alphabet and Psa 10 resumes this pattern with letters from the second half of the alphabet. These factors indicate we should read these as companion psalms which flow from one to the next.

In the psalms we’re looking at today, David speaks of “the oppressed,” “the needy,” “the poor,” “the innocent,” “the helpless,” and “the fatherless.” It’s people like this – especially those who follow Christ – who suffer injustice and mistreatment by others. As followers of Christ, we struggle to make sense of this injustice. If anyone should be concerned about the unjust treatment of people, it should be us!

Together, these psalms teach us to come to God with confidence because he is the King who carries out justice.

Central Thought

• The first psalm focuses on the certainty of justice from God before and after the moment.
• The second focuses on the certainty of injustice from ungodly people now.

If you have submitted to God as your king, then you often feel torn between these two realities – the justice of God and the injustice of ungodly people.

Both psalms emphasize that God is enthroned as king over all people and nations forever. Therefore, we should go through our own experiences of injustice and view the injustice towards others by remembering God’s acts of justice in the past and promise of justice in the future. We should remember his justice with two special actions – prayer and praise. Prayer is how we express our faith to God and praise how we express our faith to people.

These psalms open with “to the lead musician, on muth labben, a psalm of David,” telling us David wrote them for use in regular temple worship. “On muth labben” is difficult to interpret. Some claim it refers to a sorrowful musical tune called “death of a son” that corresponds to the death of Absalom; but that event seems unrelated to these psalms which focus on injustice from Gentile nations rather than from David’s nation and family. Whatever it means, it most likely offered some musical guidance for performing this song.

As with other psalms, we don’t know what specific experience caused David to write this prayer and song. He did experience many injustices, especially as he guided the nation of Israel for God, and he did witness many injustices as well. As king of Israel, he was able to influence Israel for justice, but he was not able to resolve all the injustices he ever encountered. That’s a helpless feeling, isn’t it? To know what’s wrong with the world and not be able to solve the problem?

Like David, those who follow God by faith through his son, Jesus Christ, also experience injustices. Though we’re convinced of God’s goodness and greatness, we struggle to respond well to the injustices we face and see around us. These psalms show us how to respond with confidence in God, knowing that whatever injustices occur today, there is a higher court of appeal governed by the King of Justice who lives forever.

We should express our confidence in God with praise. (9:1-2)

Praise, tell, be glad, rejoice, and sing praise as a compact cluster of words express nothing less than unfiltered, unreserved praise to God. “With my whole heart” and “all your marvelous works” describe unlimited, unqualified praise for all God is and all that he does. David had no reservations about God, so he praised God without reservation, too.

We should note that David praised God as he contemplated and experienced injustice. Such praise in the face of such problems is a mark of genuine confidence in God. Do you have the same praise-filled response to injustice?

Throughout church history, believers have been killed for their faith by unjust people. We call these believers “martyrs,” and many exhibited praise-filled hearts in their hour of trial.

• John Huss, a believer in Bohemia, was burned at the stake in 1415. After his accusers stacked wood as high as his neck, a government official asked him to renounce his preaching. Huss replied, “In the truth of the gospel which I preached, I die willingly and joyfully today.” They lit the wood on fire and Huss died singing, “Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, have mercy on me.”
• In 1965, when five men (including Jim Elliot and Nate Saint) were killed by the spears of local warriors in Ecuador, they were singing this song, “We rest on thee, our Shield and our Defender! Thine is the battle, thine shall be the praise; when passing through the gates of pearly splendor, victors, we rest with thee, through endless days.”
• In October 2021, Pastor Ojih of Nigeria was captured by Boko Haram and bound him with ropes. As he lay on the ground for hours, face pressed into the dirt and uncertain of his future, he sang praises to God. After this, he was forced to kneel before his captors and decide whether to follow Allah or Christ. With the sword raised above him, with these words he remained faithful to Christ: “tell my family that I died well and am living with Christ. And if we all die, we know that we died for the Lord.”

Do we have such confidence in God as the King of Justice that we can praise him wholeheartedly, even when we’re suffering and injustices rise in the world? Sometimes I wonder how much our confidence in God, closeness to God (or lack thereof) impacts how passionately or dispassionately we sing to God when we gather for worship.

Could it be that we don’t praise with obvious, wholehearted, unreserved confidence because we aren’t as confident in God as we imagine ourselves to be or because we’re more discouraged, frustrated, and overwhelmed by the injustices in our lives and our world than we care to admit?

Our praise should be motivated by God’s proven justice in the past. (9:3-10)

When we’re experiencing injustice and seeing it happen before our eyes, we may be tempted to feel or even believe that God is not just and is not King. Sometimes these doubts and feelings occur in a deliberate, distinct form or moment that we can point to. Other times they unfold in a gradual, progressive, almost imperceptible way over time, subtly influencing our attitude, mood, and outlook on the world. As we face this tendency, how can we focus our hearts and minds on a right view of God? How can we assure ourselves that God’s justice will prevail?

Here David helps his own heart by connecting God’s past acts of justice to his position as the king who will reign forever.  He has intervened with justice for his people in the past and he will be there to do so in the future.

Unjust people rise and fall, they come and go from our memory. Yet God’s people never pass from his memory. He will always be there for us to trust him. Just as he has intervened for his people before, so he will do in the future for his kingdom lasts forever.

To what acts of justice does David refer in this song? He doesn’t recall specific examples. But words he uses, like “destroying cities” and “rebuking nations” remind us of how God had humiliated the Egyptian Empire to free the Hebrew people from of slavery. They also remind us how God had delivered the cities of the Promised Land into their possession. Remember the destruction of cities like Jericho and Ai?

Though God is King forever and rules with justice, he does allow (but not cause or desire) injustice to occur, sometimes for a prolonged time. Consider how our recall of God’s major acts of deliverance in history, as recorded in Scripture, often sit together in our minds like five books on a shelf, one next to the other.

Yet between these great acts of deliverance – such as the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, the conquest of the Promised Land, David and Goliath, the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, and so on – long spans of time unfolded. We say things like, “I wish we could see God work like he did in the Bible,” as though the climactic, extraordinary interventions by God happened all the time. If you study biblical world history, not only did these fantastic interventions by God often occur centuries apart, most of world history is rather ordinary. Injustice has been

Sometimes God’s justice occurs after a period of prolonged suffering. So, we must be willing to suffer and not insist on immediate justice. If an opportunity to encourage or bring about justice presents itself to you directly, you should take it! Yet even a politically influential person like King David realized that he was helpless to bring about the degree and scope of justice that the world needed to experience.

We are also helpless before God to bring about wide scale change as well, yet this sense of helplessness should not make us calloused or indifferent to the needs around us. It should increase the depth of our dependence upon God through prayer – which truly makes a difference. And we should meditate on God’s past justice and praise him with all of our hearts knowing that justice will occur.

Consider this future scene in heaven before the throne of God, which will occur during the coming time we call the Tribulation when Satan’s rebellion against God will reach its climax as the antichrist rules the world, bringing about wide-scale persecution against God’s people (Rev 5:9-11):

“When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.”

The prayers of those who experience and witness injustice are far more effective at bringing about true justice than all of our political programs and strategies will ever be. So, pray to God the King and praise him for his justice.

Our praise should be motivated by a desire for God’s justice to be publicized. (9:12-20)

After reflecting on God’s past faithfulness to his people, David sets his heart with the right motivation. He makes clear to both God and people that he wants God’s justice not for his own benefit but so God’s justice will be made known to as many people as possible. God deserves to be known for his justice far more than we deserve to receive it!

“That I may tell of all your praise” (v. 14) and “Yahweh is known” (v. 16) reveal this crucial motivation. This is ultimately why David desires for God to bring justice to the world. He not only wants God’s people to be made aware of his justice (“in the gates of the daughter of Zion,” v. 14) but he also wants the nations of the world to know this as well. He wants them to “know” him, remember him, and “fear” him.

If we can’t bring about final justice in the world, then we can do something else – alert people to our God, the King of Justice. Give them an opportunity to bow before him now and trust in him as Savior so that when “justices runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24), they will be on delivered from that downpour which will wash away all who commit injustice.

Sometimes the schemes of ungodly people make it feel as though God is far away. (10:1-11)

Do you ever fell like God is a million miles away? David did! While he didn’t doubt God’s existence or ability to act (he was speaking to God!), he wondered why God didn’t act to correct the injustice he witnessed. He felt like God was hiding. Do you ever feel the same?

David speaks frankly about the troubling reality we all face to one degree or another in the present – that ungodly people seem to be working out their unjust plans with little to no consequence or resistance from God. This problem seems to contradict what we know about God’s past justice and promises of future justice.

From David’s view, unjust people were growing emboldened. Their confidence and defiance increased, they behaved as though God didn’t exist and was unconcerned with their behavior, and they were intensifying their evil plans and plots against God’s people. When we see and experience such a rising tide of unjust behavior in the world, it may feel as though God has abandoned us, but he has not. He is simply waiting for the best and right time to intervene. It’s precisely when God feels far away that we should remind ourselves that he is the King of Justice who will make all wrongs right in the end.

Since Yahweh is King, we know he will purge all injustice from the world. (10:12-18)

David refused to let prevailing injustice change his mind about God. He commits himself entirely to God’s care knowing that God will bring about perfect and complete justice in the end because he reigns over all people and will outlast everyone who treats others unjustly.

As theologian D.A. Carson observed, “The Bible insists that God is entirely just, and therefore ultimately justice will be done, and will be seen to be done.”

He remembered again how God had removed the ungodly nations from the Promised Land. He also focused not only on the deliverance and justice he desired but on the inner “preparations of his heart.”

This leads us to the greatest battleground of our day – which is not the battlefields of earth but the battlefields of our own hearts. Have we firmly established in our hearts that God is the King of Justice? If so, then let God calm and quiet your heart today in knowing that we can come to him with confidence because he is the King who carries out justice.

Noah Webster, an influential American lawyer and statesmen in the mid-1800s, said, “Justice is the greatest interests on man on earth.” Whether or not you agree, we must all agree that justice is one of the greatest interests of man on earth and yet apart from Jesus Christ, God’s chosen king, we are helpless to achieve the justice we need.”

Let me encourage you, whether you are hurting other people and treating them unjustly, the victim of injustice yourself, or grieved by the injustice you see in the world, turn to Jesus Christ and trust in him. He suffered the greatest injustice for us when he lived a sinless life and died a cruel death on the cross for our sins. He also rose again and is THE ONE who will return to judge the world. With him you have an advocate on the throne of the universe. Turn to him and put your trust in him today.

For those of us who have trusted in Christ as our God and Savior, let me encourage you with words of a well-known song written by Stuart Hamblen. Hamblen was a well-known country-western singer and Hollywood actor in the 1930’s and 40’s. His popular radio program made him radio’s first “singing cowboy.” He also played characters in ten western movies. He even ran for President!

Hamblen was the son of a Methodist preacher who turned his back on Christian values. He became known as a cheat and liar who spent much time in drunken parties. But in 1949, during a Billy Graham evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles, Hamblen believed on Jesus Christ as his Savior. From that time forward, his life took a radical new direction.

He gave up his acting career and began a traveling ministry for Christ, sharing his testimony of the saving grace of God. He used his musical talent to writing numerous gospel songs, such as It Is No Secret What God Can Do.

One day in 1958, as Stuart reflected on the darkness and limitations we all face in this life, his thoughts shifted forward to the great difference Christ will make when he returns to this earth once and for all. As he thought about these things, he wrote these words:

Until Then

Verse 1

My heart can sing

When I pause to remember

A heartache here

Is but a stepping stone

Along a trail

That's winding always upward

This troubled world

Is not my final home

Verse 2

The things of earth

Will dim and lose their value

If we recall

They're borrowed for a while

And things of earth

That cause the heart to tremble

Remembered there

Will only bring a smile

Verse 3

This weary world

With all its toil and struggle

May take its toll

Of misery and strife

The soul of man

Is like a waiting falcon

When it's released

It's destined for the skies

Chorus (which echoes David’s heart to praise God in the face of injustice)

But until then

My heart will go on singing

Until then

With joy I'll carry on

Until the day

My eyes behold the city

Until the day

God calls me home