Love & Judgment, Psalm 7, By Andy Cordle, 19 Oct 2014

The Question of How a Loving God Can Judge

So we're dealing with this question, which is a question I think a lot of people struggle with. If God is good, and if he's loving, how can he judge? How can he get angry? I think anyone who reads the Bible is going to come across this issue at some point.

We love to read the Bible as a church. We encourage everyone to read the Bible. But you have two things in the Bible. God is described as a loving and gracious and compassionate God. But at the same time, he does a lot of things in the Old Testament where he judges and he gets angry.

And it's in the New Testament as well. A lot of places Jesus speaks about hell. In fact, Jesus speaks about hell probably more than anyone else in the Bible. And he speaks of hell as somewhere that's real.

So you have God is loving. If he's loving, and if loving means not doing harm to anyone, then how can God also be angry? It's a question that we need to think through. I think it's a question that perhaps especially for us as a church is important for us to think through.

As a church, we talk a lot about God's love, unapologetically, because God's love is the central thing about him. He's a trinity. That means he's Father, Son, and Spirit, united in love. Before God did anything, before he created the world, God was love.

It's his central characteristic. So we don't apologise for talking a lot about love. But you may have heard people say to you, well, aren't you being a bit imbalanced talking about love all the time? Don't you need to talk about God's anger as well to balance it out a bit?

So it's really important for us that we're really clear in our minds how God's love and his justice and anger work together. It's really important because God's anger can often be presented in a way that's unhelpful.

So I mentioned I was in America. One of the great things about going away with work is you get to eat out in the evenings, go out for dinner. And it's good to eat out with colleagues because often when you're outside of a work environment, you can chat and open up a bit and talk about family and things.

And I was out for a meal in America with a couple of colleagues, and we got talking about Jesus and the Bible and God. It was fascinating. One guy, mid 40s probably, was sharing about his experience of growing up in South Wales and going to a Sunday school in South Wales.

And the teaching at that Sunday school was very, very much emphasising God's wrath and his anger. And they were taught, you're going to go to hell if you're not good. And the church also must have been a slightly odd church.

They asked for a contribution of 20 from everyone from their salary. And if they didn't give it, they were chucked out. So his parents got wind of this and took him out of the Sunday school eventually, which I think was probably a good thing.

But nevertheless, that's the impression of God that has remained in his mind up to this day. A God who tells you off if you're not good and threatens you with hell. And perhaps unsurprisingly, he turned away from that faith when he became an adult.

And he was liberated by reading Richard Dawkins and now is an atheist. So it's really important that we understand properly, how does God's anger work together with his love? It may be that you're here and you believe in God and you're a Christian.

So you know in theory that God loves you. But if you're honest, really, really deep down, you're not 100 sure you can trust him, trust that he really loves you. Because you read the Old Testament and you struggle with God's anger.

You struggle with how he can do those things. And you think at the back of your mind, well, I'm sure he'd be a bit more happy with me if I was good. He'd be a bit more pleased with me if I didn't sin so much.

So you try really hard. But you sin, you fall back into the things you used to do. And so you're up and down. You're thinking, oh, God's pleased with me today. I've had a good day. I've had a bad day.

He's annoyed with me or disappointed. And you're just living without any real confidence and joy and security in the fact that God really does love you. Perhaps that's you. So it's really important this morning that we understand properly how God's love fits with his anger and his judgement.

David’s Innocence and Cry for Justice in Psalm 7

So that's the reason we're looking at Psalm 7. Because Psalm 7 is a great place to turn when dealing with this question. So if you've got a Bible, this one in front of you, it's on page 450. It would be really helpful to turn there.

And we'll look at this Psalm together. So David, who wrote this Psalm, was someone who knew all about injustice. Probably more than anyone, he knew about injustice. So as a young boy, he'd been chosen by God to be king.

Problem was, Israel, where he lived, already had a king, King Saul. But David was blessed by God. David was chosen by Saul to be part of his army, won many victories, became really popular. Because God was blessing him.

And Saul became more and more jealous. And eventually Saul tried to kill him. So David has done nothing wrong, but he's fleeing for his life from Saul. He's a fugitive, he's on the run. And he's innocent, he's not done anything wrong.

But he's being hunted like an animal. And we don't know for definite, but we think Psalm 7 was probably written around that time in David's life, when he's on the run from Saul. A few clues to that, if you have a look down at verse 1.

It seems that David is being pursued. He says, save me from all my pursuers and deliver me. So it seems that he's being pursued by someone. And if you look there at the title at the top, it's a psalm which he sang to the Lord, concerning the words of Cush, a Benjamite.

So we don't know who Cush is, it's the only time he comes up in the Bible. But it's significant that he's a Benjamite, because King Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin. And so it's quite likely that this guy Cush was an ally or a friend or an advisor of Saul.

At least someone who had the ear of Saul. And it seems in verse 3 -4 of the psalm, if you have a look down, it seems that David is responding to some kind of slander. Some kind of false accusation. He says, oh Lord, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I've done what's being accused of me, then let my enemy pursue my soul.

So it seems that Cush, this guy who is probably a friend or advisor of Saul, is saying something, maybe slandering David. And it's causing him to respond in this way. It's not hard to imagine. David's on the run, David's growing in popularity.

People are singing songs about how great David is. Someone who's close to Saul says, you know what, this David, he's getting a band of men together. He's trying to take your throne, he's trying to take over.

You need to watch out for him. Completely untrue. David was actually really completely loyal to the king. But this guy Cush is feeding Saul lies and he's saying, David's trying to get you. And David's on the run and Saul's listening to this person and he's saying, yeah, David's out to get me.

I need to get David. So David's in this situation and we learn also in the title that the psalm is what's called a shigion. Now, I don't know what you thought when Anina read that at first. It's a bit of a foreign language for us.

It's a Hebrew word. I'm not a Hebrew scholar. Thankfully, a lot of people on the internet are. But this word shigion, they think comes from the Hebrew verb, which means to reel about or to stagger. They think this kind of song, it means like a song of impassioned sort of anguish.

The definition is, it's a lyrical poem composed under extreme mental emotion. It's like an impassioned plea. So David's there. He's on the run from Saul. He gets word about this guy, this guy, Kush, who's a friend of Saul, feeding him these lies.

And he's in a cave. He's on the run and he sinks to his knees and he cries out to God these words. Verse one. Oh, Lord, my God, in you do I take refuge. Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces with none to deliver.

I don't know if you've ever been to a zoo and seen a lion being fed. We went on holiday in the summer and saw a leopard, an ocelot, a small leopard, being fed. And watching the leopard tear apart its food, it's ruthless.

And it's pretty graphic and hard to see. And David's saying, this is what's in store for me. He's clearly in grave danger. He knows his life's going to be taken. He's going to be torn apart. If God doesn't step in.

And the hardest thing about it, about this situation, is that David knows he's innocent. He's not done anything wrong. So verses three to five, he says, Oh, Lord, my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, then let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it.

Let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. David's saying, well, if I've done this, then kill me. It's a pretty big thing to say. He's confident that he's innocent. He must be to say this.

We get a graphic example of this, of David's innocence, in 1 Samuel, chapter 24, in the account of this pursuit. David's hiding in a cave and Saul comes into the cave to relieve himself. And David's got an opportunity.

He could just kill Saul right here. The guy who's pursuing him is in his hands. David doesn't do anything apart from tear the corner off his robe. And Saul leaves the cave. And when he's a safe distance away, David comes out with the corner in his hand and calls out.

And he says, look, I don't want to kill you. They're lies. Don't believe the accusers. I'm innocent. I could have taken your life, but I didn't. And here's the evidence. And Saul weeps. He weeps. So David knows he's innocent.

Now, if you're guilty, the last thing you want is a trial in court. But if you're innocent, it's all you want. So David, in the psalm, then cries out to God. He says, assemble the courtroom. He says, bring the witnesses in.

Judge, because I'm innocent. Down in verse 6, he says, arise, O Lord, in your anger. Lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies. Awake for me. You have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you.

Bring in the witnesses. Over it, return on high. He says, the Lord judges the peoples. Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, according to the integrity that's in me. Let the evil of the wicked come to an end.

And may you establish the righteous, you who test minds and hearts, O righteous God. David's desperate for justice. He's desperate for God to judge and say, you're right, your enemies are wrong. And we understand that, don't we?

We can feel why he wants that so much. But we know how hard it is to see someone falsely accused and imprisoned and suffer consequences for something they haven't done. All you have to do is think of films, these legal films that you see about people who are put into prison for things they haven't done or the articles you read in the paper about families who fight for years for justice for a loved one who has been imprisoned wrongly on false evidence.

And it gets us, it gets us in our hearts. Injustice feels wrong. We want justice. And that's right. So David's crying out for God to judge. But then in verse 10, the tone of the psalm changes. It's like he's had kind of a revelation, a moment of clarity from God.

And he starts speaking truth to himself. Let's just read again from verse 10. He says, okay, my shield is with God who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, God will wear his sword. He has bent and readied his bow. He has prepared for him all his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies.

He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head. And on his own skull, his violence descends. And then this amazing end to the psalm, I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness.

I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. Think about where David is. He's on his knees in this cave. He's just heard this report. He's innocent. The king who he serves loyally is out to kill him.

And he's able to say, I will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High. It's a stunning way to end the psalm, really. How is it possible? Because, verse 10, he knows that God will save the upright in heart.

And because, verse 11, he knows that God is a righteous judge who will judge the evil. He knows that God will bring about justice in the end. And that's why he's able to say, I praise the name of God.

God's Wrath, Human Injustice, and the Need for Judgment

So can you see how this psalm helps us, then, with the question we've been thinking about? See, we often think about judgment and anger in a negative way, often because we've had bad experiences of being judged and of receiving anger that's not good anger.

It's impetuous, frightening anger. But actually, anger towards evil is a really good thing. I was reading through the psalms in my read-through as I was preparing this message. And on the day I read this psalm, it was the same day I read in the news about the latest beheading from ISIS.

Alan Henning, the taxi driver, beheaded. An innocent man who had gone to Syria to help people, been captured and been used as a pawn in this game. Reading the news, I just felt, this is wrong. Everything in you screams out, this is wrong, this shouldn't happen.

The people who did this need to be brought to justice. He's an innocent man, and they've killed him. And then I read verse 9. And I'm thinking, yes, let the evil of the wicked come to an end. It's wrong, it feels so wrong to have that kind of injustice and evil in our world.

So it's a really good thing that God judges evil. It's a good thing that God displays his wrath against evil in his world. He wouldn't be good if he didn't. So God is angry because he is good. And that is a cause for praise.

I think everything I've said so far is probably not very controversial. I think we'd all sign up to saying, yeah, ISIS are evil and they should be judged. I think we'd all sign up to saying, yeah, Hitler was evil and should be judged.

And murderers and people who abuse children are evil and they should be judged. We'd all nod our heads and say yes. But the problem is that the Bible draws that line of who's evil and who's not a lot closer to home than we'd like.

See, the Bible actually says we're all children of wrath. We're all under God's judgment. And that's when we tend to get defensive. We say, hold on, there's a lot of nice people in the world. How can God judge nice people who help others?

See, we tend to think, we like to think we're the good guy. So when we read a psalm like this and we think about how it applies to our situation, we tend to put ourselves in David's shoes. So we tend to think, oh yeah, I've had times in my life when I've been slandered.

And I've had times in my life when I've had people that are out to get me and it's been really hard and yeah, I'm kind of David in this psalm. And actually that's quite a common way to interpret psalms.

So one of the commentaries I was reading, actually the suggested application for this psalm was live with integrity so that when you're slandered you can pray like David did. That was the application.

Putting ourselves in David's shoes. But if you read the psalm like that, you very quickly run into problems. As soon as you get to verse 8 for instance. Have a look down. The Lord judges the peoples. Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that's in me.

Think, oh, hold on. If I'm David, I can't really say that. We all know, we all know that deep in our hearts it's not a place of righteousness and integrity. Or verse 10. My shield is with God who saves the upright in heart.

Well, hold on. I don't think that's me actually. I don't feel very upright in heart. So it doesn't work to read the psalm like that. Actually, when we come to read the psalms often we find that the person of David is not meant for us to identify with.

It's meant to point forwards to the person of Jesus. See, the psalms are not mainly about us. The psalms are mainly about God and his anointed king. So David, for instance, in the psalms, he was the one who was chosen by God to save his people.

David was betrayed by those closest to him. David was surrounded by enemies who wanted to get him. And ultimately David was the champion for his people. All those things are fulfilled by Jesus. Chosen by God, betrayed by those closest to him, surrounded by those out to get him, and ultimately the victor and champion for his people.

So David wasn't perfect. And David certainly for his whole life doesn't point to Jesus. But certain incidents in David's life do give us a window into the future work of Jesus. And this is one of them.

So you see in the psalms they have this kind of double meaning. This really happened to David. But it also points us forward to Jesus. I read a quote on Twitter. So many psalms of David are like clothes that he just about gets away with wearing, but which look perfect on Christ.

Clothes that he just about gets away with wearing, but that look perfect on Christ. And this is what's happening here. When you put Jesus in David's shoes in this psalm, it makes perfect sense. Only Jesus is the one that could say verse 8 perfectly, Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness.

Only Jesus could say that truly for the whole of his life. So if Jesus is David in the psalm, then where are we? Who are we? Well, the shocking truth is we are the enemies. We're the enemies of David.

We oppose Jesus, each one of us. If you think that sounds a bit extreme, let me explain. So God created the world for a purpose. God is good. God is love. He created the world for his people to share in his love.

For every human to share in the love of father, son, and spirit. But Adam and Eve, the first people, rejected that love. They walked away from Jesus. They walked away from him in the garden. They walked away from unbroken, joyful fellowship with God.

And they walked away from life. And in doing so, they were disconnected from God. Ever since then, every single human that's ever lived has done the same. We've walked away from what we were created for.

We've walked away from life, and from love, and from relationship. And instead, we've turned to ourselves. And we live on our own terms. We live with ourselves as mini-gods. We live with ourselves at the centre.

And the result of that is that we live selfish lives. We live lives that are all about me. We see that in ourselves and in our society. And that is exactly the opposite to what God made us for. He made us for relationship with him.

We live for ourselves. And so we are opposing God's purpose for the world. And in doing so, we make ourselves his enemies. So we are the enemies. We need to feel how wrong this is. We need to really feel how wrong this is.

When we think about ISIS, or we think about a murder, or we think about something that's really, really terrible in the world, it feels wrong to us. Why is that? It's because there's something precious, a human life, an innocent life that's precious, that's being abused and harmed.

Now, what God made us for is spiritual life, something even more precious than human life. And when we turn away from him and we oppose that purpose, we're abusing something sacred. It's so wrong. It's not what we were made for.

And because God loves us, when we walk away from him, he's angry because he loves us. Now, we think love and anger are kind of opposite. Actually, they're not. They're very closely related. There's a great sketch by a couple of comedians, an old sketch, by some guys called Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, and they do a sketch called The Psychiatrist.

So one guy walks into a psychiatrist's office, sits down, very pleased to see you. How are you doing? Yeah, really well, thanks. Having a great time. Got some great news. I'm in love. Psychiatrist says, great, great news.

Really pleased to hear that. Problem is, I've got this real sense of guilt as well. Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. Let's start at the start. What's her name? Well, actually, it's your wife. So the psychiatrist says, oh, perfectly understandable.

She's a very attractive woman. I can understand why you would love her. The patience of it taken aback says, well, she loves me too. Oh, perfectly understandable. Yes, yes. You're a very attractive person.

I can understand why you would love each other. Well, the problem is, we want to get married. Oh, yes, yes, perfectly understandable, yes. I can understand why you would want to celebrate your love in the union of marriage.

But the problem is, I feel jealousy towards you because you're married to her at the moment. Well, perfectly understandable. I can understand you would be jealous at me if you loved my wife. But I want to kill you.

And he says, oh, that would be a bit awkward. I've got a meeting at 6 .30. Can we make an appointment for next week? It's a funny sketch because the response of the psychiatrist is so incongruous. Now, if this guy loved his wife, he would not respond in the way he does.

The fact that he shows such indifference shows that he doesn't really love his wife. The opposite of love is not anger. Actually, anger is what flows from love. The opposite of love is indifference. And we know this is true.

If you think about someone you love and imagine that person being harmed or abused, you feel anger. That's wrong. That shouldn't happen. Anger is what flows from something you love being abused and harmed.

And God loves us. He loves every human so deeply. And that's why when we walk away from him and we walk away from life, he is angry. And he says, that cannot be in my world. I'm going to judge everything that is not in accordance with my purpose, which is life and love.

And when we walk away from God, we walk into his judgment. That's what's happening in the Old Testament. When Israel and every single human being after Adam and Eve walk away from God, they walk into his judgment.

That's not because he doesn't love them. It's because he loves us and wants the best for us. And that's what's happening now. Actually, the Bible says, judgment is now. The world is under God's judgment at the moment as every single human walks away from him.

And the brokenness we experience and the darkness that's just under the surface in all of our hearts is God's judgment on our world now. So, God could leave us there. He could leave us in the world of judgment.

By rights, he could. But he loves us too much to let that happen. And so, he sends Jesus. Jesus, the true David, the true innocent sufferer. And this psalm is fulfilled as we hear Jesus speak in these words.

I mentioned this psalm is called a shigion. It's like a psalm of intense emotion, an impassioned plea. Well, you see that nowhere more clearly than in the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus is going to the cross.

As he's staring into that cup of God's wrath that he knows he's going to have to drink. He knows he's going to have to take the full force of God's anger at evil in his good world on himself. And he makes his own impassioned plea to God.

If it's possible, take this cup away from me. But how does he go on? Not my will, but yours be done. And it's love for us, love for every single person here that drives him on to do that. And he drinks the cup.

He goes through with it. And then what happens? Verse 2 happens to him. Like a lion, they tear his soul apart, rending it in pieces with none to deliver. And verse 5 happens to him. The enemy pursues his soul and overtakes it.

The enemy tramples his life to the ground and lays his glory in the dust. It happens to him. Jesus goes to the pit of hell. He takes the judgment we deserve. And then three days later, verse 10 happens to him.

My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. And God raises him from the dead and says, this is my son. And Jesus stands with God now, offering us, offering every single human who has ever lived, a way out.

A way out of the judgment that we're in, the judgment we deserve. And he offers us, come to me. Join yourself with me and be raised with me. He loves us so much that he has done something about our hell.

He has not left us where we are. He's taken the judgment we deserve so we can be his. The question is, do you really believe that? Do you really believe that? Maybe you're realising, you've had those Sunday school experiences, you've heard those presentations of God's anger, which make him feel like someone that doesn't really love you.

Maybe you're realising, I've got God wrong. He says, come to me. Come to me. Maybe you believe in God and you know that the Bible is true and you're in that place where you read the Bible and you're just not 100 sure.

Just ask yourself the question now. What difference would it make to my life if I really, really believed that God loved me? What difference would it make if I believed right down in the depths of my being that he loved me?

Wouldn't that give you a kind of confidence and security, a joy, a peace, that you know that whatever you do, you can't please God any more or any less. He loves you unconditionally and he has done everything it takes to bring you to himself.

I know for me that the best times in my life, the times of the biggest confidence come from when I'm looking at Jesus and I'm just sure, I know God loves me. In those moments, I feel like I've got the strength to go out and do anything, try anything.

It can fail, it doesn't matter. God loves me and he loves you so much that he sent his son to take the judgment you deserve so that you could be with him forever. And that's why Christianity is such good news.