Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Good News of God's Justice | The Writings | Psalm 75

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

How can God be loving and yet judge people so harshly? Does God's judgement make him a vindictive, uptight monster? Do you ever struggle with these same kinds of questions? In today's episode, Patrick teaches on Psalm 75, reminding us why God's justice is good news and how it should change the way we treat our enemies. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 75

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. I remember years ago talking to someone who was interested in Christianity, but had one big hold-up. How could God be loving and good, and yet judge people so harshly? In his view, the judgmentalism of God was proof that God is actually a vindictive, uptight monster. And I know he's not alone. Many people struggle with the concept of God's judgment, with the concept of hell. I mean, to be honest, I've struggled with it myself. But all that changed when I read the work of a Croatian scholar named Miroslav Volf. He's a Croatian theologian who saw terrible violence in the Balkans in the 1990s during the Yugoslav wars.

He saw murder, sexual violence, and all of the worst kind. He saw unimaginable things. And he saw that the perpetrators of the evil never faced justice. They acted with impunity. And so, naturally the victims wanted to take things into their own hands. They wanted to exact upon their victimizers what their victimizers had exacted upon them. They wanted justice. They needed justice. Wolf reflected on this much later and came to a realization. The only thing that would prevent people from continuing the cycle of violence was the promise that in the end, God would see that justice is served, that in the end, he would judge. And thus, we don't have to take judgment in to our own hands. For the victimized people of Croatia, the fact that God judges wrongdoing

isn't proof that he's vindictive or hateful. No, for them, it's proof that he is loving, that he is good, and that he doesn't turn a blind eye to evildoers. Miroslav Volf wrote this. If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence, that God would not be worthy of worship. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God. My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many in the West. But it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence results from belief in God's refusal to judge. In a sun-scorched land soaked with the blood

of the innocent, that view will invariably die with other pleasant. captives of the liberal mind. His point should shake all of us in the West who live comfortable lives, all of us who never fear knights of hunger, who don't fear suffering threats of violence from the state, who can trust the courts to do what's right most of the time. We've all been lulled by the comfort of our lives into believing that God's justice is bad news, or at least unnecessary news, but as Wolf shows, God's justice is some of the best news. The world is out of joint. People do suffer. People do hurt people. God sees it all and God is not silent. He will set the world back into joint. He will ensure that good triumphs over evil. And this is very, very, very good news.

Psalm 75 is a celebration of God's justice, his judgments. And in it, the voices and the lives of the hurting and the oppressed can find assurance. God is just. Your hurts, whatever they are, will not be ignored. Let's read it here. We pray. you God. We praise you for your name is near. People tell of your wonderful deeds. You say, I choose the appointed time. It is I who judge with equity. When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm. To the arrogant, I say, boast no more. And to the wicked, do not lift up your horns. Do not lift up your horns against heaven. Do not speak so defiantly. No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt themselves. It is God who judges. He brings one down. He exalts another.

In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours it out and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs. As for me, I will declare this forever. I will sing praise to the God of Jacob who says, I will cut off the horns of all the wicked, but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up. Can you join that song? Do you celebrate the good news of God's justice? The good news of his judgment? As Wolf made clear,

it's only our assurance of God's justice in the future that frees us to love our enemies in the present, to show forgiveness to those who harm us. We trust him to sort out what we cannot, and thus in this life love those who persecute us. But of course, we can go even further than that, Because even as we read this Psalm, if you're like me, you have a stark, dark realization. I can be counted amongst the proud who stand in defiance to God.

I've sometimes been the one who has hurt others, taken from others, spoken painful words to others. I have been amongst the ranks of the unjust. And of course, that points us even deeper. Jesus died on the cross to pay the just penalty for your sin. In him, you have forgiveness. And thus, yet again, we are pointed towards a nonviolent response to others because we know that we are all a part of the same community. Every single human is a part of the broken community of unjust people who hurt others.

And that's why we treat others with nonviolence. Again, this is what Wolf writes. Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans, even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the people of humans. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion, without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence,

into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torture will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and imitate God's love for him. And when one knows that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. You see, in Psalm 75, we see the goodness of God. And it's held up to us as a mirror. And in the reflection of Psalm 75, we see our own sinfulness. We see our own injustice. We see our own terrible need. We realize that the unjust, as terrible as they are, are a part of our community, the human community. And we realize that we realize that we realize that we're just as we're

that despite our own sense of innocence and righteousness, we too belong to the community of the unjust and of the sinners. We are no different. All have fallen short of his glory. And so today, I want you to celebrate God's goodness. I want you to celebrate his justice. He will set the world to right. And then I want you to rejoice because in Jesus, you have been forgiven of your injustice. And remember that before you feel tempted to judge others. God is the true good judge. Not you and We are sinners in need of grace, a grace we extend freely to others, even those who seek to harm us.