Hello everybody and welcome in to episode 196 of the Bible 2021 podcast. We are reading Psalms 9 and 10 today and our focus is on God’s Justice: Putting Down the Evil, Raising Up the Oppressed and Fatherless + God Hears the Desire of the Humble. We are a daily 10 minute podcast, where we will dig in to the truth of the Word of God by reading one Bible chapter a day and discussing it. Welcome to new listeners in Kuwait City, Kuwait, Taipei, Taiwan, Bristol, United Kingdom, Punjab, Pakistan, Manipur, India, Parts unknown, Albania, parts unknown, Italy, Newfoundland, Canada, New York, New York, Phoenix, Arizona, Springfield, Illinois and Little Rock, Arkansas. Thanks for listening! Our goal is to encourage DAILY Bible reading, so you can jump in at any time and join with us. We want to invite as many people as possible to join us in daily Bible reading, so help spread the word and share the podcast! Don’t forget about our web-page, Bible2021.com – contact page, show notes, transcript and more– Click here for our Bible 2021 reading plan\
Two Psalms today, and both are focused on God’s justice. In the first, we see David praising God for His justice and His watchcare over the needy and oppressed:
But the Lord sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for judgment.
8 And he judges the world with righteousness;
he executes judgment on the nations with fairness.
9 The Lord is a refuge for the persecuted,
a refuge in times of trouble. Psalm 9:7-9
and in the second, we see the Psalmist asking questions about God’s justice: why is it delayed? Why do evil people mock God and think they can get away with it? Why do the wicked prosper?
Lord, why do you stand so far away?
Why do you hide in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked relentlessly pursue their victims;
let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.
3 For the wicked one boasts about his own cravings;
the one who is greedy curses and despises the Lord.
4 In all his scheming,
the wicked person arrogantly thinks,
“There’s no accountability,
since there’s no God.” Psalm 10:1-4
In the first Psalm, the Psalmist is full of faith and assured of God’s care and mercy and justice being executed exactly as it should, but in our second Psalm today, there are more questions, and doubts, and concerns – it is a cry for help seemingly spoken in a place of waning faith. Isn’t this so genuine – so relevant to our experience? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am in a Psalms 9 mindset – I worship and exult in God and bless His justice, and see so many signs of it. Other times, I am in a Psalms 10 mindset – shaken, stirred and crying out to see God’s justice released on the earth. As we’ve discussed before, the Psalms are so very realistic – realistic emotions, realistic struggles and realistic prayers. In the Psalms, you don’t see an idealized and sanitized version of following God – you see following God as a human in all of its splendors and difficulties. You see what real faith looks like – real struggles, real heart-cries, real defeats and soaring victories in the Lord. I love this about the Psalms, and love it more and more the older I get.
Putting both of these Psalms together, we see that God lifts up the oppressed, cares for the orphan, does justice for those who are good and downtrodden, and will ultimately devastate those who engage in unrepentant evil. WHEN He will do these things can be quite the question – His justice sometimes moves right in line with our timing, as we see in most of Psalm 9, and sometimes, as we see in Psalm 10, His justice seems exceedingly slow, at least from our perspective. Knowing that God’s timing rarely fits with out timing is wisdom – not easy wisdom, but it is reality, and one grows in wisdom simply learning to live with God’s timing being different than our own. Let’s read together.
One beautiful nugget of truth is found in Psalm 10: “God hears the desire of the humble.” What a comforting truth! Here’s Charles Spurgeon, expounding on that text:
“Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble.”
I call this a very blessed fact, first, because it always has been a fact. In all ages, and in all places, wherever there has been a humble heart that has lifted up its desire to God, the Lord has heard that desire. Whether Jew or Gentile, whether in the palace or in the poorhouse, whether in sickness or in health, whether in poverty or in wealth, whether in life or in death, no difference has ever been made; if the desire has been a humble one, from the first man who ever prayed down to this present time, God has always been ready to hear.
And, blessed be his holy name! it is not only an old fact, it is as much a fact to-night as it was when David first penned these words: “Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble.” At this very moment, God’s ear is hearing the beating of your hearts. O humble soul, Jehovah’s heart discerns the throbbings of your desire, though they are unexpressed in words! His eyes of fire, which pierce us through and through, are reading every longing desire of every anxious bosom here.
It is so now; and it will be a fact all through this year, God will hear the desire of the humble. It is a fact of the olden times, but it is also a fact of present import, and of the future, too. Do notice how the psalmist puts this fact: “Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble.” David does not say, “Thou hast heard the prayer of the humble;” he means that, but he also means a great deal more. Sometimes, we have desires that we cannot express; they are too big, too deep; we cannot clothe them in language. At other times, we have desires which we dare not express; we feel too bowed down, we see too much of our own undesert to be able to venture near the throne of God to utter our desires; but the Lord hears the desire when we cannot or dare not turn it into the actual form of a prayer. I know you have sometimes said, “I wish I could pray like So-and-so.” Often have you thought, “If I could only put a great many beautiful sentences together into goodly shape, then I might be heard.” Do not talk so foolishly. If you cannot put two words together correctly, if your desire is right, God will hear the desire.C. H. Spurgeon, “A New Year’s Retrospect and Prospect,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 40 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1894), 2.
Bible Memory verses for the month of July: 47 “I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them: 48 He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the river crashed against that house and couldn’t shake it, because it was well built.” Luke 6:47-48
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