When does God Exert His Power for the Oppressed?
Sermon Psalm 10
July 30, 2006
Pastor Jacob Miles*
*Not his real name. Name changed for security reasons.
Have you ever Prayed and nothing happened?
Have you ever prayed knowing that the desired outcome of your prayer was near to God’s heart? --And nothing happened?
Have you ever prayed about a situation that seemed so close to exactly what God would want, and nothing happened? The situation didn’t change?
Have you ever prayed and felt like there was no one listening?
Is God interested in the fallen world in which we live?
If God were going to be interested in anything then it would be the rescuing of the oppressed.
Where is God when the oppression is taking place? The Psalmist indicates the level of God’s interest in the oppressed and the timing of his activity on the part of the afflicted. In our passage there is a seeming absence of God.
Psalm 10 begins with a real life question of God.
Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of
trouble?
If the Lord did not hide Himself it would not be a time of trouble at all.
Where is God when people are suffering? Where is God when people are dying?
Our propensity to equate difficult times with the absence of God is natural. Throughout scripture we are confronted with the omnipresence of God. God is everywhere, not being bound by his creations of time and space. He is truly able to intersect all of time and space at once. And he does. So what is all this talk about the absence of God?
In God’s word there is an understanding about the presence of God. The doctrine of the omnipresence of God is not a recent invention. When the questioning of God’s presence occurs like in our text, the writer is not suggesting a literal absence, but rather the tangible withholding of God’s blessing.
Where is the blessing?
I am watching oppression that ends in death and God a thimble full of your blessing would dramatically alter what is taking place here.
The issue is not the omnipresence of God, but the omnipotence of God and the omniscience of God. God is here. He has the power, yet somehow he is withholding his power in order to allow the oppressed to be destroyed. Why?
Doesn’t it seem like God’s timing is lousy.
Timing is interesting, isn’t it?
Two people buy in the same neighborhood. One sells and one waits. The one that sold made twice of that the other who waited. Or the one who waited made twice of that who sold earlier. Timing
David* and Mary* leave central Asia weeks before a devastating earthquake that would have claimed their lives. Their translator died. Their friends and family there were decimated. Just a couple of weeks difference—Timing.
We believe in a great distinction between the oppressed and the oppressor, but sometimes it is just timing.
In Rwanda the Hutus could have experienced the atrocities they inflicted on the Tutsis if the clash had occurred 20 years earlier when the Tutsis were in power. Instead, the timing of a UN memo and the disregard of the situation lead to 100 days of slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus and the killing of 800,000 people. Timing
Timing is sometimes the only difference between the oppressed and the oppressor. In our passage the term righteous is not used to describe the oppressed. Their defining characteristic is that they are oppressed, afflicted, needy, and poor.
What separates the oppressed from the oppressor? Is it timing?
What is taking place in this Psalm?
The impression is that the Psalmist cannot take one more minute of the oppression. The witnessing of such atrocities is unbearable. He cries out. God your timing stinks.
When do people pray?
When have you been closest to God?
At times it is almost more overwhelming to witness friends being oppressed than it is to be in the oppression yourself.
The timing of the Lord in extending or withholding his blessing seems arbitrary. The exercise of His power in this present circumstance seems wily nily.
Is there a purpose? According to Spurgeon the absence of God is for a purpose in the oppressed.
“If he did not hide himself then there would be no bitterness, oppression and consequently no purging efficacy in his chastening.” Spurgeon
So there may be a purpose. How does the psalmist interact with God around His purposes?
Our Psalm is by David, and that right there should give us some comfort.
Psalms 9 and 10 may have been originally a single acrostic poem, the stanzas of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Septuagint they constitute one psalm.
Psalm 9 focuses on the prayer for the ungodly to be converted and they are. Psalm 10 is a prayer and there is uncertainty whether the wicked are converted and whether the oppressed are rescued.
Psalm 10 is the perfect image and representation of iniquity and is called by Augustine-the Psalm of Antichrist.
The psalmist has questioned God’s timing and rightfully so- In God’s delay, in his hiding three events that are an affront to Gods glory have transpired.
Wickedness has gone unchecked.
Innocent have been oppressed.
God’s very Existence has been attacked.
Stand and hear the Word of God from Psalm 10
1 Why, O
LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of
trouble?
2 In his arrogance
the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
3 He boasts of the
cravings of his heart;
he blesses the greedy and reviles the
LORD.
4 In his pride the
wicked does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for
God.
5 His ways are
always prosperous;
he is haughty and your laws are far from
him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
6 He says to
himself, "Nothing will shake me;
I'll always be happy and never have
trouble."
7 His mouth is full
of curses and lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue.
8 He lies in wait
near the villages;
from ambush he murders the innocent,
watching in secret for his victims.
9 He lies in wait
like a lion in cover;
he lies in wait to catch the helpless;
he catches the helpless and drags them off
in his net.
10 His victims are
crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
11 He says to
himself, "God has forgotten;
he covers his face and never sees."
12 Arise, LORD!
Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
13 Why does the
wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
"He won't call me to account"?
14 But you, O God,
do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of
the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
16 The LORD is King
for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
17 You hear, O
LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to
their cry,
18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth,
may terrify no more.
1. Wickedness unchecked is an affront to a righteous God.
In psalm 1 the righteous are promised a prosperous way.
1Blessed is the man[a]
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2but
his delight is in the law[b] of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
In Psalm 10 the evil prospers
Vs 5
5 His ways are always prosperous;
he is haughty and your laws are far from
him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
He has grown strong in the delay of God.
10 His victims are
crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
Has God delayed too long in Darfur?
Has God delayed too long in Sudan overall?
In Gods delay wickedness has increased and oppression has increased.
2. In verse two begins the description of the wicked and in that description we see the advance of affliction on the oppressed.
These people are unable to defend themselves. Only aid from outside themselves can rescue them. Hear of their plight.
They are ambushed Vs 8
They are caught Vs 9
They are entrapped Vs 9
They are killed in verse 8
They are prey for the greatest blow by the wicked. Vs 10
Is God delaying in the Land of India?
Story of Indian bonded slave
In the Indian state of Tamil Naidu a ten year old girl named Kanmani wakes up at 7:00 am to go to work at 8:00 and to return home at 6:00PM. She does this six days a week. From 8:00 she sits in the same little place on the floor and manufactures cigarettes. Her job is to close the ends with a little knife. She is required to complete 2000 cigarettes a day. If she doesn’t work fast enough, her overseer strikes her on the head. Her 10-hour day is broken only by a 30-minute lunch break. At the end of a long week she gets her wages-about 75 cents. Worst of all She has been working like this for more than five years.
Kanmani is a bonded laborer. That means she has to work like this to pay off a family debt. In a moment of crisis her family had to borrow fifty dollars.
9 He lies in wait like a
lion in cover;
he lies in wait to catch the helpless;
he catches the helpless and drags them off
in his net.
Kanmani represents 15 million children in India in bonded servitude. In his delay has oppression and wickedness increased?
In God’s hiding or withholding his blessing his very existence has been attacked.
3. The atheist has arisen
There are two kinds of atheism in the Psalms. First is the theoretical atheist. They are described as the one that says in his heart “there is no God” These people really believe there is no God and the psalmist calls them, “a fool”. The other type of atheist is a practical atheist, and they are described in Psalm 10. P. C. Craig describes this person rightly, “The functional atheist is not concerned so much with the theoretical question as to the existence of God; rather he lives and behaves AS IF God did not exist. According to David the Psalmist, “In all his thoughts there is no room for God.” Vs 4 “There is no God”
What are the characteristics of this atheist?
1. Arrogance
In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
3 He boasts of the cravings of his heart;
How does his arrogance manifest itself in his speaking?
3 He boasts of the cravings of his heart;
4 all his thoughts are, "There is no God."
On August 7 1961, twenty-six year old Major Ghermon Titov became the second soviet cosmonaut to orbit the earth and return to earth safely. He let it be known that on his excursion into space, he hadn’t seen God. That arrogance was the fuel for the atrocities the soviet empire inflicted on its citizenry. There is generally a marriage between pride and boasting that conceives the atrocities we see in this world. The arrogant goes on to say,
11He says in his heart, "God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it."
13Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, "You will not call to
account"?
The practical atheist is emboldened. HE sees that there have been no consequences for his evil, therefore, God is either not omniscient-God forgets, or god is not omnipresent; he hides his face, or he is not all seeing. There are things out of his vision. Finally, the wicked is so emboldened that he says that the account sheets will always be in his favor. He is not powerful enough to do anything about it.
He says, “If I can get away with all this, and I have, then God is really ignorant, powerless and gullible.
What has he gotten away with?
2. Prosperity is the fruit of his greed- Vs 3
5 His ways are always prosperous; He is rich.
he is haughty and your laws are far from
him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
It is his prosperity that makes his arrogance both possible and offensive. If an unsuccessful person throws around his weight, everyone laughs at him. But when this arrogant person drives a Masserati, wears designer suits and flys to all the hot spots for his vacation, it is different, particularly when he laughs at us for our old fashioned morality.
“Forget that,” he says, “There may be a God, But He isn’t any help to you. You’re not getting ahead. If you are going to succeed, you will have to do it yourself.”
3. Security—Immunity
6 He says to himself, "Nothing will shake me;
I'll always be happy and never have
trouble."
In WW II Benito Mussolini made a chilling statement after a particularly close call on an assassination attempt, “The bullet has never been made that can kill me.”
4. Vile Speech Words are the cruel weapon of the wicked. C.S. Lewis, commenting on the apparent sentiment that the acts of the Wicked are truly bad and the words of the wicked are harmless and unimportant. Lewis said, “In a simpler and more violent age when more evil was done with the knife, the big stick, and the firebrand, less would be done by talk. But in reality the Psalmist mentions hardly any kind of evil more than this one.”
7 His mouth is full of curses and lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue.
5. Violence. The last characteristic of the practical atheist is Violence.
8 He lies in wait near the villages;
from ambush he murders the innocent,
watching in secret for his victims.
10 His victims are crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
He rationalizes his actions and explains away God in all of his essential attributes.
This is what I call the law of unintended consequences. What started out as greed ended in murder? What appeared to be getting ahead, ended in getting a head.
It is easy to say that God exists, to affirm that morality matters, to believe in divine and human justice, but the words carry a hollow echo when the empirical reality of human living indicates precisely the opposite. The reality appears to be that the atheists have the upper hand that reality really does not matter and that justice is dormant. At the moment that this reality is perceived, in all its starkness, the temptation is its strongest to jettison faith, morality and belief in justice. What good are a belief and a moral life which appear to be so out of place in the harsh realities of an evil world? Indeed, Would there not be certain wisdom in the oppressed joining ranks with the oppressors? Craigie
That may be worldly wisdom but it is not the wisdom presented by the psalmist.
When does God exert his power on behalf of the oppressed?
When He is called upon.
Our summer series is on prayer. As we see in many instances, God has ordained prayer to be his chosen means of moving himself.
Who prays?
1. One who recognizes the rule of God.
16 The LORD is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
Here is David’s classic argument from greater to lesser. God who is able to conquer nations certainly can take the cause of the oppressed.
In God’s reign he exercises his righteous Judgment at the right time.
God’s absolute justice is meant the rectitude by which he upholds himself against violations of his holiness.
The destruction of Evil
He acknowledges that God does see
14But you do see, for you note mischief and
vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
2. The one who trust God’s power to His own Omniscience and believes that God rescues the oppressed destroys evil and upholds his own existence at the right time.
My schedule is not God’s schedule.
Isaiah 57:15
15 For this is what the high and lofty One says—
he who lives forever, whose name
is holy:
"I live in a high and holy place,
but also with him who is contrite and
lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.
14 you have been the helper of the fatherless.
17 You hear, O
LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen
to their cry,
18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth,
may terrify no more.
How does He pray?
1. Informs God of the situation. Rather strange to inform the omniscient one of the current circumstances
God seeks our input—
ILL Family buying a press
2. They have a battle cry mentality.
This is from the ancient battle cry of Numbers 10:35.
12 Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
3. He prescribes the course of action-what I would call shock and awe.
Verse 2 The Daniel in the lion’s den option
2In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised. esv
Verse 15 The 1920s mafia option- Break his arm
When messing with God’s children, know you will be met with overwhelming force.
Break
the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
Verse 18 The ultimate vindication of God’s name and the oppressed plight.
When the wickedness ---the antichrist prospers, when the oppressed receives one more blow, when the existence of God is called into question one more time ----What motivates his prayers?
David trusts in the God who has moved nations to do what is best for the oppressed, the wicked and his own name. He will rescue the oppressed, judge the wicked and restore his own name.
The Psalm does not give us the satisfaction of it all turning around, Just the reassurance that God is King, and that is enough.
1 Our soul finds rest in God alone;
Our salvation comes from You.
2 You alone is our
rock and our salvation;
You are our fortress, we will never be
shaken.
5 We Find rest, For
our souls, in God alone;
our hope comes from You.
6 You alone is our
rock and our salvation;
You are our fortress, we will not be
shaken.
7 Our salvation and
our honor depend on God [a] ;
You are our mighty rock, our refuge.
8 We Trust in You
at all times;
We pour out your hearts to You,
for God is our refuge.
Amen