Psalm 7, “Judgment Day”
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Nov 1, 2012, the Atlanta Sun Journal reported the story of Michael and Channel Keeley, who had been notified that the tenants in their rental property had been arrested on drug charges. When the Keeleys arrived at the property to prepare for new tenants, they found holes in the wall, and pulled out bags of drugs. They immediately called the police who came…and arrested them and charged them with tampering with evidence.
An unfortunate case of people trying to do the right thing getting misjudged according to the letter of the law. Have you ever been in a situation like this? Has your integrity been questioned and instead of being praised for doing the right thing, you got attacked or rejected? We’re living in a culture that has reversed right and wrong, good and evil. People who do the right thing are often misjudged as having secretly evil motives. It’s enough to discourage us from even trying. How do we live with integrity and have gratitude and joy in our hearts in the midst of a culture like this?
Today, we’ll see that if we consider who Jesus is as our judge but also our defender, we can live with gratitude and joy in the Lord. This psalm starts with David bringing his case to God in a dispute with someone who is out to get him.
The Case
The Case
7:1-5 lay out David’s case - He is being pursued by those that would tear him apart. The imagery is graphic. These people are like lions chasing him down to tear him apart. If we can piece together their accusations from what David says here in the psalm, they are accusing him of dishonesty (“wrong”, verse 3), betrayal (“repaid my friend with evil”, 4), and injustice (“plundered my enemy without cause”, 4). Saul’s family never got over David’s rise to power. They felt betrayed by this family friend, and cheated out of their rightful kingdom as Saul’s descendants. They thought of David as an ungrateful dog who had been given favor by Saul and Jonathan, and after their deaths, usurped the throne.
David is throwing himself on the mercy of the LORD. He wants justice. He knows His only chance for a fair trial is with Yahweh, His God.
Where do you take your case when you have people accusing you of wrong? When others misrepresent your actions out of their own corrupt perceptions, how do you deal with that? God is not physically present. Do you trust that He will take up your case and give you justice? Or do you handle it your own way? Knowing our judge can help.
The Judge
The Judge
7:6-7 - “Arise, O LORD, in your anger…against the fury of my enemies.” David needs to know that the LORD is just as angry as he is about this injustice. Will the LORD meet the fury of this accuser with an equal measure of emotion?
David trusts what the Bible teaches, that the LORD has appointed a judgment. Judges of that time would take their seat in the gates of a city on certain days, and you could bring your case. David is asking God to wake up and make this the appointed day to hear his case.
The words David uses in his appeal, “arise, lift yourself up, awake, return on high” - exaltation words. Just like our own court rooms, in which a judge takes his seat above everyone else to represent justice presiding over us, David is asking God to ascend to the seat of judgment. This is a position of exaltation, of power and authority.
This is where we meet Jesus in this psalm. Jesus took these themes of judgment and exaltation and changed the whole picture. Jesus, like the Old Testament prophets, spoke about the day when God would sit as judge over mankind as a day in the future, but the closer He got to the cross, He began to talk about it as a present experience.
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
The judgment of the world was happening. But Jesus’ exaltation would not be sitting above everyone else on David’s throne. He rode into Jerusalem, not on a warhorse, doling out punishment to all the evildoers. He chose humility and mercy. He willingly received the fury of His enemies upon Himself. His exaltation was to the cross where He received God’s judgment for sin, which is wrath.
Only after this obedience to the Father was Christ raised from the dead and exalted to His throne. The path to exaltation for Jesus was down, then up. One day, He will be the answer to David’s prayer,
Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
When He returns, people of every nation, tribe, and language will gather about Him, and He will pronounce judgment. He will establish justice in the earth once and for all (Matthew 25:31 ff.).
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
In Jesus, we see the kind of judge God is. He is a judge that fulfills righteousness in Himself through mercy. He has judged sin and poured out His wrath, and God the Son, willingly bore that judgment. As a believer in Jesus, He becomes your shield and savior,
My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
This is the kind of judge God is,
My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
The Lord is a righteous judge. The problem most people have with the thought of being judged by God is they think of God like everyone else. Nobody is perfect. Everybody has blind spots an prejudices. There is none righteous, no not one.
But David sees the LORD as uniquely qualified to judge because He is perfectly righteous. This comes out in two ways.
My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
1. He saves the upright in heart. 2. He feels “indignation” every day toward the unrepentant.
God is kind to the upright. The upright aren’t perfect people. They are those with the honesty to confess and repent when they have done wrong. They seek to do right, but are open about their mistakes. This is what David means in verse 8 about having integrity. His righteousness isn’t perfect, but he’s honest about his failures and sins. Upright people aren’t crooked or shady. They don’t cover up their sin, they confess it. The upright walk in the light of God’s presence, looking to His word for direction and correction. And God protects and saves the upright. Provides them freedom in wide open spaces of His grace. If you repent of your sin and believe in Jesus Christ, your shield is with God, who saves you. If you are not in Christ, you are still in your sin...
God is a righteous judge because He feels indignant every day — toward the unrepentant. There are some who will not walk in the light. They manipulate, lie, and cover up to save face. They don’t let God or others in to truly know them, and end up isolated. Because God loves every one of us, this unrepentance angers Him because it keeps them from coming near to Him.
When we think about God being indignant or angry, it makes us think of all the other people who have judged us in their anger and misunderstood or misrepresented us, and we think of Him being like them. But God does not feel emotion like we do. We are passionate, our emotions go hot and cold. We are sometimes indignant over the wrong things. None of us wants to be judged by a judge when he or she is having a bad day. But God is not like that. He isn’t mercurial, flying off the handle when He’s irritated. He doesn’t have good days and bad days. He is consistent in His righteousness. He is unchanging…in His delight in the upright, and in His indignation with the wicked who don’t repent. You can count on it.
The Judgment
The Judgment
So, the graphic warnings of verse 12-16 demonstrate both God’s justice and mercy.
He has prepared punishments for the wicked who (metaphorically) impregnate themselves with evil, mischief, and lies (verse 14). But there is always the possibility of repentance (verse 12). And as we learn in verses 15-16, God’s punishments are often simply allowing wicked people experience the consequences of their own sins. God will only let someone go so far in doing injustice to others and taking pleasure in evil.
David’s warning is, you can either make God your shield and salvation or face His wrath like lightning. God is a righteous judge. If any of us was to stand before God, accused of our sin, none of us could stand to defend ourselves. We have all broken God’s laws.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
God is a righteous judge. And He is merciful. He doesn’t let you off the hook. He doesn’t let you get away with anything. He provides justification for all you sin by grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Maybe you have an enemy, someone who is out for blood, slandering you, shaming you, angry with you all the time. Some people are so pregnant with their own evil and mischief and lies, they have transferred those motives onto your righteous intentions in your integrity. That person might have come to mind as you read this psalm, and this psalm is here for you to invite God into your relationship with that person.
But all of us have a much worse enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. He accuses us of all kinds of evil. Some of it is valid, and when we sin, he is there to devour us in condemnation and shame. Some of his accusations are not valid at all, like the one that because of your sin and God’s righteousness, He could not possibly love you or forgive you.
God is righteous. His wrath for sin will never change. But He has already judged sin in the flesh through Jesus Christ on the cross. If you are in Christ through faith, you receive justification by grace. Christ, who will be our judge, is also our advocate. He is also our High Priest, who has already offered Himself as an atonement for every sin. So no accusation can stand. God is our judge, and God is on our side.
David ends the psalm with gratitude and joy in the LORD,
I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness,
and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We humbly repent of our sin.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
Communion