Psalm 83: A Forgiven Debt

 Psalm 83 is gonna be our passage this morning and this summer, as with every summer, we are working our way through the Book of Psalms.

And if you didn't know this, the Book of Psalms is a songbook. It's a songbook that was used in worship, and these poems were sung together as a way for God's people to worship him corporately to express joy, anguish, Thanksgiving requests, celebration, or even teachings on Israel's history. And Psalm 83 is a Psalm of asap.

It's a song of asap and it's actually the final song of ASAP in the book of Psalms and asap, as we're told. In First and second Chronicles was from the tribe of Levi, and he was assigned by Jehosaphat to help lead worship in Israel. And many of asaps Psalms revolve around the idea of justice and judgment.

In last week, associate Pastor Mark taught us about Psalm 82 and our own expectations of those who rule over us and how God is the right and good and true ruler who acts justly and how God encourages, sees and is in control. And said another way, God, in Romans eight, God tells us that I will have mercy on whom I'll have mercy and I'll have compassion on whom I have.

Compassion. God's justice is perfect and is outside of our desire for how he uses it. And our Psalm today is similar in its theme. It's also about justice. In this Psalm, the enemies of Israel have formed a coalition against God's people with the goal of erasing them from the map. Here in a second, we're gonna read the Psalm, Psalm 83, and you're gonna hear many names of these opposing forces, these other nations, and you may recognize some of them from your reading of the Bible, and you, others may be new to you, but all of them were nations that at one point were antagonistic towards God and toward his people.

And ASAP is asking God to deliver justice upon them to, to save Israel from these opposing armies. And with this context in mind, would you please stand with me for the reading of God's Word from Psalm 83,

a Psalm a Psalm of asap. Oh God, do not keep silence. Do not hold your peace or be still, oh God, for behold your enemies make an uproar. Those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people. They consult together against your treasured ones. They say, come let us wipe them out as a nation.

Let the name of Israel be remembered no more for they conspire with one accord against you. They make a covenant. The tense of Edam and the Ishmaelite, Moab and the Hag. Wrights Gable and Amman and Amalek Philistia with the inhabitants of tire. Asher also has joined them. They're the strong arm of the children of Lot due to them, as you did to Midian, as to Cicero and Jayden at the River Keyshawn.

Who were destroyed at indoor, who became dung for the ground, make their nobles like orb and zeeb all of their princes, like Zeba and Aluna, who said, let us take possession for ourselves of the pastors of God. Oh my God. Make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind as fire consumes the forest.

As the flame sets the mountains ablaze. So may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane. Fill their faces with shame that they may seek your name. Oh Lord, let them be put to shame and dismayed forever. Let them perish and disgrace that they may know that you alone, whose name is the Lord are the most high over all the earth.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that people are like grass and beauty, like the flowers of the field. Well, the grass withers and the flowers fade, but this, the word of our God will stand forever. This is the word of the Lord. You may be not. You may be seated. As we look at Psalm 83 today, I wanna do so through three points that will help keep us organized and help us consider what God says through ASAP and how it helps us think about justice.

Our first point is recognizing injustice. Our second point is merciful. Justice. And our third point is final justice, so recognizing injustice, merciful justice, and final justice. And I hope that through these three points, you see that because our God is both perfectly merciful and just we must trust how and when he enacts vengeance against sin because our God is both perfectly merciful and just we must trust how and when he enacts vengeance against sin.

So let's begin with 0.1. It's a short one, but an important one. Recognizing injustice. Recognizing injustice. 'cause in our passage today, ASAP appeals to God for help against foreign enemies who, as he says is in, says in verse two through five, these enemies make an uproar. Those who hate you have raised their heads.

They lay crafty plans against your people. They consult together against your treasured ones. They say, come, let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more for they conspire with one accord against you. They make a covenant. So Israel's enemies are unified together and are threatening to wipe away Israel because of their hatred for God and his treasured people.

ASAP And the people of Israel are threatened. They feel fear and anger at the injustice that they are facing, and they're turning to their God who they know is all powerful and is able to lip to deliver them. And he's asking for help. And my question for you is, is that relatable? Not foreign enemies may be threatening to wage war against you, I hope.

Um, but rather the feeling of facing injustice and needing help. Facing injustice and needing help. What kind of injustices have you faced? And when I say injustices, I don't necessarily only mean the legal sense, though many of you have experienced that. I mean a time or a situation where you have seemingly undeserved suffering or mistreatment put upon you.

Now I know that can feel like a very subjective thing. We all have different ideas of what injustice and justice are, but I think that we can recognize when something is done to us or someone else that does not seem right or good. I know it to be true from many of your stories. Fri fired from jobs for trying to do the right thing, getting sick, and insurance companies refusing to give you the care that you need.

Having your kindness or generosity taken advantage of by others. Being betrayed and having your trust broken by the people that you love most. Being punished in a classroom for something that you did not do. Abuse from people who are supposed to protect or care for you. And I think that all of us, for all of us, all we have to do is turn on the TV or to go on our phones and scroll through news story after news story about the injustices that happened in the world, child trafficking.

Pointless war is causing the death of thousands people who seem to do the most harm, prospering the rich and famous, getting away with a light slap on the wrist for their crimes, while poor people sit in jail for misdemeanors. Companies extort their workers and governments failing to care for their people.

And I know that the temptation is when we see these stories and when we have them happen to us, is to just keep scrolling until we find something funny. Find something to turn our attention away from what we just saw, or to make a, make a post about how angry you're about it and think, oh, we did. I did my part.

I can leave that behind. Or when we face injustices in our own lives, we might do these same types of things, distract ourselves, move on while still sitting with the anger or the impact of being betrayed or hurt or treated unfairly. But it's important that we recognize that our world is broken rather than just pretend everything is okay.

It's a core part of the biblical story that things are not as they should be. We have to recognize that we all know it. We all see it every day in the world around us, or the sin of our own hearts. Something is wrong, something's wrong. It's a reality of living in a world wounded by sin that humans choose.

When we walk against how God designed us, no amount of distraction or from the injustices of this world will change that. Right. Nothing will change that on our own. But remember that in our psalm today, our, the Psalms were used as a song in worship to help teach people about God, about how to pray and what ASAP shows Israel.

And what he shows us today too, is that we don't have to just distract ourselves from injustice, but rather recognize the reality of it and then turn in our disposition toward our God who calls us his treasured ones and ask him for help. That's what as ASAP teaches us, we say, God, this is not fair. God, this is terrifying God, this is unjust.

God, please help me. This isn't complaining to God. This is honesty about our situation and our feelings, and we turn toward our Heavenly Father who loves us and cares about us, and we give him our sorrow. Philippians four, six through seven says it this way. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So the good news about our prayers is that God hears them. God answers them. God grants peace in times of trouble. But God answers his prayers, these prayers in his own just and merciful way, which leads us into 0.2 merciful, justice, merciful justice. So 0.1 was recognizing injustice. We have to recognize the injustice of our own world in turn to God in our trouble.

And 0.2 is merciful justice. So we know that we can, and we must turn to God with our pleas for justice. And as we learned from Pastor Mark last week, God is the only good and perfect judge. But what do we want from his justice? What do we want God's justice to look like? Well, we want things to be made right according to our view of what that injustice is.

Right. We want things to be made right. Justice looks like this to me, but true objectivity and justice as humans is difficult, if not impossible, considering our own depravity. What we wish for our enemies or those who commit injustice toward us, if we're being honest, is what we see asap say in verses 13 through 15.

Oh my God. Make them like a whirling dust, like chaff before the wind as fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountain ablaze. So may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane. It sounds great for Israel, right? It's the kind of justice that we want to see happen.

The bad guys get what's coming to them, but that's not where the Psalm ends. See ASAP actually alludes to the purpose of God's justice against Israel's enemies. Look at the next verses with me. What does he say? He says, fill their faces with shame that they may seek your name. Oh Lord, let them be put to shame and dismayed forever.

Let them perish and disgrace that they may know that you alone, whose name is the Lord are the most high over the earth. ASAP seeks God's judgment against Israel's enemies so that his enemies in their defeat might come to know God and that his name might be made great. That is the purpose of justice according to ASAP and this way, ASAP prays for his enemies sake that they might know God.

Imagine if we were able to have that mind among ourselves, that justice could be for the sake of our enemies, so that they might come to know God, that we have a heart for those who hate or hurt us. A little over a month ago, as part of my celebration of graduation trip, my mom took me to the Northeast and we got to travel up and down the coast.

But on the very last day, uh, we spent the day in Boston. And if you've ever been to Boston before, you might know about this, but I'd never been. But since I'm a lover of American history, people told me you have to do the Freedom Trail. And the Freedom Trail. If you don't know, it's a two and a half mile walk that goes through downtown Boston and it visits major historical sites, um, especially from the American Revolution.

And one of these sites that we got to see was the Old State House, which is this really cool old brick building, and it's surrounded by skyscrapers and it feels like out of time for it to just be sitting in the middle of downtown Boston. Now, the old State House, if you're not aware, it's a historically important building in its own rights, but it's most known for what happened outside of it.

Which was the Boston Massacre. Now, the Boston Massacre was one of the inciting incidents in the American Revolution. A group of colonists grew upset with the taxation of the British government and the presence of troops in their town, and they protested in the town square. And after tensions rose and the protest seemed to turn violent, the British troops fired into the crowd and killed five colonists.

Now in the aftermath, these British troops were taken into custody and they awaited trial while the colonists erupted in anger for what they saw to be an abuse of power and an injustice against an already angry people. And then the trial came and the man who decided to represent the British troops was a lawyer named John Adams.

Yes, that John Adams, the man who would be a major figure in the American Revolution, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the thing that we celebrated on Friday with hot dogs and fireworks, that man John Adams became the second president of the United States and that John Adams represented British troops in court, and he was even even able to convince the jury that they were not guilty due to their actions being incited by the protestors.

So why would John Adams, a man who saw the British as an enemy and spent the rest of his life for the next however many years to fight them, why would he represent British troops in court? Well, in his diary in 1815, after he was president, John Adams wrote this, the part that I took in the defense of Captain Preston and the soldiers procured me anxiety and obloquy obloquy, meaning pub public criticism.

It was, however, one of the most gallant generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life and one of the best pieces of service that I ever rendered to my country. Judgment of death against those soldiers would've been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or witches anciently, as the evidence was the verdict of the jury was exactly right.

Adams believed that justice was more than just his enemies being punished because he didn't like them. And as for ASAP in our passage today, his prayer to God is similar, that justice would be delivered in the punishment of sin, but also for the redemption of Israel's enemies. Justice was about more than just what he wanted.

What an incredible, but a difficult disposition to have to embrace that. The purpose of justice is more than our own satisfaction of revenge. That's why Jesus in Matthew five says it this way. You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hit your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes his son rise on the evil and the good.

And since reign on the just and the unjust for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? In other words. If you trust that God has a perfect purpose in his justice and his mercy, then let us pray for and love our enemy, knowing that God will be just against sin no matter what. He has that part covered.

And if that is still hard for you to accept, like it is for me many times that there could be redemption in salvation even for our enemies, then you like me, have to remind ourselves daily of our own unworthiness of our salvation. See the truth of the matter is that if we say that what we really want is for things to be fair.

If we really want things to be fair, if what we want is for sinners to be destroyed, and that's our understanding of justice, then we forget that we were at one point too far from God, that we too sin daily, that we too commit injustices all the time. If things were to be fair, truly fair, then none of us would be safe.

Absolutely none of us would be saved because none of us are worthy of the salvation and righteousness that we've inherited from Christ, none of us. It's why I asked Ali earlier to read the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor, because if we don't have asaps attitude in our hearts, when we consider injustice in our enemies, then we're like the unforgiving servant who gets his own debts forgiven and then holds his own debtors accountable.

Mercy for me, justice for you. That's not how it works. It's an incomplete view of justice because it's an incomplete view of who God is. God on the cross proved himself to be perfectly just in punishing sin on himself, but also perfectly merciful in saving us from ourselves. Even though we don't deserve it.

We cannot gate keep that mercy thinking that it's only for us, but rather like ASAP pray that even our enemies might see it. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying it's right, and I am saying it's good, and sometimes we need to remind ourselves of that good news. So many of us fear that when we do something wrong, when we sin, we nervously wait for our punishment from God, the proverbial lightning bolt from heaven.

When we believe this, we forget that our debt has already been paid, that Jesus bore the punishment for sin and his mercy is upon us, and that is final. Point two Merciful Justice. Despite what we might want or believe, God shows mercy and justice to whom he pleases. Despite what we might want or believe, God shows mercy and justice to whom he pleases.

So 0.1 was recognizing injustice. We have to recognize the injustice of our own world and turn to God in our trouble. And 0.2 is merciful justice. Despite what me we might want. God shows mercy and justice to whom he pleases, which leaves us with our 0.3 final justice. In my last semester of seminary, I took a class over the Prophetical books of the Old Testament.

It was a brutally difficult class, um, but incredibly fascinating because it dealt with the books of the Bible that most people either like read through really fast or don't understand or just are like they, they exist there at the end of the Old Testament, the major and minor prophets. Um, but those books deal with Israel and Judah and their respective exiles and threat of invading forces.

And having come off of that semester and then reading this psalm, my main thought when ASAP was talking about the invading forces was, man, he had no idea that things were gonna get a lot worse. Things are gonna get really, really bad because Assyria was gonna show up. Babylon was gonna show up, Rome was going to attack.

There were going to be worse enemies in the future, and there were enemies in the past too. Right in the passage, ASAP references old enemies in verses nine through 10, he says, due to them, as you did to Midian, as to Cicero and Jaben at the river. Keyshawn who were in destroyed at indoor, who became dung for the ground.

It's a repeated cycle of enemies for Israel. If you read the Old Testament, you see it over and over and over and over again. It's more enemies, more enemies, more threats of invading forces. It's a seemingly endless amount of threats to their wellbeing. It's a reality of a world wounded to its core, that defeat of one enemy doesn't defeat evil.

In reality, this reality is true for us today. It's reflected even in our most popular storytelling. It reminds me of the Marvel Cinematic universe. I am not sure how many of you are fans of the movies, but there are 36 of them. There's actually a 37th coming out in like a week or two. They are superhero films, and every single one of them has the repeated idea that there is a new enemy.

The hero defeats it, but in the next movie, there's another new enemy and the heroes have to defeat that enemy. And even when the big bad enemy like Thanos is defeated in Avengers end game, well, there was even a more evil enemy waiting in the wings. King, the Conqueror. Galactus is gonna show up. Dr. Doom is gonna show up now.

And now, don't get me wrong, I love Marvel movies. I've loved them since I was a little kid. I'm not complaining about the repetition. I think the repetition actually mirrors a fact that we all seem to feel that there's no end to the injustice that we see. It is enemy after enemy after problem that we see in our life, and it seems to have no end the suffering We face the evil in the world.

Asaf knows that there were once enemies, that there are enemies, and I'm sure he knew that long after he's gone, that Israel would continue to have enemies. Why does he know this? Because Asaf probably knew, like I hope you and I both know that our longing is not in the defeat of the enemies and sins and suffering right in front of us, that we do want that, but our longing is in the final defeat of evil, and that it's fulfilled in the sure promise of the gospel that Jesus came, he lived, he died, and he rose again, victorious that one day all these things will be made new.

That is where our longing is in the defeat of evil. Lemme say it this way. I know that there are those of you in this room right now with your head down, with your spirit and turmoil by the injustice that is going on in your life. You might not even be able to hear the words of the sermon because you're so distracted by the, the worry in your heart, and I cannot pretend like I fully understand what you're going through.

And I am not gonna say you just got to, to walk past it and to, to hope and to move past it. I want you to know that your brothers and sisters in this church will and should be the first to recognize the injustices and the sins and the sufferings in your life, and daily walk beside you in prayer as you hurt.

I hope that to be true and we can pray without ceasing that God will change your situation, that God will change the hearts of those who hurt you. But I wanna tell you, we may not see justice in this lifetime. We may not see it. Cheaters might prosper. People might abuse power and not be held responsible in their life, but our faith is not grounded on the fact that if we just work hard enough to combat it, that we can defeat the evils of this world.

Now, yes, God does use us as his agents of redemption, and so many of you are fighting the good fight to show God's goodness to the world. But if your hope is in permanent results, remember that there is only one way. There's only one way for true and final justice. And the God who loves you has already achieved it on the cross.

He has promised in his word that vengeance is his. And whether that punishment was poured out on Christ, on the cross or on the unbeliever one day on the day of final judgment, that perfect justice will happen. It will happen. And what does that mean for us? It means hope for the future. A daily longing for the day when sin and evil will be done away with, and this hope does not take away from what you're going through right now.

It is still hard. It still hurts. I'm not saying to shrug it off or smile through the pain, but I am saying that there is an end to the injustice and the road that you're on does have a destination that's far better than you can even imagine. And when we face injustice and when we see it in the world, we do what we can to help.

And yet still rest on the knowledge and faith and hope that Christ has and will do something final about it. It's why that I have to often go back to Revelation 21 and 22 all the time because the promise of a day in new creation, without death, without mourning, without crying, without pain, it reminds me that there is a sure promise in the gospel.

That Jesus has secured an ending in his death on the cross and his victory over the grave. And if you place your faith in Christ that your debt truly has been paid, it has been paid. And because of this, you and I get to live in the hope of a future and a final justice where we get to walk with our just and merciful God forever.

Let's pray. Lord God, I am reminded all the time of how little I deserve your mercy and how much I deserve your justice, Lord. And how if I look at the cross, I see it. Um, Lord, let's be a church that remembers that, that walks in hope, that reminds each other of that hope Lord. Um, not one that refuses to acknowledge brokenness and woundedness and hurt Lord, but that we, we take that we pray and turn to you in it, Lord, that we pray for our enemies.

Um Lord. Let us walk in faith knowing that one day you will come to make all things new again. Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.