Psalm 94: Where Is God in All This?

 Okay, brothers and sisters, friends, guests, if you would grab a Bible and open with me to Psalm 94. Psalm 94. There are Bibles that should be underneath your chair beneath you in. Please open up with me to Psalm 94. The Psalms are in the middle of the Bible. If you open up to the middle, there's a good chance you're gonna find yourself in the Book of Psalms.

We have for the last 10 years, studied the Book of Psalms every summer. We come today to the last of our Psalms for the summer of 2025, Psalm 94. If you're willing and able with a copy of God's word before you, would you stand with me for the reading of God's word?

Psalm 94. This is God's word. It is given to you in love. Please give your attention to it. Oh Lord God of vengeance. God of vengeance. Shine forth. Rise up. Oh judge of the earth repay to the proud what they deserve. Oh Lord, how long shall the wicked? How long shall the wicked exalt? They pour out their arrogant words.

All the evil doers boast, they crush your people. Oh Lord, they afflict your heritage. They kill the widow and the sojourner and murder the fatherless, and they say the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive, understand o doles of the people fools. When will you be wise? He who planted the ear.

Does he not hear? He Who formed the eye? Does he not see? He who disciplines the nations? Does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge. The Lord knows the thoughts of man that they are, but a breath. Blessed is the man whom you discipline, oh Lord, and whom you teach out of your law to give him rest from days of trouble until a pit is dug for the wicked.

For the Lord will not forsake his people. He will not abandon his heritage. For justice will return to the righteous and all the upright in heart will follow it. Who rises up for me against the wicked who stands up for me against the evil doers. If the Lord had not been my help, my soul soon would have lived in the land of silence when I thought my foot slips.

Your steadfast love, oh Lord, held me up when the cares of my heart are many. Your consolation, cheer my soul. Can the wicked rulers be allied with you? Those who frame injustice by statute, they band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become my stronghold and my God, the rock of my refuge.

He will bring back on them their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord our God will wipe them out. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but God's word stands forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Please, father, would you take this very sobering Psalm and would you show us the beauty of your savior, who indeed bo your full wrath so that we who deserve your judgment, might receive your grace?

Help those in this room for whom the gospel is still a strange doctrine that they don't yet believe, become clear. As they look to the beauty of your cross and the majesty of your resurrection, we pray these things in Jesus name, amen.

This past Wednesday, the headlines presented us once again with a tragedy This time in a school of a church in Minneapolis. Two precious lives, lost

parents who dropped their children off at what should be one of the safest places in the world. Receive the unspeakable phone call.

Families are shattered. The Minneapolis community is scarred. It doesn't take long for us, does it? Oh, Christian. Oh, guest. To look out at the world and to say, with this psalmist, how long

do you hear us?

Can you make sense of this?

Does anyone see

That's the scream of the psalmist in Psalm 94.

But to understand Psalm 94, you have to recognize that the Psalm doesn't just stand by itself. The Salter, this Book of Psalms is put together very intentionally. There are five books in the Psalms and they reflect the first five books of Moses. The first five books of Moses Tell The History of Israel and the Book of Psalms is put together by our forefathers in a beautiful way because they don't tell the history of Israel, but they do tell the progression of a human heart toward glory.

Book one is chapter one through Chapter 41. These are Davidic Psalms. They talk about David's individual trust in the Lord, his recognition of his dependence upon Christ himself. Book Two picks up with chapter 42 through 72. Now, David and others bring national Psalms into the mix because just as the human heart recognizes they need grace individually, they're brought into a community.

So also the Salter invites you into a community in Psalms 42 through 72, and then book three, Psalm 73 through 89 is a time of. Looking at the great kingship of God's rulers over earth and asking the question, where did that all go? Because it's the book of exile. It starts out, who do I have in heaven?

But you in Psalm 73, and by the time you get to Psalm 89, it is crying out, Lord, where is your steadfast love of old? On book four, the book that we're in, that we began in Psalm 90, it begins to emerge us and teach us how we are to live now, even right now in 2025, as people who live in the land of exile, how are we to live into the renewal?

Into, into the. Faith and the hope that we will one day as we await the returning king. These psalms all the way from Psalm, uh, 90 through 106 are God's answer to the exile. If the earthly kings have failed us. Look, there is a higher, Yahweh is the ultimate king. He is the true king and the true judge, and he is our rally cry amidst exile.

And then the final book of Psalms in Psalm 107 through 150. It speaks of the restoration and the final celebration of praise as it prepares us for the hallelujah Psalms that end the salter. This is the progression not of our history as a people, as the first five books of Moses are, but it is the progression of the human heart as we prepare more and more and more and are sanctified and prepared for glory.

And Psalm 94 sits right at the hinge of book four last week. We saw in Psalm 93 that. The psalmist to just thundered the Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. And then Psalm 94 immediately asks if that's true, how do you explain Wednesday? Why did the wicked prosper? Why did the rulers frame injustice into law?

That is the necessary question that all of us as Christians must ask before we can move on into understanding how we are to live as children in the midst of exile. Are you with me? The Book of Psalms is not just about individual poems put together, but it is about watching the progression of our human hearts as we become more and more like Jesus together as a community.

And so the Psalms answer is striking in Psalm 94. He says, your hope is not found in better legislation. Your hope is not found in better schools that are safer. Your hope is not found in new technology to protect our children. Ultimately, your hope is found in Yahweh, who himself is the judge who will rise.

He is a father who will not forsake his people, and he is a comforter who will console. So if you've ever asked the question in the quiet of your heart, where is God in all of this? Then Psalm 94 is for you. It shows us, first of all, in verses one to seven. And then in verses 20 through 23, to trust the judge who sees.

Listen to how the Psalm opens. It says, oh Lord God of vengeance. Oh God of vengeance. Shine forth, rise up. Oh, judge of the earth repay to the proud what they deserve. That title, the God of Vengeance, sounds harsh to our modern ears, but in Hebrew, NAHAM. It doesn't mean petty revenge. It's a covenantal term.

It means that God is the one who keeps his promise by setting things right. His vengeance is not like ours. Hot, tempered, reactive, emotional. His vengeance is holy and steady, and it is righteous. The commentator on the Psalms, Derek Kidner. It says that these fiery cries of the Psalms often create a kind of embarrassment problem for the Christian because we all know that scripture is inspired and Jesus tells us to love our enemies, and Kidner presses us in his commentary.

He says, don't dismiss these words simply as vindictive. See them as what they are in Hebrew. They're a plea that justice shall be done, and that God's righteous vindication of his people will certainly. Come about when Jesus, himself and his earthly life prayed this prayer, the answer came for all those who lived during his time in his resurrection.

And you read about this from Paul in Acts 1731, God has fixed today on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of all this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. That was for the first century believers. Just a little gift from the Apostle Paul to say, look at the resurrection.

Don't you see it? Look at it. He has risen for us. And Paul knows during the second missionary journey to the church in Thessalonika, he needs to give us even more evidence for those of us who live on this side of the resurrection. And so he says in about 80 51 to the church in Thessalonika, as you heard, Daniel and Alex read earlier, this is evidence of the righteous judgment of God.

Do you need evidence? Oh, Christian. That you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you also are suffering since indeed, God sits it just to repay with affliction, those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, inflaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God.

And on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, where do you look for ultimate restoration of judgment? You look for Jesus's return and as people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who if you use the hammer beams of this church to think about redemptive history, you live between these last two.

Standing on the shoulders of giants who've gone before you and you say, on this side of the resurrection, the evidence of God's love for you calls you to look back at his promise, signified by his resurrection. What more could he have done to prove that he was real except rise from the dead and now he promises that he still will return.

And so when we cry, how long we are not? Indulging bitterness. The psalmist here is not saying Take revenge out on your enemies. For my sake, we are praying for the risen Christ to restore justice, to make everything new. The focus is on Christ's return, not our spite and not our revenge. Think about how often parents you hear that phrase, how long in my family we hear that question?

Almost every time we get in the car for a car trip.

Are we there yet?

Daddy? Are we there yet? And this is though, the Psalmist says you're back in that backseat and you are not driving and you're crying out to your heavenly Father. How long are we there yet? And that is not a cry of unbelief because just like when we were children and cried that just like your children cried, that they know you're gonna get to the destination.

They have confidence in you. So we also can cry out how long we have confidence that our father is going to get us to the destination. He's going to get us there. And so why does the psalmist cry it that way? Look at verses five and six. He says They crush your people. Oh lord, they kill the widow and the soner and they murder.

The fatherless. Does that list ring a bell? Throughout the Old Testament law, God singled out the widow and the orphan and the soner as those that he himself would defend. This is what Deuteronomy 10, verse 13, or Deuteronomy chapter 27, verse 19 says, you can look those verses up to harm them was to spit.

In God's face, these lawless men are breaking the covenant and then listen to their arrogance. In verse seven, the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive they're mocking him. Don't you hear it? They take God's covenant name, the God of Jacob, and they deny his very character. You remember Hagar Hagar said, bear lehay the God who sees me.

It's as though they're saying, ha, God doesn't see you. And for some of you who are back in church here, hearing the gospel again for the first time in many, many years, that's one of your primary obstacles to believe in. You see all of the wickedness and the evil of the world, and you think, well, how can a beautiful and good God allow that to happen?

What if he has reasons for it that would stagger your imagination that we don't yet know? He invites you into that tension. How long, oh Lord, how long?

There is a throne that is higher than every human throne.

The psalmist knows better. He says in verse 20, he says, better than to believe this mockery can no wicked rulers be all lied with you. Those who frame justice by statute. It's not just evil doers who can do evil, it's also governments who can be corrupt. Leaders can literally frame injustice into statute and into law.

Evil can be systemic. And yet in verse 22, we read, the Lord has become our stronghold, my stronghold and my God, the rock of my refuge. This is the cry of Daniel. This is the cry of the man who served four kings under two empires, faithfully as one, who himself was literally in exile in Babylon. And then there's the final word in verse 23.

He will bring back on them the iniquity and he will wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord our God will wipe them out. The Hebrew here is vivid. It is like all of the energy used to persecute God's people boomerangs back onto them. What they plan for others will fall on them. That is his covenantal justice.

So what does this mean for us? If we are to be the ones who trust in the God who sees it, means that we don't have to take vengeance into our own hands. Romans 1219. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 32 verse 35, and he says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for its written Vengeance is mine.

Says the Lord. I will repay. To the contrary, Paul Exhort says, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink for. By doing so, you heat burning coals on his head. Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Think about the upside down nature of the gospel to which he's called us as a people to live in this fallen world marked by his Holy Spirit.

Don't you see the radical ethics of the gospel turn the world upside down so that you don't need to revenge. You can leave it to the Lord whose vengeance is far more just, and it means that we don't have to downplay evil. The Psalms give us permission to cry out how long,

and there should probably be more tears wept in this room than there are as you confront the reality of the evil in the world.

And it means that there's only one safe place to stand, and that's when the judge rises and either your sins are judged at the cross in Christ or they will be judged in you when he returns. No wickedness escapes his sight. So when you look at a corrupt system, or when you look at a corrupt group of people, or when you look at a corrupt individual, when the wicked prosper and the perilous seem to put their thumbs on the small, remember Psalm 94 and cry out with a psalmist.

Don't bottle up your outrage, but bring it to the judge who sees refuse revenge and leave it in his. Hands first, you trust the judge who sees. Secondly, in verses eight through 15, we trust the Father who trains you. Look at the middle of that section. Look at verse 12. It says, blessed is the man whom you discipline, oh Lord, and whom you teach out of your law.

This is surprising. As I read the Psalm, it surprises me that the psalmist drops discipline in the midst of a man crying out for justice. Why does he talk about discipline? Because discipline is not God's rejection, but it's his fatherly training of us in the midst of exile. The word for discipline in Hebrew is yaser.

It means that not punishment in the sense of. Wrath. That means training and instruction and correction. It's the kind of, if you had a good father, and I know some of you in here struggle with the idea of God as a father because your father wasn't a good father, but if you have a good father, you can imagine some of the men in this church who are good father figures to you.

It's when they get their arms around you metaphorically, and they welcome you and they help you see the beauty of your savior, and they hope you walk and grow in the knowledge of the gospel. That's the picture that he brings here. He's getting his hands. Around you metaphorically to say, let me train you, let me show you how a father uses the same word in proverbs about a father disciplining his son to give him wisdom.

The commentator, uh, Christopher Ash says that the same persecutions that render the wicked guilty are often the same instruments used to refine his people. Saint Augustine said it like this, you make pain. In a prayer. He said, you make pain your precision tool to teach us our lesson. You arrange that pain so that the pain itself shall teach us.

Oh, come Lord Jesus, I, I know some of you're so tired of pain.

This is why Derrick Kidner urges us not to rush past the psalmist cries. You must feel both the fire of injustice and the force of his fatherly hand, because without it, our prayers of indication become cynical, and we have too many friends who are cynical right now. But when you recognize it's his fatherly hand guiding and carrying every aspect of every one of your days, then your prayers become hope filled.

'cause he has not made a mistake and he knows exactly where you are and the circumstances he's given you in order to shape you more and more to his image. And do you notice what it's paired with? It says whom you teach out of your law. God's discipline is never random. It's not meaningless than our suffering.

It's always tied to his word and he's shaping his people both through his providence and through his precepts of his word.

And the goal of God's fatherly discipline is found in verse 13. Look at verse 13 with me. Do you see it? It says, as Barry prayed earlier, to give him rest from days of trouble until a pit is dug for the wicked shat in Hebrew. The word rest means a kind of covenantal rest together as a people, not a sleepy Sunday afternoon nap time.

It is a deep soul rest. It is a wholeness and a confident peace that we are secure in God's kingdom. Isaiah and Jeremiah use that root word rest all the time to speak of Israel, resting in the land, and that image is pulled in this Psalm to say, it is also true of your soul, don't you Long for that kind of rest?

Because not only do we trust the judge who sees, but we also trust the father who trains us. And you see the, the covenant language in verse 14, the Lord will not forsake his people. He will not abandon his heritage. He gives us rest, his people, his heritage. You're a part of something bigger than just your individual families.

You're part of the church, and this is why community groups are so important in our church. Because we want you to be known and we, uh, want others to know you. It is so easy to live in Tulsa and Elso and wherever you're from. Broken Arrow Sky took Sand Springs, jinx. It's so easy to live in all of that ways.

Our houses are shaped by our architecture where we never know each other, even on our own streets. And yet God has given you an opportunity to be known by others, and we want you to be known in this church. And that's a scary thing. But it is part of the steps of you learning how to rest in his finished work.

In a church where the pastor is held accountable, it's not about me. We have a session who leads and guides us. We have a presbytery, a group of regional churches over us who help shepherd us. Even every meeting we ever have as elders in this church is reviewed by another group of pastors. Isn't that freeing?

So that we can learn how to rest in the good news of the gospel and keep that the focus. We want you to be known, would you allow yourself to be?

And then verse 15, for justice will return to righteousness and all the upright and heart will follow it. The Hebrew literally says justice will return to the righteous. It's like a poetic way of seeing that one day God will realign what is crooked, like a broken bone being realigned by an orthopedic surgeon.

He will straighten what is crooked. Yeah, justice and righteousness will once again sink up. They will line up and it will all make sense. So if you trust in Christ French for the Fri of your sins, would you know that God disciplines you in love, not in wrath. Discipline is for his children, and discipline is not rejection.

It is proof that you belong. A father doesn't discipline another family's child. He disciplines his own children, and so your father in heaven disciplines you, and he even uses the tools of suffering to do that,

and he will not abandon you. He will not abandon your heritage. And so we get to submit to his discipline and we get to hope in his rest. And when you do that, you are able to remember. Verse 14, the Lord will not forsake his people. If you're in Christ, he will never abandon you. Hallelujah. I wonder if you believe it.

Do. People who watch the way you live, would they say he lives because he knows that he'll never be abandoned? I've said this before many times. All of us have deep sins that are beneath the sins on the surface. One of my deep sins that I struggle with, if you wanna ask me what I do during the confession of sin, almost every week, it's confessed the deepest struggle that I have in my, and that is the fear of abandonment.

I have had that since I was a little child for a set of circumstances. I'm glad to explain to you some other time, but I have to believe again and again and again that the good news of the gospel is that he will not abandon me, and that drives so much of my own self-sabotaging strategies. And I wonder what it, what drives you?

The sin beneath the sin. Oh, the good news of verse 14 is that he will not abandon you. He won't forsake his people.

But what about all the fatherly discipline? That seems unbearable. And what about when the anxiety in our hearts just won't let up? This is where the psalmist goes next and verses 16 through 19, and then he talks about it in verse 22. You trust the comforter who holds you. If we are to trust the judge who sees 0.1, if we are 0.2 to trust the father who trains you, then you are also to trust the comforter who holds you.

Look at verse 16, who rises up for me against the wicked who stands up for me against evil doers? Those are rhetorical questions. Don't you hear the ache and the psalmist? The psalmist looks around and he doesn't see anybody. He sees no advocate. He sees no friend. He feels abandoned. This is the worst nightmare for some people like me who rises up.

It's the verb co. It's used back in verse two. When the psalmist cries rise up O judge of the earth. When no human rises up for you, the Lord himself will rise up for you. And indeed, literally he has risen up for us, hasn't he? Hallelujah. He has risen for us and he will rise again as he comes upon his return to judge the living and the dead.

And those of us who were in Christ covered in his blood and his righteousness will receive only grace upon grace from his fatherly hand. But those who don't place their faith in Christ yet will receive the just wrath of God that comes upon them. Because you'll either be judged in Christ or you'll be judged in yourself and in your sins.

He says, and then he continues in verse 17, if the Lord had not been my help, my soul would have fled, uh, not have lived in the land of silence. This is like the shocking immediacy of the scream of Psalm 94. If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would have lived in. Utter abandonment, and isn't that what Jesus experienced on the cross?

He says, I looked for comforters and found none. Psalm 69, father, father, why have you forsaken me? He said on the cross, Jesus was abandoned so that you would never have to be. He was abandoned on the cross so that you would always be brought in and welcomed in. Friends. Don't you see the gospel as something so much bigger than just personal faith and doctrines to be believed in?

It is a worldview through which you see everything about life centered upon Jesus' death and resurrection for us, and it affects every aspect of your life from the way that you practice law or medicine, or execute your business or do plumbing or lead your family. Everything is shaped. By lenses that are colored with the blood stain of Jesus's love for you on the cross and the beauty of the hope of the resurrection.

So that when we can trust the judge who sees when we can trust the father, who trains us, when we can trust the comforter, who holds us, we can say, like Samuel said, when he said, here I raise an Ebenezer between Mspa and Shin. Do you remember that story when he was fighting the Philistines and he said, I raise up a stone of help.

That's what the word help is here. Azer, it's the same word. It's used in Psalm 121. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. It's as though we stand with the psalmist and we stand with Samuel who raised up in Ebenezer in one Samuel chapter 17, and we stand in the midst of our exile, in the midst of our groaning, and it's so we sing.

Here. I raise my Ebenezer, hear by thy help. I come

and we sing amidst the exile. E stone Azer help. We have a stone of help and he is our rock. The Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Do you know him? Friend. Psalm 94 is the bridge between Psalm 93 and what we're going to see next summer are the enthronement Psalms of Psalm 95 through 99. And to get there, you must be able to be fiercely honest with the evil in the world and to know that there is a judge who sees every injustice.

He sees it. There's a father who trains us, and there is a comforter. Who consoles us? One last thing. If I were to put this sermon in a sentence, I would just simply ask you to quote, memorize verse 19, when the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer, my soul cares, and Hebrew at rhymes, it literally means divided thoughts.

God will bring consolation. Taku meme.

The cares are answered by God's taku meme, his constellations, and verse 22 anchors it. The Lord has become my stronghold and my God, the rock and my refuge. So where's your heart? Your heart Torn by look to your father in heaven. Who is? For you, your rock. Do you see the judge who make everything right? Do you know your father in heaven?

Who trained you? And do you rely on the comforter who's been given to you? Namely the Holy Spirit to shape, shape and mold us, not just individually, but into a people to exercise a counter-cultural community for the common good of this city and for the world. To the praise and the glory of his name, amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.