Arise, O Lord
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
March 22, 2020
We planned to studyseveral of the Psalms of Lament during the season of Lent, and I couldn’t thinkof a better place to be. You won’t find a heading in your Bible that designatesa psalm as a Psalm of Lament; that’s the category we place them in based ontheir content, and when we do, there are nearly fifty different Psalms ofLament. As we prepare our hearts for Good Friday and Easter, we’ve chosenseveral to cover, each arising from a different cause, a different reason tolament. Last week we covered Psalm 38, which is a lament over our own sin; thisweek we take up Psalm 10, which is a lament over abuse done by the wicked.
Scripture Reading
You can follow along with me as I read Psalm 10 or feel free to pause the video and read the passage yourself. I’ll go ahead and read the passage now, and then pray thatGod would be our teacher as we study this passage together.
1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 Inarrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they havedevised.
3 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain cursesand renounces the Lord.
4 In the pride of his face the wicked doesnot seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
6 He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meetadversity.”
7 His mouth is filled with cursing and deceitand oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9 he lurks in ambush like alion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
10 The helpless are crushed, sinkdown,
and fall by his might.
11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never seeit.”
12 Arise,O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13 Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call toaccount”?
14 But you do see, for you note mischief andvexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16 The Lord isking forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will inclineyour ear
18 to do justice to the fatherless and theoppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terrorno more.
Introduction
Last week I shared a realistic although made-up story to illustrate the theme of Psalm 38. I told you about a married couple who comes to a counselor’s office. The first twenty minutes are a nearly unbroken chain of back and forth, of one spouse starting a paragraph about what one person did and the other spouse interrupting to say what “really” happened.
After forty minutes, the counselor raises a hand. A momentary ceasefire begins. She says, “I think I’m beginning to see some of the issues.” Then she looks at the husband.“Sir, in all this, what is it that you think you’ve done to contribute to the problem?” “Well, she did this and she did that, and what was I supposed to do,”he says. The counselor turns to the wife. “And you, what have you done tocontribute to the problem?” “Well, he did this and he did that, and what was I supposed to do,” she says. The counselor sighs. She wipes her cheeks with her sleeve. “I want to help you,” she says. “But I can’t.”
The point of the illustration last week was to show that unless you can identify and confess your own sin to God, you can’t begin to heal. However, perhaps many of you, as you listened to that illustration, had objections. “But, Pastor Benjamin,sometimes it is the other person’s fault.”
You’re not wrong. I’vebeen in ministry long enough to see marriages destroyed, not only by twoparties who share the blame but by one party who goes off the deep end. I letthe tension from that illustration hang unresolved last week because last weekthe focus was on you and I and our sin before God and how it stinks to highheaven. This week, in Psalm 10, we are still concerned with sin, but the sin thatstinks something fierce in the nostrils of God is the sin of others. And theproblem in view, the origin of the lament, is that God, according to the author,seems to hide while wicked people abuse others.
1. What we see with our eyes: the wicked rule, vv. 1–11
In the first 11verses the people of God bring their complaint to God. Their complaint is this:judging by what we can see with our eyes, the wicked rule and reign. I’ll readv. 1 again.
1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
The accusation isthat the Lord is aloof, indifferent. In times of trouble, God is playing “hideand go seek,” which is a very strange thing to do for the Creator of theUniverse—to hide. The game “hide and seek” is a children’s game. It’s fun.However, it’s not fun when you are a child, and there is a murderer in yourhouse, and you’re hiding in the closet of your bedroom calling your father onthe phone trying to get him to help, but he can’t pick up or won’t pick up.
A good pastorfriend of mine had this happened to his family last fall. He was away onbusiness, and a crazy person broke into the house, and the young son and hismother hid in the bathroom while the intruder pounded on the bathroom door. Thepolice arrived just before the door broke. “Why, O Lord, do youstand far away? / Why do you hide yourself in times oftrouble?” Verse 1 is the summary of the lament. The author goes on to explainin more detail just what are those “times of trouble” that God ignores.
The next ten versesdescribe the character and conduct of the wicked. For the sake of time, I won’treread all the verses. But in vv. 2–6 we read about the pride, arrogance, greedyboasts of the wicked. In v. 4 we read, that “in the pride of his face thewicked does not seek him” and “all his thoughts are ‘There is no God.’”That’s true, but it might be more helpful to notice that it is not so much thatthe wicked think there is no God but that there is no God other than me. Thewicked set themselves up as gods. I’ll read v. 6 again.
6 He [the wicked] says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
These are claims ofdivinity. Not moved or changed, meaning immutable? All generations, meaningtranscendent and everlasting? In other words, “I am the master of my fate, thecaptain of my soul” (cf. the poem “Invictus” mentioned last week). Then in vv.7–11 we read that the totality of the wicked person’s being is bent toward evil.We read about the curses of his mouth. We read about where he sits in ambush.We read about the greed in his eyes. We read about how his body lurks like alion stalking prey, His mouth, his sitting, his eyes, his jaws—the totality ofhis being is bent toward wickedness, and all the while he claims (as we read inv. 11) that the Lord does not even see—let alone do anything about it; Goddoesn’t even see. The complaint of God’s people in v. 1 is that God standsaloof, and that is a problem for believers. Here, however, the wicked see thealoofness of God not as a problem but as a window of opportunity that is wideopen.
In our day, we canthink of those who attempt to price gauge on hand sanitizer. I heard of someonewho bought 17k bottles of hand sanitizer, put them in his garage, thenincreased the price a dozen fold and tried to sell them on Amazon, which Amazonthankfully stopped. Or consider this one from our church context. For threeweeks in a row, email scammers tried to fake my email address and asked onehundred people in our congregation for money, hoping that someone could belured into their net. And consider the way that the “lion” and “lurking” imageryin this passage might in our own day cause us to think of the #metoo and#churchtoo sexual abusers who lurk like lions. It’s an especially vile thingwhen the evil of abuse comes from the hand of those claiming to be priests and pastors,those who claim to know God but do not know him.
In v. 10 we readthat “The helpless are crushed, sink down, and fall by [the might of thewicked].” The wicked succeed in their murder of the innocent that they devisein v. 8. I think about the origin story of Planned Parenthood, which I’m notsure everyone knows. Planned Parenthood and their founder Margaret Sanger havea grizzly origin story, a story with wicked roots of eugenics, that is, intheir case the preying upon low income and ethnic and racial minorities as away to thin the herd. It was evil. It still is.
2. What we see with the eyes offaith: God rules, vv. 12–18
In v. 12, the psalmflips. When the people of God sing this psalm, we begin singing about what wesee with our eyes, that is, how the wicked rule and reign. Now we sing aboutwhat we see with the eyes of faith: that God rules and reigns. And this leadsto something worth pointing out in our sermon series. Laments are not justcomplaints when they are biblical laments. Laments—the biblical kind—have a trajectory.They move from complaint to trust, just as Psalm 10 does. Look with me at v.12.
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Wait—I thought, thatthey thought, that God was hiding, that he was aloof? Not so. The deepertrust, the deeper knowledge that God is near. It’s like when I use Photoshop,and I have other drawings and images behind other files, and you can only see thoseother images if you open the main Photoshop files. The .jpeg or .png file isnot all that there is. And the godly know there is more to what they can seewith their physical eyes. Christians know God can and will arise and lift uphis hand.
The hand of theLord communicates his strength and power. The hand of the Lord is not somethingto be trifled with. In a UFC fight in January, Conor McGregor won his fight in40 seconds. McGregor is known for the strength of his left hand, and also otherthings like being cocky, but whether he is too cocky or not, you don’t want to triflewith his left hand. The fight in January, he actually won with a kick to thehead, but you get my point. The hand of the risen Lord is not something to betrifled with. As the saying goes, he’s not a tame lion.
In v. 15 the authorwrites,
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
This is not so muchan “eye of an eye” prayer request. Again, the arm is symbolic of power. It isthe arm that does so much wickedness. To ask God to break arms is to ask thathe break their ability to do harm. This is asking God to come to our defense.
Some of you mightbe troubled by this language. Who is God to judge and break arms? WhatChristian should this? I can assure that my friend’s son and wife who were lockedin the bathroom wanted God to break in. And they were not wrong to do so.
The passage ends withthe people of God asserting their conviction that God is in fact the one whorules. In v. 16 the author writes, “The Lord is king forever and ever; thenations perish from his land.” And the Lord’s kingship is actually for the goodof the vulnerable, the fatherless, the poor.
When we began thissermon series, we thought it would be good to call the series “How Long, OLord?: Learning the Language of Lament.” I probably would not have said it thisway, but when you use the word learn, we tend to think of classrooms andacademics. But now, with a serious virus stalking the globe, our learning tolament might be a lot more experiential than theoretical or academic. That’snot a bad thing. Because those who engage experientially in biblical lament willalso experientially come to know the goodness of God’s strength. This is thejoyful trajectory laments move us on, from complaint to trust. God is not abrittle God; he’s not aloof. God is near; he is strong.
Conclusion
When Jesus wasnearing the end of his earthy life, in Luke 22 he referred to that time as the hourof darkness (v. 53). We have a savior who has gone before us through the jawsof death and has come out the other side. In a beautiful twist, in the hour ofdarkness, God was actually breaking the arm of evil. Listen to the way theapostle Paul describes the gospel and the hope of a Christian in Colossians 2:13–15.
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
God broken theability of the wicked to do us eternal harm and bring us eternal death. It issin that does us eternal harm, and God in Christ has taken that away.
If you are inChrist, if you have put your faith in Jesus, then whether you feel the hotbreath of the jaws of the wicked... or whether you have fears over this virus...or whether you worry about the financial impact to your business... know thatGod, even now as we read in v. 16, is “king forever and ever.”
