a sermon on Psalm 33
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
Have you ever read a story in the newspaper or heard one on television that was
so horrible, so heartbreaking that something inside you screamed for justice to
be done? A child is abducted and abused. Corporate criminals rob their company
blind and leave workers without a pension. Sometimes the perpetrator is caught,
other times not. Sometimes justice seems served, other times not. Have you ever
wondered why evil is so prevalent and justice so rare?
I believe that God has woven justice into the fabric of the universe. I believe
God is personal. God created all that exists. God loves justice. And God’s
creation reflects God’s character. No one ever gets away with anything. Every
action has a consequence; every evil is repaid. Justice is built into the
universe. It is utterly inescapable.
You may doubt that. You may think I am naïve. I should open my eyes, and look
around, right? Then I would see. I suspect, however, that there is more to
reality than what we see and more to human existence than just this life. The
Bible often wrestles with this theme. God loves justice. We read that over and
over again. He loves it so much he insists his people love it too. Yet the
wicked often prosper while the righteous suffer. How can this be? At the end of
the day, scripture does not conclude, “Well, maybe God will see justice done or
may he won’t.” Rather it asks God, “How long?” God’s people pray, “Lord, we know
you will execute justice. When are you going to do it? How long must we wait?”
Oh, we wait all right. God must perceive time differently from the way we do. He
certainly has more patience. But you can rest assured that sooner or later
justice will be done. God guarantees it. In just a moment I will explain why I
am so certain of this.
First, however, I want to say a bit more about God’s justice. God has given us
freedom. We are not machines; we are human beings, created in the image of God
with a marvelous capacity to love and to do good. With that comes an equal
capacity to do evil. We are fallen. This means we are prone to do evil. We
freely choose it, and obviously God does not intervene and stop us—at least not
usually.
We are free to choose our way instead of God’s way, but we pay. Our actions have
consequences. Our sins define us. That is, they help to make us who we are. You
lie, you steal, and you don’t get caught. But now you are a liar and a thief. It
will catch up with you.
In the same way, we are free to put bad ideas into practice, but we are not free
to make them work. In the 20th century numerous countries tried communism. They
found it to be flawed theologically. It did not take into account the Fall and
humanity’s consequent sinful nature. Fallen humanity is inherently selfish, so
communism doesn’t work. Hundreds of millions suffered terribly to learn that
lesson. Now in the West, we are trying to build just and peaceful societies on
the shaky foundation of materialism—a worldview without God. Christian truth and
Christian values have been rejected. I believe religious liberty is a good thing
and that it is consistent with Christian values, but we ignore truth at our own
peril.
In the same way, individuals are free to base their lives on a mistake. One can
seek fulfillment in money, sex, power, prestige, drugs, or simply entertaining
yourself into a stupor. We can put bad ideas and poor judgment into practice,
but we are not free to make them work. Lasting fulfillment cannot be had by
making any of those things the center of one’s life. Wrong beliefs and wrong
choice have consequences. Why? Because God has built justice into the universe.
Now let me tell you why I can be so sure. I want to give you three reasons. The
first is, if God has not woven justice into the very fabric of creation, then
the Bible is completely wrong about God. Two themes we find over and over again
in its pages: God created everything that exists (except himself, of course),
and God loves justice. We find both these ideas in Psalm 33, which by no means
stands alone in scripture, although it is typical of the Bible’s insistence on
these truths. Look at verse 5: “God loves righteousness and justice.” He doesn’t
just like them or think they are good. God loves righteousness and justice. It
goes on: “The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.” This gets at the
important truth I mentioned earlier: Creation reflects the character of God. And
this makes perfect sense. God is not going to make a creation he doesn’t like.
You won’t hear God say, “Wow, I messed that up. What a disaster!”
We know that right now, because of the Fall, because of human sin, the world is
not everything God wants it to be. His will is not done on earth as it is in
heaven. That’s why we call it “the Fall,” because humanity fell away from God’s
good design and dragged the rest of creation with us. However, when we did, God
did not say, “Ah, too bad. I had hopes for them. My good creation is ruined.” He
said, “This is my creation. You are my creatures. I will send a Savior. I will
set things right.” God loves justice. God’s creation reflects God’s character.
You might be inclined to agree with me if you think about our thirst for
justice. Why does evil outrage us? Why do we hunger for justice to be done? Is
it because we are made in the image of God, so that like our creator we too
desire justice? I believe so. I believe our desire for justice is part of God’s
fingerprint on our soul. Ask yourself: Do you desire justice to prevail
universally—from our playgrounds to our courtrooms to the international
community of nations? If you (a simple, sinful human being) desire justice,
wouldn’t God (who is wholly good and morally perfect)?
Psalm 33 goes on to praise God as creator. Then it talks about his sovereign
rule over the nations of the world. Then it compares trust in armies and
strength to hope in the Lord, and decides that God alone can save. God alone is
our help and shield, so we trust in him. That’s Psalm 33. It praises God’s
absolute power. By his word the heavens were created. He spoke and the earth
came to be. That is the kind of power God has. In other words, God is fully
capable of executing the justice he loves so much. If God has not established
justice in the universe, if God does not guarantee justice will be done, then we
dare not trust anything the Bible says.
The second reason is the most important. If God has not built justice into the
universe, the cross becomes inexplicable. Why did Jesus have to die? Why can’t
God just forgive the same way he created, by saying the word? Scripture says he
died in our place. He suffered the consequences of our actions. He paid the
price for our sin. If justice reigns, then the cross makes sense. God desired to
see justice done but also to extend mercy to us, so he became the judge who
fined the defendant, then paid the fine himself. Our sin threw the universe out
of whack. A debt had to be paid. Wrong had to be set right. Jesus did that. He
died so that we would not have to. If, however, God has not established justice,
why would Jesus have to die? Couldn’t there have been an easier way?
I think Paul gets at this a little in his letter to the Romans. He begins by
talking about how the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. He goes on to talk
about the dilemma of fallen humanity. Then he comes around to the good news that
God forgives us and sets us right by grace through faith in Jesus. In chapter 3,
verses 25-26 we find: “He did this [that is, God sent Jesus as a sacrifice of
atonement] to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had
passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time
that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in
Jesus.”
Those words righteousness and justify are related to justice. They all speak of
moral balance, of things being as they should be. God sent Jesus to show he is
righteous and just, both when he judges and when he forgives and saves.
The third reason I am convinced God wove justice into the universe is, Jesus
lives and reigns. Yes, Jesus took your sins and mine. Yes, he bore the guilt of
the world. Nevertheless, although he paid the price and died on the cross, it
would not be right—it would not be just—had he simply stayed dead. He took our
sin, and he conquered. Jesus was the only righteous human being who ever lived,
the only one who did the will of the Father perfectly (even when that meant
dying for the sin of the world). His resurrection proves the goodness, power,
and justice of God. He lives and reigns and as God establishes justice.
I realize that all three of my reasons depend on Christian faith. An unbeliever
who looks at the world might well conclude that justice is a figment of human
imagination. I believe this is another consequence of the Fall. Humanity is in
rebellion against God. The world is not as originally designed. Consequently,
God’s justice is not completely obvious. However, we who know Jesus Christ, and
know God’s love and power, can be absolutely certain God will execute justice.
Someday he will, and then it will be obvious to all.
OK, you are with me so far, I hope. God executes justice. He has built it right
into creation. Now I have another question: Is justice always a good thing?
A story comes from the Civil War about Robert E. Lee, who was a very
conscientious Christian. It seems a Confederate solider had gone awol and got
caught. He had shirked his duty, and he was brought before the court marital. It
was obvious the young man was terrified. Punishments in those days could be
severe. He was pale and couldn’t stop shaking. Lee said to him in a gentle tone,
“Young man, do not be afraid. You will get justice here.” To which the young man
replied, “I know that, sir. That’s what I’m afraid of!”
Raw justice, absolute justice can be a frightening thing. We are all deep down
rebels against God. So although we know justice to be a good thing, we maybe
don’t want it applied too rigidly, at least to us. Right?
Let me come at this by sharing two ways God’s justice differs from the Hindu
concept of Karma. A Hindu believes in justice. If you have ever read Rudyard
Kipling’s book Kim, you may recall the old Hindu mystic who always spoke about
the wheel of fate. Over and over he said, “Just is the wheel, never swerving a
hair.” Meaning the wheel of fate pays back each person according to his or her
deeds and does perfectly, not veering so much as a hair’s breadth. But this is
not what I mean when I say God has woven justice into the fabric of the
universe. There are at least two big differences.
One, God’s justice is personal. Karma is impersonal, mechanical. It is like a
law of nature. God’s justice is personal. God acts. He establishes and upholds
justice. He also extends mercy. His mercy comes in more than one way. God’s
mercy can come as forgiveness. It can also come as discipline. God’s people are
on a bad path. They have turned from God. They don’t realize it, but they are
heading toward destruction. Left to themselves, they will end in ruin. But God
loves them. He doesn’t want them to come to ruin. He wants to save them. So what
does he do? He disciplines them, in the hope that they will come to their senses
and return to him, like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ story. I have met many
Christians who were just like that. In a universe of mechanical justice, by all
rights they should have been lost and destroyed. But God intervened. He turned
the wheel. He got their attention, revealed his love to them, and turned them
around.
This leads to the second way God’s justice differs from Karma: God’s justice
allows for grace. This is where the cross becomes so important. Jesus really did
take our place. He paid our debt. He suffered our consequences. Every one of us
is guilty before God. We not only fail to keep God’s revealed law; we also fail
to keep the moral law he has planted in our souls. The wheel was rolling toward
us—I don’t believe in fate, but the idea of a wheel I find helpful—the wheel of
justice (if you want to call it that) was about to bring our sin back upon our
own heads and crush us. Then Jesus threw himself at it and saved us but got
crushed himself. His death benefits all who have faith in him. Those who trust
him are forgiven and set free. That’s grace.
There is justice in the universe. Believe it! No one ever gets away with
anything. Because of grace, however, no one has to be condemned. So either you
pay for your sin yourself, which means condemnation, separation from God, death,
and hell. Or Jesus pays for your sin on the cross. Justice will be done. Someone
will suffer the consequences of every evil deed. Thank God, it does not have to
be you.
I like to end every sermon with practical ways to apply scripture’s teaching,
and I find four things jumping out of the pages at me.
The first should be obvious, and that is the importance of trusting Jesus as
your Savior. If you have not done that, I’d love to talk with you about it
one-on-one. It can come down to this: Do you believe justice is a good thing? Do
you believe God will see justice done? If so, you need a Savior. God has
provided a way to execute justice and forgive us. You ought to look into that.
Second, if I am right about justice, it ought to affect how you live. Whatever
evil you are tempted to do, you cannot get away with it. Even secret sins no one
knows about—they will find you out. This is true even for Christians. Yes, Jesus
has paid for our sins, all of them. No, you will never be condemned. Yet
consequences remain. You might suffer natural consequences. You cheat on your
spouse and get caught. Or you don’t get caught, but what you have done poisons
your marriage and family life. Beyond natural consequences, there are other
consequences. You might suffer God’s loving discipline as he tries to guide you
back to the right path. You might suffer loss on that great day when God judges
the world. Paul writes about Christian leaders who are saved from condemnation,
but all they had worked for was lost. Christians never need to fear death and
hell, but that does not mean we can sin as we please and get away with it. God
is not mocked.
Third, confidence in God’s justice gives teeth to Jesus’ teaching about not
taking revenge. “Vengeance is mine. I will repay,” says the Lord—in Deuteronomy,
Romans, and Hebrews. Jesus teaches us to forgive. Most of the time we would
rather get even. If we can be sure, however, that God will handle that for us,
we have no need to soil our hands and souls by perpetuating a cycle of
evil-for-evil. That’s one of the differences between God and us. God is
responsible for justice in the universe; we are not. When God punishes the
wicked, it is justice. When you take revenge on someone who hurt you, it is sin.
That’s a hard thing to accept, but it becomes acceptable if we can really count
on God to deliver justice. When someone does you wrong, you can be absolutely
certain that either that person will pay (and pay dearly) or Jesus will pay
their debt on the cross.
Fourth, although Jesus teaches us not to take revenge, God has made us his
partners in overseeing his creation. He loves justice and expects us to.
Although we cannot execute justice as fully or perfectly as he does, he has
called us to approximate his justice as best we can in human societies.
Scripture teaches that God grants authority to legitimate governments to keep
peace, establish order, and protect its citizens. I am speaking now of our legal
system and law enforcement. We Christians should do everything within our power
to support and encourage our legislators, our courts, and our law enforcement
officers to do their job and to do it right and well. God loves justice. He does
not want human societies full of chaos and fear. That’s what we have without law
enforcement. All those who work in that field have a special calling from God.
This is true whether they are Christians not, even if they don’t believe in God.
They do God’s work. God expects us to approximate his justice as best we can in
our society, so let us support those who do that important work.
In conclusion, I believe God has built justice into his creation. I hope you
believe this too. God deserves our praise, both for his justice and his grace.
How wonderful God is! As Psalm 33 says, “Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous.
Praise befits the upright.” Amen.