Psalm 7
Date: February 18th, 2023
Speaker: Sam Crites
Scripture: Psalm 7
MIT: David calls for God to give him justice and judge between himself and his enemies.
1-2: David pleas to the Lord for deliverance.
3-5: David asks God to judge him for the potential wrongs he is being accused of.
6-7: David calls the righteous Judge to rise up and hold court.
8: David asks to be judged according to his righteousness.
9: David calls for justice, that evil would end and that God would establish the righteous by reading their hearts.
10: God is David’s shield and protection.
11-13: God is a righteous judge that feels indignation at sin and will deal with a man that does not repent.
14-16: Wicked men fall into their own evil.
17: David praises the Lord.
MIS: God is a just judge that justifies the unjust.
God is a just judge that will bring an end to injustice. (9)
God judges the secret hearts of men. (6-8; 10-13)
God justifies the unjust. (1-5; 14-17)
Introduction:
Where is justice? Have you ever asked that question? Has something ever happened to you that makes you look up at the heavens and ask God, where is justice? Where were you when my neighbor was quietly beating his wife and no one knew? Where were you when my friend slipped into a depression from which they never recovered and took his own life? Where were you when children were being exploited and shipped all over the world to be taken advantage of by evil men?
This past week, two juveniles shot up the Kansas City Chief’s victory parade, leaving 22 wounded and one dead. If God is an all-powerful, ever-present, all-knowing judge, why has he not brought justice to his world?
This is the exact same question David is asking in Psalm 7. He is fleeing from his own son and being falsely accused by one of his enemies of sins he did not commit, and he pens Psalm 7 to ask God to deal justly with him. He petitions the God of justice and asks him to judge him justly. Let’s read Psalm 7 together.
Psalm 7
7 A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
17 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.
Over the last 4 psalms, we have seen David work through one catastrophic event in his life: the rebellion of Absalom. In Psalm 3, we saw David plea for God to save him from the taunts of his enemies, begging the Lord to arise as his rescuer and save him from the hands of his pursuers. In Psalm 4, David called on God to hear his prayer even though he does not deserve it and give him peace in the midst of his suffering. In Psalm 5, David asks the Lord to forgive his sins and replace his sorrows with joy, to lead him out of the hands of his enemies into the path of righteousness. In Psalm 6, we saw David beg the Lord not to give him what he deserved, but to show him mercy because of his steadfast love. David threw himself on grace, showing genuine remorse over his sin and trusting that God would deliver his life so that David would be able to testify that he is a deliverer.
Finally, in Psalm 7, David is calling on the Lord to right the scales of injustice in his own life. Our God is a God of justice. He is a just judge that judges justly, so David pleads with him to judge the secrets of his heart and render a verdict on whether David is righteous or wicked, is he just or unjust. In the end, what we will learn from Psalm 7 and the main point of our sermon is this: Our God is a just judge that justifies the unjust.
That tongue twister is the essential lesson of Psalm 7 and the center of the Gospel. Our God is a just judge that justifies the unjust. To understand this, we must first understand that our God is a just judge. This is the first point of our sermon. God is a just judge, meaning, he is a good judge that upholds justice. He balances the scales of injustice and rights wrongs.
This is the white-hot center of the Psalm and we see it in verse 9. God will bring an end to the wicked and he will establish the righteous because he knows the minds and the hearts of men. He brings about justice because he is just. He makes righteous because he is righteous.
Which will lead into our second point, as a just judge, he judges the secret hearts of men. In Psalm 7, David calls upon the Lord to set up court. He asks God to gather all the people, all the witnesses, to arise and sit on his bench of justice, and to judge David according to the accusations made against him and render a verdict.
This is an important psalm because Psalm 7 is David’s throw down moment with his enemies. The historical context we get at the beginning of the psalm tells us that this psalm is a song David sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, the Benjamite. As we will see later in the sermon, I think Cush the Benjaminite is Shimei the Benjaminite that curses David as he is fleeing from Absalom, accusing David of betraying Saul and his house. This makes sense in the context of Psalm 7, because if David unjustly usurped Saul then Absalom can usurp David. So David calls upon the Lord, the one who judges the secret hearts of men, to render a verdict.
The third and final thing we will see in Psalm 7 is that God justifies the unjust. Even though David is not guilty of the accusation of usurping Saul, he is guilty of great evil. He seduced Bathsheba, murdered Uriah, and betrayed the trust his people had in their king. Between Psalm 7 and Psalm 8, God does delivers David from Absalom, not because David deserves it but because God is a deliverer. Look how the Psalm ends. David praises God, not because David has been vindicated, but because God is righteous. David’s righteousness is not dependent David, but on the God who justifies the unjust.
Psalm 7 is a psalm that puts God’s justice and his mercy on display in perfect harmony. He is a God that judges justly and he is also a God that justifies the unjust. Psalm 7 should be a precious psalm to followers of Christ, because Psalm 7 is a psalm about the Gospel. Today in Psalm 7, we will see that our God is a just judge that justifies the unjust.
God is a just judge.
To see this, let’s consider our first point: God is a just judge. To see this, let’s look at the very center of the psalm in verse 9. Let’s reread it together.
Psalm 7:9
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
I say this is the center of the psalm because it is both the middle verse and also the structural center. Hebrew poetry often follows a chiastic structure, meaning, it makes an arrow parallel statements that point to the most important aspect of the poem at its center. This is what is taking place in Psalm 7. The way the psalm is written in the Hebrew gives special emphasis to verse 9, so we should give it special consideration.
It is not only the structural center, but it is also the truth around which the rest of the psalm depends. If God is not a just judge, then David’s request to be judged and his call for justice are a moot point. If God is not a righteous God, then David has no hope of anyone defending him from his enemies that are unjustly stealing his throne from him. The entire psalm hinges on the fact that God is a just and righteous judge.
This makes Psalm 7 an extremely relevant Psalm because justice is the soup de jure. It is the topic of the day. Everyone in our contemporary moment wants to talk about justice and because our God is who he is, Christians above all people should care about justice. The problem with Christians is that we have not understood what the Bible teaches about justice and so we are not able to speak into the cultural moment and capitalize on the conversation that is taking place around justice.
According to the world, the highest form of justice is social justice. Social justice assumes that they fundamental institutions of our society create winners and losers, those that are privileged and those that are underprivileged. Social justice purposefully disadvantages those that are perceived to be privileged and gives advantage to those that are perceived to be under privileged in hopes of artificially balancing the scales. This is not justice. In fact, it is the opposite of justice. It takes from one person and gives to another based on artificial social perception.
This is where Psalm 7 can help. In Psalm 7, David articulates a biblical understanding of justice. He says in verse 9, evil and wickedness will come to an end and the righteous will be established. Biblical justice is that everyone gets exactly what they deserve. Evil is punished and righteousness is vindicated. Look at verses 11-16:
Psalm 7:11-16
11 God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.
12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
15 He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
16 His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.
Every day the Lord feel indignation at the persistence of the wicked and the injustice done against the righteous. We can clearly see in Psalm 7 that the Lord will not allow this to endure. He will make war himself against the wicked and bring unrighteousness to an end.
This is not the first time we have seen this theme in the Psalter. In Psalm 1, we saw that the way of the righteous follows the blessed man into prosperity and the way of the wicked perishes because they cannot stand in the judgment. In Psalm 2, we saw that the only begotten Son is the righteous king that will rule the nations with a rod of iron and bring justice to the rebellious kings of the earth.
There is a promise in the psalms that God makes to all people. The righteous will be established and the wicked will perish, because God is a God that deals justly with all people. He will hold everyone to account for their actions and bring justice to his creation by putting an end to evil and reigning in righteousness.
But this is not just the teaching of the Psalter, it is the teaching of all of Scripture. Listen to Job 34:10-12:
Job 34:10-12
10 “Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding:
far be it from God that he should do wickedness,
and from the Almighty that he should do wrong.
11 For according to the work of a man he will repay him,
and according to his ways he will make it befall him.
12 Of a truth, God will not do wickedly,
and the Almighty will not pervert justice.
God is a God of justice because he cannot do wrong. It is not in his nature. Therefore, he will render to man what he deserves based solely on what each man does. He will punish the wicked and vindicate the righteous.
The error we could make as we consider God as a just judge is to picture him as harsh and vindictive. One way to illustrate this is to ask a lost person why God forgives. Have you ever thought about that? Why does God forgive? When I have conversations with lost people, 9 times out of 10 when you ask them why they think they will be forgiven, they say something to the effect that God is love or God is good and kind. A God that keeps people accountable and gives people exactly what they deserve is not good or kind, he is mean, and angry, and harsh.
But this is directly contradictory to what Scripture teaches. That God is a just judge is because he is a good judge. Listen to Proverbs 18:5:
Proverbs 18:5
5 It is not good to be partial to the wicked
or to deprive the righteous of justice.
This is the God that David knows in Psalm 7. David has been accused, he has been sinned against by his son and his elders that are actively rebelling against him, and he is calling out to a judge that he knows is righteous and good, and will render a just verdict. All that we stand to learn from Psalm 7 is dependent on the fact that God is a just judge and he can render just verdicts because he tests the minds and hearts of men.
God judges the secret hearts of men.
Which brings us to our second point: God judges the secret hearts of men. In our second point, we are going to see David put himself on trial before the just judge of verse 9. To understand the trial, we must understand the accusation, David’s plea, and the verdict. By the end of the trial, we are going to see that David is both guilty and not guilty. He is not guilty of the accusation made against him by Shimei in this particular trial, but he is guilty of the sins he committed against Bathsheba, Uriah, and his people.
First, what are the accusations being brought against David in Psalm 7 and who is making them? In the superscription to the Psalm, we read this:
Psalm 7 Superscription
A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.
Everything in Psalm 7 is a response to whatever accusation Cush, the Benjaminite is making against David. Now, no one definitively knows who this Cush is, but I think it is Shimei, Saul’s son, that is cursing David as he flees Jerusalem. Turn with me to 2 Samuel 16:5-8:
2 Samuel 16:5-8
5 When King David came to Bahurim, there came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gera, and as he came he cursed continually. 6 And he threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David, and all the people and all the mighty men were on his right hand and on his left. 7 And Shimei said as he cursed, “Get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man! 8 The LORD has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned, and the LORD has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, your evil is on you, for you are a man of blood.”
I have two reasons that I think Cush is Shimei. First, they were both Benjaminites. Saul was not from the tribe of Judah as some might assume of the first king of Israel. He was a Benjaminite, meaning he was from the tribe of Benjamin. Gera was one of the subtribes within the tribe of Benjamin. So Shimei, as a part of Saul’s house, was a Benjaminite.
The second reason is that Shimei levels an accusation at David and what Shimei says lines up with David’s defense in Psalm 7. Look at verse at verses 7 and 8 of 2 Samuel one more time.
2 Samuel 16:7-8
And Shimei said as he cursed, “Get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man! 8 The LORD has avenged on you all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned, and the LORD has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, your evil is on you, for you are a man of blood.”
Shimei says that Absalom overthrowing David is just because David overthrew Saul. David is falling into the same evil that he brought on Saul and all his house.
This is a serious accusation that requires a serious response. It is false, but it is very serious. It is false because David had multiple opportunities to kill Saul in secrecy and in battle but he refuses to. Saul was the Lord’s anointed and David knew not to raise a hand against the Lord’s anointed one.
If we were to keep reading in 2 Samuel, one of David’s men wanted to go over and put an end to Shimei, but David stops him. Despite the falsity of the accusation, David does seek justice before men, he wrote Psalm 7 to seek justice before God. We can see this in 2 Samuel 16:12. David says:
2 Samuel 16:12
It may be that the LORD will look on the wrong done to me, and that the LORD will repay me with good for his cursing today.”
So, the accusation is made, it is false, but David seeks justice before God and not before men.
Which brings us back to Psalm 7. Now that we understand the accusation, we must now understand David’s plea and defense.
In verses 6-8, David calls on God to convene his court and hear David’s case. He says:
Psalm 7:6-8
6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
8 The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
The court has been set and the accusation of Shimei has been made. What is David’s pleas? We find it in verses 3-4:
Psalm 7:3-4
3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
David’s plea is for justice. He pleas not guilty and in his plea we can see the parallel between what David says in verses 3-4 and Shimei’s accusation in 2 Samuel 16.
David’s relationship with Saul was complicated from the beginning, but David was always faithful to respect and honor Saul. He fled instead of defending himself against Saul’s murderous intent. When he had opportunity for revenge he didn’t take it. And when Saul committed suicide and a sycophant seeking David’s approval claimed to have been the one to kill Saul, David killed that man because of his respect for God and love for Saul. In all the accusations that can be leveled at David, usurper is not one of them.
But I think there is a deeper pain David feels at the accusation of Shimei. Look at verse 4.
Psalm 7:4
4 if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
I don’t think you could ever say that Saul was David’s friend. Shimei accuses David of being guilty of all the blood of the House of Saul. David is not only sitting on Saul’s throne, but on Saul’s son’s throne. Shimei is accusing David of usurping Jonathan and all his descendants. Jonathan was David’s best friend in life. They loved each other like brothers. They made a covenant to always care for each other’s children. Shimei’s accusation has to cut David to the core because of his love for Jonathan.
So David puts himself on trial before a just judge and asks to be judged. If he has taken Saul’s kingdom by force or deception or done evil to Jonathan, then Absalom is justified to take David’s kingdom in the same way. David’s plea is not guilty.
Finally, we get to the verdict. What is God’s judgment of David? It does not seem that there is a verdict rendered in the Psalm. The court is convened, David’s plea is made, but the verdict is only implied. In verse 10, David says:
Psalm 7:10
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
David just pleaded in verse 8 to be judged according to his own righteousness. In verse 9 we have this beautiful statement of God’s justice and righteousness. David asks God to judge the secrets of his heart, and then in verse 10, where we expect to see the verdict, we see David casting himself on grace. He asks God to be his shield and to save those that are upright in heart. It doesn’t seem like the verdict is handed down in our sermon text.
So let me put forward my understanding of God’s verdict in David’s life. We have clearly seen that David is not guilty of the accusations Shimei makes against him in Bahurim. David not only honored Saul in life, but he also honored him in death. He also remained faithful to his covenant with Jonathan and redeemed Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son. But even if David did the right things for the wrong reasons, the Lord would know that. He can see David’s heart. David is not guilty of any accusation Shimei could bring against him regarding Saul’s house because David genuinely honored the Lord and honored Saul in the way he handled his own anointing and his long wait to become king of Israel.
However, that is not all that David is on trial for. In previous sermons in the Psalms, we have seen that everything taking place from Psalm 3-9 was written in response to David’s flight from Absalom. In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan makes it clear that God will repay David for seducing Bathsheba, killing Uriah, and misusing the authority that God gave him over the nation of Israel. Shimei gets it wrong that David is suffering because of the way he handled Saul, but he got it right that David is suffering because of his own sin.
God justifies the unjust.
Which brings us to our third and final point: God justifies the unjust. We have already seen that God is a just judge and we have seen that he judges the secret hearts of men, but now we have to deal with the fact that David was not destroyed by Absalom. David says in verses 15 and 16 that evil men fall into the evil plans that they make. Why has that not happened with David? Let’s finish our study of Psalm 7 by reading the beginning and the end of the psalm. Look at verses 1 and 2, and 17:
Psalm 7:1-2; 17
1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
17 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.
What is David’s hope to escape the evil that he has brought into the world? David can defend himself from the accusations of Shimei, but can his own righteousness save him from the evil he committed against Bathsheba, Uriah, Tamar, or even Absalom? Every single negative thing that has happened in the second half of the book of 2 Samuel is directly related to David’s weakness and sin.
So, if we didn’t know how the story ended and we only had Psalm 7, we would expect that David would die, Absalom would become king, and justice would be done. But that is not what happens. David is not overthrown. Absalom is the one that dies. And justice is not done. You heard me right. Justice is not given to all the families that David sinned against and all the people whose lives were ruined by David sinfulness.
Which leaves us with a huge problem. How can God be a just judge, which we have clearly seen that he is, and David not be brought to justice? Where is the payment for David’s sin? The answer to that question is at the center of everything the Bible teaches and we could expand it. Not only, where is the payment for David’s sin, but where is the payment for Abraham’s sin? He was an idolater and selfish. He tried, on two different occasions, to save his own life by prostituting his wife. Or where is the payment for Moses’s sin? He murdered a man in cold blood. Where was the payment for Samson’s sin? He was a fornicator. Where was the payment for Noah’s sin? He was a drunk. Where was the payment for Solomon’s sin? He was a polygamist that was led into idolatry by his foreign wives. How can God be a God of justice, a just judge, when he does not do what he says he is going to do? When he doesn’t give the heroes of the Old Testament what they actually deserve and he lets them off the hook. How can David end this psalm by giving thanks to God for his righteousness when we have not seen him be righteous?
Turn with me to Romans 3:21-26. Paul answers this question for us.
Romans 3:21-26
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 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. 26 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.
Paul answers our question. How can God pass over sins and still be a just judge? The answer is he doesn’t, not ultimately. The answer is that every single one of David’s sins, and Abraham’s sins, and Moses’s sins, and all the sins of the saints in the Old Testament were paid for, eventually. They just weren’t paid for by those that committed them. They were paid for by the blessed man, the only begotten Son, they were paid for by Jesus Christ.
Paul says that the righteousness of God is demonstrated by the fact that every single sin that he past over in the Old Testament was laid on Christ at the cross. The mystery of ages past was manifested in a man, hanging on a tree, dying for sins that he did not commit, so that the righteous judge could look on him and pardon me. God is both just and the justifier of the one that has faith in Jesus. He is the just judge that justifies the unjust.
This is the Gospel. This is why David can trust in God to be his shield to save him from the evil that he brought on himself. That evil was eventually atoned for by the blood and sacrifice of David’s greater son, who was God himself.
Conclusion:
As we conclude, I will return to our question at the beginning of the sermon. Where is justice? I wonder if Christ asked that question in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was pleading with the Father for another way. Where is justice?
As a Church that lives in a world so consumed by asking that question, have we genuinely considered what we are asking? If anyone can claim that the Gospel is unjust, it is not the victims of sin, but the one who paid the penalty. God himself took on humanity to stand in our place and in the place of every single person that takes refuge in him to bear the wrath of God that they deserved so that they would not have to. He was a shield for unrighteous sinners. He was a refuge for those that were too weak to stand before the tempest of God’s wrath. He was a propitiation, an all satisfying sacrifice, for David’s sin and my sin and everyone’s sin that put their faith in him.
God is the just judge that justifies the unjust because his just Son took the unjust punishment that justice required.
Let’s pray.