Over the past year, how many of you have said something along the lines of, our country is falling apart? I normally ask you to think about these questions, but let's see a show of hands. How many have said something along that nature? Our country is falling apart, is falling to pieces. You might, when you say that, be thinking about the economic status of our country, where things aren't as good as they used to be. Maybe you were thinking about the political changes that we've watched happen over the last several years. Maybe it's the increase of crime. We've certainly seen a lot of that over the last few years, right? Crimes on the uptick. Maybe it's the moral character of our nation that you've watched decline over your lifetime. All these things might be the reasons that you say our country is falling apart. It's falling to pieces. We know that we've seen righteousness being disregarded, we've seen unrighteous behavior rewarded. One point that I want to make this morning is that our country is less than 250 years old at this point. And we're measuring things in that time frame. Now, I make that point because the psalm we're looking at this morning is more than 2,500 years. Now, I know math may not be a strong part, but 250 is less than 2,500 by a factor of 10. And yet, a lot of the problems we see in our country are present in the psalm we're looking at this morning. There's nothing in our psalm this morning that ties it to any specific event in the nation of Israel's history. We can't point to a time period, but we can point to a lot of similarity between what was happening in their nation and what's happening in ours. We do know that this psalm was placed into the Psalter when it was organized in its final form so that it lands here in the third book of the Psalter. This is what our series has been going through, the third section, the third book, if you would, of the Psalter. And in this section, many of the psalms have been psalms of lament. You've listened to many of those as we've gone through this series. Laments of individual nature as we live in this sin-filled world and it crushes in upon us and we cry out to God because of it. Many of the psalms have dealt with those injustices that people experience because this world is filled with sin. Well, our psalm this morning also deals with the topic of injustice. but looks at it from a different angle. It takes a different perspective. Rather than being a lament of personal experience, the injustice that this psalm considers is what happens when those who are responsible for ensuring that justice is served fail to do so. Those whose jobs are to deal with injustice, promote it rather than discourage it. This psalm deals with those who failed the nation of Israel. They failed to ensure that Israel would be a just nation, a nation that honored righteousness and punished unrighteousness. It's a short psalm. It's a short psalm, so let's read through all of it before we start. Psalm 82. God takes a stand in his own congregation. He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Vindicate the weak and the fatherless. Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the weak and needy. Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall like anyone of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possesses all the nations." I titled this sermon, as you can see on the screen, The God of Judges. We see the idea for this title right in the very first verse. In that very first verse, the idea that we find there is that God will judge. God will judge. Really, I think you have to love the image that the psalmist creates here. He says God takes his stand. The scene is that of courtroom. Courtroom where the judge walks in and comes to the very place where justice is to find its home, the courtroom. In this courtroom, God serves as the judge. The court's in session and God is presiding in all of his holiness, in all of his sovereignty, in all of his righteousness. God is the judge. There's an interesting wordplay in this verse. It's really, excuse me, an interesting wordplay that has led to a lot of interpretive debate around this psalm. I'm going to warn you, I'm going to wade into the weeds a little bit. Maybe quite a bit. I'm going to wade into the weeds, but I have a point, so bear with me. I expect that most of you know that the Hebrew word Elohim is one of the words used for God in the Old Testament. Technically, Elohim, the Hebrew word, is the plural form of the very common noun El. That's the word for a deity, El. Elohim means a plural. And in Hebrew, the plural can mean a plural, but the plural can also be used to emphasize majesty, or to emphasize the greatest, what we would call the superlative. So Elohim can be seen as the most majestic god of the gods. God that is above all gods. Well, the wordplay in verse 1 of our psalm is that Elohim here is used at both the beginning of the verse and the end of the verse. In the beginning is clearly a reference to God because it's used with a singular verb. That's one of the ways you can find out it's a the emphasis. It's a plural noun but it's used with singular verbs so that means it's really a singular noun being elevated. Do you follow me? I'm trying not to get too complicated here but these are important weeds even though we're going to mow them down, okay? In the beginning is a reference to God. At the end of the verse is clearly a plural word. As I said, the plural can be just a plural, gods. Many English versions, like the new King James Version, for example, represent this word play literally by translating the verse, God stands in the congregation of the mighty, he judges among the gods. That's an accurate translation, but do you see the problem? Who is it that God is judging? Who are the gods? I bring this out because I know that in this room there are several different translations being used. Plus, I also know many of you have study Bibles that have notes that help you understand what is in the text. Not to mention that you all have phones and a quick online search will give you numerous hits. So depending on what you have in your hands at the moment, you may have one of three answers to the question of who is God judging when it says the gods? Some scholars and commentators suggest that the God is judging the false gods that surround the nation of Israel. He's essentially giving a mock trial, as it were, to judge all the false gods, to impress upon his people that he alone is the mighty sovereign God. Well, the problem I have with this suggestion is that nowhere does the Bible ever even give a nod of validity to the pagan views of other deities being real. The Bible never suggests that false gods are in any sense real. How could God judge a non-entity? Even setting up a mock trial against pagan gods seems contrary to the rest of Scripture. Well, that's one view. A second view is that God is judging the spiritual powers that stand behind these ideas of pagan gods and all the injustices that occur in the land. That's better. And now, I don't believe that spiritual powers that are aligned with Satan, you know, the demons, the demonic forces that are behind all idolatry, I don't believe anywhere else in the Bible those demons are called gods. But this view at least aligns with the rest of scripture. Demons do stand behind false worship. They do stand ultimately behind the unjust system that Satan oversees in this world. Still, as you might guess, I lean toward a third view, a third option, as, in my opinion, the best interpretive choice. It's the choice that's represented by the New American Standard translation that we just read. That view is that this plural form of Elohim at the end of the verse that's used here to set up this courtroom scene, Elohim, the supreme God is judging over the Elohim, that really it's setting up that God is calling in the most powerful members of society into the courtroom. The rulers and the judges, those that are responsible for ensuring that justice is served on his behalf in his world, they are the ones he's calling. They are the ones that may think of themselves as gods. God, in fact, is sarcastically, mockingly calling them gods because they think they're powerful. But he's calling them before him. they're about to give an account to God for the way they've mishandled their responsibilities. The responsibilities that the supreme God, the sovereign God, the only true God, the living God, has entrusted to them. Now I will admit that there is, again, no other clear text in scripture where God refers to humanity, humans, as gods. Still, I think I'm on pretty solid ground with this interpretation. And the reason I think I'm on solid ground here is because Jesus interprets this psalm as a reference to human leaders. He quotes verse 6 in an argument in John chapter 10. It's found in beginning verse 34 and flows for a few verses there. Jesus is arguing with the Jewish leaders of the day and they're accusing him of blasphemy because he called himself the son of God. And he says, why are you accusing me of blasphemy for me calling myself the son of God when your scriptures call your forefathers gods? So Jesus is referring to this verse saying it's pointing to the leaders. So I think that's a good translation or good interpretation. Now, I know I took you into a lot of weeds, but I want you to see why I agree that the new American standard is right, that God is judging the rulers, the judges, the powerful people of society, those who have failed to uphold the standard of justice that God has set. It's a responsibility that God has delegated by placing them into their position of authority. Now they are giving an account for how they fulfilled, or failed rather, to fulfill that role. God will judge. That's the point there of verse 1. Verse 1 makes that clear. If we move on to verse 2, we see that God will judge based upon reality. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Here God has begun to speak in verse 2. God actually continues speaking all the way through verse 7. He starts speaking with a question, clearly a rhetorical question. God isn't asking for information, it's a rhetorical question. The implication is when he says, how long is that perversion of justice is occurring and it's been happening for some time. This is not new. It's not a new problem. The leaders have settled into a pattern, a pattern of dealing unjustly with the people that come before them. Note this specific accusation implied in the second part of the verse. Rather than upholding righteousness, these leaders have shown partiality to the wicked. Let's put this in perspective. God, the holy God, the righteous God, the just God, has observed this happening repeatedly. Second Chronicles 19.7, in the context there actually of judges being appointed to oversee the judicial system of Israel. In that context, they're told, if they take their role as judges, that the Lord, our God, will have no part in unrighteousness or partiality or the taking of a bribe. Yet God has watched. If judges who've been appointed to that position have time and again shown partiality for unrighteousness. In other words, they flipped the duty they were given on his head and done the exact opposite. And while they may think that God did not notice, God clearly is not ignorant of their actions. And he is about to judge based on what has truly occurred, what has really happened. You know, verse 2 here, this is one of those verses that we probably need to meditate on a lot more frequently than we do. We're so caught up in the here and now. We see the wicked getting away with their wickedness in the here and now, And we start despairing at the state of our world. How many times have we said that opening thing, our country is falling apart, with a little bit of despair underlying it? We see the wicked getting away without these consequences, and we frankly have the same thoughts as the wicked do. The wicked are doing what they're doing because they think they can get away with it, that God doesn't know. We start moaning and groaning because we think the wicked can get away because God isn't aware. Friends, that is a wicked thought because it is a wrong thought. It is an unbiblical thought. It is a thought that is completely contrary to how God has revealed his character to be in his word, and yet we harbor that thought. Let's call ourselves out for sin when we sin. God is aware of what is happening. God knows the wickedness that is being done, and God has promised that he will do something about it. God is aware of all the injustice that happens when the powerful people of our society show partiality toward those who do wickedness. God is aware and he has told us that he will judge based upon reality, not appearances. All the moaning and groaning that we have about the state of our country reflects a failure to take God at his word. is the sinful attitude that we need to confess and we need to turn away from. God will judge based on reality. Not only that, but we could anticipate God will judge also based upon righteous expectations. Righteous expectations. Each line here, verses 3 and 4, are driven by an imperative. Vindicate. Do justice. Rescue. Deliver. Four imperatives. God is really, it seems like he's pounding on the stand saying, here is what I told you to do. Vindicate. Do justice. Rescue. Deliver. These are your duties. He's given clear responsibilities to the leaders that he's placed into positions over the nations. So it's clear how his judgments will be rendered. God has emphatically stated, here's what you must do. He's put people in positions throughout the nation for a specific purpose. He's told them how to fulfill their role. They have socially and economically weak among them because this is a sin-filled world. There will always be the destitute. There will always be those who need help. There will always be downtrodden people because there's sin in this world. The socially strong are to be the ones who will stand up for the wicked, or against the wicked, for the downtrodden. Those judges, the leaders, the ones he's placed into these positions, their job is to make sure that the wicked do not exploit the weak. And if that happens, if the wicked do something that ploys the weak, they should punish them so that a lesson will be served that will hinder others from doing likewise. There will be fear to take advantage of the weak. That's their duty. They are to make sure the most vulnerable members of society have somewhere to turn to solicit help. That's why God placed them into positions of authority. That's why they have influence in their society. Their duty is clear. Ensure righteousness. Let me just mention, before we move on, that God's expectations for anyone that he places into a position to render judgment hasn't changed. God still expects people in a position to judge right from wrong to judge righteously. The women filling the halls of power in our country have the same duty before God as the men did back here in ancient Israel. While we should not doubt God's promise to judge, we still at the same time should not hesitate to call on those who are in positions that God has placed them in to live out the duty that God gave them. We should call on our leaders to stand for righteousness. Especially we should expect they would do that among the most vulnerable. We should hold them accountable when they fail. This is an election year. Now, I agree it's hard sometimes to wade through the rhetoric of our politicians to really figure out who might be standing for righteousness and who might not be. But we should look for men and women who will fulfill the righteousness that God expects. The righteous expectations that God gives in verses three and four. Notice, the expectation is not that they will make our lives more profitable. or that our retirement will be easier, it's that they will vindicate the weak, they will do justice for the afflicted, they will rescue the needy, they will deliver those people from the hands of wickedness. That's what we are to look for in our leaders. Let's bring this a little bit closer to home, though. Yes, we all vote, but that's still kind of abstract. We may not be those who render great judgment in our society. In fact, I don't think any of us fit that category. But all of us are likely at various times called to render judgments between people. In those moments, when those expectations are there, God's expectations of righteousness should guide us. So, parents, when your children have complaints against each other. Children never complain about their siblings, right? Parents, when your children are complaining, your job is not simply to quell the noise of disharmony in the home. Your job is to display a love for righteousness. A display that shows up in the judgments that you render. Similarly, if you have two employees arguing or if you have two friends that are spatting, our concern must always be righteousness. After all, God will render his judgments of all who judge based on righteous expectations that he has decreed. That includes us. For all the situations that God calls us to render judgment on, we are expected to render according to his righteous decrees. God will judge based upon righteous expectations. In the final verses then of that short speech that God gives, things get really specific. We see in the last three verses of his speaking, verses five, six, and seven, that God will judge even the most powerful of people. Even the most powerful. They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. He's talking about these leaders, these judges, these rulers. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, you are gods. And all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes." Verse 6, as I said, that's the verse that Jesus quotes in his argument there in John 10 with Jewish leaders. That argument fits the context of the psalm. Because the Jewish leaders fit the context of the psalm. They think they're high and mighty. But God says, you're just like everybody else. Of course, all the leaders throughout human history fit the context of this psalm. They are there because God has placed them where they are. Men and women enjoy high positions of authority, are prone, when they are in those positions, to think that somehow they have figured things out. One of the natural temptations they face is that they expect that people will hang on their words because they're important people. I mean, think, just for example, of all the athletes or celebrities that post opinions all over social media about something as outside their zone as environmental concerns. How many celebrities and athletes have posted things about environmental issues? Think about it. These individuals, they may be great at handling a ball, or they may be really good at convincingly portraying a character, but they have absolutely no qualifications to deal with the technicalities of environmental issues. Nor do I, for that matter. Yet they believe that their popularity qualifies them to have an influential opinion. Well, people in positions to render judgment over other people can easily fall into that same trap. They can think because they're in this position, they know more than they do. Yet God states that they do not. They're walking around in darkness. They're blind. Instead, what they do with this false idea is that they shake the foundations of the earth They do that by rendering perverted justice. In other words, they're shaking the very moral order that God has designed his world to operate under because they're giving injustice in their decisions. Verse 6 is stated in an extremely emphatic way. I said. God is saying, it's, I am the one, listen to me, I said. your gods." In other words, they're only in their position because God has put them there. The God who spoke, let there be light, and there was light, said, you have a position of authority. He has personally assigned each of them their position. The problem comes when they fail to realize this fundamental truth and forget that they're really in that position under God. They start to act, probably even start to think, that they're truly equal with God. After all, this is mankind's fundamental issue, isn't it? All the way from the Garden of Eden, our fundamental problem as humanity is that we want to be equal to God. We want to be like God. We want to be gods. Adam and Eve desired to be like God. We want to be like God. And the mirage of power can cause people to think that they've actually accomplished that desire. All too quickly, any of us find ourselves forgetting that we are wherever we are in this world because God has personally placed us there. We have our assignments in life, whatever they are, because God has spoken. Verse 6, as I said, begins with that emphatic I. Well, verse 7 begins with an equally emphatic word. It's a contrast. Nevertheless, I placed you in a position. You got the wrong idea about it. Nevertheless, you will die like men. It doesn't matter how high people are. It doesn't matter how mighty people become. It doesn't matter how godlike people see themselves. All die. Think of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She was the first woman judge to make it on the Supreme Court of the U.S. She served there from 1981 to 2006. She was one of nine justices in the highest court of our land. Aside from becoming the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, she went as high as you could get in the judicial system. Yesenia O'Connor died just over a month ago, on December 1st. Now, I'm not implying that she had a high opinion of herself. I don't know her. I don't know enough about her to know if she intentionally flouted God. I do know that regardless of the great achievement that she made it to in the judicial realm, despite that great achievement, she died. She died like every other person. And beyond that, there is no doubt that she will face the judgment of God like every other person. God will judge even the most powerful people. Having made that point, God ends his speech. God is done talking at the end of verse 7, yet the psalmist has one final point for us. A point he makes in verse 8. Going back to the base idea, God will judge. Pray. Pray. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possesses all the nations." The psalmist hears what God has said and responds with this urgent prayer. Arise! Judge the earth! Having faced the failings of the human judges, the psalmist appeals to the one who has placed them into their positions. He prays. He prays to God. The supreme ruler before whom all other rulers will stand in judgment, he calls out to God. The psalmist knows that God will judge. God will judge, so he prays. And by doing that, he models the response that all people of faith should show when they face injustice in their own world, in all of its many, many diverse forms. The expectation is that because God will judge, His people will pray to Him when they face injustice from those in authority. Of course, this means that we should find ourselves praying a whole lot more than we do. Rather than spending that time complaining about our country instead of moaning and groaning where our country is headed, we ought to be praying. I remember when I worked in an assembly plant, the plant manager had a saying when people were talking about a problem in the plant. And they would come in and they'd give a report on the problem and they'd say something along the lines of, well, we hope, I hope this will happen. And he'd look at them and say, if all you can do is hope, get on your knees and pray. At least you're doing something. Well, he was not Christian. He was trying to make a point. But we are believers, right? We know that prayer does something. So why are we not using it? Why are we moaning and groaning about our country when we have a judge, the ultimate judge, that we can escalate our issues to? When I worked in the corporate world, the company I worked for had what they called open door policy. The idea of the open door policy was that anyone in the company could escalate an issue up through the leadership chain to get it resolved. You could escalate your issue all the way up to the chairman of the company if you wanted. That was the policy. If you thought you needed to go that high to resolve your issue. Well, folks, we have the ultimate open door policy. We can escalate to the one who can handle everything. We should take advantage of that option more and more as our concerns for justice increase. Arise, O God. Come to our aid. God will judge. Pray. That is the point of verse 8. God will judge. God will judge upon both reality and righteous expectations. God will judge even the most powerful people. God will judge. Pray. Certainly there is a lesson for us about prayer in this psalm. we can and should take our cries of distress to God when we encounter injustice, when the authorities over us promote wickedness rather than righteousness. Still, I think the lesson goes beyond prayer. If we consider everything we've seen in this psalm regarding God's promise of justice, it's broader than just prayer. The larger lesson is that God will judge. We have hope. We have hope. God will judge. We have hope. Clearly, God is the supreme ruler before whom all rulers will stand. This world is God's world. It is his sovereign domain. God will ensure that justice is ultimately seen in his creation. When that happens, the corrupt will face condemnation, the faithful will face vindication. That is our hope. God will set all things right. Acts 17.31 assures us that God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed. That man is Christ Jesus. A man who has demonstrated that he is completely righteous. He is perfectly righteous. God has appointed other judges who have failed to live righteously and to do righteousness. The man who will ultimately judge all things has proven he does only righteous. Whereas all other fail to render righteous judgments, Jesus will not. The appointed judges of today, they may fit the pattern of the rulers of Psalm 82, but Jesus is already appointed to rectify everything that they get wrong. That day is coming. Jesus is coming. We have hope. We have hope. God's future judgment is the basis of real hope. At the same time, we do live in the here and now. I understand that. Hope is in the future. We hope because we don't have. We hope with confidence, but we don't have. We live in the here and now. And this psalm has something it can teach us for today beyond waiting patiently for the future. Our hope is not limited to a future. I can think of a few ways of application that our hope trickles into the here and now. Certainly, one, we should prepare ourselves to stand before God's judgment ourselves. We have to know the one who will judge all things. We have to know Jesus as our Savior. But we also have to recognize that even knowing Jesus as Savior, we still face the temptation of living independently of God. We face the temptation to ignore his standards of righteousness. That temptation, as I said, is not limited to those in high positions of authority. We all face it. So we need to remember we will stand before God's judgment. We will give an account for our acts of unrighteousness. We need to prepare in large ways, like Accepting Jesus as Savior, that's the foundation to all things, but we also need to prepare in small ways by living righteously. Even in the little things. For example, I'll just give you an example here. We're all, unless some of us are really on the ball this year, which is, I guess, possible, but highly unlikely, knowing our nature. All of us in the next three months are going to be filling out our taxes. When you do that, are you going to look for opportunities to fudge just a little bit? You know, maybe embellish your deductions a little bit, or ignore maybe some cash earnings that you have. Doing little things to reduce your taxes. No one would know. No one does except God, who is the judge. we need to prepare ourselves to stand before God's judgment. Another aspect of application here is that we should work for justice. As much as we can in this world, I mentioned that we have upcoming elections, we certainly should view our votes as an opportunity to work for justice. But beyond that, God may grant us, and he does grant us, at times, opportunities to help the downtrodden in our society in much smaller ways. That might be as simple as giving an ear to someone who needs advice. Someone that society has cast aside. It might require getting involved in social issues ourselves. Clearly, the unborn are the most extreme example of the vulnerable in our society. We can help the unborn by simply working with Next Step Pregnancy Center. If you don't know how to help, see Stacy. She's right here. She'll get you plugged in. I guarantee it. God clearly cares about rescuing the vulnerable. Do we? Finally, we apply this psalm simply by resisting despair. Sure, we're surrounded by sinful people doing sinful things. That's no surprise. It's been that way since the Garden of Eden. At times it does appear as if they and their unrighteousness is getting the upper hand. It appears that unrighteousness and wickedness is increasing and righteousness is decreasing. That's the appearance. Our psalm reminds us that this world has had that appearance for thousands of years. I'm not trying to belittle the unrighteousness of our day, but I am trying to remind us that God remains sovereign. The wicked of our society will not have the final say. Unrighteousness will not win in the end. Righteousness wins. God will judge. We have hope. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would help us to truly grasp this psalm this morning. That we would leave here, men and women, filled with hope because we know our God more clearly. That we see you more fully. That we anticipate your righteous judgments with greater confidence. With such confidence that it shapes how we live. May we boldly live for you, standing against the unrighteousness of our world, with confidence in our Savior who will come and judge all one day. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.