PS 94 1 " O LORD, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth."When man sinned, he promptly throws the whole earth into the continuous process of dreadful death. Everything was cursed by God. The desperate hope for completed restoration was reluctantly abandoned.But when God reestablishes His mighty kingdom, we are brought back to that radical vision of restoration. This beatific vision defines both understandable and mysterious desires. Because the created earth is plunged desperately into violent rebellion and pervasive corruption everyone is guilty of naturally producing destruction and death.   

The exclusive power that is preventing man from destroying himself and the earth is God's effective power. The sole way that God can sufficiently restore the original freedom and moral goodness is through judicial punishment. The Psalmist is saying only God comprehends the way to restore the utmost freedom because God is the judge. No man seeks judgment without first desiring it. God is graciously allowing the man what he naturally desires. He is not responsible for their personal judgement nor is His, saints. We are worthy of a suitable reward because we earnestly want deliverance at the reasonable expense of divine justice. The quickest way to satisfactorily resolve this social problem is for God to generously provide us with what we sincerely desire. For Him to justly give the wicked what they naturally desire. That's when all things are unified.

 2 " Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve,"The Psalmist is justly saying that the sooner the Lord takes vengeance the fewer innocent people will be sorely hurt. The proud befall those people who do not enjoy God in their thoughts, live as if God does not exist. In the Psalms, a person who does not acknowledge God is spreading a destructive disease or the nervous dread of the curse.
3" How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant?"What inevitably happens when the wicked are happy? They are being used by powerful men to establish a terrible curse. This heathen world has a political power structure in which men become gods as they establish their own authority and accumulate many personal followers.

 4" They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting."God has established His authority by His words. To speak in a way to overturn His word, or to redefine His word is the same thing as seizing a kingdom by violence. "Boasting" is clearly establishing authority by abusing someone else. 5 "They crush your people, O LORD; they oppress your inheritance."They torture Gods people...137 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps,3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" They make war with Israel and import them into captivity. They ruthlessly sacrifice the helpless babies of Israel on the altar.8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us-- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

   6 "They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless. " God has established His law to defend the helpless and the powerless from being abused. When men unanimously overturn God's law, they obtain power by destroying the powerless.
7 They say, "The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed." When the wicked rule they spread hopelessness. This is the agitated voice of the wicked curse in the wounded hearts of Gods concerned people. 22 8 "He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." This is the wicked curse of faithlessness.  

  9 "Does he who implanted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?
10 Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches man lack knowledge?
11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man; he knows that they are futile." But because God is the creator then He controls the outcome. So God has established His way through pronouncing a curse on those who spread the wicked curse of faithlessness. The Lord knows or He creates futility through giving the wicked what they are thinking. We wish the full effect of the curse of the law because it is the only method by which power is transferred.
12" Blessed is the man you discipline, O LORD, the man you teach from your law;
13 you grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance.
15 Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it."Man in a collective sense. God disciplines Israel by punishing the waywardness of the wicked but using that punishment to double the blessing of His saints. He is saying God has made the kingdom flourish in His people by giving them all they need in salvation. They naturally follow His success." will follow it." The basis of this new kingdom relationship is God's faithfulness in His covenants. "he will never forsake his inheritance." In other words to be consistent. God disciplines the whole nation to bless the saints. 13" you grant him relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked."

 

 

A lot of people teach that God will hide His face from us when we sin. But these complaints in the Psalms about Gods anger or His rejection are not talking about the context of salvation in a relationship but salvation in the absolute terms. Salvation is physical deliverance from the deadly wound in war. Gods wrath is according to His justice. God cannot hate His own work that His Son accomplished. It would be like cursing Himself.

A lot of people play fast and loose with this language. But these Psalms are written to pronounce and not as a class room study. They are written with forms of speech and in a language of absolute context. They are written as hate speech that is on the lips of Gods people toward the destruction that is practiced by the wicked. The general attitude of the Psalmist is an absolute hatred expressed by God in cursing. So if the anger was directed toward Gods covenant people the prosecuting identity would be of no value.

This is why there is no such thing as two line. The curse leads to destruction and the blessing leads to eternal life. One line is going in the opposite direction of the other line. To love God is to oppose Gods opposition absolutely. To love ones neighbor it to express the full anger of God toward his destruction. Love and hate used as positive redeeming attitudes. Only two line teaches that hate is good in bringing righteousness.

When the Psalmist complains about a problem it is in the absolute words. There are no pragmatic expressions in the Psalms.27 9 Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior". The Psalmist is speaking as a prosecutor and enforcing the curse by alluding to the death that he sees in the battle field ...this is an expression like if" I forget Jerusalem may my right hand forget its skill." This statement is making it doubly trusting of Gods faithfulness on His side of the covenant. The same thing here ..saying that he is experiencing the pain of the curse like all of the enemy lying on the ground ..dead.

 

Ps 7 9 O righteous God, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure.

10 My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart.

11 God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.

12 If he does not relent, he will sharpen his sword; he will bend and string his bow.

13 He has prepared his deadly weapons; he makes ready his flaming arrows.

14 He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment.

The law of the curse is like a war between the Lord and the wicked. The Law given to Moses had in each one a proclamation of death to law breakers. When the Psalms speak about Gods fight with those who oppose Him it is in the context of adding weight until the person is crush under the weight of the curse. When the curses are pronounced we are fighting with spiritual weapons. 7 16 "The trouble he causes recoils on himself; his violence comes down on his own head. 17 13 Rise up, O LORD, confront them, bring them down; rescue me from the wicked by your sword. 5 Since they show no regard for the works of the LORD and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again"

This is why we are taught that our fight with earthly weapons are of no consequence to this eternal struggle with evil. We may have the responsibility to protect our home but this is an earthly attempt that is constrained by the moment in time 44 1" We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago.

2 With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples and made our fathers flourish.3 It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them..But this struggle through pronouncing the curses has been going on since the beginning of creation."20 7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. Because we fail to fight with spiritual weapons we are of no value in overcoming evil. Because we trust in temporary fixes we never overcome the evil.Gen 4 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."

One generation teaches the next generation the works of the Lord. The works of the Lord rise and fall according to the pronouncement of the curses and the blessings. Through the decree.....44 4 You are my King and my God, who decrees victories for Jacob.5 Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes.6 I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory;7 but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame. Through Gods name is simply the use of Gods law as an instrument of war. This is what the apostle teaches us about sanctification. We sanctify the culture by His word. The arm of the flesh is to trust in own horses. The working of the word is a trust in Gods decrees alone. This rising and falling through pronouncing the curses is a work that is done on the heart of Gods elect to wrestle with evil until it is subdued. The confession is.... I do not trust... you put weight on the adversary....44 6 I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory;7 but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame.

The curse is like moving closer to danger and resisting it by pushing it away. The inward battle is always our destroying any opposition through the pronouncement of death while we appear to be as harmless as doves. We are most free when everything that we go through becomes unified in life and death. When we experience the line between blessing and cursing. This is our secret protest that cannot be overcome.

"We need to silence this view that Gods response to evil is a way of controlling it. God views every evil and has determined where it is performed and who does the act from before the creation of the world. When we are convinced that evil is in Gods hands we are free from tension. How does God look at evil?

He looks at evil with perfect judgement. There is no time where God treats evil in a struggle of two wills. God has taken care of evil before it is committed. Even tho we live under the constraints of time ...God determines all reality as if we were before Him in the judgement. There is nothing that opposes God whose power of will or the level of disgust in the act that is not made powerless by Gods curse. God never loses power or respect at any time in the whole history of the earth.

Why do we react as if there was a will that was in competition with God? Why do we feel the tension between good and evil? If there is grace on the earth then it has taken care of evil. Where grace exist evil is dead. The power of evil is the same thing as a small spark being consumed by an ato mic bom. The presence of grace is the reality of Gods absolute rule as if we were all present in the future eternal kingdom without any opposition. Grace tears down any opposition to Gods will. The reason that we struggle with tension is because we are corrupted in every part and we are touched with the curse of pragmatism. " Me

 

Ps 17 15 And I--in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness". When we are saved we are declared righteous. Our old will is not made new...but that will is destroyed...God replaces our old will with a new will...this is called being implanted with the seed of the word of God...When we are implanted with this seed we understand all the words of God ...we may be very small in our understanding but because we understand one word we understand the spirit of all the words. Now listen..as the Apostle says that because we are saved there is no attempt to thwart our growing in Christ that can overcome us.

The Psalmist is saying that because the Psalmist is declared righteous he now enjoys a face to face relationship with God. A new birth voice that is reflective.17 8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek." Without this new relationship we could never receive anything from God without our adding to it. Everything that we receive is gifted to us. This new face to face relationship is bathed in covenant language. In other words face to face means that we are in a relationship with our Father as if Christ was coming to Him. When we are saved we get a whole new image. This is the image of Christ. It has already been given to us in its fullness. This image becomes clearer as we reach our final destination which is His eternal kingdom. But we already understand it because we cannot be made unbalanced since we accept that the word of God unifies all of Gods reality.

When we are saved we go from the strongest opposition which is inside of us to fighting with outside opposition. It is incorrect for us to cures ourselves by saying that we have an equal war between good and evil that we fight on the inside. Rather we are taught that the voices that oppose God are outside of us. 4 6 Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?" Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD". We are taught that the evil that we face is like noise to our ears. As society gets more and more evil we are confronted by noise that gets louder and louder. This is how we face opposition. Because we believe that the power of the curse is no longer speaking from the inner man. But its coming from the wicked...It is expressed by the Psalmist as a threat that we hear that argues against our face to face relationship with God. 10 11 He says to himself, "God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees." This faithless expression that is meant to develop a distrust for God is" He trust in God let God rescue him" This is the most Satanic voice to convince us that we are not face to face with God.

But we enjoy the face of God which shines the glory of Christ. This glory is not goose bumps from hearing that God loves us but its the promise that we have an absolute and final defense that dwells in us ..its the pronouncement of death which is our ability to fight a spiritual war as if we were in a physical war...we have been gifted with covenant words that give us full protection. This protection is described in the way that God overcame Israels enemies by the light from His eyes. 4 6 Many are asking, "Who can show us any good?" Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD". Gods face shines upon us so that we live in the reality that everything that opposes us will die and everything that is for us will promote our eternal life. We overcome through this perfect face to face relationship that is gifted to us by the work of Christ. Me

 

Our provision is unlimited and our failure is taken care of because we are fully accepted in Christ.

Ps 129 He will not let your foot slip—

he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 indeed, he who over Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord watches over you—

the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

6 the sun will not harm you by day,

nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all harm

he will watch over your life;

8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going now and forever more.

The Lord created all things. He is the creator and sustain-er of all creation. When God delivered Israel from Egypt, He led Israel through the desert to the promise land by a cloud. The cloud was a display of Gods control over the creation. At all times Gods is ordering the movements of all the created things. In this way God is working with His hands as He creates and recreates. In Acts the Apostle said that we live and move and have our being in God Not only does God work with the things of creation but He holds us together.

So we only exist because God is always sustaining and healing us. The Psalmist is saying that God gave them a visible display of His power and order when He led them by the cloud. He protected them from the harmful heat of the desert sun and was even watching over them in the cloud by blocking out the light from the moon while they slept.

This is a picture of the incarnation of Christ who became a man and obeyed the Father perfectly. Just as God led Israel to the promise land over very dangerous territory so Christ has made us completely acceptable to the Father by acting perfectly and atoning for our sin. All the work that we do in this life is only acceptable to the Father because Christ went our before us and accomplished the Fathers will.Our provision is unlimited and our failure is taken care of because we are fully accepted in Christ.

 

 The history of the world comprises a comprehensive history of Redemption. God has accurately established an everlasting covenant with a man justifiably called the grace covenant. He established Israel by naturally gifting them with His moral law and continuous acceptance by sovereign grace. Before the foundation of the world, God planned to amply provide mankind with all that they needed. When sin entered man received the generous gifts of God and employed them to intentionally destroy the earth and all mankind. But God even decreed the sin and the destruction of man. All of the histories of mankind were decreed by God. God manages all things. When He graciously provided salvation, He satisfactorily accomplished the work within Himself. No part of the comprehensive history of the world is without God's satisfied justice. Before the foundation of the world, God decreed whatsoever comes passing under the judgment of His absolute justice. So sin or essential righteousness must receive the appropriate consequence as an essential part of decreeing whatsoever comes to pass. The declaratory judgment of all sin was already decreed before the foundation of the world. God's offensive attitude toward sin has always been sealed in His eternal wrath.

 God's eternal judgment from before the historical foundation of the world is written as authoritative pronouncements of the curses. Everything that God has declared is wholly successful because it is sufficiently satisfied with Himself. This is what the Psalmist means by appealing to God for effective relief graciously according to His Name. 9 Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name;"God's eternal covenant of grace given to the saints is ostensibly based upon His own work and will. The history of redemption is God's valuable work as a gift to His Son who has to appropriately place all things under His feet. God's contemptuous attitude toward sin and destruction or righteousness is like a scale of the considerable value of Christ's work on one side and the judgment of sin on the other side. At all times God sufficiently marks all destruction and evil that adds up to the considerable weight of accurate judgment that He meets out toward the wicked. Nothing happens in this world that is beyond God's adding and subtracting.

 At all times Gods curses are judgements that He official accounts to the wicked that are beyond our comprehensive understanding. Gods justice is His ultimate satisfaction of receiving the appropriate consequence of sin and extensive destruction according to the eternal value of Christ active obedience and control. Man maintains his system of arbitrary justice but Gods vengeful response is far worse. When we speak the dreadful curses, they are Gods perfect justice and fearful vengeance according to Gods eternal judgement that is enacted on the reasonable basis of eternal decrees. At every moment God is amply satisfied with the fierce curse as the legitimate consequence of sin and destruction. He was satisfied in His eternal counsel according to the continuous history of His decrees. The pronouncements are calling from eternity past to eternity future of Gods final judgement and divine vengeance. This is critically important because it invariably changes our future bliss in heaven. We will be therefore accepted and valued that we will be stunned at the aggravated abuse that we ill endured on the earth.