Summary 

Anxiety and restlessness are defining features of modern life, but this struggle is not new. As far back as Genesis, humanity was crying out for relief from toil and burden. Jesus answers that cry in Matthew 11:28 with an invitation to find true rest in Him. That rest, however, looks different than most people expect. It is not relaxation or leisure but rest found in meaningful labor, loving relationship, and an eternal perspective. When we come to Jesus as children who receive rather than performers who earn, something shifts. The burden does not disappear, but it becomes genuinely light when carried alongside Him.

Transcript

Lord, I pray that you'd open to our minds and to our hearts this passage that we would see the goodness of a God who judges all, who looks over all. God, I pray. Knowing that the idea of your divine judgment unsettles us at times, I pray, Lord, that it would also give us great hope. Lord, we commit this time to you, and we ask that the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts, would be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
All right. I think it's rather uncontroversial to say that there is no shortage of injustice in the world.
Far from it. It's actually not just maybe that there's no shortage of it, that it just seems to abound. The world seems chock full of it. And of course, it's not hard to think of different cases. The world we could.
I could recount for you some of the history in our own city of redlining and cities throughout our country during the Jim Crow era and how that has continued to have effect in the lives of so many throughout our own land. We could consider human trafficking here in central Pennsylvania or Los Angeles or the boroughs of New York or all throughout the world. We could think of the forced labor that happened during much of colonization, the Spanish Encomita of the Americas, or what they did in what is now the Philippines. I mean, the examples can just kind of abound. We can think of famous court cases of injustice.
You can think, of course, maybe of the Central Park Five. But we could go on and on with court cases. We can think of massive racial injustices, apartheid in South Africa, the transatlantic slave trade. We could think of the genocides in Rwanda or Cambodia. We could think of the Armenian genocide.
And so many Christians, 1.5 million Christians killed during World War I by the Ottoman EMP Empire. And of course, we could talk about the Jews under The Nazis, the 6 million or so that were killed. But what's that? These things just don't happen overnight. It's not just the case that societies at large kind of commit injustice, though that often ends up sometimes happening.
But it's often the case that one individual or one ruler or one authority or one judge acts unjustly and perpetuates injustice.
It's not the case that all of a sudden Hitler appeared.
He was existing within a structure that had a history to it. Let me tell you at least one of the examples that people kind of said, well, much of what happened in this case kind of led structurally to what happened under the third Reich, many of you may know of the Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus, in his case, he was an affluent and rather deeply patriotic Frenchman living in Alsace, which at the time, you may know, that sort of northeastern part of France sort of went between the French and the Germans. But he was a French military officer, and he had, by all means sort of assimilated the French life. And so some people actually that were sort of known anti Semitics thought, well, if we can show that he didn't, can't it be said maybe that all the Jews can't assimilate into French life?
So Dreyfus was accused and he was convicted of treason and more specifically, of selling military secrets to the Germans. He denied the charges. His family protested all of the rest.
And actually, this is where it sort of parallels both what developed in Germany over the next few decades and actually, in some ways, you could say our own time. The mass media took over, as it was in the 1890s, and the mobs rallied. In fact, we know that there were mobs that were rallying in French cities, crying out in 1894, death to the Jews. In light of the Alfred Dreyfus case. In fact, one person that I read said that you could literally just kind of divide the French population between the pro Dreyfus and.
And the anti Dreyfus, which was to say the pro Jewish people and the anti Jewish people.
What seemed clear to many was this was a case of gross injustice, of covering up evidence and largely for the sake of the Jews being blamed. So Dreyfus was court martialed because somebody supposedly found in sort of the trash bin near him what was supposedly evidence for this selling of secrets to the German military. He was court martialed, he was tried. He was not allowed to see the evidence. He wasn't allowed to speak on his behalf, and he was sentenced to life in a felony colony in French Guiana on an island called Devil's island, probably not the greatest place to live.
Not only was he sentenced there, but he was sentenced to solitary confinement there, as if to teach anyone else who may do something similar, this will be your fate. Well, there was a good deal of outcry against this, of course, because it seemed rigged. Where was the evidence? Where was the just trial? And one of the most famous people that sought to uncover this injustice was the great French novelist and journalist, Emile Zola.
So Emile Zola actually wrote a letter that appeared on the front cover of one of the most widely spread French newspapers at the time. It was addressed to the French president. And that letter is called J'. Accuse. I accuse.
And he lists at the end, j' Accuse so and so and so and so and so and so. And how. He was just saying, this is a rigged deal. This is injustice grossly administered.
Well, after writing that, Emile Zola was accused himself and he was put on trial for libel. I'm going to get back to that trial, but I want us to consider Psalm 82, because in many ways, Psalm 82 actually mirrors, in some ways, a courtroom setting. And I want us to look at this psalm by considering the judged, who's being judged, what the judgment is, and then the jurisdiction of God. All right, y' all got that? Three Js?
It's a Presbyterian minister thing. Presbyterian pastors named Peter Do. Three Js. So the judge first. And if you open up your Bible to Psalm 82, this is how Psalm 82 begins.
God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. So he's got the divine council there, and there's these gods, and he's the one who's holding judgment. So who are the judged?
Well, the word there is the Elohim, which is rightly translated gods.
What?
Isn't there just one true God? What is this stuff? What's it saying? I mean, you're right. Okay, let me give you some examples.
Isaiah 45, 5 says, I am the Lord, and there's no other besides me. There's no God. Sounds pretty clear. 1 Timothy 2, 5 says, there's one God, one mediator between God and man. In our Lord Jesus own words.
He's sort of echoing the famous shema of Deuteronomy 6, the great confession of Jewish faith that Jesus says is true. He's affirming in Luke chapter 10 and Mark 12, when he says, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
These all sound pretty clear. So what is happening? Who's being judged here, right? This council that is before God, who's doing the judging? And it says it's the gods.
Well, as you might imagine, scholars are divided on this. Let me give you two of the main sort of here, and the first one, and the most historic kind of understanding of this, of who's being judged here, is human judges, which is to say human rulers, humans that can affect the world about them, who can decide the fate of another. And it might sound odd to us, of course, to call a human a God. It kind of. It does.
But. But there's examples of this in the bible, actually, Exodus 21, and that's part of Israel's civil law. And there's actually a case where it says, okay, if this thing happens, you need to go to. And it actually refers to gods as human judges or, sorry, human judges as gods. You need to go to these small G gods to determine this case.
Exodus 22:28 says, you shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people. A lot of people think of those as a synonymous thing. It's saying, don't revile God, which is a way of also thinking of the rulers of your people. So the rulers can be considered kind of like a God. And even if that isn't synonymous, in that text, you can see how there's this godlike function that rulers have.
They actually sort of set up things for other people. They speak and actually somebody has to follow them. They're judging and they're deciding the fate of the world in a way.
And probably the strongest argument actually to understand these gods here as human judges or human rulers or human people that are over others that have an effect in the world is that Jesus actually, in John chapter 10, which Nicole read for us, he directly quotes this text when he's speaking to the religious rulers. He's saying, God even said, over, essentially, you, all your gods. Why are you getting mad at me for the idea of blasphemy? That's kind of part of his argument that's going on there.
So think about this, okay? It's true that to a degree, human judges, human rulers, human authorities have a godlike function in the world, which is to say they work on the world for its fate. Right? There's a way in which they speak and something comes into being in the world, directs the life of another. We could think back about the redlining.
How has that affected the world to come? Right? It's having an effect on the world and how it comes about. And we can think about this sort of on a. On a more sort of local setting, too.
We've been praying for. I've been praying for you teachers and you who are in education, you administrators, you know, you're effective. Actually, part of the great probably thing that enlivens your work is, you know, I can affect the future of a student. And you can, for good or for ill, you can build them up, you can tear them down. Parents, you know, this in the authority kind of way that you interact with your children, you sort of direct their life in a way.
You kind of set them up on a certain trajectory or not.
Think, of course, of the human judge thinking of how an entire life can be taken by the judgment that they give.
Think of human rulers. Think about how much you care about who gets elected to what office. Think of how many millions, hundreds of millions of dollars go into election campaign. And think about how you wake up after election either elated or dejected. Why do you do that?
Because you know to an extent the people that have power affect the world about you.
We know how significant human judges and human rulers and those with authority have.
And judges and rulers. And frankly, you and I, because we all have a degree of authority, though some of us, a smaller degree, have an opportunity or not to reflect the great Judge, the one true and living God. So speaking of Jewish judges, one commentator said they were sons of the highest, called by his name, bearing his image, exercising his authority, charged to execute his will. And they ought to have been, in their measure, his living representatives. And that could be said actually about every single human charged to do his will, bearing his image, exercising his authority in their measure, his living responsibilities.
And so it's in this sense that this human judge idea comes that you can be called gods.
But of course, that's not the only reason, or that's not the only sort of way this is understood. The other main way this is understood is as sort of minor deities or spiritual beings. And this has gained some more traction recently, if you're kind of like into historical theology and its development probably the last hundred years has gained some more popularity. And this is taking this idea of Elohim here, gods to be sort of minor, minor deities, spiritual beings, maybe like angels or demons. They're spiritual beings that have a sway in the world.
And actually, again, you've heard this kind of argument from Ephesians 6, which Nicole read for us, right? They're the principalities and powers of the world. Or as six four says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And so you can see there's an argument to be made here too, right? Oh, maybe this is.
Maybe there are rulers and principalities and powers. This of course, pushes against our modern sensibilities. But there's this spiritual reality that is existing beyond us that actually has an effect on our world. And Isaiah, again, Isaiah 24 says, the Lord will punish the powers in the heaven. And so there is this idea that in the heavens above there is certain powers.
This doesn't take away from the responsibility of humans, but it does say that there's more at play than we might see.
So which is it? I wonder what you think. Which is it? Human judges, Some sort of spiritual, divine, sub, divine being? The gods, Human judges, human authorities.
Are they a spiritual ruler? They'll be judged? You know what?
I don't know.
I don't know what the answer is. I think I lean towards human judges in part because of how Jesus uses that, but I don't know. And I actually think that there's maybe something there which might be the point. Either seems possible, but the point remains that God is judging those who have authority and rule, who judge the world about them, who have sway in how the world progresses, the fate of the world. God is calling them to account for what they do.
So the judges, what's the judgment? Okay, well, again, in some ways we could break this into two sections. Now, it's not two interpretations, but two sections. And one first is God's, and one is sort of the author of the Psalms. So first verses 2 to 3.
This is God speaking. That's what most all believe. How long will you judge unjustly? This is God's judgment that he's holding. And show partiality to the wicked, give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the death to rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
So that's sort of God's judgment. Now, here's the. Here's the author, most likely, of the psalm, responding Also verse 4. Sorry, verse 5. They have neither knowledge nor understanding.
They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. What's the judgment? Well, it's more of an indictment. The judgment that God gives to these judges and rulers, whether on earth or in the spiritual realm, is that they have not cared for those among them.
Think about this. How long will you judge unjustly? Show partiality to the wicked? God says, give justice to the weak and fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked, saying, you have not done so. Injustice is running rampant.
God's judgment is an indictment.
And then the psalmist himself says, they don't have knowledge, they don't have understanding. They walk in darkness. And because of this, the foundations of the earth seem to be shaking. We all feel unsettled. The world is not right.
Which is to say it's really kind of an interesting thing that you first have God's indictment and then you have the human response. Which is to say that if you are angry at injustice, God joins you in that. So is God. If you look around the world, you see the poor being taken advantage of, the hope of the needy being forgotten, as one of our prayers says, the fatherless being overlooked. If you look at that and you long for the day when that will no longer be the case, in a way, so does God.
That's part of what's happening here. God's response to this, God's judgment and this human response that the foundations seem to be shaken.
If you consider the plight of children who are abused or abandoned and misused, and that causes your blood to boil. This text says that God also is angry at such a thing.
If you consider how often those in authority abuse it, which is so common in the church, outside the church, in the civil realm, all over. So is God. He's outraged by such a thing. The judgment that God gives, as he calls the rulers to account, is an indictment that they have actually not sought justice, they have not sought the well being of those under their care. Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, he wrote this of these verses.
He says these three verses, meaning two to four, indeed the whole Psalm. These three verses. Actually, let's just take the whole psalm. Every prince should have painted on the wall of his chamber. You know, you think art, you should put up in your dorm.
Like, some of y' all are moving into your dorms. You're like, what art should I put up? He's like, you know, art, princes and people should put up on the wall these words, write them up there. But he goes beyond that. He says, every prince should have this painted on the wall of his chamber, on his bed.
Like, well, how should I design the sheets on my bed? Let's print out Psalm 82 over his table. You're like, oh, let's put a. What new table runner should I buy? Let's buy one with Psalm 82 all over it and on his garments.
You know, all over. He's like, all over. The rulers need to know that they will be held accountable, that God is, is looking at what they do, how they're affecting the world, and he is to judge.
Every ruler should know that he will give an account to God, an account for how he did or did not act justly and love mercy and walk humbly before God and for the sake of the people under his care. And I think that leads to the third part. Okay, so I've talked about, like, who's being judged, what the judgment is. And then the third thing, what's the jurisdiction of God, which is very clear. And I think it's actually clear if you take the ambiguity of God's seriously and you don't land necessarily.
Is it human judges, is it spiritual beings? Maybe the point is there is no end to God's jurisdiction. Maybe he's actually over it all and cares for it all.
So continuing, verse six, I said, which most believe, this is again God speaking. You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. And again, two things.
First thing, these rulers are not gods. Sorry, these rulers are not God, Right? It actually says they're gods, they aren't God. And oddly enough, this text is actually another one of the ones that people go, well, maybe this is referring to spiritual beings, maybe it's referring to human beings. Part of the argument for the human side is, like man, you shall die.
But again, it does say Elohim. And they're like, what's this? Here's the point. They may be gods, they may have real effect in the world. They may be able to judge to a degree, but they are not God.
And think of this again, this is key, I think, for our own understanding of our own authority.
Fathers, mothers, you will do well to remember that you are not the God over your children.
You are under the true God. And you will give an account for how you trained your children, how you encouraged them, how you spoke to them.
Right? We have certain degrees of authority. You who work, so many of you work, you have jobs, you will give an account to God who judges all. You know, the authority that we have is a. Is an authority under the great authority, which is the point of the Ecclesiastes passage.
These rulers are not God. And they will give an account. They will give an account. That's the first thing there. The rulers are not God, and neither are we.
The second thing, though, is that God's jurisdiction really is over all things.
And again, this is why I kind of love the ambiguity of verse one. But verse eight, it ends, arise, O God, judge the earth. He's not saying judge the kings, the judges of Israel, judge Babylon and Assyria. You know, we've been looking at some exilic psalms. He's saying, judge it all.
Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit some of the nations. Doesn't say that, does it? It says all the nations. The jurisdiction of God is over all things. His care is for it all.
He desires justice to be brought to all of the world. There is no end to the jurisdiction of God.
He will judge the earth. Not just Israel or apartheid South Africa or the Third Reich or whatever you want it to be, but all of it. And he will inherit the earth, which is to say, he will have it all.
This is something I read interesting this week. Psalm 82 is used in one of the great Eastern Orthodox liturgies, particularly of the Paschal vigil. And how it's used is this is after each reading of each verse, the whole congregation would sing the very last verse. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. So after each verse, the whole everybody, the night before Easter says those lines, that very last line after each verse, Arise, O God, Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations.
And that happens on the night of Holy Saturday, which is to say it's sandwiched between Good Friday and the reality of the cross, the weight of sin, the destructive nature of injustice and sin, and the empty tomb, which is to say the hope of God that the effects of sin and its destruction, the death which comes about because of sin, the injustice of the world, will not have the final say. Even as they are remembering and celebrating Christ in the tomb, it's sung, declaring that the judgment of God that happened on Good Friday and his rule through Easter Sunday, and the empty tomb will come about God's judgment on the cross. And the resurrection is not just a forensic judgment, though it is that. It is also the vindication of a righteous God, saying, I'm going to bring my righteousness to the world. I'm going to judge those who perpetuate sin in the world.
It will be judged. And there's a greater story. He judges Satan, sin and death. He judges the principalities and powers. He judges earthly rulers on the cross.
And he invites those who look to the cross to see that there is hope beyond it to the empty tomb. That's what they're remembering as they sing this, as they recount this on Holy Saturday. But let me get back to the Dreyfus affair, as it is often called. So I left with Emile Zola's trial, right? He had written that famous letter, Jacuz, and he'd been called to trial for libel.
And a lot of people think actually Zola was actually hoping to do that in a way, because he was trying to raise awareness to the injustice that was happening and how anti Semitism was being wide sort of spread throughout France through this Dreyfus affair. And so he goes to Trial. And he's standing there in the court and he was told he's not allowed to speak, he's not allowed to bring evidence, he's not allowed to have any testimony from anyone. And what I read in a number of cases is that what the, what the judge kept telling, in fact the judge kept yelling at Zola was, this case is closed. Stop trying to reopen it.
We've decided this man's fake. This case is closed.
And I guess in the middle of this judge yelling this, Zola stands up and he points to a mural of a crucifix Jesus hanging on a cross. And he says, there was another case that was closed. And what he was doing was he was saying, you know, the Romans and the religious leaders took their power and they sought to suppress someone. In fact, what they did was they even closed him up into a tomb with a big old stone behind it, thinking, we've done it. And he's saying, there was a case that was so unjust in the world, and yet the justice of God prevailed.
Jesus should not have died a sinner's death. He was unjustly condemned and the justice of God prevailed. So that Jesus himself conquers Satan, sin and death, and brings an end to this idea that injustice can get away it. And here's what happened to Emil Zola.
They didn't buy it. He actually fled to England. He had to leave the country. He was going to be imprisoned, one of the most famous writers of the time in France. So he fled to England.
But what happened actually right after that is that they decided to reopen up the Dreyfus case. And a year later, Alpha Dreyfus was brought back from Devil's Island.
Now, not initially, actually. It wasn't for five more years that his case was really retried fully and he was vindicated. It actually wasn't for seven more years that he was reinstated as a lieutenant colonel in the French army. But it was that turning point, the turning point when Emile Zola said there was a case that was closed. And that case was the greatest instance of injustice, where the righteous died for the unrighteous and the unjust.
Judges thought they were going to get away with it. They thought they could get away with injustice and God will not allow it.
Friends, that is good news. I mean, in a world that is chock full of injustice, in a world where it's not hard to think of different ways that all of us live unjust lives, it is good news to know that God does not turn a blind eye to any of it.
Also, if this jurisdiction of God is over all things, the truth is that we will all give an account.
And the question of the Scriptures is, will you give an account of how Christ died for your sin, for the injustice that you perpetuate? Will you rest on him as the great Judge? Yes, but also as the one who paid the penalty for your sin? Or will he not?
It's good news to know that God says, there is no injustice of which I will not judge justly. No case is finally closed until I close it.
But also it begs the question, where will you be on the judgment? Will you be clinging to Christ?
Will you be saying, I don't need. I don't need the righteousness of God for me, I'll continue in my unjust sin. Thank you very much. Where will you stand at the judgment when the jurisdiction of God is over all things?
Let me pray for us. God, we're thankful that your Word speaks to so much. We're even thankful to a degree when it speaks in a way that is beyond our understanding because it humbles us.
God, would you bring your justice to bear in this world? Would we be agents of it? Would we walk, walk justly, walk humbly? Would we love mercy?
God would be. Would we be those who exercise the authority that you give us for the well being of those under our care? Would we guard our speech? Would we use it to build up and not to tear down? Would we love others as you love us and God?
Would we cling to the cross of Christ who takes on Satan's sin and death and takes our sin upon himself, that we might receive the judgment of God not for what we did, but for the righteousness of Christ?
Please do this Lord. Teach us these things. In Jesus name, Amen.

Previous Page