Life is not fair, isn’t it? We are told this over and over again, and we know from experience, even from a young age, that life is not fair. On Twitter, someone posted the reason their toddler cried that week, they were:
- I wouldn’t let the dog drive him to daycare
- the bath was “too wet”
- he wanted syrup for breakfast… just syrup
- his sister “keeps looking at him”
- he wants shoes like his friend Jacob (there is no Jacob)
But the unfairness of life doesn’t only come from us not being able to do our own thing. Life can seem to be not only unfair but also unjust. I remember when I was at uni, I thought how wrong the world was, in that I could always afford to have $20 in my wallet when most of the world could not. The uneven distribution of wealth and resources across the world really messed with me. There are wickedly complex systems across our world that mean some people are disadvantaged and even mistreated, and taken advantage of. It’s not fair, it's not just.
We all yearn for a world that is fair and just, and we look to our leaders, those in power, to help. Justice is a key factor for the stability and prosperity of our society. How fair something is for all people is a good indicator of how good or bad a government is. Do the powerful take and control, and do their wrongs go unpunished? Australians pride ourselves on the idea that regardless of status, income, class, we all want a fair go for all.
Over the next four weeks w,e are going to be looking at Psalm 72 - it is about a king. That is how ancient Israel was governed, by one person at the top. This system could be a very good thing, or a very corrupt thing. It all depends on the character of the person calling the shots.
There are lots of themes and ideas in this Psalm, but today we are looking at this king through the lens of justice. We will see that this Psalm is calling out for a king who is endowed with God’s justice, who judges people fairly and who crushes the oppressor.
The subscription at the top of this Psalm says it is “Of Solomon”. This is a little ambiguous, is it by Solomon or for Solomon? If you scroll down to the last verse, it says
This concludes the prayers of David son of Jesse. (Psalm 72:20 NIV)This addition line is closing book 2 in the Psalms. Psalms have five books to it, this is closing the second. It is ending a section on David’s public prayers. So this Psalm could be a prayer by David for his son, Solomon, the next king, or it could be a prayer from Solom about the role of the king that was passed down to him from David.
Either way, this Psalm is about a king. It is asking God to grant the king with special traits and characteristics, for the good of the people and the land. If the king is fair, if he protects the weak, there will be blessings, and the people will want his rule to continue. If the king behaves like God, who is just and kind, it will go well for everyone.
And this is still true today. While we live in a different governmental system, we still want those in charge to also possess these qualities. We still want our leaders to be people who are just, people who help the afflicted, people who bring prosperity to their people, and who treat everyone fair and equally across the whole country. It would be worth thinking about how do you pray for our rulers? What do we ask God to grant them in their role over us? Psalm 72 could be helpful in this area.
Now, when we look at what is said of this king, in this Psalm, the words are quite grand or even over the top. It is almost asking too much of this person. It is asking this king to rule over other kings, to last as long as the sun and the moon. This Psalm is asking for someone like Abraham to come, so that in sentence 17, “all nations will be blessed through them”.
Who can live up to this? Was this prayer answered in Solomon? Well, Solomon’s reign started off quite good. He had peace throughout his borders, and other world leaders came and paid him tribute and they were astonished by his wisdom. There was great wealth in the country. In 2 Chronicles, it says
All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon’s day. (2 Chronicles 9:20 NIV)To those under Solomon, silver was like stones (2 Chr 9:27). He built the temple and the palace, and was a wise king.
But the end of Solomon’s reign wasn’t good. He turned to idol worship and away from the Lord. And after him, it only got worse. His sons fought for power and they split the kingdom in two. And then the rest history of Israel's kings wasn’t great, I think in their history there were about 4 good kings before they got conquered by other nations.
So how does this Psalm fit with Israel's history? This is poetically expressing what a good king would be like. It is hopeful in how a king would act. Some think this was quite possibly used as a prayer for the newly anointed king of Israel perhaps during a coronation service (Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary Psalm 72. A Prayer for the King).
When the king received this sword, the archbishop tells him [to do justice, protect the holy Church of God, defend the widows and orphans and to restore what is good.]
“With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God and all people of goodwill, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order” (The Presentation of the Regalia)These are good charges to start your reign. But we all know, the proof will be in their ruling.
Later, in the history of ancient Israel, after the country had been conquered and the nation was in exile under the Babylonian King Darius, Zechariah quotes this Psalm when talking about a future king who would come on a donkey, who would take away the armies and
His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zechariah 9:10 NIV)That is a quote from sentence 8 in Psalm 72. Even after the long line of kings in Israel, the nation was still looking forward for this great king to turn up.
And you might want this too. You might look around the world, read the news and wish for a just world leader. One who is not self-interested, but who looks after the weak, who ensures justice is given to the afflicted and the oppressors are crushed so they can not harm anyone anymore.
We have these yearnings, but are they just idealistic and not realistic? C.S Lewis said,
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.”We desire justice and world peace, and a good world leader, yet we don’t have it. And feel frustrated that we don’t have it. Perhaps we were made for something more than where we are now. Perhaps there is a realm where we yearn to live, that will satisfy this desire.
Israel desired this king to come one day; they called that king the Messiah. And we know that this king is Jesus. He is the just King that this Psalm is talking about, but not in a poetical, idealistic way, but in a realistic way. Jesus meets all our unmet desires for perfect justice. Jesus really is the royal son who fulfils all of this Psalm.
Justice and Righteousness
The Psalm starts off asking for the royal son to be just and right.Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness. (Psalm 72:1 NIV)Jesus is God’s righteousness. Jesus was the royal son, born in the line of David and Solomon (Mat 1:6). Jesus was perfectly right and lived God’s ways all the time. So as a King, His reign is perfect, and His rules and judgment are always right. And so in His perfect kingdom, He asks for people to also be perfect to live in it. He wants the people to be holy as God is holy. To be righteousness as He is righteousness.
Jesus said His Kingdom was near but, unless your righteousness is better than the best religious guys of his day, then you will not enter (Mat 5:20). A righteous and just King wants a righteous and just people.
How might you go in a kingdom that asks for perfection? The other side of righteousness is judgment. Falling short of the right things. How might you live in a place where justice is always perfectly met?
In God’s kingdom, He wants you to have a perfect relationship with the King, to obey what He says. To trust that He knows what is best. He wants your heart to be aligned with Him. Jesus, the king, said it is an offence to look lustfully at a woman, or to lie, or to hate your neighbour and want what they have. How well are we at listening and obeying the King's words, and how much are our hearts in rebellion against Him?
The next sentence cuts both ways
May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice. (Psalm 72:2 NIV)This Psalm asks for the king to judge His people with righteousness and judgment. In the Apostles Creed, the one thing left for Jesus to do is to judge the living and the dead.
One day, Jesus will judge everyone and give His just and right judgment for what everyone has done. And when we think of the powerful and the abusers who look like they get away with it today, we can take comfort knowing that Jesus will right every wrong. He sees all the evil and wicked things, and those who are not prosecuted, those who manipulate the system to get away with it, those who keep things hidden from people, and Jesus one day will expose all of that. That is what a just and fair King does.
But we sometimes shy away from thinking about ourselves. We want jutice for others, but when faced with being judged by a perfectly just God, we might get nervous.
We know we are not perfect. We might say that we are not that bad. But that does me we are some bad. It conceds the point that we have done wrong, and so, in doing wrong, or failing to do what is right, we face God’s judgement.
Apart from Jesus there is no perfectly rightouse King. Apart from Jesus is there is no perfectly righteous person.
This might not sound too good, that we are all facing a just judgement. We are now needy not for justice, but for mercy and grace. And the good news is that all those who trust in Jesus are given His rightousness. Jesus, the good and fair King, redeems us, and gives us His goodness.
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished (Romans 3:25 NIV)God can’t just simply forgive people who do wrong without punishment. That would be unjust. What would you say to the victems of crime if a judge kept forgiving people who pleaded guilty and didn’t give any fine or sentence to the perpetrator? The victems would feel like there had been no justice at all. That what they have suffered seems of little value to the judge.
We have wronged others and God, so it would be unjust for God not to punish the wrong things that we have done, but Jesus on the cross took our punishment on our behalf.
Jesus took our punishment for our wrongs on Himself, which means, if we go to Him, we won’t be punished again for them. You can’t be puniched twice for the same sins. God doesn’t sweep our sins under the rug and simply forgives us, Jesus takes our sins for us and endures the punishment for them, so we don’t have to.
This way, Jesus can still be fair and just to declare us right, because He is the one who makes us right through His own death.
Under Jesus we can now live, in His Kingdom right now. We can be citizens of heaven here on earth. We can live now, how we want, in preparation for when Jesus will come back again. And as we see injustice in world, we can speak up, and get involved to help right some wrongs, for that is the nature of our King. We can mimick Jesus now, doing what pleases Him. We can participate in this restoration when we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10) and then, think how we might be an answer to that prayer.
Crushed oppression
We can help to bring about justice here, under our new King, for we have a future hope knowing that Jesus has already won the victory over our great enemy. Jesus is the one who has, in sentence 4, he crushed the oppressor (Psalm 72:4 NIV)Way back at the start of the Bible story, we meet Satan and after the fall, God promises that someone will come and crush his head (Gen 3:15).
Not only did Christ redeem us, take our punishiment for us, and give us his rightness, He also disarmed and triumphed over the Devil (Col 2:15).
While it may not seem like it now, with all the injustice around, we can take comfort that God has dealt with evil and will complete the task when He returns (Rom 16:20)
So, as you do look around the world, read the news and wish for a just world leader, know that there is a just King ruling over this world. He will judge everyone one day. He has crushed the great oppressor and will come back and finish the task of removing all evil from this world. One day a new world will come, where tears, and pain, and suffereing, and sin and death will be no more. It will be a place greater than Solomon's, where the road base will be made out of gold, and it will last forever.
Praise Him
So let us praise God. He has done marvelous deeds. He is the just King, who is rightouess. Jesus is the one who is just and who justifies us.He is ruling now in heaven and one day He will come back and rule this world forever.
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