Psalm 75
To the choirmaster: according Do Not Destroy. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.
1 We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for your name is near. We [Hebrew They] recount your wondrous deeds.
The psalm marks a dramatic turn from the previous psalm in its very positive opening. In Psalm 74 the psalmist complains that God abandoned his temple and his people in their moment of need, but here he declares that God is near and wonderfully active. Speaking on behalf of the community, the psalmist affirms God’s active presence, equating His name {Near) with his person, a common Hebrew convention. What does it mean to declare that God is near? Is this a feeling, a sense that another person is in the room, the words of a voice inside your head? When someone is near it means simply that you are not alone. It is knowing this and living accordingly. Yes God’s voice is in your head as you read his Word and commit those words to memory, and then he brings them to mind when needed. Yes his presence is there because you can speak aloud to him at any time. God’s nearness is experienced in the actions he performs on our behalf. In Israel’s case this was deliverance from enemies, rescue from hunger by providing rain for crops, deliverance from death by recovery from sickness. It is seeing God’s hand in everything, every day. It is noticing the beauty of the earth and the goodness of human beings that reflects the image of God. It is knowing that whatever happens in this life, we are promised an eternal life with God and those who have embraced his nearness. Psalm 73 reminded us that it was good to be “near God”. The nearness of God is our good. When we say that a friend or family member is near, we mean both physically (we spend time together) and we share a close connection with them. They are “near to our heart”, we share in the good and bad of their lives as they in ours. May I recognize the nearness of God in my life today, show me evidence of it and together with your people Lord, I will recount your wondrous deeds.
2 “At the set time that I appoint I will judge with equity.
3 When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah
God speaks in these four verses (2-5). He promises that he will judge with equity at the time he selects. When the earth totters (lit. melts or dissolves) and all of its inhabitants along with it, it is God who keeps steady (lit. measures) its pillars. This metaphor of dissolving and measuring seems to be related to judgment. God is the ultimate constant in the universe. The shifting sands of culture and history swallow peoples and governments. History is littered with the ruins of civilizations that left behind great buildings and engineering marvels, vast empires that were once admired and feared have fallen in a blink of an eye -- Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and even Rome. The European empires of the16-19th centuries shrank as two world wars exhausted their resources and resolve. The great superpower that is America has enjoyed a season of influence, but at the present seems to be turning on itself, being divided and conquered until we are only half the nation that we once were. Our hope is not ultimately in our culture and our government. Our hope is in the One who holds steady the pillars of the earth itself. God’s judgment is what ultimately matters. He will have the final say. It is his measure that matters. If he chooses to be done with it all, the earth will dissolve and swallow us up at his command. If he chooses to save us all, that will be done as well. From the perspective of a Jewish person in Babylonian captivity, this psalm makes all the more sense. The ascendant Babylonian empire seems unshakeable, but God is the one holding the pillars. He is the one who will execute judgment on them. The words, “Mene mene tekel upharsin” will soon be written on the wall -- “Measured and found wanting,” and judgment will be swift. In these days of uncertainty, I’m happy to be trusting in the One who judges and the One who’s got his hands on the pillars that support the earth. He can hold them steady, or he can rock them. He’s got the whole world in his hands, and I’m happy to place my life there as well.
4 I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’ and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn;
5 do not lift up your horn on high, or speak with haughty neck.’”
God continues to speak, singling out the arrogant and the wicked, “Don’t brag, Don’t point out your strength, Don’t lift up your nose at me or anyone else.” This is wisdom for sure. The Proverbs tell us that pride goes before destruction and a haughty attitude before a fall. Be careful walking with your nose up in the air; you’re likely to step in something or trip and fall on your face. The psalmist here is likely thinking of the Bablyonian leaders who are confident in their superiority to their Jewish captives. Obviously they were able to conquer them and their god, so the evidence is clear. It’s science. They are better than everyone else. Smarter, stronger, more cunning, a superior race. God addresses both their words and their actions in a chiasm, framing their “lifting of their horns” by their boasting and speaking with a haughty neck. The horn was a symbol of strength, so these guys are flexing and trash talking. You can be sure that it is not going to end well for them. This is a common motif in storytelling -- the antagonist is overconfident and monologues while the hero waits for an opportunity to strike. This is exactly what God is doing only on a massive scale. He allows the arrogant to strut and say their thing, but their day is coming, and they will be humbled and silenced. So keep this in mind if you’re ever tempted to admire such men and women. Their days of boasting are numbered. Their horns will be cut off, they’ll be disarmed and rendered harmless.
6 For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up,
7 but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.
Honor doesn’t come from the earth (the east, west or south are likely references to the earth itself, the horizontal dimension). It is God Judge who puts one down and lifts another up. These verses reiterate the central idea of the psalm -- God is sovereign judge, so place your trust in his good judgment. Another implication of this truth is that it is useless to try to bring honor to yourself. You are not going to generate honor that really matters on this earth if you are intentionally trying to bring honor to yourself. Certainly men and women are honored when they do something heroic on behalf of others, or even when they just live good honest lives. But they are not seeking honor. They are seeking good. Jesus taught on this quite a bit and certainly modeled it. He said that those seeking honor from men would be humbled and those who were not would be exalted by God. It is human nature to seek honor, to be liked and admired by others. This can lead us to do good things for the wrong motives (or do bad things for the wrong motives). The bottom line is, “don’t look around you for honor (the east, the west, or the south). Look up to God, live a life of worship. And look down, keep your head bowed before him and in due time he will lift you up. The psalm reminds me of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who said, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be unto me as you have said” (Luke 1:38). She didn’t ask for greatness, to be put into a situation where she would face public humiliation and ultimately heart-breaking loss. But she accepted it with humility and God exalted her above all women. May I be like her in seeing my place in your plan. Whatever you ask, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be unto me as you have said.”
8 For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
God’s judgment of the wicked is depicted in the metaphor of a cup of wine. The Lord holds a cup of wine in his hand that is foaming from being well mixed. In other words, it is prepared. Wine takes time to ferment and the mixing suggests that other ingredients were added as well, probably to increase its potency. All of this takes time, demonstrating God’s patience. This is consistent with other scriptural references to God giving time for nations to repent and the statement in Psalm 103 that He is slow to anger (which comes from Exodus 34). Here’s the interesting thing, the wine must have been pleasant in some sense because the wicked drink it down to the dregs, taking in every drop. They take the cup willingly. It is what they want. They get what they want. This is the essence of God’s judgment in a world where He has granted humans the freedom either to love or reject him. If you don’t love God and reject his ways, He allows you to do that. Romans 1 describes this process in detail. Since people rejected God and actually attempted to suppress the knowledge of God, He “gave them over” to do what they wanted to do and to “receive in themselves the due penalty for their disobedience.” When you see people who have willingly rejected God, they are delighted to drink the cup of wrath that he has prepared for them. They don’t understand that it is wrath -- they think that it is pleasure, it what they desire most, and so they drink it down to the bottom of the cup. This changes the way one looks at people who have rejected God and his laws. They are to be pitied above all else, and they deserved to be warned by those who know better. There is another cup that God has offered us. It is the cup of salvation, the blood of Jesus and the new covenant. In drinking of this cup we proclaim the Lord’s salvation. Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath (even after praying three times for it to be taken from him), so that we could drink his cup of salvation. Which cup are you drinking from today? What are you doing to convince others to change what they are drinking?
9 But I will declare it forever; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.
10 All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.
The psalmist returns to his original declaration of worship. He began the psalm with “I will give thanks”, and concludes with “I will sing praises”. He declares that he will speak the truth stated in this psalm forever, namely, that God is near, good, and just. He is worthy of our worship and devotion. He brings down the high and mighty, and he lifts up the lowly. This reality gives the psalmist confidence to say, “I will cut off all the horns of the wicked”. Note that it is not the Lord cutting off their horns, but the psalmist himself. This could be a reference to his strength in battle, but that doesn’t seem likely given the content of the rest of the psalm. There is no other battle imagery. Perhaps it is the fact that armed with the truth of God’s judgment, the psalmist no longer fears the strength of the wicked. They are no longer a threat to him. He doesn’t envy their power or desire their position in society. They hold no power over him anymore because he has remembered how God sees things (no unlike what the psalmist experienced in Psalm 73). Remembering means to bring something to the forefront of one’s mind in a way that engages action. The psalmist isn’t personally going around and chopping off the strength of the wicked, engaging them in philosophical debate about the existence of God. Rather, he is declaring victory over their power and influence. The horns of the wicked appear strong in our culture. A man-centered worldview now dominates the major institutions of society (although they are plenty of individuals in those institutions that have not bowed the knee to it). The world is drinking deeply from the cup of wrath and they do not even realize it. They are enjoying its flavors even while it poisons them from within. They are not to be feared, but to be pitied. This is what the psalmist means by cutting off their horns. They and their influence are rendered powerless by this truth: God is Judge. He is good and he is patient, but He is the judge. He has set up the world to work in a certain way by design, and when we abandon his design we are asking for catastrophic failure. God’ wrath is built into the system. It’s what we receive when we operate outside of the design parameters. Orient your life around those parameters and you will be lifted up. Resist them and you will be brought down.