Psalm 10

If you examine any dispute among men, you will find sin and sinners on both sides of the question. When religious people fight for a cause, no matter how right they may be, sin and sinners are in their camp. It's the same with atheists. Only Jesus is without sin. The rest of us get our designation of righteousness by being given His. His came by merit. Ours by grace.

The world is full of disagreements. Unfortunately the church in the world is also full of disagreements. It's the same story there – plenty of sin, and plenty of sinners. It's not that way in heaven. In heaven the church has no sin. In heaven the church is not only credited with the designation of holiness; the church there is actually perfectly holy.

We live here now, on the earth side of things, and we need help. We need God badly, and there are times when He seems too far away to come to our aid. Psalm 10 begins with these desperate questions: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”

Here on earth we not only have mean-spirited disagreements, we also have poverty and oppression. There are people that make their living by pursuing the poor, devising schemes to take away from the weakest people in the world the little that they have. God is not happy about it.

To be fair, there are plenty of oppressors that are not all that happy about God either, but there are others that make a great outward show of their religion. Some cruel people curse and renounce the Lord, but others cloak everything in proud hypocrisy. In their own secret thoughts they are counting on the fact that there is no God. How else could people use skillfully crafted deceptions to sell worthless products to those who cannot afford them, or extract contributions from widows in God's Name with manipulative lies?

Liars can do quite well. They expect to prosper now, and then to pass on their winnings to the next generation like kings dispensing blessings to their personal favorites. They may not worry much about God at all. Heaven is far away, and they like like the distance. They feel that they have liberty to do what they know to be wrong, and they convince themselves that there will be no consequences for their choice to say what they want to say about anyone, and to use other people in any way that they decide.

There are some who think that the only evil in this world is calling someone or something evil. But what about this from Psalm 10? Some big man lies in wait in some mountain pathway, looking for an undefended child to come by. What does this man want as he watches for the helpless to make the horrible mistake of turning down the wrong road? He's like a lion waiting for his prey. No, he's worse than a lion, because he really is a man, a man created in God's image, created to care for the weak, not to kill, steal, rape, and then run away and pretend to be innocent. He was created to worship and obey the God who says, “You shall not murder.” Instead he comforts himself by this secret wish: “God has forgotten, He has hidden His face, He will never see it.”

Such a man is really evil, no matter how religious or irreligious he says he is. If a church or government does this kind of thing it is an evil entity, whether it claims to love God or to hate Him. It is morally wrong. Why do we bother denying this?

Yet the church has become a stench in everyone's nostrils with its continuous pronouncements about the evil of the world. The worshiping community of God must first repent of our own sin before we would speak out against others. If we do speak out in some extreme case of danger or evil, we must do so with a prior recognition that on our side of whatever question we speak to, we are still sinners who have sin. Not that we need to parade our humility before others. No one believes that we are humble when we do that. No, we need to call on God to defeat evil both within us and outside us as a part of our worship of the Lord of lords. We cannot ignore the plight of the weak and the defenseless, but we cannot pretend that the problem is not in us as well as among others.

When we call upon the Lord for deliverance, our prayers to God must be spoken in faith. The Lord does see. He does note evil in this world. He will take action as only He can. Oppressive men will not be allowed to prosper forever. A day of reckoning will come.

As we wait for that day trusting in the One who died for our sins and was raised for our justification, we do need to stand up for the helpless. But we need to do more than speak. In a free society, speaking up is very inexpensive. What can we do for the fatherless and the oppressed that would cost us more than just our words? Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the lonely. Adopt the orphan. Be a real friend to the friendless.

God did more for us than just state His opinion. He came in the quietness of a Word that was living and active. Jesus broke the arm of wickedness by taking the penalty upon Himself that we deserved. There was nothing detached about the cross. We need to love like Him.

God will judge the wicked. He will help His people as they cry out to Him for mercy and for justice upon the earth. He will not be far off forever. One day, those who abuse others will no longer terrorize the poor.

But before we just start another religious argument where we are the righteous and the others are sinners, we need to make a commitment to love. Take the log out of your own own before insisting that you can perform surgery on someone else. Talk to God in faith before you talk to people in hasty accusation. Love like Jesus.