God the Judge in a “Judge Not” Culture

God the Judge in a “Judge Not” Culture

Psalm 75

Main Idea: God’s righteous judgment is bad news for the proud and good news for the believing.

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer Martin Luther summarized his theology this way: “One must always ‘Let God be God.’” This is a classic example of “easier said than done.” No one has trouble letting God be God as long as God is doing what we would do if we were God. However, the God we’re talking about is a God who does things that are out of step with—even contradictory to—our cultural preferences.

This God defines right and wrong. And he doesn’t do this after polling our culture, or any other culture for that matter. He gives us a list of dos and don’ts, many of which are as binding today as they were in ancient times. He tells us that if we live life our own way and reject him as the loving Creator and Lord, we will be condemned. When we read the Bible to learn about this God, we discover the unflattering news that God doesn’t need us. He doesn’t have a human-shaped hole in his heart that only you can fill. He doesn’t run a democratic republic; he runs a kingdom. He is a generous King, a gracious and loving King. But he is a King, and he shares his throne with no one. This is the only God there is. There are no other God candidates.

To a culture where our favorite verse is “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt 7:1 NKJV)—to a culture that stands ready to quote this verse to God himself should he start to get any ideas—to this culture, God comes in Psalm 75 and unapologetically asserts his right to judge, his competency to judge, and his title as Judge.

As Christians we want to think biblically about God’s judgment. Psalm 75 is going to lead us. Along the way, we want to carefully avoid three wrong responses to the biblical teaching concerning the judgment of God: ridiculing judgment, boasting in judgment (gloating), and minimizing judgment.

Something else I hope we see before we’re done is that judgment is at the heart of the good news of Christian faith. There is no gospel without judgment. In a fallen world there is no salvation without judgment.

This is why a passage that is dominated by the idea of God’s judgment could begin with thanksgiving (v. 1). Let’s not miss this. The attitude one has toward the judgment of God reveals one’s view of the character of God. In that way this psalm begins by urging us to consider the source. The one doing the judging is the Lord God himself.

The Source of Judgment: The Lord

Psalm 75:2-3

Consider verses 2 and 6-7. Psalm 75 is not a reluctant admission on God’s part, “OK, I might as well admit it,” his holy head lurching downward, “I am the sovereign Judge.” No, this psalm, unlike our culture, views the judgment of God in a positive light. Look at how God speaks of judgment in verse 3. When God judges the earth, he is stabilizing it.

Humanism tries to offer us the hope that we can establish peace and righteousness and justice in the world apart from God. In our time and culture, that hope is often built on a theory of evolution coupled with the importance of education. There’s only one problem: It’s not happening. It’s not working. Our advancements in education have only made the tools of war more sophisticated.

When we think of divine judgment, sometimes we think of God shaking the world with judgment. There are passages that speak that way (e.g., Heb 12:25-29). But it’s fascinating to me that this passage comes from the other direction. It’s telling us when unrighteousness and evil and injustice are left unchecked the world is tottering, and when God acts in judgment, he is steadying the world.

One of the reasons we find people not taking judgment seriously is they simply do not believe in the biblical God. Psalm 94:3-9 describes the foolish, arrogant, judgment-dismissing attitudes of the wicked as assuming that God is blind or indifferent. But Psalm 75 views judgment in a positive light because it views God in a positive light. Again, our view of judgment takes its cue from our view of God.

What does this mean practically? It means that if I trust God’s character, then I’m convinced that he will judge rightly. So, for example, before I even read that difficult chapter of the Bible where God comes in judgment, I’m convinced that what God does is right. And after I have read that passage where God comes in judgment, I’m convinced that what God did was right. Why? Because we consider the source. We ask the simple question: Who is doing the judging here? When we discover it’s God, we call to mind what we know about the biblical God.

First, he is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love (Exod 34:6). God isn’t trigger happy. Second, he is righteous in all his ways (Ps 145:17). He doesn’t have temper tantrums. He doesn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed. No, his judgment is a measured expression of his righteous character. Third, God is all wise (Ps 147:5; Rom 16:27). Scripture says the Lord founded the earth by wisdom (Prov 3:19). He also runs it by wisdom (Job 12:13-35). He judges with perfect wisdom. He is never in the dark. He never lacks all the information. We humans, even at our best, often lack context or comprehensive awareness of motives and contributing factors. God knows all. God rules and governs in righteousness, wisdom, and truth.

Paul brings God’s wisdom and his judgments together. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Rom 11:33-34). Paul brings up an important and associated theme—namely, mystery. He uses the words unsearchable and untraceable. Isaiah 55:9 tells us that God’s ways and thoughts are infinitely higher than ours. We may not fully understand the why or the how of God’s judgment, but the upshot is faith in God means we come to these passages with a humble trust and confidence that God is good.

This brings us to the first wrong response to biblical teaching on God’s judgment.

Wrong Response 1: Ridicule Judgment

Bill Maher sums up the story of Noah and the great flood this way: “It’s about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it and his name is God” (Howell, “God a ‘Psychotic Mass Murderer’”). There’s an underlying assumption behind statements like this: that our sense of fairness and justice is the standard of fairness and justice. We give the impression that justice and righteousness is a moral code that exists outside of God—if you will, above God. God is answerable to that moral code. God is only righteous insofar as he conforms to that external standard, which (often) happens to perfectly match my sense of justice and righteousness.

One of the reasons our culture is so allergic to biblical teaching about God’s judgment is because it reminds us of something we, in our pride, hate hearing: God is above us. I am not God’s accountability partner. He’s not asking me or you if it’s going to be all right to flood the earth (Gen 6) or if it seems heavy-handed to annihilate the Amalekites (1 Sam 15).

We’re allergic to hierarchy—unless we’re at the top. This is not just a modern thing or an American thing. Isaiah 29:16 says it’s a fallen humanity thing:

You have turned things around, as if the potter were the same as the clay. How can what is made say about its maker, “He didn’t make me”? How can what is formed say about the one who formed it, “He doesn’t understand what he’s doing”?

The ridicule response to judgment is wrongheaded because it assumes we have a better sense of right and wrong than God does. Those who ridicule God’s judgment are not just self-righteous enough to look down their noses at other sinners, they are self-righteous enough to look down their noses at God himself.

The God of the Bible is who he is. He can’t be taken in a piecemeal way. He is Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, Savior, Comforter, and returning King. It’s a package proposal. We take him as he is for our everlasting joy or reject him to our everlasting destruction. As Christians, we don’t say that to an unbelieving world with smirks on our faces but with pleading and through tears. In a way the doctrine of God’s judgment draws a line in the sand between those who submit to God as he is and those who take what they like and leave the rest aside—those who make a god in their own image.

One author put it this way:

But far from owning that they hate God, the vast majority of men will not only vehemently deny it, but affirm that they respect and love Him. Yet if their supposed love is analyzed, it is found to cover only their own interests. While a man concludes that God is favorable and lenient with him, he entertains no hard thoughts against Him. So long as he considers God to be prospering him, he carries no grudge against Him. He hates God not as One who confers benefits, but as a Sovereign, Lawgiver, Judge. He will not yield to His government or take His law as the rule of his life. . . . The only God against whom the natural man is not at enmity is one of his own imagination. (Pink, Doctrine of Human Depravity, 114)

Here in Psalm 75 it is manifestly obvious: God is not ashamed of his title as the Judge of the earth. It’s the first thing out of his mouth when he speaks in verse 2: “When I choose a time, I will judge fairly.” Scripture reveals that God is ultimately the source of judgment. Given what we know from Scripture about his character, we should not want any other in charge of determining what is right and just.

The Target of Judgment: The Proud

Psalm 75:4-7

From beginning to end—from the moment proud Satan and his angels were cast down, to Adam and Eve eating the fruit so they would be like God, to Pharaoh arrogantly refusing to let God’s people go, to the throwing down of the great Babylon in Revelation 18:7-10—God’s judgment always hits its target, and it targets human pride.

There are these moments as you read through the Bible when your hair stands up a little, and you think, He probably shouldn’t have said that. Take Daniel 5, for example. Quick background: God’s people are in exile. Jerusalem has been torched. The Babylonian ruler, Belshazzar, is throwing a big party. The theme of the party is “Nobody is bigger, badder, and richer than Babylon.” Since Belshazzar is the ruler of Babylon, this is basically a “look how awesome I am” party.

Then Belshazzar does something really dumb. He orders his subjects, “Fetch the gold and silver vessels, the ones we stole from the Jerusalem temple before we burned it to the ground. Go get those! A round of drinks for all my lords, my wives, and my concubines. Drink to the glory of my kingdom, from the holy vessels of the temple of Yahweh. Drink to our gods!” And the text says,

At that moment the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and began writing on the plaster of the king’s palace wall next to the lampstand. As the king watched the hand that was writing, his face turned pale, and his thoughts so terrified him that he soiled himself and his knees knocked together. (Dan 5:5-6)

Then God addressed Belshazzar through Daniel, reminding him that the sovereign God placed his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, on the throne, “But when his heart was exalted and his spirit became arrogant, he was deposed from his royal throne and his glory was taken from him.” Belshazzar didn’t learn from history: “But you his successor, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, even though you knew all this. Instead, you have exalted yourself against the Lord of the heavens” (Dan 5:20,22-23). This party and the Babylonian kingdom were brought to an abrupt end that very night. The Medeo-Persians came, they killed Belshazzar, and Darius took over.

There it is: God’s judgment always hits its target, and it always targets human pride. This is not only true when it comes to pagan pride but religious pride as well. Both James and Peter remind believers, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).

Wrong Response 2: Boast in Judgment

Some of us read passages that speak of God’s judgment of evil and assume an attitude of moral superiority. Remember the Pharisee’s prayer in Luke 18? He prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like that guy over there.” This is a classic case of what has come to be known as the humble brag because this prayer basically says, “I’m better than you, but it’s only by grace.”

But look at Jesus in the Gospels. Find the places where he is shouting, rebuking, and condemning. Who’s he talking to? Professing members of the community of faith. These weren’t atheists or idol worshipers, the Belshazzars of the world. They were churchgoers. They taught and memorized large portions of the Bible. Jesus reserves his strongest rebuke for them: “Blind guides! . . . whitewashed tombs. . . . Brood of vipers!” (Matt 23:24,27,33).

When we watch Jesus’s manner with the self-righteous, we are seeing “God opposes the proud” in living color. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). This was not a compliment. He wasn’t saying, “You guys are so righteous. You don’t need me. Let me go help these other people.” He was passing them by on account of their pride. It was an act of judgment.

The great Puritan pastor Thomas Watson said, “The greatest of all disorders is to think we are whole and need no help” (Wilson, Works, 81). In the book of Proverbs we come to a list that should bring us to the edge of our seats because it starts this way: “The Lord hates six things; in fact, seven are detestable to him: arrogant eyes . . .” (Prov 6:16-19). Verse 5 of our passage warns against speaking arrogantly.

The boasting response is arrogant because it assumes that when God judges evil and injustice in the world, I’ll be safe because I’m so righteous. However, when the Bible speaks to the problem of evil in this world—injustice, anger, malice, vengeance, lust, greed, selfishness—we are inside the problem of evil, not outside. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . . The wages of sin is death” (Rom 3:23; 6:23).

Someone said, “Pride is the AIDS of the soul.” No one dies of AIDS. AIDS breaks down your body’s ability to fight off illnesses of many kinds, and one of those illnesses kills you. Pride is like that. Pride lowers our defenses against all kinds of destructive sins. It makes us think we’re above temptation. “Even if everyone falls away, I will not.” Remember Peter saying that to Jesus? Famous last words. This is sobering. Pride left unchecked will take us places we never thought we’d go. Pride destroys friendships and marriages. Pride leads to divisiveness in the church. Pride is killing our witness before a watching world. Pride leads us to disciple our children to be nothing more than little Pharisees, with all the outward trappings of religious observance, yet having no sense that grace is amazing—where they never feel any sense of wonder at the mercy of God toward us in Christ.

What a tragic miss it is when we look at biblical judgment and all it produces and say, “Thank God I’m not messed up the way those people are!” Where is my heart? Why am I smirking? This boasting is not good.

In Romans 10 Paul tells us why his Jewish brothers and sisters by and large rejected God’s salvation and God’s Messiah:

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. (Rom 10:1-3)

In this case the rejection wasn’t because they wanted to eat, drink, and be merry with the dying pagan world around them. They rejected salvation because they were so righteous. They looked in the moral mirror and liked what they saw. “We don’t need a handout. We’re not God’s charity case!” they said.

No wonder, when Jesus begins the Beatitudes, he starts his list of virtues with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs” (Matt 5:3). In Scripture, blessing comes to those who are poor in spirit, the meek inherit the earth, and battles are not won by trusting in horses, chariots, weapons, or human strength. Oh, to be a church full of people who are poor in spirit! Oh, to be a man, a husband, a father, a pastor who is poor in spirit! Pastor Jonathan Edwards was intensely committed to live a godly life on a daily basis, and yet he would say years after his conversion, “I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness, and the badness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion” (Works, vol. 1, 57).

Is that your experience? In Scripture, the closer holy people got to the holy God, the less holy they felt themselves to be. Charles Spurgeon famously wrote, “It is easier to save us from our sins than from our righteousness.”

The kingdom of God has a predictable pattern. God exalts the lowly and brings down the proud. We rightly say pagan pride is a stench in the nostrils of God, but we often neglect to realize that religious pride is just as offensive.

Friends, don’t miss who is in the crosshairs of judgment in Psalm 75: the proud. So there can be no more important response to this truth than to humble ourselves before God. We must cast ourselves on his mercy because if we don’t think we need mercy, we need it more than ever.

The Goal of Judgment: Salvation

Psalm 75:8-10

God’s judgment is a terrifying thing because God is infinitely holy and we have sinned against him. The sobering thing is that when all is said and done, God’s judgment is not poured out sparingly. There is a cup filled to the brim with God’s just judgment against human sin, and that cup will be drained all the way down to the dregs. That cup will be turned over on the last day, and there will be no drips. God’s just wrath will have been fully poured out. Yet no one will be able to charge God with overreacting to evil.

David cries out in Psalm 51, “Against you—you alone—I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence; you are blameless when you judge” (51:4). Those words are a fitting response to every act of judgment we read about in the Bible. For example, what happened in the great flood? “Against you—you only—did they sin and do evil in your sight. So you are right and blameless in this flood.” The Amalekites are destroyed. “You are right and blameless.” The earth opens up to consume the sons of Korah. Fiery serpents are sent into the camp of Israel. “You are right and blameless when you judge.” This applies all the way up to the final day of judgment, when God’s just wrath is poured out on all rebellion. These words could even be written over the door of hell itself. “Against you have these sinned and done what is evil in your sight. You are right and blameless in this eternal judgment.”

This is what our sins deserve. Scripture points this out time and time again: “Lord, if you kept an account of iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” (Ps 130:3). It’s a rhetorical question whose answer is obvious: no one. Again: “And you—you are to be feared. When you are angry, who can stand before you?” (76:7). The answer: no sinner. And we have all sinned against God. There is no one righteous, not even one.

So, how is it that we can say the goal of judgment is salvation? How is it possible for us, far from ridiculing judgment or boasting in judgment, to humbly give God thanks in the midst of a song about God’s judgment? The answer has everything to do with this cup in verse 8 and a prayer from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember what Jesus asked? “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39). The Father’s silence in the face of Jesus’s plea for the cup to pass makes it abundantly clear that it was not his will for the cup of wrath to pass from Jesus.

What was the Father’s will in sending the Son? The cup of God’s justice against our sin sat there for thousands of years. God could not simply pour it out on the ground. That would be to deny his commitment to justice. It would be a denial of his own character, which is impossible (2 Tim 2:13). So the cup must be drunk.

The glory of the good news is this: in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ came to give his life as a ransom for sinners. The prophet Isaiah predicted the Father would lay on Messiah the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:6). So as we look forward from Psalm 75, the next time we see the foaming cup of judgment is when, on a hill outside Jerusalem, on the darkest day in human history, God puts it into the trembling hands of his only Son and says, “Drink it.” Jesus took the cup and drained it for all who believe!

Christian, that is your salvation! No wonder there’s salvation in no one else. No wonder it’s such an insult to speak of “other ways” of salvation when Jesus alone became our substitute. Jesus alone became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). He alone bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Pet 2:24). The judgment of God on Jesus is our only hope of rescue.

So here is the final response we must avoid.

Wrong Response 3: Minimize Judgment

The minimize response is also arrogant because, if God in his Word makes judgment a prominent theme, then when I push this aside, however humble I might look or sound when I’m doing it, I have assumed the position of God’s editor, his PR agent. Friends, read the Bible and think about this. If God’s primary goal was to be accepted by our culture, he would’ve given us a much different book because our culture doesn’t like a lot of what’s here.

Beyond that, when we downplay the judgment of God, we are stealing glory from the cross. When we look at the cross, we see the greatest expressions of God’s justice and mercy in all of history. God’s justice was glorified in that moment because the cup of wrath was drained to the dregs. God’s mercy was glorified in that moment because the cup of wrath was drained by the Son, not you and me.

That’s why Paul says, “You want to boast? Go for it! Boast in the cross!” (Gal 6:14; author’s paraphrase). On the cross we see that God is both “just and the justifier” (Rom 3:26 ESV) of the one who believes. He is seen, there, as Judge of all the earth and Redeemer of his people.

But we must respond to this news! Jesus is not automatically the substitute for every person on the planet. If that were true, we would be universalists; everyone would be saved because Jesus died. But it’s not true, which is why response to Jesus is utterly vital. At the end of the day, all God’s judgment will be poured out in fullness. Here’s how it will play out. Either Jesus Christ drinks the cup of God’s judgment in your place because God is merciful, or you will have to drink it yourself because God is just.

The one who turns from sin and trusts in Jesus will never drink a single drop of wrath. Why? Because Jesus drank the cup for all who trust him, and God is just—which means he can’t charge all your sin to Jesus and still leave part of the bill for you.

This is why I love the verse of “It Is Well” that says, “My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! / My sin—not in part but the whole / Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, / Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!” (Spafford, “It Is Well,” 447). For all those who trust Jesus and embrace him as Lord, the just penalty for your sins against a holy God has already been satisfied. There is literally no wrath left.

That’s why Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” Your condemnation wasn’t swept under the rug somewhere. It was absorbed by Christ who stood in your place. When we look at the cross, we see God’s judgment accomplishing God’s salvation for all who believe.

If it was appropriate for the psalmist to begin a psalm of judgment with a word of thanksgiving, how much more so for us? We can say with even more heartfelt conviction, “We give thanks to you, God; we give thanks to you, for your name is near. People tell about your wondrous works” (v. 1). His most wondrous work of all is that God the Father found a way in his wisdom to be, at the same time, the Judge of the earth and the Savior of his people.

Reflect and Discuss

1. In what ways do we as humans struggle with God being God? Why are we so allergic to the idea of God being the Judge?
2. What is your attitude toward God as the Judge? Why?
3. How does pride lower our defenses against other sins? In what ways does pride manifest itself in your life?
4. How can we humble ourselves before God? What does this practically look like?
5. How is salvation the goal of judgment (see Ps 75:8; Matt 26:39,42)? How does downplaying the judgment of God steal glory from the cross of Christ?
6. How should this psalm inform how you pray, how you praise God, and what you pray for?