Psalm 9 includes both praise for who God is and a call for God to vindicate the righteous. One of the common themes of the psalms David wrote is David “reminds” the LORD who He is. He reminds the LORD of His goodness, His protection of the weak, and many other traits. Something I have learned from this over the years is when I am praying, I “remind” God who He is, not that He ever forgets, but I do sometimes. When I praise God for being all-powerful, or acknowledge His goodness, the reminder is more for me than for Him. I’m sure that’s the way it was for King David as well.
Psalm 10 calls the LORD to come out of hiding and pronounce judgment on the wicked. The author, who is not identified, reminds the LORD of all the injustices done by the wicked, and particularly the injustices the wicked carry out against the poor. Then he calls on the LORD to judge the wicked and to show the world His righteousness and power.
Psalm 11 is brief, but it reminds us the LORD is in His Holy Temple in heaven and He sees all. He judges the wicked and upholds the righteous. This theme repeats over and over again throughout the psalms.
In Psalm 12, King David calls on God to “show up.” By this I mean David tells the LORD the evil are prospering, and they don’t seem to be judged. David knows the LORD’s righteousness prevails in the end, but at the moment it seems the wicked are more prevalent than the righteous. As we look around in our world, we might think the same thing. The “rewards” of righteousness aren’t always evident in this life, and it seems the wicked often prosper and benefit. The LORD’s justice always prevails, though, and we need to remember as King David did that the LORD has the final word.
As we return to Matthew 27, we read again the account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, His condemnation by the crowd, His crucifixion and burial. We’ve read this account before several times now. As I reread it, two things stood out to me: 1) Judas “repented” of his sin of turning Jesus over, but he really didn’t. He was sorry for what he had done. He gave the money back to the religious leaders, but he didn’t repent, that is he didn’t change his mind, nor did he turn away from what he had done and back to God. Instead, he languished in his sorrow, and decided to kill himself in his remorse. The devil won twice: first when Judas sinned by betraying Jesus, and then when Judas ended his life rather than being restored from his sin. As we read in John’s gospel, after Jesus’ resurrection He restored Peter to fellowship. Peter had sinned by denying Jesus three times, yet because Peter repented, turned away from the sin, changed his mind about it, and returned to God, he was able to receive restoration. Then he lived a fruitful life for Jesus. We must learn both from Judas’ failure to repent and Peter’s willingness to do so, how important it is to repent and turn back to God when we have sinned.
The second truth that stood out to me in this reading of Matthew 27 is how much it seemed Pilate wanted to do the right thing regarding Jesus, which was to release Him. Yet, in the end Pilate listened to the voice of the crowd. It’s easy to condemn Pilate, but we have all been in a situation where we knew the right thing to do, but the crowd was doing the opposite. I haven’t always done the right thing in that moment, because it’s always the hard thing. It’s hard to stand against the crowd whether the “crowd” is only a handful of people or a huge multitude. Pilate missed the opportunity to act righteously, because he was more concerned with pleasing the crowd. In our lives, we will face the crowd many times, and the only way we will choose what’s right in that moment is to follow Jesus faithfully when it is just Him and us.