When My Cares Are Many
Psalm 94,
O Lord, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
2 Rise up, O judge of the earth;
repay to the proud what they deserve!
3 O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked exult?
4 They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers boast.
5 They crush your people, O Lord,
and afflict your heritage.
6 They kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
7 and they say, “The Lord does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”8 Understand, O dullest of the people!
Fools, when will you be wise?
9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
He who formed the eye, does he not see?
10 He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
He who teaches man knowledge—
11 the Lord—knows the thoughts of man,
that they are but a breath.12 Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
13 to give him rest from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
14 For the Lord will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.16 Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the Lord had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the Lord has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the Lord our God will wipe them out.
Growing up, when my family took road trips, my brothers and I would tell time in “ninja turtle shows.” It was our way of saying, “Are we there yet?” Inspired by our favorite tv-show, featuring four adolescent, pizza-eating, crime-fighting reptiles in a half shell. “Mom, how many turtle shows until we get there?” “How many turtle shows until we eat?” “Dad, I have to go the bathroom.” “Okay, we’ll stop in two ninja turtle shows.” “No, Dad, I need to go in now ninja turtle shows.” Mind you, we weren’t actually watching ninja turtle shows in the car (that needs to be clarified today). There were no screens on those 6, 7, 12-hour drives.
How many ninja turtle shows? This was our 8-year-old, 9-year-old way of saying, How long? We’re tired of this car. We’re tired of this uncomfortable seat belt. We’re tired of Dad’s banjo music. We just want to get to the cabin, or the ocean, or the mountains, or wherever we were going. How long, Mom? How long, Dad?
I thought of those car-rides as I was studying Psalm 94 over the last month. The psalm reminded me how much of life, even the Christian life — especially the Christian life — is waiting.
Some of you are waiting right now, and you’ve been waiting a long time. And you’re tired. You’re tired of the doctor’s visits. You’re tired of the hard conversations. You’re tired of the applications and interviews. You’re tired of the demoralizing headlines and all the evil you see in the world. You’re tired of trying to bring up Jesus again, because you know how angry it makes them — but you love them, so you keep bringing him up. You’re tired. . . . How long, O Lord?
That’s the kind of prayer this is. This particular psalm is wrestling with wickedness and waiting for God to bring justice for his people, but much of it really does apply to whatever pain or uncertainty you’re carrying right now.
Their ‘How Long’ Song
So this is a how long song, and there are dozen or so of these in the psalms. They prayed this kind of prayer a lot. They certainly weren’t afraid to pray and ask how long, to plead with him to put an end to their pain and confusion and suffering. Here’s Psalm 13:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Notice, they weren’t questioning if, but when. They knew he was going to do what he said he would do — and they told him they knew that — but they weren’t afraid to ask when. It was an honest, faith-filled way to express their anguish to God. Lord, when will you make this right? How long? We know the day’s coming, we know you’ll come through for us, we know you’ll put an end to their evil, but why can’t it be today? Can’t it be today, God? Don’t be afraid to pray how long prayers. God teaches us to pray those kinds of prayers, again thirteen times in the psalms.
So what were the people waiting for here in Psalm 94? Let’s start in verse 3:
O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked exult?
They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers boast.
They crush your people, O Lord,
and afflict your heritage.
They kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
and they say, “The Lord does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
This psalm, like many psalms, is wrestling over evil in the world. These are really wicked people. He says they’re attacking God’s people. They’re killing widows and sojourners and orphans. And they’re not doing it in secret. “They pour out their arrogant words;” verse 4, “all the evildoers boast.” They brag about killing kids. Can you imagine?
It’s horrifying that we don’t have to imagine. . . . Do we? No, their wicked tribe is alive and well today in America, where we kill nearly a million children in the womb every year. And then people parade their abortions, right here in our city. How long, O Lord! Put an end to this wickedness. Save these precious boys and girls.
It’s wicked today, and it was wicked then, and God’s people were tired of it — tired of the killing, tired of the boasting, tired of the blaspheming. “God, how long are you going to let them talk about you like that!” Make it all stop. Put it to an end. Show them who you are. Show them that you love us.
This psalm is their how long song, and the song addresses three audiences with three different messages, and those are my three main points:
God, take vengeance.
Believers, take heart.
Sinners, take heed.
1. God, Take Vengeance
This is where the psalm begins, verses 1–2:
O Lord, God of vengeance,
O God of vengeance, shine forth!
Rise up, O judge of the earth;
repay to the proud what they deserve!
God of vengeance. The God who confronts and punishes those who wrong him, everyone who wrongs him. The God of Psalm 94 will wage terrifying war on every unforgiven sin against him. He will have his vengeance. Is that how you think about God? Is that how you pray?
We don’t pray like this much, do we? You don’t hear this in our prayers on Sundays, at least not often. Maybe that’s because the church isn’t a nation like Israel, and so we don’t have the same kinds of national enemies Israel did. We’re not dealing with Egypt and Assyria and Babylon. We also live in the New Covenant age, and so we might think that God was a God of vengeance and wrath, but now he’s a God of compassion and mercy. Not so. The God of Psalm 94 is the God of wondrous compassion and mercy (we’ll see that in a moment). And the God of John 3:16 and Romans 8:28 is every bit the God of consuming wrath and certain vengeance.
The same letter that gave us the promises of Romans 8 says, just four chapters later, Romans 12:19:
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”
Vengeance is still his, and he will repay.
We should shudder to think about what’s coming to those who will not repent and believe in Christ. Their destruction is coming, and it will be worse than any of us can imagine.
God is still a God of vengeance, and the people of God still have enemies. Some estimate that tens of thousands of Christians are killed every year because of their faith, in places like China, India, Ethiopia, Iraq, and North Korea. And the murderers are still boasting. They’re still preaching the same lies, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.” No one’s going to do anything to us. It’s evil and God will have his vengeance. And one way that vengeance will come is through our prayers for justice. “O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth!” You show your awesome glory in mercy, and you show it in wrath. Shine forth! Show them who you are. Show them that you see and that you love us.
2. Believers, Take Heart
So, first, they pray, “God, take vengeance.” The psalmist also turns, though, and addresses the afflicted, in verses 12–23. He speaks to those who are waiting and suffering and praying, and he strengthens them to wait well with four key messages.
1. Your waiting will end.
We’ll start where the psalm ends, verse 23:
[God] will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the LORD our God will wipe them out.
It often seemed like evil was unchecked and might go unaddressed, so God’s people wrote songs to remind themselves that every evil will be fully punished. As we just saw in the last point, God will have his vengeance, and his vengeance is a refuge for all who belong to him.
We can trust that every sin against us will be paid for in full.
And not just our waiting for justice and vindication, but all our waiting will end one day and soon. “‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’” Revelation 21, “‘and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” No more tears or death or pain waiting, and all things new. Your waiting, whatever you’re waiting for in this life, will end.
2. Your waiting is not condemnation.
There are twin confusions when the wicked keep hurting God’s people. The first is why the wicked seem to get away with so much and for so long. The second is why God allows his people to suffer like we often do. God speaks to both in this psalm. God will judge the wicked — all the wicked for all that they have done — and God is not judging you. Verses 12–13:
Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord,
and whom you teach out of your law,
to give him rest from days of trouble,
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
What’s he saying? He’s saying that the painful waiting that the faithful are enduring isn’t condemnation. It’s discipline. It’s not a pain that leads to death, but a pain that leads to life, and holiness, and joy. “Blessed” — happy — “is the man whom you discipline, O Lord.”
Our waiting is a refining and a training for righteousness. It’s the love of a Father, not the sword of a Judge.
And even while we wait and endure his fatherly discipline, he comforts us by speaking to us.
“Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law, to give him rest from days of trouble, until a pit is dug for the wicked.”
While they are being afflicted, for as long as they are afflicted, he’s teaching them his law — he’s revealing himself to them through his word — in order to comfort and strengthen them. He’ll have his vengeance soon — justice will be done — and until then, he’s going to keep speaking rest into your waiting. And that brings us to the third message.
3. Your waiting isn’t too heavy for him.
Your waiting might feel too heavy for you. And that might make you think that it’s too heavy for God. You can’t imagine carrying what you carry another year, another month, maybe another day. And so you start to wonder if there’s any way to carry it. God can carry it. This is verses 16–18:
Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When I thought, “My foot slips” — I can’t carry this anymore. I can’t take even one more step — The Lord held me up.
I love these verses because even though things are going badly for God’s people right now, even though the wicked have the upper hand for now and they’re causing terrible pain and loss, the psalmist can still see and feel the kindness of God.
“If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.”
If the Lord had not been my help, it could have been so much worse than this. This suffering and waiting is awful — How long, O Lord! — but I’d rather bear this with your help than bear anything apart from you. You’ve helped me. You haven’t abandoned me.
We’re going to see in a minute how persistent sin hardens and blinds a person and keeps them from seeing God. We see the opposite here, though. Because the psalmist’s heart is soft and his eyes are clear, he’s able to see the grace and help of God even in terrible suffering, even in the darkness of the valley. He can still see. What would this have been like if the Lord had not been my help? But he was my help. He is your help, no matter how dark it gets. Your waiting isn’t too heavy for him.
4. You can have joy while you wait.
This is all under point #2. Point #1: God, take vengeance. Point #2: Believers, take heart. And we hear four precious reasons to take heart:
Your waiting will end.
Your waiting is not judgment.
Your waiting isn’t too heavy for him.
And now, fourth, you can have joy while you wait.
This last one comes from verse 19 (this verse was the reason I asked to preach this psalm). I’ve returned here again and again and leaned on this verse to remind myself how good God can be, even in trials. Verse 19:
When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
Even though everything around me’s going wrong right now, you cheer my soul. Your consolations comfort and satisfy me. God can cheer any soul, even yours, even now. You might have to wait for justice, or for healing, or for reconciliation — and you might have to wait a long time — but you don’t have to wait for joy. Not with this God. Not if God himself is your joy. Even when the cares of your heart are many, he can cheer your soul. Your cares will never exhaust his consolations. Your pain will never surpass the joy of his presence.
The apostle Paul understood Psalm 94:19. He says, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” (2 Corinthians 7:4). Why? He tells us in Philippians: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord . . .” (Philippians 3:8). I have Christ — my life is his, and he lives in me, and he’s more than I could ever have or enjoy without him. So when the cares of my heart are many, they’re not too many. No, even then, my God is able to cheer my soul. I promise you, he’s able to cheer your soul.
3. Sinners, Take Heed
When we’re waiting for God to make what’s wrong right and put an end to all the evil around us, we say to God: “God, take vengeance.” We say to one another, “Believer, take heart.” And, last point, we say to the enemies of God: “Sinner, take heed.”
We get a glimpse here into the heart and logic of evil, verse 6:
[The wicked] kill the widow and the sojourner,
and murder the fatherless;
and they say, “The Lord does not see;
the God of Jacob does not perceive.”
Satan whispered to Adam and Eve, “Did God really say?” Here, he whispers, “Does God really see?” God doesn’t see what you’re doing. He’s not able to watch everyone all the time, and if he is, he couldn’t possibly have the time or interest to deal with it. No, God doesn’t see your sinning.
And they don’t just believe what he’s saying, they don’t just think this is the back of their minds while they keep sinning. No, by verse 7, they’re preaching Satan’s sermon. They say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive.” God’s not going to do anything about this. Do you really believe that? No, God’s not going to do anything about this, because there is no God. That’s what they’re really preaching.
And that’s what indulging in sin — any sin — does to us. This is the hardening and blinding I mentioned earlier. Sin takes us from believing “God doesn’t see” to preaching “God doesn’t see” to eventually rejecting and ignoring God altogether. Sin hardens us until we can’t see or hear or feel anymore. We walk and eat and sin in a world filled with the glory of God, and yet we can’t see him or hear him anywhere. It’s like walking along the Pacific Ocean, and looking around wondering where the water is. Sin does horrible things to people, and this is the worst thing it does to us. It slowly poisons our eyes until the unspeakably glorious God seems small, weak, boring, imaginary. Giving into sin will destroy your soul by slowly blotting out heaven.
Is some sin doing that to you? You might say that God is real, and that he sees everything, and that he’ll judge every wrong one day, but if you secretly persist in that sin, you’re really saying you don’t believe any of that. And if you keep returning to that swamp of lust or bitterness or greed or self-pity, you’ll see less and less and less until you can’t see anything at all. You won’t be able to see the ocean, even if you’re standing in it.
Hear the warning, verses 8–11:
Understand, O dullest of the people!
Fools, when will you be wise?
He who planted the ear, does he not hear?
He who formed the eye, does he not see?
He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke?
He who teaches man knowledge —
the Lord — knows the thoughts of man,
that they are but a breath.
He made the eye. Do you think he can’t see what you’re doing? He made the ear. Do you think he can’t hear what you’re saying? He doesn‘t just know what you’re doing and saying; he knows what you’re thinking — “he knows the thoughts of man.” You’re not fooling him at all, not even for a second. You’re fooling yourself, and you’ll destroy yourself if you stay on that path. God sees all, and he will have his vengeance.
But even now, even after you’ve given into that sin again and again, the God of vengeance, the God of perfect justice, is holding out a hand of mercy to you, a blood-stained hand of mercy.
And this brings us to the Table.
God of Vengeance and Mercy
We meet the God of vengeance and mercy in the face of Jesus Christ, who comes to execute judgment against all who refused to repent and to save all those who repent of their sins and treasure and follow him. Listen to 2 Thessalonians 1:6–9:
God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance — terrible vengeance — on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints — stunning mercy — and to be marveled at among all who have believed.
He is the God of vengeance. Every wrong will be made right — every wrong committed against you and every wrong committed by you. And those wrongs will be made right one of two ways. Either God will inflict his vengeance on you, because you refused his mercy. Or he will have poured out his vengeance on his Son, at the cross, because you humbled yourself, believed in his Son, and were saved. Those who are forgiven through faith will never taste the wrath of God, not one ounce and not for one second.
