All right, this psalm has the usual marks of a lament psalm. In verse one, we have the direct address with an introductory petition that’s usual in the laments: “O Lord, my God, in you do I take refuge. Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.” In verses six to eight, we have the petitions proper. That is led up to in verses three to five, but then the petition proper comes in beginning with verse six, where he asks for justice and vindication: “Arise, O Lord, in your anger.” And then verses 10 and following, we have his expression of confidence, an expression of trust: “My shield is with God who saves the upright in heart.” And then he concludes, as usual with the lament psalms, he concludes with praise in verse 17: “I will give to the Lord the thanks due his righteousness. I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.”
All right, the superscript of Psalm 7 provides for us the historical setting. This is the second of 14 psalms that provide a historical setting for the psalm that we’re intended to recognize, but there are a couple of questions that are raised with the superscript. First of all, this word Shiggaion: “A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.” So this is a psalm that he sang himself to the Lord, but a Shiggaion—what in the world is that? And the answer is, no one knows. This word is used here and in Habakkuk chapter three, verse one, or another psalm as well. These are the only places it’s used in the Old Testament. The meaning of it has eluded us. Too much time has elapsed. In fact, even the Septuagint translators, when they came across this—this would be 150, 200 years before the time of Jesus—when they came across this word Shiggaion, they didn’t know what it meant either. And so they just opted to say “a psalm of David.” We don’t know what it is. It’s a poem of some kind. It’s a psalm, one that he sang to the Lord, and I don’t think there’s a lot of consequence in missing that.
There’s another question that’s raised in the superscript as well, and that’s this matter of Cush, a Benjaminite. And the question here is, who in the world is Cush, a Benjaminite? We’ve seen some other Cushes and Kishes earlier in Genesis and things, but who’s this Cush, a Benjaminite, that has affected David somehow that he’s writing? There’s no record of this in the book of Samuel that records David’s life. We don’t know who Cush is. The best guess is—and this is judging from some of the hints in the psalms, some of which I’ll see here in a second, and then some as we go along—the best guess here is that this psalm was written during David’s flight from King Saul. This is 1 Samuel 21 to 26, and that period when he’s running from King Saul for his life.
You might remember that period. It’s the period of history which Bruce Waltke likes to call the time when we had “one king too many” in Israel. We had Saul, who was the anointed king in Israel. David has been anointed, promised that he would be king, and the present king, King Saul, has turned furious against David, in a rage with jealousy, really in a way insane with jealousy over David. And he’s trying to kill David now, and David has to run for his life. David, as you remember, had risen to prominence. When he came to Saul, at first he was embraced and loved, and then he became the champion in Saul’s army, and then Saul tries various ways to off him, and they don’t work. And now it’s just—he throws a javelin at him, and David has to run, and he’s on the run for his life from a crazy king, King Saul, who wants him dead. He’s in covenant partnership with the king’s son, Jonathan; Saul himself is enraged over everything and David is out on the run from Saul.
You might remember sort of the epitome of that period of David’s life when he’s running from Saul. He’s running and he’s hiding in a cave at En Gedi. And while he’s there in the cave, he’s trapped in there. He can’t get out because if he goes anywhere, he’ll certainly be seen. Saul and his men are closing in on him. They don’t know where he is. They know he must be somewhere in the area. He’s hiding in the cave. And then we have that opportunity where David could have killed King Saul. Instead, he cuts off a piece of his robe, you remember, and then goes to Saul later and says, “Look, I’ve got this. I could have killed you. Why do you believe these things about me?” It’s during that period, I think, that we have this psalm that is written.
During that period, some false accusations had been raised against David, and that’s what David complains about in this psalm. Verse, for example, let me read you some passages from 1 Samuel, from that section. 1 Samuel 24, it’s in this context of David running from Saul. 1 Samuel 24, verses eight and nine: “Afterward, David also rose and went out of the cave and called after Saul, ‘My Lord the King!’ And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, ‘Why do you listen to the words of men who say, “Behold, David seeks your harm”?'” This isn’t true. Don’t believe it. And here’s the proof of it.
Now, presumably one of these people who had raised false accusations against David saying “he seeks your harm, Saul,” one of them evidently was a man by the name of Cush, a Benjaminite. It’s Saul’s tribe. It’s usually loyal to David. And David’s life is now in danger. He’s being accused of going after Saul when in fact he has not. Now there are some echoes of that in Psalm 7. Look at verses three to five here. Psalm 7, verse 3: “O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.”
That’s reminiscent of some passages in Samuel. 1 Samuel 20, in verse one, David says to Jonathan, “What have I done? What is my guilt? And what is my sin before your father that he seeks my life?” And then in 1 Samuel 24, verse 11: “See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand, for by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it.” And then again, 1 Samuel 26: “Now, therefore, let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the Lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering. But if it is men, may they be cursed before the Lord, for they have driven me out this day, that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, ‘Go serve other gods.'”
So evidently there had been some false accusations against David during that period. They are reflected in the Samuel account. They’re reflected here in Psalm 7. It seems that that’s the context going on. Now to appreciate that situation that David is in, you have to go back and remember 1 Samuel 16, where David has been anointed by the prophet Samuel, and he has the promise now: he will be king. Now being the anointed one, he’s God’s property. He has God’s promise, he has God’s protection, and he will be king. The problem is, Saul has that anointing. And being the anointed of God, you dare not touch him. He’s God’s anointed; if God wants to remove him, that’s up to God—you can’t do it. And so David is caught. He has the promise that he will be king, but he cannot take that into his own hands. He has to leave it to God to do it and trust him with it, as we’ll see here in the psalm. God has promised him, “You will be king,” but he’s not yet king, and the present king wants him dead, and he can’t retaliate. All he can do is run and hide.
So the gist of the psalm, again, is David’s plea for deliverance, like we see in many of his laments, a plea for vindication, and it’s grounded in God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness in this context means God’s faithfulness to his promise to David, the anointed one. But here, unlike what we saw last week in Psalm 6, the tone is one of a marked confidence on David’s part. He expects vindication from God.
Verses One And Two
All right, now to the psalm itself. Verses one and two lay out the setting for us in broad terms. “O Lord, my God, in you do I take refuge. Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, lest, like a lion, they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces with none to deliver.” So we’re to think here in terms of Saul, the king, with a javelin, throwing it at David, and now with his men on a relentless pursuit of David, seeking his life. David is out on the run, and from his standpoint, Saul and his men are, in his words here, like a lion. They’re vicious, they’re ruthless, they’re determined to kill, and there’s nothing else in their mind. And so he says in verse one, “O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge.” That’s the language of trust. God is a fortress. He can run and hide with God, but there’s nowhere else to turn. There’s no resources of his own that he can take. He can’t go against Saul to defeat his enemy. Even when he has opportunity to do it, he dare not. And so like David at En Gedi, when he’s in the cave, his advisors tell him, “Now’s your chance.” It’s all the Lord’s property—”I can’t.” All he can do is abandon himself to God’s safekeeping. That’s the atmosphere of verse one. “O Lord, my God, in you do I take refuge.” There’s nowhere else to go, no resources of my own. The language of utter trust and abandonment to God’s safekeeping. So in verses one and two then, we have the introductory petition: “save me from all of my pursuers and deliver me.”
Verses Three Through Nine
Now in verses three and following, we come to the formal petition section. Remember in lament psalms, the heart of the lament psalms is actually the petition, not the lament. And so we come to the lament section beginning in verse three. Now often in the lament psalms, David will complain. He’ll protest his innocence. He’ll say, “I’m innocent. Why should this be happening? It’s not fair. It’s unjust. I don’t deserve this.” But here there’s no extended complaint. Here instead, what he does is protest his innocence by means of a self-maledictory prayer, a self-implication of sorts. Verse three: “O Lord, my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let them trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust.” That is not just death, but a shameful kind of defeat to death.
So David here speaks with confidence. This attack is unprovoked; it’s undeserved. “I’m pleading for your deliverance, Lord, but if I’m guilty, let him catch me and kill me.” So it’s a strong statement of his confidence in his own integrity in this regard. And the implication, of course, is: “Lord, you know I’m not guilty, that I do not deserve this, therefore deliver me.” And that, in fact, is the petition when it comes to the formal petition itself in verses six through nine.
So look at verse six. “Arise, O Lord, in your anger and lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies. Awake for me, you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you. Over it return on high.” So he’s protested: “I don’t deserve this, Lord, you know it. Check out my heart. You know I don’t deserve this. So, arise.” That’s a battle cry. “Arise, take up arms.” It echoes actually Moses’ war cry in Numbers chapter 10. “Awake for,” in the second part of the verse, “awake for me.” He says—this is obviously an anthropomorphism of some kind. God does not sleep; God doesn’t need to wake up. But the idea is that of: take action. Go to war for me. Take up my cause and get involved in this.
And then verse seven: “Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you. Over it return on high.” Here God is pictured as the transcendent judge. He’s over it. He’s over the peoples of the world. And he wants God now to act in that capacity as the transcendent judge. And it, of course, anticipates a day of final judgment, which is a major theme throughout the Bible—we’ll talk more about that. But he’s simply pleading here in this particular case, here and now: take up your role as a judge and bring them all into account. And bring it about now.
And then verse 8. It’s a surprising turn. “Judge me.” So God is the judge. He’s the judge of all peoples. And now David pleads to the Lord: “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.” So this resumes the thought of verses three to five, where he protests his innocence by saying, “If I’ve done this and I’m actually guilty, then let them catch me and kill me.” But here he’s more in a positive tone. “Lord, come as judge and judge me. Stand as judge over me and you will determine that I’m righteous and that my integrity is still intact.”
Then verse 9: “Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous. You who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.” Remarkable language that is picked up elsewhere in the Bible repeatedly, and that is that of God judging in a way that entails more than just the actions, but the mind and the heart as well—that is the motives, the dispositions, the feelings, the desires, the intentions. Not only what was done, but why it was done and with what motives. But here it’s in a positive sense. “God, you who test the hearts, judge my integrity and judge my righteousness. My heart has been faithful. I have not been selfishly ambitious in this. I don’t deserve what is happening.” And he wants God then to stand as judge, not only over them, but over him and vindicate him publicly. So that’s verses seven to nine. Come and act on my behalf and vindicate me before everybody.
Verses 10 Through 16
Well, that brings us then to verses 10 to 16, where we have this confidence section of the lament. Verse 10: “My shield is with God who saves the upright in heart.” So he’s still contending that his opposition is undeserved. He’s upright in heart. He has not shied away from what God requires of him. And so he calls on God to be his shield. Well, actually here he doesn’t call on God to be his shield. He states with confidence that “God is my shield.” God takes up my cause and it is a righteous cause that he takes up in my case. So David is confident that this is undeserved and so he’s also confident then that God, as the righteous judge that he is, will not allow this wrong to succeed, but he will bring about what he has promised.
Now in verses 11 to 13, David branches out here to a larger theological perspective. Rather than just being personal in its view with regard to “my cause,” he speaks in terms of the bigger picture of God as judge. Verse 11: “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow. He has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.” So again, he’s speaking of the universal government of God over all the world and over every individual. And notice verse 11, the second part of the verse, again we have the statement of God’s hatred—God’s hatred of the wicked. “A God who feels indignation every day.” That is constantly, continually, God feels indignation toward the wicked.
So the picture’s of God, a righteous judge, amazingly patient with regard to the wicked, but feeling indignation over it. That day of judgment—it’s coming, it’s coming, and they will get their due. Patiently holding back, and yet he’s incensed with anger. And verses 12 and 13, it’s only a matter of time. God is the righteous judge. He’s incensed at sin. And for the unrepentant, only judgment awaits. Now from this point forward, the tone of the psalm is just supremely confident. Unlike some of the other laments, here we have David supremely confident and we don’t have any more petitions, no more pleading with God. In fact, there’s no more personal references from here forward except for his expression of praise. Simply look at the big picture. He’s assured with the truth that God, the righteous judge, will bring about justice. These people cannot succeed. The righteousness of God is at stake in it. He’s made a promise. He will keep it.
Well, then we come to verses 14 to 16, and here we have some proverbial-like statements with regard to the wicked, and they all follow this judgment theme. These are like brief proverbs. Verse 14: “Behold, the wicked man conceives evil, is pregnant with mischief, and he gives birth to lies.” Graphic kind of language. He’s conceived evil. He is pregnant with mischief. He’s just waiting to go. But then when it gives birth, it gives birth to lies. The idea here is that of deception, disappointment. I think the NIV here translates it “disillusionment.” So what they plan, the evil that has been in this gestation period for a while, and they’ve been planning to do, ends up in a way that is totally disillusioned. It doesn’t work out the way they planned, and of course the point then is that of the coming judgment, and that is verses 15 and 16, where he explains more specifically.
“He makes a pit,” that is the evil, “he makes a pit, digging it out”—this is the wicked man conceiving evil and pregnant with mischief—”he makes a pit, he digs it out, and falls into the hole that he has made.” Or verse 16: “His mischief returns on his own head, and on his own skull, his violence descends.” So these are proverbs of the consequences of sin. It’s kind of like universal maxims. You set out to do what’s evil, it won’t work out well for you. He fell into his own trap. In other words, sinful behavior has its consequences. It doesn’t work out as planned. And it’s not hard to find some biblical examples of this, like Haman, who’s hanged on the gallows that he made for Mordecai. Or even David and his sin with Bathsheba—that really didn’t work out that well in his family either, as we’ve seen. Even the lost world can recognize that it’s stupid to break the law, that crime doesn’t pay. And then the world is spoken of as the natural consequences of doing wrong. Parents routinely—I did with my kids—parents routinely warn their kids ahead of time: “When you face temptation, you need to think. You need to think—this isn’t going to work out well.” In other words, these proverbs are: doing wrong isn’t worth it. And you see it all the time that sin doesn’t pay. You see it in broken homes, you see it in broken lives, you see it in people in the hospital and in prisons, and it just doesn’t work out well.
But David’s point here is much bigger than that. David is not talking here about the natural consequences of misbehavior. In fact, much sin and much crime goes without notice and without check in this life. It goes without consequence. God is patient. He’s sovereign in the timing of judgments. Sometimes crime has paid. Even so, David insists that sin sets in motion its own punishment. Sin sets in motion its own punishment. He looks behind these, what we might call the natural consequences of misbehavior or something like that, and he sees the actions of a just God. And in every one of them, it’s like a flash of justice: that God has intervened, God is not absent, and these consequences of doing wrong are in fact God’s interventions in his flashes of justice, all prospective of a final day of judgment when he calls all men into account, when God the righteous judge—verses 11 to 15—the one who is indignant and every day is indignant with those who sin and then will whet his sword and bring his weapons of judgment to bear on all of the unrepentant.
It’s like—the idea here is not far from Romans chapter two and verse five, where the Apostle Paul, speaking of that day of judgment, speaks of those who, with their sins, store up wrath, store up wrath against the day of wrath. Every sin, put in a bank account. Every next sin, put in a bank account. And one day you’ll draw, and the punishment for it will come. But David is utterly convinced of the justice of God. He will be vindicated and his oppressors will be punished. God’s righteousness is at stake in it all.
Verse 17
And so we come then to verse 17. He concludes with praise. Here he views the present from the perspective of the inevitable end. “I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness. I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.” That is to say, God will intervene. He will do what he has promised. The righteous judge of the earth will always do what is right. Justice will be served. And until then, David is just encouraged with the prospect of it. And that’s where the psalm leaves us.
Now one of the outstanding themes of this psalm is that of the coming judgment. Verses seven and eight speak of it in a larger perspective with regard to the nations. “Let the assemblies of peoples be gathered about you.” The assemblies of the peoples—that’s the nations. “Let the assemblies of the peoples be gathered about you. Over it return on high. The Lord judges the peoples.” All men, all women, collectively, individually, all accountable to the Lord God. And he will bring them into account. And the outstanding reminder of Psalm 7 is, as I said it before, you can sing “I Did It My Way,” but in the end that will be your undoing. We are not autonomous; we are accountable creatures under the watchful eye of our Creator.
Now this, of course, is not a very popular doctrine today. The idea that God would actually judge people for their mistakes is just a repulsive thought to our society today. It dethrones man. It’s just insulting. This is one of the doctrines of the Bible that is just intolerated today. Could not be more offensive. And yet it’s a huge, huge theme all through the Bible. We have it in the Psalter at the very beginning: “the way of the wicked will perish.” Psalm 2: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.” We find it all through the prophets; they’re famous with it. The prophecies of the Day of the Lord coming in this day of judgment and the day of judgment promised on the nations that came temporally in their own experience historically. “For three sins of the children of Edom, yea for four I will not withhold punishment.” And many of them, the prophecies were of the coming judgment in this time, and they happened. For all of them the prophecy is of the Day of the Lord and his climactic fulfillment in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul makes reference to this in 2 Thessalonians 1, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, bringing vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. Revelation, the book of Revelation accounts these judgments in graphic terms. It’s really a funny thing that people talk about the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. You always know it’s somebody who’s never read the Bible when they say that in the Old Testament you have a God of wrath, and in the New Testament you have a God of love. And it’s just silly. You’ve never laid eyes on the New Testament. In fact, both judgment and love in the New Testament are ratcheted up entirely. You have love in an amazing new way, but you have judgment in an amazing way. You have descriptions of judgment in the New Testament you don’t have a faint of in the Old Testament. Try Revelation; try the words of Jesus with his horrible descriptions of hell, forever.
A huge theme in the scriptures and in Psalm 7 and verse 6, David calls for it: “Arise, O Lord, in your anger. Lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies. Awake for me, you who have appointed a judgment.” It just might be that Paul had this verse in mind when he was on Mars Hill and he spoke in Acts 17:31: “God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance by raising him from the dead.”
On verses 11 to 13 here, David warns of a coming judgment for those who do not repent. I wonder if Jesus had these words in mind in Luke 13. You remember there had been those incidents that had happened locally in Israel? A tower had fallen, people had died, and then there was some massacre by some soldiers, massacres of the people. And Jesus, remember what he says? “Don’t think that they were worse sinners than you, and that’s why this happened to them. But I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish.” You see in that outflashes of the judgment of God. That’s just prospective of what will come on all the unrepentant.
And then verse 9: God is referred to as the one who tests the minds and the hearts in judgment. That’s taken up for us in Revelation chapter two, verse 23, where the Lord Jesus takes up these words himself in warning the church of Thyatira that had allowed sexual immorality: “I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And I will strike her children dead, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart. I will give to each of you according to your works.”
Surely one of the great takeaways of this psalm is what I’ve mentioned already: that in every false accusation, in every misjudgment, in every injustice, we may take encouragement from the fact that in the end, because God is righteous, he will call the score in truth. We’ve all had it—accusations that were false, innuendos that are made about us. I’ve had it in ministry. People say things and you can’t fix it because to say it and set it right, you have to implicate others, and you have to live with it. And David takes encouragement from the fact that there’s coming a day when God, the righteous judge who judges the minds and the hearts, will call the score in truth.
And yet, the scope of divine judgment that David speaks of here in verse nine is just staggering. It’s a sobering thought. Not just judgment universally, but judgment that will test the minds and the hearts. That is, God will call into account injustice, justice, just judgment. Not only what we have done, but why we have done it, what our motives were in it, what we said, what we meant to say by it, our intentions in it, and all of that is brought to bear in judgment. God, who searches the minds and the hearts, brings us into account. That’s echoed in 1 Thessalonians chapter two and verse four, where Paul speaks of it again with regard to the judgment seat of Christ. It’s just a staggering thought that when God calls all of us into judgment, he takes into consideration not just the external actions, but the motives, the intentions, and all.
And what’s remarkable in this regard is the bold, unflinching confidence with which David speaks of it. Verses three to five: “If I’m at fault, let me die.” If that’s not enough, verse 8: “Judge me according to my righteousness, according to the integrity that is within me.” Verse 9: “You who test the minds and the heart, confirm that I am righteous.” Verse 10: “My shield is with God who saves the upright in heart.” David is bold and unflinching in this confidence before God that when He judges the minds and the heart, “this is what I want. I want God to judge the mind and the heart and vindicate me.” That’s just remarkable, remarkable kind of language.
On one level, as I’ve said before with these laments, when David protests his innocence, we have to see that he’s speaking with reference to the specific situation. “I’ve not acted in treason against the king. I haven’t tried to overthrow him. I didn’t bring this on myself by any actions on my part. I didn’t preempt it.” He’s speaking at that level. But the language is shocking. When we read these kind of words—”Judge me according to my righteousness, judge me according to the integrity of my heart, you who judge the mind and the heart, show that I’m upright”—we wince when we read that, don’t we? Who in the world can talk like that? I wonder sometimes if I’ve ever done anything with a pure motive.
In fact, there’s only one person in the whole history of the world who is able to talk like that in an absolute sense in the face of false accusation and wrongdoing. The Lord Jesus could say to the Father, “Vindicate me according to my righteousness.” And he was vindicated in resurrection. And yet, this is the very kind of confidence that marks the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter eight, a confidence that he extends to all of the people of God in Christ. Looking ahead to final judgment, the Apostle Paul says, looking ahead to final judgment, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” He pictures us standing before this judgment seat of God. When God the judge is there to test the minds and the hearts and render judgment accordingly, who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? And he answers this question: “God has justified.”
And that’s of course the whole heart of the gospel. His whole purpose in writing the book of Romans is to expound that: that the righteous God has found a righteous way to pronounce unrighteous people righteous. That here we have one who has stood in our place, who is perfectly righteous, and coming in our place has borne the judgment of God in our place, so that we in him are safe. His righteousness has become ours. Our sin was given to him. He paid the price, and now God can righteously pronounce us righteous. And that’s why he can write, “There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
And as we sing, when Satan, or anyone else for that matter, tempts us to despair and tells me of the grief within, of the guilt within, upward we look and see him there who made an end of all of our sin. He has answered for it all. There’s no hope apart from that. And we will never stand in judgment before God on any other ground. And there is that two-sided message of the scriptures running all the way through the Bible. On the one hand, you are a sinner. You are a creature accountable to God. And you have sinned against him. And he tests not only what you have done, but your very mind and heart in doing it. And he will call you into account for it. And then that second message goes right along with it, and that is there’s only one way of escape from that judgment, and that is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. You may find yourself in him by faith and joined to him by faith. Enjoy the vindication of God that comes for those who are in Christ. Or you’ll be held accountable for all of your sins and you’re on your own.
And that awful day of judgment, when God searches the hearts, we can have the confidence of David, we can have the confidence of the Apostle Paul. Not one charge will be held against us. Our righteous substitute has answered for them all. And in fact, and in fact, in that awful day of judgment, every injustice will be made right. And the wicked who have so long oppressed the people of God will be called to account. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1, those who trouble you will themselves be troubled. We who are righteous in Christ, we who are righteous in Christ will share in his vindication and in his kingdom glory forever. Amen. Let’s pray.