Slices
Prepare
Do you ever wonder what you would do, what decisions you would make, if you were ‘in charge’? What would you change? What wrongs would you right?
Bible passage
A psalm of Asaph.
1 God presides in the great assembly;
he renders judgment among the ‘gods’:
2 ‘How long will you defend the unjust
and show partiality to the wicked?
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
5 ‘The “gods” know nothing, they understand nothing.
They walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 ‘I said, “You are ‘gods’;
you are all sons of the Most High.”
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
you will fall like every other ruler.’
8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.
Explore
Who do you think are the ‘gods’ that Asaph rails against in this psalm? Pagan idols? The ‘rulers’ and ‘authorities’ Paul describes in Ephesians 6:12? Human rulers with authority?
To me the clue is in verse 1, which talks about God presiding over the ‘great assembly’. The word is used throughout Exodus and Numbers to describe the whole people of Israel. That means the ‘gods’ (vs 1,5,6), the ‘sons of the Most High’ (v 6), are all God’s people, called and set apart to be different, to behave differently from the world.
There is no escape for us from verses 2 to 4. All God’s people are required to bring God’s rule and justice to the world. All God’s people must have the same heart, the same concerns as God for the ‘weak and the fatherless’, the ‘poor and the oppressed’, the ‘needy’ (vs 3,4).
God will one day bring the perfect justice his people are supposed to bring – the question is, on which side of God’s justice will we be standing? And what are we doing about it here and now?
Respond
Do you share God’s heart for justice? Or is your faith more about believing the right things? Both are vital, but most of us are stronger in one than the other. Ask God to help you keep the right balance between them in your faith.
Deeper Bible study
The Son is the image of the invisible God … all things have been created through him and for him.’1
Why is the first commandment, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’?2 Presumably because the Israelites were in danger of becoming attracted to other gods. Israel was a small nation surrounded by larger and more powerful cultures whose established religions were thoroughly polytheistic. The Hebrew prophets resist this worldview by asserting God’s role as Sovereign Creator and denouncing other gods as worthless idols.3
This psalm takes a different tack. The psalmist plays on the ancient Near Eastern idea of the gods meeting in assembly under the presidency of a supreme god, to decide what would happen on earth.4 Here, however, God himself is presiding, gathering the other gods around him to judge them for their complete failures in just leadership. They have acted in the interest of the ‘unjust’ and ‘wicked’, instead of defending the ‘weak and the fatherless … the poor and the oppressed’ (vs 2,3). Consequently – in a shock departure from ancient Near Eastern mythologies – God effectively strips these gods of their divine status, decreeing that they will ‘die like mere mortals’ (v 7). At the end, the psalmist calls on God himself to restore justice on earth, as its true and rightful ruler (v 8).
Despite the psalm’s purported setting, we are right to hear God’s criticisms of the gods (vs 2–4) as directed also at those who have leadership responsibilities on earth. In later Judaism the ‘gods’ were interpreted as referring to the Jewish people (as Jesus’ comments in John 10:34‑36 indicate).5 Can we respond by reflecting on how we measure up to this moral commission today, as well as joining the psalmist in urging God to ‘rise up’ and bring justice to all the nations (v 8)?
Reflect on these words from Micah 6:8: ‘... what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’
1 Col 1:15,16 2 Exod 20:3 3 Eg Isa 44:6–20 4 Robert Davidson, The Vitality of Worship, Handsel, 1998, p271 5 Mays, Psalms, John Knox, 1994, p270
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Exodus 37,38; Acts 3
Pray for Scripture Union
SU Mauritius ask us to pray for the Bible engagement training programme with children’s and youth leaders of the churches of Rodrigues Island especially that they will be able to arrange meetings for follow-up training. Pray too for the Prayer Walk project that they are initiating.
