An appeal to the God of vengeance sounds exceedingly inconsistent with the Scriptures that present Jesus as bringer of shalom – peace. Yet that is how tonight’s psalm begins: “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!” Have not the storms of your heart similarly cried out for justice? The world is not fair, the rich and influential are invited to the table and you are left out in the cold. Someone at work, those scoundrels in government, someone in your own family has turned on you, and you would like to see the tables turned. “Repay to the proud what they deserve!”
What sort of psalm is this? The sort you can understand. The anger turns to questioning. How long, God, are You going to let this go on? “O Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?” How long, how long?
And then from questioning to receiving mockery: Your religion is worthless, you’ve trusted in something foolish.
But then God speaks. And indeed, He calls us fools. “Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise?” Indeed, the Lord says, “I hear, I see, I discipline, I teach, I know … I know that your thoughts are like a breath: they last for a moment, are not seen, and soon gone forever.”
To all this, the believer responds: “Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law.” The person who began in anger, crying out for vengeance, concludes by crying for his sins. The first and necessary discipline was not on the wicked and proud; or rather, it was not on those other wicked and proud people, but on the wicked and proud man whom we see reflected in the mirror.
The Lord disciplines the one whom He loves; and so your cancer, your gray hair, your lack of recognition, your lack of the money you crave, your dysfunctional family and melancholy soul: it all is working for good, God is working it for good to turn you from the one crying out for vengeance to a person who cries out for mercy – both for yourself and for others.
The psalm is not done with the wicked, the legislators “who frame injustice by statute.” No, the Lord has use for them too: “They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.” We can look upon the innocent babies condemned to death by the abortion industry; we can see the righteous, the saints in Syria being brutally murdered by crucifixion and beheading, after they see their wives and daughters raped.
But these are not ultimately who the Psalm means. The Lord Jesus is the righteous one, the only innocent one. He is the true victim of this Psalm: “They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.” And we know how that ends: absolution and resurrection. This is the consolation that cheers us. As we go through the hardships of this life—and really, we know little of hardships compared to most Christians in most times and places—but as we go through our raging for vengeance, our impatience with God’s schedule, and finally come to see His discipline lovingly training us, then we can say aright, “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.”