In the Lord I Take Refuge: 31 Days in the PsalmsSample

The tone of Psalm 10 turns sharply from the Psalms that have come just before. Here we find the psalmist distraught at the victimization of the helpless. And this cruelty seems to come not at the hand of foreign nations but at the hands of fellow Israelites—fellow members of the people of God.

Seeing such evil carried out against fellow humans—fellow members of God’s people—can easily cause deep cynicism and emotional fatigue. How does one persevere in the face of horrors done to others, especially horrors perpetrated by those who ought to have been the kindest? Everything in us screams out for justice.

David feels the same way, but he realizes that “you [the Lord] do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands” (v. 14). The Lord will “do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed” (v. 18). God will, one day, right all wrongs, straighten out all that is bent, and rinse this world clean of all injustice.

And how do we know this? Because in the middle of human history, God proved the lengths to which he was willing to go to undo injustice. He sent his own Son, the one man who was ever truly just, to go to a cross and swallow all of the injustice of all of those who would simply trust in him. Does this mean we can overlook injustices committed against the helpless today? On the contrary—it means that we are freshly empowered and motivated to fight the horrors of this world, knowing that the horror of our own sin has been justly wiped away, by sheer grace, in the work of Christ, received by faith.