The Justice of the Son | Psalm 72
Brian Hedges | December 8, 2024
I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Psalm 72. It is one of the royal psalms, a psalm that is a prayer for the king, and it is in particular a prayer for the king’s justice and righteousness.
We just sang about the justice of God in that wonderful old hymn “O Holy Night”:
“Truly he taught us
To love one another;
His law is love
And his gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break,
For the slave is our brother,
And in his name
All oppression shall cease.”
That particular translation became popular in the United States in the nineteenth century when a fiery abolitionist names John Sullivan Dwight published those words, a translation of a French hymn, in his magazine. Of course, the country was fraught with division over the issue of slavery at that time, and that hymn began to become more popular during those days.
We still sing it today, and it’s good that we sing hymns like that, because it reminds us of one of the most foundational convictions about the kingdom of God, that God’s kingdom is concerned with justice and with righteousness in the world.
Psalm 72 is all about that. This is a psalm that is either ascribed to Solomon or was prayed for Solomon. The inscription simply says, “Of Solomon.” I want to begin by reading this psalm, Psalm 72. It’s twenty verses. This is the last psalm in Book 2 of the Psalms, so the end of the psalm will reflect that when it speaks of the conclusion of the prayers of David. So, Psalm 72; let’s read it together. It says,
“Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the children of the needy,
and crush the oppressor!
“May they fear you while the sun endures,
and as long as the moon, throughout all generations!
May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,
like showers that water the earth!
In his days may the righteous flourish,
and peace abound, till the moon be no more!
“May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth!
May desert tribes bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust!
May the kings of Tarshish and of the coastlands
render him tribute;
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts!
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations serve him!
“For he delivers the needy when he calls,
the poor and him who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.
“Long may he live;
may gold of Sheba be given to him!
May prayer be made for him continually,
and blessings invoked for him all the day!
May there be abundance of grain in the land;
on the tops of the mountains may it wave;
may its fruit be like Lebanon;
and may people blossom in the cities
like the grass of the field!
May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things.
Blessed be his glorious name forever;
may the whole earth be filled with his glory!
Amen and Amen!
“The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.”
This is God’s word.
Last week we began a series through this season of Advent, and we’re looking at a number of these psalms in “Songs of the Son: Advent in the Psalms.” Last week we talked about the coronation of this Son, this kingly, royal figure in the psalms. We were looking at Psalm 2. Today we’re looking at the justice of the Son or the righteousness of the Son from this psalm, Psalm 72. I think this was probably a prayer of David for his son Solomon upon the accession of the throne, when Solomon was to become the king, following King David.
As I said, this is a psalm that is all about justice and righteousness. We can’t look at everything in this psalm because of its length, but I want to focus on three things this morning:
1. The Cry for Justice
2. The Kingdom of Justice
3. The Arrival of Justice
Notice those three things.
1. The Cry for Justice
This cry I think is implicit in the psalm because it is a prayer. You really see this especially in those first four verses. Notice the urgency of this prayer.
“Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to the royal son!
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice!
Let the mountains bear prosperity—”
The word there is shalom, the idea of peace and prosperity in every dimension of life—politically, economically, physically, spiritually.
“Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness!
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the children of the needy,
and crush the oppressor!”
These verses show that right at the heart of the kingdom established by God in Israel through the Davidic line and through Solomon, the Son of David, was to be this priority of justice and righteousness. This is what would mark a righteous king: he cared about justice, he cared for the poor, he cared for the needy, he crushed oppression. You can see it in this cry for justice in the psalm.
We might ask the question, what is justice? What’s the very nature of justice? I’ve found much help in the writings of Tim Keller. He wrote a book a number of years ago called Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. Keller asked this question: What is doing justice?
He unpacks the concepts of justice and righteousness in Scripture. He shows us that the Hebrew word for justice has to do with both the punishment of wrongdoing and giving people their rights. Justice is essentially, he says, to treat people equitably. It is to give them their due.
He shows that over and again in Scripture this justice is concerned with four groups of people: the widows, the orphans, the immigrants, and the poor. Those four groups of people have been called the quartet of the vulnerable by Nicholas Wolterstorff. This concern for justice is rooted in the character of God, wedded to righteousness, and the word for “righteous” refers to right relationships. Justice is giving people their due, righteousness is right relationships, which leads Keller to say that “biblical righteousness is inevitably social,” because it is about relationships: right relationship with God and with others.
Keller says, “If you’re trying to live a life in accordance with the Bible, the concept and the call to justice are inescapable.”
Well, that’s the concern of this psalm. This psalm is about righteousness, it’s about justice, and it’s praying for this king to rule in righteousness and justice. I already read Psalm 72:1-4. Now look at verses 12-14. You see this again, and this is the reason why this king is being acclaimed in the nations.
“For he delivers the needy when he calls,
the poor and him who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life,
and precious is their blood in his sight.”
Once again, you see this concern for justice.
Now, as Keller mentioned, this is something that you see throughout Scripture, and you see it over and again when there is this mention of one or all or some of these four groups of people, the quartet of the vulnerable. I want to just establish this for a minute. I want to show you this in several passages of Scripture, beginning with Deuteronomy 10:17-18. It says,
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. [Notice this.] He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner [or the immigrant], giving him food and clothing.”
Then what follows is an exhortation for the people of Israel to remember that they were once sojourners, they were once strangers in a strange land, and therefore they are to treat the sojourners among them with compassion.
Or look at Psalm 146. Here are three verses from Psalm 146.
“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
“The Lord sets the prisoners free…
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”
Again, you’re seeing that concern for these vulnerable groups of people who need a God who executes justice on their behalf.
Here’s one more, the prophet Zechariah—Zechariah 7:8-10.
“And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.’”
There it is in the form of a command to not oppress these groups of people.
Now, Tim Keller, once again, says,
“In pre-modern, agrarian societies, these four groups had no social power. They lived at subsistence level and were only days away from starvation if there were any famine, invasion, or even minor social unrest. Today this quartet would be expanded to include the refugee, the migrant worker, the homeless, and many single parents and elderly people. The justness of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups. Any neglect shown to the needs of the members of this quartet is not called merely a lack of mercy or charity but a violation of justice. God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we.”
I’m spending a little time on this point to just establish that this is a biblical priority, the priority of justice. God cares about justice and the kingdom of God is about justice.
Now, this might prompt an objection in some people’s minds. You might say, “Isn’t this just the concern of liberal socialists, cultural marxists, and progressive post-evangelicals? Why are we talking about this in this church?”
My answer is that while it’s true that all of those groups may use the language and emphasize the importance of social justice, justice itself is a biblical concept, as we’ve just seen. God is a God of justice and righteousness, and he requires the same of us.
Yes, we need to be careful to define the nature and scope of justice by the Scriptures. We have to be careful in the application of biblical texts, that we don’t misuse them or take them out of context. We should be discerning and realize that there are some groups that fly under the banner of justice that don’t base their ideas of justice on Scripture, but justice itself should be the concern of every Christian.
I’ll remind you of Micah 6:8.
“He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
To be a follower of Jesus and to obey the basic commands of Scripture is to be a person who’s concerned with justice.
Listen, if we are just in the least bit in touch with our own humanity, we should care about the issue of justice. Did you know that today there are some 28 million people in forced labor, in slavery, in the world? Human trafficking generates about $150 billion a year, with two thirds of that coming from commercial sexual exploitation. Around 9 million people die of hunger every year, many of them children under the age of five. Seventy-six thousand children died of AIDS or AIDS-related causes in 2023.
This is a current issue. It may not be right in your back door, or you may miss it when it’s there, but this is a current issue. It’s something that we should be concerned about.
If you want to know one practical thing that you can do in response to this, I would encourage you to look up International Justice Mission. Go to their website. You can see all kinds of current statistics and reports. This is a Christian organization concerned with justice, and you can give, and you can help to fight injustice through your generosity.
The cry for justice—I start there because that’s the concern of this psalm, the cry for justice.
2. The Kingdom of Justice
But the psalm is not just a cry, it’s not just a prayer for justice, it’s a psalm that speaks about the kingdom of justice. That’s point number two, the kingdom of justice. This is a royal psalm. You see it in verse 1: “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son.” That’s why I’m including this in the series “Songs of the Son.” This is one of those psalms that talks about a son, a royal son, and shows that the concern of this son is to rule in justice and righteousness.
Originally, as I’ve already said, this was a prayer either by Solomon or, as I probably think, for Solomon. This was likely the prayer of David for his son Solomon. To be sure, when you look at the reign of Solomon, you can see some initial and partial fulfillment of this.
Richard Belcher, in his wonderful book The Messiah in the Psalms, summarizes this. He shows that “the effects of Solomon’s wisdom and justice are seen in the well-ordered administration of his kingdom.” You see that in 1 Kings 4. You see his deliverance of the living child of the prostitute mother. Remember that story? The two prostitutes were both arguing over one child, and he has the wisdom to discern which one was truly the mother. That’s in 1 Kings 3.
You see the great material blessings that God’s people experience under Solomon’s reign in 1 Kings 4. You see the nations coming in admiration of Solomon and his wisdom and justice. You have that with the Queen of Sheba visiting Jerusalem in 1 Kings 10.
So, it seems initially that here’s Solomon, who is reigning in justice and righteousness, and there’s peace and prosperity. There’s shalom. It seems like the prayer of this psalm is being answered. But then, you remember what happens? Solomon ends badly. In 1 Kings 11 he turns to idolatry, and in 1 Kings 12, in the next generation, four times it’s said that Solomon had laid a heavy yoke on the people. So here’s a king who seems to be pursuing justice and prosperity and so on, but the way in which he does it ultimately turns away from God and is another instance of oppression.
Friends, this is the story of all merely human kings and kingdoms. In the attempt to rule well, in the attempt to promote freedom and justice and peace and prosperity, inevitably every human king and every human kingdom ends up in some way falling short of that standard.
You might think of the pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Here is this empire, one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen. They’re promoting the peace of Rome. But how do they do it? They do it at the point of a sword. “Submit or die.”
We even see this in the history of the United States. You may not know this, it’s not particularly important, but one of my hobbies or pastimes is I enjoy reading history, and I enjoy reading presidential biographies. So this year I read—mostly listened on Audible—a biography of George Washington by Ron Churno, and I’m almost finished right now with David McCullough’s biography of John Adams. It’s fascinating. I love the history, I love the things that you can learn from that experience, and I love reading biography.
To be sure, George Washington was a man of great courage, incredible self-discipline, fortitude, perseverance. He made many sacrifices in order to lead the armies of the American Revolution and was the first president. He was a great man in many ways. Yet he was a slave owner, and he had over a hundred slaves.
John Adams, the second of the U.S. presidents, was not a slave-owner. In fact, he was one of only two of the first twelve presidents of the United States who did not own slaves. The other one was his son, John Quincy Adams. Yet Adams was the first president to live in what later became known as the White House, which was built in part by slaves.
Thomas Jefferson, who was the architect behind the Declaration of Independence, where it says “all men are created equal,” was also a slave owner.
So here are men who are fighting for freedom, yet they are building a country on the backs of slaves. So there’s oppression right there in the pursuit of peace and prosperity. It’s just another illustration of this basic problem, that no human kings or kingdoms are perfectly just and righteous. Even the best rulers are somehow complicit in injustice. This is the sad lesson that the nation of Israel learned throughout Old Testament history, as king after king after king in some way disappoints or falls short of the standard of God’s justice and righteousness.
It shows us that Psalm 72 must be pointing forward to a better kingdom and to a better king, to a messianic figure who will reign over an eternal kingdom.
You can see that in the qualities of this kingdom as this psalm prays for the king. We’ve already seen the psalm prays for his reign in justice, and that’s really the first seven verses. But it’s also a prayer that he would reign over the nations. You see this in Psalm 72:8-11. Here are a few verses.
“May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth!
May desert tribes bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust!...
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations serve him!”
Interestingly enough, while Psalm 72 itself is never quoted in the New Testament in relationship to Jesus, there is a link, because Psalm 72:8, which I just read (“May he have dominion from sea to sea”), is quoted by the prophet Zechariah. Here’s the prophecy: Zechariah 9:9-10.
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea [there it is, quoting Psalm 72:8],
and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Of course, that prophecy of Zechariah is quoted in both Matthew 21 and in John 12.
So Psalm 72 has a clear link to Jesus, because here is a king who will come in justice, and here is a king whose reign will be universal—the scope is over the nations. And his reign will endure forever. That’s really the third prayer of this psalm. May he reign in justice—that’s the first. May he reign over all nations—that’s the second. May he reign forever—that’s the third prayer in verses 15-17. I’ll read verse 17:
“May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!”
That’s, incidentally, where we get the Isaac Watts hymn that we began with this morning,
“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Does its successive journeys run;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.”
That whole song is a reflection on Psalm 72. So the kingdom of justice.
3. The Arrival of Justice
We see the cry for justice, we see the kingdom of justice, and now, thirdly, the arrival of justice. So, the final question to ask this morning is, how does justice finally come? I’ve already hinted at the answer. How does justice finally come? It comes in the arrival of Jesus Christ. That’s what the word “advent” means. Advent means arrival. It’s in the advent of Christ, the arrival of Christ, that justice comes.
I want to show you this in just another link to this psalm from Psalm 72:17. Let me read this verse again. I just read it, but let me read it again.
“May his name endure forever,
his fame continue as long as the sun!
May people be blessed in him,
all nations call him blessed!”
Now, if you know your Bible, does that remind you of anything? “May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed.” That is a direct echo of another passage of Scripture. Here is the Davidic king, who is the son who is to reign forever as part of the Davidic covenant, and it’s connecting us to the promise that God had made to Abraham all those hundreds of years ago in Genesis 12:2-3.
“And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
When you open your New Testament and you read the very first verse in the New Testament, Matthew 1:1, do you know what it says? It says, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
I mean, do you see the connections here? God made a promise to Abraham: “I’m going to give you a son, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” God made a promise to David: “I’m going to give you a son who’s going to reign over my people forever.” And the people of Israel, after hundreds of years, are still waiting for a king. Then Jesus comes on the scene, the son of David, the son of Abraham, and his whole life is a life marked by justice and righteousness.
Do you remember what he said upon his baptism in Matthew 3:15? When John the Baptist says, “I shouldn’t be baptizing you, you should baptize me,” Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness,” or all justice. It’s the same word in the Greek New Testament.
You remember Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
When you watch the progression of Jesus’ ministry, you see his continual concern for the oppressed, for the poor, for the needy, for the afflicted. He’s bringing deliverance, he’s bringing liberty, he’s bringing freedom, he’s feeding the hungry.
But you also see something utterly unique about King Jesus. Jesus’ kingdom is different because he does not establish his kingdom by force, but he establishes his kingdom through self-sacrifice—not at the point of a sword, but by going to the cross on our behalf.
That’s the distinctive thing. That’s the unique thing. Here is a king who will establish his reign over all people and over all the world by taking injustice upon himself and never in any way inflicting injustice on others.
There’s kind of an interesting example of this, if you’ll forgive the pop culture illustration. Our culture’s concerned about justice, even though there’s a lot of injustice in the world. But most of the time, when you watch a film and there’s injustice being perpetrated in some way, there will be a figure who comes on the scene who’s going to fight. But usually it’s through violence; it’s a vigilante. It’s the Liam Nissan type, or the Clint Eastwood type. I mean, Clint Eastwood was the classic enforcer, right? He’s fighting against injustice, he’s fighting against crime, but he’s doing it through violence.
But there is a film of Clint Eastwood’s that I saw a number of years ago that was somewhat unique. It was the film Gran Tourino. Now, I only recommend it with caveats. It’s a violent film and it has R-rated language. But it is a film about this man named Walt Kawowski. He is a retired factory worker, he’s a Korean war vet, he’s a widower, and he’s a racist.
In the film, he lives next door to an Asian family against whom he’s deeply prejudiced, but as the film progresses and he begins to build a relationship with this family, he discovers that they are being terrorized by a local gang. Walt gets involved and he starts trying to stop it, to no avail. The violence begins to escalate. When you get to the end of the film, you’re kind of expecting Clint Eastwood to do what he did in all his other movies, pull out the guns and blow the bad guys away. But that’s actually not what he does. He surprises us by choosing self-sacrifice instead, as he confronts this gang intentionally unarmed, deliberately drawing their fire. He dies in the process, but in doing so secures justice for his oppressed neighbors.
That’s just a very faint illustration of what Jesus has done for us. Here’s Jesus, who comes on the scene with love, with justice, with righteousness, and the way in which he establishes that justice and righteousness in the world is by letting injustice do its worst to him, taking it upon himself, bearing our sin, our shame, dying on the cross for us.
To be sure, he’s coming again, and when he comes again he will establish justice once and for all, and that’s our hope in the advent season.
We’ve seen these three things: the cry for justice, the kingdom of justice, and then the arrival of justice in the Son.
Let me end this morning by asking these two questions.
(1) Number one, have you suffered injustice? In a room this size, the answer for some of you is certainly yes, that you have. You have in some way been a victim of injustice or mistreatment in some way, through abuse or through a violent crime or some other way in society. If you have been a victim of injustice, the exhortation today is trust in the justice of the Son. Don’t take justice into your own hands, don’t take vengeance, don’t seek revenge, but instead, trust in the God who is just and who will put this world to rights.
(2) Secondly, have you trusted in Jesus? Are you a follower of Jesus this morning? Are you a Christian? If so, then follow him in the paths of justice and righteousness. “He has shown you, O man, what he requires,” to love mercy, to do justice, and to walk humbly with your God. That’s our calling. Let’s follow Jesus on the path of justice together. Let’s pray.
God, we thank you this morning for your word, and we thank you for the assurance that you are a God of justice and righteousness, that you execute justice for the oppressed, and that in your kingdom justice will prevail. In a world that is full of injustice in so many ways, we find great hope in that today. Our prayer is that you would help us to not only trust in your justice but to follow you in that path and to be people who are marked by peace and justice and righteousness ourselves.
Lord, work in us what is pleasing in your sight, the changes in our hearts and lives that would fill us with compassion, with recognition of the great needs of the world, and with a willingness to be involved in somehow fighting for justice for others.
Lord, as we come to the table this morning, may the Lord’s table be for us a reminder of the great sacrifice that Jesus has made on our behalf; that Christ is the one who bore injustice, who bore not only the injustice and the cruelty of sinners against himself, but who bore the wrath of God against our injustice and our unrighteousness, so that we could be justified, we could be forgiven, cleansed, transformed, and made new. May we see in the emblems of the table the sacrifice of Christ. Lord, may your Spirit work in our hearts so that we will become more like him in our character. We ask you, Lord, to draw near to us in these moments now as we come to the table. Be glorified in our worship. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.