The Judgment of Corrupt Leaders

The Judgment of Corrupt Leaders

Psalm 58

Main Idea: The gospel compels believers to oppose injustice from evil leaders in anticipation of Christ’s future judgment and reign.

In 1384 John Wycliffe wrote, “The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People” in the prologue to his translation of the Bible. But it was Abraham Lincoln who made the threefold phrase famous during his address at Gettysburg. The great president actually borrowed the phrase thirdhand. A preacher named Theodore Parker had used it in a sermon in Boston’s Music Hall on July 4, 1858. Lincoln’s law partner, William H. Herndon, had visited Boston and heard the sermon. He returned to Springfield, Illinois, with his notes from the sermon. Herndon recalled that Lincoln marked with pencil the portion of the Music Hall address, “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people” (Langley, Washington Post).

A persecuted Bible translator, a respected preacher, and a revered president all anticipated government to be for the good of the people. What none of them wanted was for government leaders—or leaders of any kind—to turn the tables and use their authority and the people under their leadership for their own selfish agendas and gain. Certainly the escalation in recent years of public awareness of sexual and domestic abuse by politicians, preachers, and other people in positions of authority is indicative of their concern. Before it was their concern, however, it obviously was God’s concern. Psalm 58 is attributed to David, although not associated with a specific event in his life. But we can be relatively confident that at least part of the reason he wrote it was to help the congregation lament the injustice of corrupt government leaders and to confidently anticipate God’s ultimate judgment of evil at the end of the age (see Ps 14).

Paul declared that God’s reign over evil rulers—both seen and unseen—is rooted in the deity of Jesus Christ and secured by his work on the cross:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Col 1:15-20)

Old Testament prophets had seen this dominion coming through the eternal reign of God’s Messiah (Isa 9:6; Dan 7:14). This divine domination has been God’s plan all along.

God’s Messiah—Jesus—emphatically claimed his position of authority after his resurrection from the dead when he declared, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18; cf. John 17:2; 1 Cor 15:20-28). Christ’s reign over evil rulers was further realized in his ascension back to heaven, when God

exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens—far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. (Eph 1:20-21)

Ultimately, this universal authority will be manifested when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:15; see vv. 15-18). The resurrected and exalted Christ is the ultimate expression of God’s judgment against and reign over evil rulers.

The heartbeat of the psalmist here provides us with one model of praying like Jesus taught his followers to pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10). That’s what the psalmist is praying for, and that’s what believers today must pray for.

The Rejection of Justice

Psalm 58:1-5

To flesh out the prayer for God’s kingdom to come, believers need to speak out on behalf of the oppressed. This psalm begins with an aggressive verbal offensive against those who reject justice and use their authority to foster inequity. Various Bible versions translate “you mighty ones” (v. 1) differently, but the reference to the “wicked” in verse 3 supports the probability that the psalmist is addressing government leaders who abuse their positions to immoral ends. That’s why the rhetorical questions in verse 1 about whether they “speak righteously” and “judge people fairly” are answered with an emphatic “No” in verse 2. The progression of “your hearts . . . your hands” (v. 2) indicates instead that these leaders exercise a calculated ruthlessness in dealing with their subjects. These rulers think through their evil intentions in advance, cunningly weigh out their options, and mete out their self-serving plans with the efficiency of shrewd businessmen. They blatantly and intentionally reject justice.

David’s assessment of these evil leaders then shifts from rebuking them directly to reflecting on some of their specific qualities that lead them to reject justice. He highlights their depravity by calling them wicked “from the womb” and liars “from birth” (v. 3). Their corrupt conduct betrays the nature that has characterized them from conception. He then compares their effect on the victims of their deceit to “the venom of a snake” (v. 4). They poison those who have been entrusted to their care. And he concludes by accusing them of turning a deaf ear to any voice of reason or persuasion (vv. 4-5). The picture is of the deaf cobra who is swayed not by the voice of the enchanter but by the movement of his instrument.

Consider two applications of David’s direct and indirect rebuke.

Reflect God’s Heart for the Oppressed

The gospel of Christ compels its adherents to be aggressive advocates of the oppressed and careful critics of corruption. Both reflect God’s heart. The direct address in verses 1-2 reveals that God is far from passive when it comes to injustice. David wasn’t hesitant to speak against those who were unjust. He said it to their faces instead of talking behind their backs, gossiping about them, or accusing them only in the hearing of those who would be sympathetic with him. He models here the open and honest communication of charges with integrity. Such should be the practice of God’s children when addressing grievances and inequities, even with those who oppose us.

Furthermore, we have a moral obligation to defend the oppressed in this world because God’s Word is far from silent on his heart for them. He defends the oppressed (Job 36:6; Pss 9:9; 72:2,4; 103:6; 146:7; Isa 14:32; Jer 50:33-34), delivers them (Judg 10:11-12; 1 Sam 10:17-18; Pss 72:12,14; 76:8-9; 106:42-43; Isa 26:5-6), gives them hope (Ps 9:18; Isa 54:11; Zeph 3:19-20), hears their cry (Pss 9:12; 10:17-18; 22:24; 106:44-46), shows them compassion (Judg 2:18; Neh 9:27; Isa 49:13), and promises to punish those who punish them (Isa 10:1-3; Amos 2:6-7). So God’s children are to emulate his heart. We are to encourage the oppressed (Job 6:14; Ps 34:2; Isa 1:17), help them (Isa 58:6-11; 1 Tim 5:9-10), and cry out to God on their behalf (Pss 74:18-21; 82:3-4).

As we advocate for the relief of those who are the victims of oppression, we must always do so through the lens of the gospel and with the character of Christ. Amid the political turmoil in recent years, many professing Christians have felt that social media is a license for bad manners and unchristian rhetoric, using various platforms to maliciously attack opposing candidates. Our denunciation of unethical leaders and shady governments must always be done with integrity. It needs to be firm, fair, and honest, and at the same time “gracious, seasoned with salt” (Col 4:6). Even our approach to and interaction with those who persecute others must always be the same as that with which we engage our own enemies: with love. Only then can we give testimony to the gospel and rightly reflect the heartbeat of God (Matt 5:43-48).

Remember God’s Grace for Ourselves

The second application is one of honest introspection, of careful self-examination. As we can tell from Psalm 51, David obviously understood that the difference between himself and these wicked leaders was one of degree rather than nature. He confessed his own depravity: “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me” (Ps 51:5). And it’s the same for every person who’s ever been born. The description of these evil leaders in Psalm 58:3-5 is eerily similar to Paul’s assessment of us:

There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom 3:10-18)

Before rushing past this portrait of corrupt government officials, we need to see it as a mirror. Remember, beloved, we should look at these sinful men and conclude, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Don’t ever forget the grace of God in your own life.

The Request for Justice

Psalm 58:6-9

If the rule of Christ Jesus is going to be experienced at all on earth as it is in heaven, it’s going to take more than our activism on behalf of the oppressed. It’s going to take the forces of heaven to intervene on their behalf. Consequently, living out those early lines of the Lord’s Prayer will demand us to request God’s help and cry out to him on behalf of those who are the victims of injustice at the hands of wicked political leaders. Once again we’re likely to find ourselves wrestling to reconcile the psalmist’s prayer with Jesus’s command to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors (Matt 5:44-45) and Paul’s exhortation for us to bless those who come against us (Rom 12:14). Yes, this is another one of those imprecatory prayers, one in which he appears to be calling down ill will on the enemies of the suffering (see comments on Ps 54:5).

So, as we move into this section of the passage, let’s not forget to allow it to open a window into our own hearts. Take a moment to reflect on how you felt when you listened to the most recent news report of an ISIS bombing of a Christian church building in some other part of the world, or even the threat of the North Korean dictator to launch a nuclear missile. Ponder for a moment what you were feeling when you first read the testimonies of Nazi Holocaust prisoners, victims of apartheid in South Africa, survivors of the killing fields of Cambodia. Most of us will have to admit that our heart longs for justice when we hear these accounts. So we likely can identify with the psalmist as he pleads with God to take action to defend his suffering little ones. In righteous indignation David uses a series of metaphors and similes to articulate two requests believers can and should make of God regarding wicked rulers.

Pray for God to Restrain Corrupt Leaders (58:6)

The psalmist first asks God to render these evil leaders impotent, to restrain their influence on their victims. The imagery he’s using at first seems extremely violent and harsh until we remember that the Holy Spirit isn’t likening the corrupt leaders to domesticated kittens but to savage beasts. The psalmist isn’t asking God to beat up someone who’s bullying him on a Near Eastern playground but instead to break the deadly grip these wild carnivores have on their trapped prey. We must pray as if the stakes are high!

Pray for God to Remove Corrupt Leaders (58:7-9)

The psalmist ups the ante in the next three verses by going beyond asking God to go ahead and take them out! He wants them to evaporate, to become blunt and harmless, and to dissolve away and be completely removed as if they had never existed.

Should believers actually pray like this? The psalmist’s prayer appears driven by outrage that these kinds of leaders exist at all. His desire for their end seems violent. Kidner says, “It prompts the question whether an impassioned curse of tyrants is better or worse than a shrug of the shoulders or a diplomatic silence” (Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 227). Jesus seemed to opt for the former, at least when it came to leaders who abused people and led them astray. In Matthew 23 he pronounced a series of curses on the scribes and Pharisees, all beginning the same way: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (23:13,15,23,25,27,29). These lead-ins are all followed by some of Jesus’s strongest and most damning words in the New Testament. While none of us are Jesus, and while our engagement of bad people must intend to overcome evil with good, our Lord did seem to affirm the practice of the psalmist in sometimes crying out for God to bring an end to malicious leaders.

The Response to Justice

Psalm 58:10-11

God will respond to the prayers of his children as they cry out to him with zeal and passion for justice and righteousness in the universe. He’s been clear about this all along. The prophet Isaiah declared that God ultimately will levy his comprehensive judgment against the wicked rulers of earth (cf. Ps 2) as well as those in the unseen world (cf. Ps 82). He said, “On that day the Lord will punish the army of the heights in the heights and the kings of the ground on the ground” (Isa 24:21). The day will come when God will vindicate his children and give them something to celebrate. At the same time he will exercise final and complete judgment against all evil authorities seen and unseen. The psalmist describes how both groups, the righteous and the corrupt, will respond on that day.

The Righteous Will Rejoice (58:10)

The response of the righteous is the natural reaction of those who are passionate about justice being served. When they see the “retribution”—or punitive vindication—meted out by the righteous Judge of the universe, they “will rejoice” that justice is finally being realized. The picture of the righteous person as one who “will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked” magnifies the celebratory and triumphant atmosphere of this ultimate vindication. The expression is a traditional ancient Near Eastern way of describing the utter defeat of an enemy. So we’re not looking at some kind of twisted and ghoulish foot-washing ceremony but at victors as they wade through the blood left over from the carnage of battle (Wilson, Psalms, 842).

This gruesome celebration at first seems morbid, and we are almost tempted to shy away from embracing it, yet it makes complete sense in light of the larger biblical picture of God’s righteousness. He wants us to anticipate the day when he will make right all the wrong in this world. The psalmist’s description of that justification pales in comparison to John’s vision of the bloodbath that will take place upon Jesus’s return at the end of the age:

So the angel swung his sickle at the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. Then the press was trampled outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press up to the horses’ bridles for about 180 miles. (Rev 14:19-20)

Our Lord’s righteous army will join him in this final exercise of justice against the wicked:

The armies that were in heaven followed him on white horses, wearing pure white linen. A sharp sword came from his mouth, so that he might strike the nations with it. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God, the Almighty. And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he called out in a loud voice, saying to all the birds flying high overhead, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of military commanders, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and of their riders, and the flesh of everyone, both free and slave, small and great.” (Rev 19:14-18)

God actually is appalled when his followers don’t see themselves as warriors of righteousness and fail to join him in his campaign for justice (see Isa 63:1-6). This realization compels believers in Christ to long for Jesus’s return and his final vindication.

The Corrupt Will Be Convinced (58:11)

The response of corrupt leaders and their followers to the justice of God will be different. They will not celebrate but instead regretfully and finally acknowledge what the righteous have always known. They exercise their self-serving and manipulative ploys during their reign with complete disregard that there will ever be a day of reckoning, but in the end they will be convinced of God’s justice and forced to publicly recognize and acknowledge that he never forgets his children. In fact, he ultimately will “reward” them and condemn those who seek to manipulate them.

This reversal of perception and fortune is a picture of every person who rejects Christ in this life. People live as if no judgment were coming, no day when they would have to answer for their hard-heartedness and self-service. They go through life looking out for number one and stepping on whomever they need to step on as they make their way to the top.

However, the Bible is clear that the day will come when their perception will be overturned and their understanding will be radically different. Those whom they spent their lives abusing and manipulating will one day be rewarded, and they will finally be convinced that there is a righteous Judge on the earth. His name is Jesus, and all who hear his gospel should embrace it while they still have a chance.

Conclusion

To be sure, God’s reign is no democracy, yet he does intend it to be for the good of the people he created (Rom 13:1-7). And he never intended for the governments he ordained to lord over people for the benefit of the leaders who run them. God ordained governments to benefit people, not to suppress and oppress them.

But evil governments and rulers seem to have free reign today. Yet the Bible is clear that God will have the last word. In that age “to come” to which Paul referred (Eph 1:21), every person who’s ever lived and every principality and every power will know that Jesus is Lord over all. Why? Because

God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9-11)

At the inauguration of the eternal kingdom, the host of heaven will declare, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15), for “he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Rev 19:16).

So we pray like Jesus told us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9-10). And because we’re reassured that prayer will be answered in Jesus’s promise, “Yes, I am coming soon,” we pray even more urgently with John: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).

Reflect and Discuss

1. Based on Psalm 58 and other supporting Scriptures, what is the biblical view of government? How should government leaders treat us, and how should we treat them?
2. What are some examples of injustices going on in today’s world?
3. What keeps us from reflecting God’s heart toward the oppressed?
4. What are some tangible ways we can speak out and take action on behalf of the oppressed?
5. David’s rebuke toward the ungodly was public. How should we publicly rebuke the ungodly?
6. What role does self-examination play in publicly rebuking sin?
7. Based on David’s prayer concerning ungodly rulers, how should we pray in regards to ungodly rulers?
8. How should we respond to the seemingly brutal and morbid images in the Bible of God’s judgment? Why would God use such language?
9. Is it appropriate for us to pray that God would remove ungodly leaders, and, if he must, in a violent way?
10. While we can disagree on whether God may ordain war, what can we agree on concerning our role in fighting for the oppressed?