#DailyDevotion Do You Wonder If God Is Listening?

Psalm 10 ¹²Come, O LORD God! Lift Your hand, and don’t forget the oppressed. ¹³Why should the wicked despise God and think that you won’t punish? ¹⁴See for Yourself the trouble and look at the grief, so You can take it in hand. The victim entrusts himself to You, for You are the One who helps the orphan. ¹⁵Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; punish his wickedness until it is gone.

We often have trouble praying imprecatory psalms because they call down God’s wrath on people. Jesus apparently didn’t have trouble praying them as he inspired the psalmist to write them down. They are his prayers. He prays them to this day, interceding for us in the ear of the Father at the right hand of God. The thing is when we pray such things, we leave it in the hands of the LORD who judges men’s hearts and judges them righteously. On top of that, behind wicked doers are the evil spirits of the air, the forces of darkness that inspire men’s wickedness. I contend it is these forces we are praying against when we pray these prayers. The LORD has more than one day to do away with evil doers. Perhaps He will kill them in a spiritual sense, that is bring them to repentance. If they die in baptism, isn’t that the same? I think so.

So we cry out to the LORD God to come and lift up His hand against our enemies. We may sometimes feel as if God does not see the troubles we have on account of other people. I know I can identify with the psalmist here asking God why does He let the wicked despise Him and think He won’t punish them. I tell our Father, “Just look at what these people are doing, the trouble and grief they are causing!” We must entrust ourselves to the LORD to take it in hand. Vengeance doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to the LORD. The LORD is the one who helps the orphan. Who is the orphan but our LORD Jesus Christ who entrusted himself to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. He trusted himself into the Father’s hand even at the point of death, death on a cross. We too should entrust ourselves and our whole lives and everything in them to God our Father.

¹⁶The LORD is King forever. The heathen must perish from His land. ¹⁷O LORD, You hear the desire of the oppressed. Encourage them and listen to them. ¹⁸Give the orphan and the oppressed fair treatment so that no one on earth will terrify them again.

Our LORD Jesus Christ is King forever. He sits at the right hand of God. He will cause all the heathen to perish from the land, from the world. He gets rid of them either by conversion of the heart or by the Lake of Fire, by hook or crook. We need not fear they get away with anything. As those who have been redeemed from what we deserve, we pray for our enemies’ conversion, to be our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We are encouraged by the psalmist the LORD does hear the desire of the oppressed. So we call upon the LORD to encourage them and to listen to them. We need to know, God hears our cries. He heard the voice of Jesus from the cross as he appealed to the Father. In him, the Father hears your voice a well. We need not act rashly like those who go about rioting because of injustice. The LORD will give the orphan and the oppressed fair treatment so the people of the earth are never terrified again by them. Our Father in heaven will make certain justice is achieved.

Merciful God and Father, hear our voice when we cry unto you. In Christ Jesus give us justice and deliver us from all our foes. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.