I used to check the news daily and often times throughout the day. I had an urge to know what was going on in the world around me. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think it gave me a sense of being in control because nothing could catch me by surprise. I knew what was going on.
But what it actually did to me was exactly the opposite. It made me feel out of control. I kept reading about these forces exerting their power on culture and the economy, forces I could do nothing about. Some of those forces were individual people. Others were companies or nations. Others were amorphous trends or movements within culture. Others were hurricanes and epidemics. No matter what they were, I stood weakly by, unable to affect them one way or another.
A feeling of being manipulated by the powerful is a regular theme in life. As kids, there are parents, teachers, and coaches. Later on, there are bosses, police officers, and the proverbial “man behind the desk.” And there are always the bullies and thugs and politicians, which too often blend into one. Sometimes they push us around. Sometimes they simply herd us like cattle.
Psalm 75 is a helpful corrective prayer. It looks around at the arrogant powers and asserts God as Judge as the antidote to them.
Before addressing the problem, it begins with praise. This framing of the problem with praise already changes the way the problem will be faced, since God is up front and center.
We praise you, God,
we praise you, for your Name is near;
people tell of your wonderful deeds (Ps. 75:1).
Following this initial praise, Asaph (the psalm writer) hears God speak. And God speaks to the issue on Asaph’s mind: In a world where the arrogant push people around, we need a Judge who will protect us from them.
A key image of this bullying is the lifted up horn. In fact, our word “bully” has its origin in the horns of bulls.
In a farming and ranching culture, people are more familiar with animals with horns than those of us raised in urban settings. Because of that, the image of a raised horn seems odd to most modern readers. But in the agrarian Hebrew imagination, a lifted up horn was a sign of power and dominance since that’s how an ox would use its horns. It can also be an image of honor, respect, or pride. Context determines its use and here in Psalm 75, it’s used negatively as an image of arrogant pride, a flexing or posing in the face of God. (However, we will encounter a positive use of the image as the psalm ends.)
You say, “I choose the appointed time;
it is I who judge with equity.
When the earth and all its people quake,
it is I who hold its pillars firm.
To the arrogant I say, ‘Boast no more,’
and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns.
Do not lift your horns against heaven;
do not speak so defiantly’” (Ps. 75:2-5).
Against the high-horned bullies, God makes several assertions.
1. God sets the time when change will come. For you and me, it can’t come soon enough. And the fact that it doesn’t come on our timetables makes us question if God is going to do anything at all. To head off this typical train of thinking, God asserts his singular authority to choose when he’s going to act decisively. This doesn’t mean he isn’t doing something now or that we shouldn’t do something now ourselves. It means that the day of judgment, when all things are fully and finally set to rights, is his alone to decide. It also means we need to not get so stressed out and overly activist because of the current circumstance.
2. God is the Judge. And his judgments are made with equity. He is evenhanded. He brings true justice, not the limited perspective attempts at justice we humans bumble about with. No other judge knows the truth of things as he does or has the ability to make things right as he does.
3. God holds things together. In some cosmologies, the earth is built on pillars. If they were to fail, we all would fall. But even though there are wars and natural disasters and the world seems about to topple, God holds the pillars firm. God is the true foundation.
Arrogance is idolatry.
The lifted up horns are actually lifted up against heaven, against God. Boasting is defiance. It sets up the kingdom of Self against the kingdom of God.
But the reality is that no matter how much anyone from any point of the compass tries to exalt himself, he gets nowhere. There’s only so much hot air inside those who inflate themselves. No substance.
God the Judge is the one who lifts up and brings down. What looks so effective by those who set themselves up as elite ends up doing nothing for them. The self-inflated get their bubbles burst by the Judge. But he doesn’t just deflate, he exalts. And so James the brother of Jesus will encourage us to do the opposite of the horn-lifters: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10).
What the arrogant get instead is The Cup.
No one from the east or the west
or from the desert can exalt themselves.
It is God who judges:
He brings one down, he exalts another.
In the hand of the LORD is a cup
full of foaming wine mixed with spices;
he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth
drink it down to its very dregs (Ps. 75:6-9).
The Cup is filled with a heady drink. Foamy. Spicy. But ultimately it’s a bitter drink for it’s a drink of judgment. God hefts the pitcher and fills the Cup and the wicked drink it down to the residue at the bottom, getting every last drop.
It’s a brew of their own making. All of their arrogance. All of their spite. All of their manipulating and maneuvering. All of their sins make the recipe for the drink that will do them in.
Surprisingly, this is the Cup the Father places before Jesus, the humble and obedient Son of the Father. This is the Cup Jesus asks to avoid drinking. But he does drink it not because he deserves to drink it, but because we deserve to drink it. While we may not lift up our horns to the extent of the arrogant and powerful in the world, we all assert our own Self-kingdoms over God’s kingdom. As rebels, we deserve the Cup of Judgment. But Jesus drinks it in our place.
Because Jesus drank our cup, we drink his cup in communion, a cup of judgment already served, already drained.
Returning to Psalm 75, God ensures the violent proud will drink their beverage. Because of this, we return to the praise that began the psalm. For we know the world that got turned upside-down by the violence of the arrogant will be turned rightside-up by God the Judge.
As for me, I will declare this forever;
I will sing praise to the God of Jacob,
who says, “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked,
but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up” (Ps. 75:9-10).
We tend to dislike the word judgment. I remember reading little Chick tracks when I was a kid and seeing portrayed in them an individual judgment by God where each person is hauled before the great white throne to stand alone while every sin committed is replayed on a massive video screen, shaming before condemning. Those images were chilling.
But the Psalms offer a very different view of judgment. Unlike the Chick track view of judgment, biblical judgment has to do not with shaming us over our secret sins, but with the restoration of God’s shalom by ending the turmoil caused by the arrogant who lift themselves up by pushing down others like one bull dominating another.
Judgment unmakes their violence and also unmakes them so that they will never be able to do it again by cutting off their horns.
I remember feeling my strength as a full grown teenager walking the high school halls and feeling like I could knock over almost anyone I wanted to. I felt it again as a magazine editor to whom business leaders gathered in order to woo me and my magazine into writing articles about them.
There are plenty of times in life when we feel our weakness. But there are times when we feel our strength. It’s essential in these strong times to submit that strength to the Judge or else he will cut off our horns if we lift them too high — for, in doing so, we always end up using our strength to push others down.
At the same time, the good and just and kind will find themselves picked up from the mud and lifted up by God the Judge, their horns lifted up by the one only worthy to raise a horn. That is a good judgment. And that is something that should cause shouts of joy.
Questions for reflection:
Where am I strong right now?
Where does my strength come from? How did I get it? How might I lose it?
Who do I use my strength for? Myself? Others? A mix? How might I corrupt it? How might I use it well?
Dunamis (Greek: power) in the book of Acts always comes from the Spirit. Do I, like Simon the sorcerer, want to buy this power for myself?
Prayer:
I bow my horn before you, Lord, for you are the King and Judge of all people. May I use what strength I have to serve, not to compel service, lifting you up instead of myself and lifting up those who have fallen or been pushed down. In Jesus, who drank the Cup. Amen.