The Divine Conspiracy: How God Overthrows Tyrants Text: Psalm 10:17-18
Introduction: Two Kinds of People
The world is not nearly as complicated as the people who are trying to ruin it want you to believe. At the end of all things, when all the smoke clears and the final accounting is made, there are only two kinds of people. There are those who know they are creatures, and there are those who pretend they are gods. There are the humble, who bow before the throne of Yahweh, and there are the proud, the men of the earth, who puff out their chests and imagine they are the architects of their own reality. This is the fundamental conflict of all human history, and it is the conflict that Psalm 10 brings to a sharp and glorious conclusion.
The first part of this psalm is a raw complaint. The psalmist looks out at the world and sees what we see. He sees arrogant, prosperous wickedness. He sees the wicked man hunting the poor, blessing the greedy, and renouncing the Lord. In his pride, this man believes God is not paying attention, that God has forgotten, that God does not see. He lives as though he is bulletproof, as though his earthly perch were an eternal throne. He is the quintessential "man of the earth," and his stock-in-trade is terror.
But the psalm does not end there. It does not end in the despair of verse 1, wondering why God is standing so far off. It ends in the triumphant declaration of God's unshakable kingdom. It ends, as all of history will end, with God on His throne, the nations vanished from His land, and the prayers of the humble answered. These final two verses are not a desperate wish; they are a statement of fact. They describe the mechanics of how God dismantles the entire apparatus of godless oppression. It is a divine conspiracy, hatched in Heaven, that overthrows every earthly tyranny. And the central agents in this conspiracy are the humble saints of God, armed with nothing more than the desires God Himself has given them.
The Text
O Yahweh, You have heard the desire of the humble;
You will strengthen their heart, You will cause Your ear to give heed
To give justice to the orphan and the oppressed,
So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror.
(Psalm 10:17-18 LSB)
The Source of True Reformation (v. 17)
We begin with the engine room of history, which is the prayer closet.
"O Yahweh, You have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart, You will cause Your ear to give heed" (Psalm 10:17)
Notice the glorious, closed loop of God's sovereignty here. God hears the desire of the humble. But where did that desire come from in the first place? Did the humble, by their own native goodness, gin up a holy desire for reformation and justice? Not a bit of it. The verse tells us that God is the one who strengthens, or prepares, their heart. This is a profound statement about the nature of prayer. Our prayers for revival, for reformation, for the overthrow of wickedness, are not our idea. They are God's idea. He is the one who plants the desire in the hearts of His people. He creates the thirst, and He creates the water to quench it.
This is why we can have such confidence in our prayers. We are not shouting into a void, hoping to get God's attention. When a humble believer prays for God's kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, he is praying a prayer that God Himself wrote on his heart. God prepares the heart to pray, and then He causes His own ear to hear that prayer. It is a divine feedback loop. He loads the cannon, tells us where to aim it, and then celebrates the victory with us when the shot lands. This demolishes all forms of pietistic despair. When you see the wickedness in our land, in our halls of justice, in our corrupt institutions, and your heart groans for righteousness, that is not you being a political crank. That is the Spirit of God strengthening your heart for the battle. That desire is the first trumpet blast of the coming victory.
Who are the humble? They are not the sniveling or the weak-kneed. Humility in Scripture is not a posture of worthlessness; it is a posture of right-relatedness. The humble are those who know their place. They know they are creatures, and they know God is the Creator. They know they are dependent, and He is the great Provider. The proud man, the man of the earth, thinks he is self-sufficient. The humble man knows he is utterly dependent on God for his next breath, for his next meal, and for the next righteous desire that flits through his heart. And because he knows this, God gives him the kingdom.
God strengthens their heart. He makes it firm, resolute. He gives courage. This is not about mustering up positive feelings. It is about God establishing the heart in the truth of His sovereignty. When you know that your desire for justice is from God, and that God is hearing that desire, your heart becomes like flint. The threats of earthly men become like the buzzing of flies. This is the strength that topples empires.
The Goal of Divine Justice (v. 18a)
The purpose of this divinely initiated prayer is not simply to make the humble feel better. It has a definite, concrete goal in history.
"To give justice to the orphan and the oppressed..." (Psalm 10:18a LSB)
God's justice is not an abstract, sentimental thing. It is fiercely practical. It always lands on behalf of the vulnerable. Throughout Scripture, the orphan and the widow, the oppressed and the fatherless, are the litmus test of a society's righteousness. Why? Because they are the ones with no earthly power. They have no lobbyist, no political action committee, no army. Their only recourse is to appeal to the God who is the Father of the fatherless. A society that despises them is a society that is shaking its fist at Heaven.
When our modern social justice warriors talk about the oppressed, they mean something very different. They have their own manufactured categories of oppression, based on godless ideologies of envy and resentment. But biblical justice is about righteousness, about rendering to each his due according to God's law. The orphan has been deprived of parents, the fundamental unit of God's government. The oppressed man has been deprived of his property, his liberty, or his life by the lawless actions of the powerful. God's justice is the restoration of God's created order.
And notice the connection. God hears the prayers of the humble in order to execute justice for the orphan. True care for the vulnerable is not born out of secular compassion or government programs. It is born out of a heart made strong by God, filled with a desire for God's righteousness to be established in the land. When Christians start praying in earnest for God to act, the first beneficiaries are always those who have been chewed up and spit out by the proud.
The Result: The End of Terror (v. 18b)
And here we come to the glorious, postmillennial conclusion. This is the end game. This is where history is headed.
"...So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror." (Psalm 10:18b LSB)
Who is this "man who is of the earth"? The Hebrew is enosh min-ha'aretz. It is a term of contempt. It means mortal man, frail man, man who is made of dirt. This is the man who has forgotten he is dirt. He is the secularist, the humanist, the tyrant, the bureaucrat, the godless politician who thinks his decrees are ultimate. He is the man who lives and breathes in God's world, on God's real estate, and yet acts as though he is the landlord. He derives all his strength, all his ability to cause terror, from the very God he denies.
His primary weapon is terror. He uses fear to control, to manipulate, and to oppress. He wants you to be afraid of his laws, his mandates, his armies, his disapproval. He wants you to believe that he holds the power of life and death. He is the one who persecutes the poor, who devours widows' houses, who sets traps for the innocent.
But this psalm declares his expiration date. The prayers of the humble, strengthened by God, leading to the justice of God, have this as their ultimate earthly result: the disarming of the dirt-man. He will no longer cause terror. This is not speaking of heaven. This is speaking of a time on earth when the force of the gospel so thoroughly permeates a culture that the enemies of God are marginalized. Their ability to terrify the people of God is stripped from them. This is the promise of the Great Commission. This is the promise that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
How does this happen? It happens when the humble stop being afraid of the dirt-man and start fearing God alone. It happens when their hearts are so strengthened by the reality of God's sovereignty that the threats of the state become laughable. When a man truly believes that God hears his desires, he is no longer susceptible to terror. He becomes ungovernable by tyrants. And when you have a whole culture of such people, the tyrant's game is up. His power, which is built on a bluff, is called. The terror evaporates. The man of the earth is revealed to be nothing more than a pile of dust, and the saints inherit that earth.
Conclusion: Your Desires Matter
So do not despise the groanings of your heart. Do not dismiss your desire for a righteous public square as some kind of carnal political activism. If you are one of the humble, if you have bowed the knee to Christ, then that desire for justice is a gift from God. It is the first step in His grand strategy to dismantle the kingdoms of this world and make them the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.
God is preparing your heart. He is strengthening it. He is causing His own ear to listen. He is doing this so that He might rise and bring justice to the fatherless, to the unborn, to the oppressed. And He is doing all of this for a glorious end, that the arrogant, puffed-up, dirt-men who currently strut and fume on the world stage will be silenced. Their reign of terror will end.
Therefore, pray with confidence. Pray against the wickedness you see. Pray for the humble to be strengthened. Pray for the orphans to be defended. Pray for the proud to be brought low. For in praying this way, you are not just expressing your own opinion. You are participating in a divine conspiracy. You are speaking back to God the very desires He placed within you, and He has promised to hear, and to act.