The Divine Lawsuit: When the Foundations Are Shaken Text: Psalm 82:1-5
Introduction: A Crisis of Authority
We live in a time of institutional rot. Men look at the halls of justice, the seats of government, and the towers of finance, and they see a crooked game. They see a system that favors the connected, punishes the ordinary, and calls evil good and good evil. There is a deep and abiding sense that the very foundations of our civilization are trembling, that the structures we once trusted are crumbling into dust. And this is not paranoia. It is a sober assessment of our condition.
But this is not a new crisis. It is an ancient one. The problem is not ultimately with our political parties or our economic theories. The problem is a rebellion against the ultimate source of all authority, the living God. When men in power forget that they are men under authority, they inevitably become tyrants. When judges forget they must one day stand before the supreme Judge, their own judgments become instruments of oppression.
Psalm 82 is God's answer to this crisis. It is not a gentle suggestion or a polite memo. It is a divine lawsuit. It is a summons from the court of heaven, where God Himself takes the stand to prosecute the corrupt rulers of the earth. This psalm rips the robes off of proud men and reminds them that their authority is delegated, their time is short, and their judgment is certain. It tells us why our world is shaking, and it points us to the only foundation that can never be moved.
The Text
God takes His stand in the congregation of God; He judges in the midst of gods.
How long will you judge unrighteously And show partiality to the wicked? Selah.
Give justice to the poor and the orphan; Justify the afflicted and destitute.
Protect the poor and needy; Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.
They do not know and do not understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
(Psalm 82:1-5 LSB)
The Heavenly Courtroom (v. 1)
The scene opens in the highest courtroom in the universe.
"God takes His stand in the congregation of God; He judges in the midst of gods." (Psalm 82:1)
The first thing we must establish is the identity of these "gods." The word here is Elohim. Our secular age, when it bothers to read the Bible at all, might see this and imagine a pantheon of deities, a holdover from primitive polytheism. But that is to read with stunning ignorance. The Bible is ruthlessly monotheistic. The Scriptures themselves interpret this for us. These "gods" are human rulers, civil magistrates, judges, and kings. They are called "gods" not because they are divine, but because they wield a divine function: the authority to judge, to render verdicts, and to execute justice (cf. Exodus 22:28). They are God's deacons, His ministers of justice in the civil realm (Romans 13:4).
But notice the arrangement. God, the ultimate Elohim, stands to judge among these lesser elohim. He is not a distant landlord; He is the active, present, and supreme Judge. All human authority is delegated authority. Every king, every president, every judge holds his office as a trust from God. He is "under Him, over the people." This is the foundational principle of all just government. To forget this is to lay the axe to the root of the tree of liberty. An authority that does not recognize a higher authority will inevitably become an absolute authority, which is to say, a tyranny.
This verse establishes the great divine council. God has convened a meeting, and the rulers of the earth are in the dock. Their performance review is about to begin, and the One reviewing them is the One who gave them the job in the first place.
The Divine Indictment (v. 2)
God does not waste time with pleasantries. He immediately levels the charge.
"How long will you judge unrighteously And show partiality to the wicked? Selah." (Psalm 82:2)
This is the heart of the matter. The charge is corruption. It is a two-fold failure. First, they judge "unrighteously." They have abandoned God's fixed standard of right and wrong and have substituted their own crooked, self-serving standards. Justice is no longer a reflection of God's holy character; it has become a tool for personal gain and political power.
Second, and more specifically, they "show partiality to the wicked." This is what unrighteous judgment looks like in practice. It means the law is a spiderweb that catches the small flies but lets the wasps and hornets tear right through. The wealthy, the powerful, and the politically connected get a slap on the wrist, while the ordinary man is crushed. This is a direct violation of God's explicit command: "You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike" (Deuteronomy 1:17).
The word "Selah" instructs us to pause. We are to stop and feel the weight of this accusation. Think about the two-tiered justice systems of our day. Think about the powerful who walk free while the weak are imprisoned. God sees all of it, and His question hangs in the air: "How long?" This is not a question of curiosity; it is a declaration that His patience is running out. Judgment is coming.
The Job Description of Justice (vv. 3-4)
After the indictment, God lays out the positive duty of the magistrate. This is what they were supposed to be doing all along.
"Give justice to the poor and the orphan; Justify the afflicted and destitute. Protect the poor and needy; Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked." (Psalm 82:3-4)
Notice the subjects of true justice: the poor, the orphan, the afflicted, the destitute. Why? Because these are the ones most vulnerable to oppression. They lack the money to hire expensive lawyers. They lack the connections to influence the judge. They lack the power to fight back. A nation's justice system is measured not by how it treats its billionaires, but by how it treats its orphans and widows.
This is not a call for wealth redistribution or some form of Marxist social justice. The command is to "give justice" and to "justify." This is a legal, forensic task. It means to render a right verdict according to God's law, regardless of the social status of the person in front of you. It means declaring the innocent to be innocent and the guilty to be guilty, without partiality.
And this justice is not passive. The magistrate must "protect" and "deliver." The civil ruler is to be a shield for the weak against the "hand of the wicked." He is to be a terror to evildoers (Romans 13:3). Government's primary role is not to provide healthcare or regulate the economy; it is to punish wickedness and protect the innocent. When it fails at this, it has failed at its most basic, God-given duty.
The Great Unraveling (v. 5)
This final verse shows the catastrophic consequence of abandoning God's standard of justice.
"They do not know and do not understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken." (Psalm 82:5)
The "they" here refers back to the corrupt judges. Their problem is not a lack of intelligence. Corrupt men are often very clever. Their problem is a moral and spiritual blindness. Because they have rejected the light of God's law, they "do not know and do not understand." They cannot see reality for what it is. They are like men trying to perform surgery in a pitch-black room. They are stumbling, groping, and destroying everything they touch.
Their entire way of life is a walk in darkness. They make their crooked deals in the shadows. They whisper their perjuries in back rooms. They have rejected the God who is light, and so darkness is all they have left.
And here is the result: "All the foundations of the earth are shaken." This is not hyperbole. When a nation's judicial system becomes thoroughly corrupt, the society itself becomes unstable. The rule of law is a foundation. Property rights are a foundation. The sanctity of contracts is a foundation. When these things are eroded by partiality and injustice, the entire social order begins to collapse. We are watching this happen in real time. We see the foundations cracking all around us because our leaders, our "gods," are walking in darkness. They have rejected God's blueprint, and now the building is coming down on their heads, and ours.
The Only True Judge
This psalm is a terrifying indictment of all corrupt human authority. But it is not without hope. The failure of these earthly "gods" points us to our desperate need for a perfect Judge, a righteous King.
The Lord Jesus Christ is that King. He is the one who always judged righteously. He never showed partiality. He always defended the cause of the weak and the needy. And yet, in the greatest injustice in human history, this perfectly just Judge was arrested, put on trial, and condemned by corrupt earthly rulers who were walking in darkness.
At the cross, the foundations of the earth were truly shaken. There, God the Father executed perfect justice. But He did it in a way no one could have expected. He took all the unrighteous judgments we deserved, all the partiality we have shown, all the wickedness we have committed, and He laid it on His Son. The one man who deserved to be justified was condemned, so that we, the afflicted and destitute, could be justified freely by His grace.
The gospel is the ultimate answer to the crisis of Psalm 82. Our earthly rulers will continue to fail us. The foundations will continue to shake. But there is a kingdom with foundations that cannot be shaken, and a King who reigns in perfect righteousness. The call of this psalm is a call for earthly judges to repent and kiss the Son, lest they perish in their rebellion. And it is a call for the poor and the orphan, the afflicted and the needy, to put their trust not in princes or in judges, but in the King of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can deliver us from the hand of the wicked, and who will one day judge the world in righteousness.