The quest for justice did not begin with the death of George Floyd. It didn’t even begin when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1954. In fact, it didn’t begin with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, or the signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 or with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

No, Psalm 74 demonstrates that God’s people have longed for freedom and justice since well before the time of Christ. Asaph wrote this psalm sometime after the Babylonians destroyed the Temple of Solomon in 587 BC. After that time, God’s people would remain in subjugation to unbelieving foreigners – first to the Babylonians, then to the Persians, and then to the various Greek kingdoms that succeeded Alexander the Great’s empire. By the time Jesus was born, Judea was under the thumb of the Romans, who would go on to destroy the Second Temple in 70 AD.

No, it’s no wonder that generation after generation of God’s people have sung along with Asaph’s burning question: “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?” Perhaps you’re asking that question today too.

But isn’t it interesting that, after lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem and before asking God to remember His covenant, Asaph spends six verses recalling God’s work in creation? He thinks about how God formed the seas and the rivers, how God set all the stars in the heavens and how God established the changing of the seasons (Psalm 74:12-17).

So, what does this digression have to do with his pleas for justice? Everything, really. For doesn’t the magnitude of God’s creation put so many of our urgent, pressing concerns into their proper perspective? I mean, how many of us really know what all those English barons were so concerned about when they cornered King John at Runnymede? Do we really understand why the Pilgrims were so anxious to get to America? No, by tearing down a statue of Ulysses Grant in the name of racial equality, San Francisco rioters have made it clear that even the greatest efforts to bring about greater justice will eventually be forgotten by the coming generations. But all the while the stars remain fixed and the seasons come and go according to God’s design.

And that’s the best news of all – the God Whose unimaginable power created everything that exists is the same God to whom Asaph cries out for justice. And Asaph could make his appeal with confidence because of the covenant God had already made with His people (Psalm 74:20). Asaph thus relied on the promise God made to David that one of his descendants would rule forever (II Samuel 7:16), as well as on the promise God made to Abraham that His descendants would be as numerous as the unchanging stars in the heavens (Genesis 15:5) and that they would live in the land He had promised to them (Genesis 12:7; 15:16)

And we can rely on those promises as well, since they’ve all been fulfilled in the coming of Christ, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the One Who will come again to bring justice even to the worst of the world’s oppressors. So, no matter how great the forces of injustice may seem today, let us continue to trust in the righteousness of our King to set all things right – in His way, and in His time.

Psalm 74:10-20 (ESV)

10 How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!
12 Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.
18 Remember this, O LORD, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people reviles your name.
19 Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts; do not forget the life of your poor forever.
20 Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.