We waste so much time and energy in the quest for an answer as to how God expects His people to live, when God provides a straightforward response and merciful direction for the people of His choosing. After doing away with that which is purely pragmatic and self-serving, by rendering His clear judgment on the gods that have been providing a faulty foundation for His people’s ongoing justification for not carrying out His purposes for them, God sets forth His plan.
Quite simply, He says, “Defend the cause of the poor and the fatherless!” (Psalm 82:3a) Though poor can be a relative term depending on one’s country and culture, “fatherless” is easily understood. God expects His people to be an advocate for the orphaned and abandoned. Orphans are extraordinarily close to the heart of God, an assertion which is borne out by the repetition of Scripture concerning the fatherless, and of God being their supporter through His people. We can take this a step beyond the understanding of “fatherless” as referring to those that are orphans because they do not have an earthly father, and carry this conception into the spiritual realm as well. Because Israel (and renewed Israel through the covenant of belief in Jesus) can look to and speak to God as their Father, those outside of the covenant could be considered to be “Fatherless.”
How do God’s people defend the cause of and support and show concern for such Fatherless ones? They do so, naturally, both then and now, by preaching the Gospel. Prior to Jesus, Israel preached the Gospel by avoiding idolatry, reverencing God’s sanctuary, and by keeping God’s Sabbaths, looking forward to a messiah through whom God would put down evil and restore His creation. In doing this, they were a light to all peoples for God’s glory, and were blessed by God in a way that was designed to draw people to Israel and to Israel’s God.
Now, as we live within the kingdom of heaven that was inaugurated at Jesus’ Resurrection and is ruled by Him as He works through us by the Spirit so that we might serve as lights to all peoples for God’s glory, we preach the Gospel of Jesus. It is the very preaching and proclamation of that Gospel, which has power in itself according to the Apostle Paul in Romans (1:16), that gives a Father to the Fatherless, bringing men and women into the covenant through belief in Jesus. At the same time, as the Gospel takes root and inspires a trusting allegiance to its claims, God’s people are inspired to meet the physical needs of literal orphans. It is the power of the Gospel that brings us close to the heart of God, for preaching and for serving, carrying us into a devotion to what it is that God desires for His people if they truly seek to serve Him.
The Psalmist goes on to write, as He presents God’s plea to His people, causing us to hear God saying, “Vindicate the oppressed and suffering! Rescue the poor and needy! Deliver them from the power of the wicked!” (82:3b-4) With the inclusion of “the wicked” in this verse, we can return to the favoritism towards the wicked of the second verse and realize that, more than anything, man needs to be delivered from his idolatry. That idolatry is the idolatry of self, as man worships a harsh and cruel taskmaster that keeps him in subservience to a stream of desires that was brought into being when man, in Adam, renounced his purposes and his dominion and his bearing of the divine image, and chose to trust and serve the creation rather than the Creator.
Because of the fall, all that are under the curse that has been wrought by Adam can be said to be oppressed by the stalking specter of death, while suffering under the corruption and violence that is in this world. It is only in becoming people of the covenant, now through belief in Jesus as the One through Whom God has sufficiently dealt with these things, that the oppressed and suffering can be vindicated. This vindication only comes through sharing in Christ’s conquering of death---by being crucified with Him and being raised up with Him---and sharing in His Resurrection (His vindication) and eternal life through a Spirit delivered and empowered faith for belief in Him. Through a belief in the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, and through that alone, is a man delivered from the power of the wicked, by being given a faithful King to Whom he can render submission, and a God to serve that exists, that took human flesh upon Himself in order to suffer, that sympathizes with man as His brother, and that does not change.
There is a Gospel, and an empowerment to belief in the Gospel, so that God’s people can carry out His purposes in this world, to be what He would have them to be, and to do what He would have them do. It is only through that Gospel and its power to grip and to change and to conform a person into the divine image that had been previously forfeited, that we can make just decisions, defend the poor, support the orphan, vindicate the oppressed and suffering, rescue the poor and needy, and deliver them from the power of the wicked. If we find ourselves engaged in this battle, motivated by our allegiance to the Gospel proclamation, then we can trust that we are close to His heart and serving according to His will.
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