Psalms 94:12 - Meaning and Application

The psalmist has already warned those who trouble God’s people. Now he gives comfort to those who are troubled, showing them the rest God has promised. See (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7). He speaks to suffering believers from God’s promises and from his own experience.

From God’s promises, he says, “Blessed is the man whom you discipline” (Psalm 94:12). Here he looks past the human enemies and sees God’s hand. The enemies mean to crush God’s people (Psalm 94:5), but God uses them as a father uses discipline for a child he loves. They do not mean it that way, and their hearts do not think it that way (Isaiah 10:5-7). Yet God turns even their harm into loving correction.

One promise is that God’s people will gain good from suffering. When he disciplines them, he will teach them. No one teaches like God does. The troubles of believers are fatherly discipline meant for their instruction, correction, and growth. When the teaching of God’s word and Spirit comes with the rebukes of providence, both show that people are blessed and help make them blessed. Then suffering becomes a mark of adoption and a means of sanctification, that is, becoming holy.

When we are disciplined, we should pray to be taught and look into God’s law as the best explanation of providence, his guiding care. The discipline itself does not do the good by itself. The good comes from the teaching that comes with it and explains it.

Another promise is that they will find rest after their suffering. God will give them rest from the days of trouble (Psalm 94:13). There is a rest waiting for God’s people after their days of hardship. Those days may be many and long, but they will be numbered and finished in due time. The God who sends the trouble will also send the rest, so that he may comfort them in proportion to their affliction.

God teaches his people through trouble to prepare them for deliverance. He wants to give them rest by first reforming them, so that when the affliction has done its work, it can be removed. He also promises that they will see the ruin of those who caused their suffering. That promise is not given to feed revenge, but to honor God. While the pit is being dug for the wicked, God is also ordering peace for his people and preparing arrows against their persecutors.

Though they may be knocked down, they will not be abandoned (Psalm 94:14). God’s suffering people may be sure of this. No matter what their friends do, God will not cast them off or throw them out of his covenant, his binding promise, or out of his care. He will not forsake them, because they are his inheritance. He will not give up his right to them or allow himself to lose what belongs to him. Paul comforted himself with this truth (Romans 11:1).

Bad as things are, they will improve. What is now out of order will return to its proper path (Psalm 94:15). Judgment shall return to righteousness. The seeming disorders of providence, for there are no real ones, will be set right. God’s rule sometimes seems far from righteousness, while the wicked prosper and the best people suffer the worst treatment. But judgment will return to righteousness again, either in this life or, at the latest, at the great final judgment, which will put everything right.

Then all the upright in heart will follow after it. They will praise God with full satisfaction. They will return to a fruitful and flourishing condition and shine again after a time of obscurity. They will yield themselves to God’s providence and follow its movements with fitting hearts. They shall walk after the Lord (Hosea 11:10). Dr. Hammond thinks this was especially fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and later of pagan Rome, the powers that crucified Christ and persecuted Christians, and in the rest that the churches received through those events. Then judgment returned to righteousness, to mercy and goodness, and to favor toward God’s people, who were as honored as they had once been trampled down.

From his own experience and observations, the psalmist says that he and his friends had been oppressed by cruel and arrogant men who held power and abused it against all good people. They were themselves evil doers and workers of iniquity, people given over to sin and injustice (Psalm 94:16). Their throne was a throne of iniquity (Psalm 94:20). Their rank gave sin respectability, and their authority was used to support it and carry out wicked plans.

It is a sad thing when a throne, which should terrify evil doers and protect and honor those who do right, becomes a shelter for wickedness. A throne of iniquity is one that, through its rulers’ planning, frames mischief, and through its power, makes that mischief into law. Sin is bold enough even when human laws oppose it, though those laws are often too weak to stop it fully. But how much more daring and harmful sin becomes when a law supports it. Sin is no better, and much worse, because it has been written into law. Nor can people excuse themselves by saying they only did what they were told.

These workers of evil, having made mischief into law, then make sure the law is enforced. They gather together against the life of the righteous, who will not keep the statutes of Omri or the law of the house of Ahab, that is, the corrupt laws of wicked rulers. They condemn innocent blood for breaking their commands. Daniel’s enemies are an example. They framed mischief by law when they won an ungodly decree against prayer (Daniel 6:7). Then, when Daniel would not obey, they gathered against him (Psalm 94:11) and condemned his innocent life to the lions. The best benefactors of mankind have often been treated this way, under the cover of law and justice, as though they were the worst criminals.

The oppression they suffered weighed very heavily on them and crushed their spirits as well. Let suffering believers not lose heart if persecution leaves them confused and downcast. It was so with the psalmist here. His soul had almost lived in silence (Psalm 94:17). He was at his wits’ end and did not know what to say or do. In his own feeling, he was near the end of his life and ready to drop into the grave, the land of silence. Paul had a similar experience when he received within himself a sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). The psalmist said, “My foot is slipping” (Psalm 94:18). “I am going down beyond recovery. There is no help. I must fall. I will one day perish by the hand of Saul.”

“My hope is failing me. I do not find the firm footing for my faith that I have found at other times” (Psalm 73:2). He had many confused and tangled thoughts about his situation, how to understand it, what course to take, and what the outcome might be.

In this distress, they looked for help, support, and relief. First, they looked around for it, and were disappointed (Psalm 94:16). “Who will rise up for me against the evil doers? Do I have a friend who will stand with me out of love? Does justice have a friend who will speak up for my wronged cause?” He looked, but there was no one to save him, and no one to support him. When the oppressors have power, it is no surprise if the oppressed have no comforter, and no one dares to stand with them or speak well of them (Ecclesiastes 4:1). When the apostle Paul stood before Nero’s corrupt court, no one stood with him (2 Timothy 4:16).

Then they looked up for help (Psalm 94:20). They humbly reasoned with God: “Lord, can a throne of injustice have fellowship with you? Will you approve and support these tyrants in their wickedness? We know you will not.” A throne has fellowship with God when it is a throne of justice and carries out the purpose for which it was set up. For it is by him that kings reign, and when they rule for him, their judgments are his, and he owns them as his servants. Whoever resists them, or rises up against them, brings judgment on himself. But when a throne becomes a throne of injustice, it no longer has fellowship with God. It is far from the holy and righteous God to be the protector of wrongdoing, even in princes and those who sit on thrones, even if they are thrones of David’s house.

They found help and relief in God, and in him alone. When other friends failed, they had a faithful and powerful friend in him. This is a comfort to all God’s suffering people, and they are called to trust him.

God helps in the darkest moment (Psalm 94:17). “When I was almost living in silence, the Lord was my help. He kept me alive, and he kept me from giving up.” Unless I had made him my help, by trusting him and waiting for rescue from him, I could never have kept hold of my own soul. But living by faith in him kept me above water, gave me breath, and gave me something to say.

God’s goodness is the great support of sinking hearts (Psalm 94:18). “When I said, My foot slips, toward sin, ruin, or despair, your mercy, O Lord, held me up.” It kept me from falling and frustrated the plans of those who wanted to bring me down from my safety (Psalm 62:4). We owe our spiritual support not only to God’s power, but also to his pity. “Your mercy,” the gifts that come from it, and my hope in your mercy, held me up.

God’s right hand supports his people when they look left and right and find no one to help. We are best prepared for his gracious support when we know our own weakness, know we cannot stand on our own, and come to God to confess that our foot is slipping.

God’s comforts are the real relief for troubled hearts (Psalm 94:19). “In the many thoughts within me,” thoughts that were noisy like a crowd, pushing and crowding each other, and hard to control, “your comforts delight my soul.” They are most welcome when they come just in time to quiet restless thoughts and keep the mind at peace. The world’s comforts give little delight to a soul troubled by heavy thoughts. They are like songs to a sad heart. But God’s comforts reach the soul, not just the imagination, and they bring the peace and joy that the world’s smiles cannot give and the world’s frowns cannot take away.

God is, and will always be, a righteous Judge. He protects what is right and punishes wrong. The psalmist was sure of this, and he had also seen it for himself. He will give justice to those who are wronged (Psalm 94:22). “When no one else will, cannot, or dares to shelter me, the Lord is my defense.” He preserves me from the harm of my troubles, so I do not sink under them and get ruined by them. He is the rock of my refuge, a place where I can hide in safety and stand securely above danger. God is his people’s refuge. They may flee to him and be safe. He is the rock of their refuge, strong, firm, unshakable, and immovable, like a rock. Sometimes natural hiding places are even stronger than built fortresses.

He will also settle accounts with the wrongdoers (Psalm 94:23). He will give them back their own sin. He will deal with them according to what they deserve, and the very harm they planned and carried out against God’s people will come back on them. So it says, “He shall cut them off in their wickedness.” A person cannot become more miserable than his own wickedness will make him, if God visits that wickedness on him. It will wound him in the memory of it, and cut him off in the payment for it. The psalm ends with this confident joy: yes, the Lord our God, who takes our side and claims us as his own, will cut them off from fellowship with him. That will make them completely miserable, and their pride and power will not help them at all.