In this special episode of Thread, we take an extended look at Psalm 82 to seek answers to the question: Why is there so much evil and injustice in this world?  Is there a spirit world government behind human social structures around the world? Find out more in this episode of Thread. 

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Show Transcript

Thread Bible Podcast Season 4 Episode...

Hi, I'm Chuck Quinley.

Welcome back to Thread God's Word, tying together all the pieces of your life.

The Thread Bible Podcast is a verse by verse study of the Bible.

And in season four, we have been studying the foundation, the

bedrock of the entire Bible.

Genesis one through 12.

This is a special episode of Thread.

It's a time here at the end of the study where I get to tie up some pieces

that I want to add to our study, although they are not technically.

In line with the passages we've been studying, but I

think they're really important.

I am going to assume if you're on this episode that you've

been along for the ride.

This has been the most important study of my life.

For understanding the big story of the Bible, even to understand

the gospel in a much clearer way.

Now, if you haven't been with us, I really recommend that you go back to season

four, episode one and start there because if you just jump in at this point, I

honestly, I don't know if you're gonna know what to make of this lesson, cuz

this one is going to sound a little bit.

To many people's ears.

The important thing that we're doing here at the end of this, this study

of the first 12 chapters of our Bible, is to try to bring it all

together into a Christian cosmology.

A cosmology will help you answer the question, what kind?

Is this, you know, what is this world I live in?

How does it work?

What's the truth about it?

Cause and effect what's this world about?

And that's a really huge, important question that all of

us need to get an answer to.

This episode is also going to wrestle with one of the biggest questions

that people have been asking.

Even in the ancient world, and that is, it's the question that

plagued job, it plagued the psalmus.

And here are the questions.

Questions like, why does our beautiful world have so much evil in it?

I mean, why is there so much injustice in every single nation,

despite our best efforts, despite, you know, you come up with democracy

and you still get injustice.

You come up with, you know, you do all kinds of things to try to make right.

Old.

Things that were done wrong, and yet then it spins off wrong again.

I mean, why is it that the, this is like trying to, you

know, herd mercury or something.

Why is there so much injustice?

Why isn't there a clear system of karma?

You know, where you, you do good, you get good, and as long as you'll do

good, you just keep getting more good.

You know, Why is it that good people as Billy.

Wrote, you know, only the good die young.

That's oversimplification, but you know who gets persecuted.

Well, it's the righteous who get persecuted and who gets to persecute them?

Well, it's the evil ones and they have the power.

So why do the evil ones always end up having the power and use

their, you know, so they can use their muscle to crush the good?

And why is it that country, by country, by country, generation after generation,

I mean, through hundreds and thousands and thousands of years, we still struggle.

To create an equitable society where everything is just fair and good.

You know, we've tried Utopia over and over again.

Humans have gone off and, and made farms and whole states, you know, where they.

Tried to create a beautiful free place that had justice and it was right.

You know, and they can have very high aspirations, but in

the end it always gets wrecked.

So that's the question you're like, why is the universe, why?

Why does this world, maybe not the whole universe, but at least our world, why

does our world's at least, Behaviors.

Why do they always spin toward darkness?

It's frustrating and it's we want an answer to it.

All right, So to get an answer to that and, and that's what today's thread

is gonna wrestle with, is we're gonna look at a passage in the Bible,

whole psalm, but, and that Psalms 82.

So you can go ahead and grab your Bible and be going there, but before.

Fair.

I want to go back and hit the high points again, and I know I've done

this probably 20 times, but, and I won't get . I will try not to get

sidetracked on any of it and get it all set again in a minute, but it's just

important to watch the logic of it.

Okay?

The Bible opens up with one character, God, the creator, He.

We learn his name and his name is connected with the

i, with the idea of freedom.

He is the free God.

I will be whatever I will be.

He has freedom.

He has agency.

He is able to choose what he wants to do and do it.

And so one of the things he wants to do is create It is within him to create.

And so he does, and he creates not only a.

And not only material objects, but he creates two societies, high

societies, not just the animals.

He creates animals, he creates the fishes, he creates everything, but

he creates two societies of high.

creatures and the first we could lump together and call angels, although that

word means messenger and they don't all do messaging, but they are not of this world.

They are not made of the.

Of the soil of our planet.

They are from some other thing and place, and just for simplification,

I'm gonna call 'em angels, but the Hebrew word is Elohim.

It's the word for any supernatural, any living being that is not.

Of this world.

I'll just leave it with that.

Elohim, it's also the word for God or Gods.

The gods of the nations, the creator, God, it's just one catch all term.

The other free society are humans.

They are made in His image and earth is created as the homeland.

For the creator, God, Yahweh, and it is created as a place

of overlap of heaven and earth.

And so you have now the, the dream of two societies functioning as one family.

in one homeland and Yahweh himself is going to live here.

And the Bible opens up with this, these beautiful stories

of Yahweh walking with humans.

And there's this, this paternal interaction.

With male and female humans that he has made, he announces that

the humans will be his imagers, they will be his his reflection.

They'll be the co-reg on this planet.

And then the tragedy kicks in.

We are co-reg and Psalms eight is kind of amazed that he would

pick us and not the angelic sons.

You know, what is, man, that you're mindful of him we're

a little lower than the.

But you crown us with glory and majesty and you know, you

turn this world over to humans.

That's what Psalms eight is all about.

And so then the tragedy comes.

One of the beings does not like humans and wants to get us killed.

And so he's the first rebel.

He's the naka, the serpent, the dragon and the humans collude

with him, and they rebel against.

The creator, father, and the earth becomes filled with violence to the

point that there are no more good people.

There is one righteous person left on the whole planet, and before there are none.

Yawe rescues the one.

Puts him in a lifeboat and hits the global reset and wipes out

all the humans in the world.

And so now we find the world reset and we have this, these

three chapters about that event.

And, and you know, I always wonder, you know, why so many chapters

about that when other things don't get that much attention And yeah.

And then I saw it.

Toward the end of that, the world is wiped out all this death, and

now we're trying to start over again and save the world that way.

Save the world by killing all the bad people.

Now, that's every, every action movie in the world.

You know, it's kill the bad people.

That's the solution to the problem.

That'll solve the problem of injustice in the world if we could

just kill all the bad people.

So, okay, we'll try that solution.

Bam.

They're all.

And Yahweh MUEs over this.

And then he makes a decision.

It's a breakthrough covenant.

It only comes from him.

No one can make.

Make this choice when he says, Even though it's a huge passage, even though

the human heart is bent on raw, the destructive force from birth, I am never

again going to kill all the humans.

I'm never again gonna wipe out.

All the life on this planet, another solution has to be found.

Well, the story continues.

Humans repopulate right away.

We start doing evil again.

And then you come to Genesis 11.

Genesis 11 is the great story of human.

One world government, one world cooperation, all humans united

cuz that's how it has always been.

But now we come under like one government and immediately it's a conspiracy

against God, against the Creator God.

We rise up to face him.

We rise up to battle and to push him away, we create Babel and the whole

system of Babylon, which becomes a spiritual theme for the rest of the Bible.

And we build this battle tower and we challenge.

The God who is our creator and our savior.

Well, Yahweh comes down and he saves the earth the second time.

This time, not by killing everybody, but by dividing humans.

And we have been hopelessly divided since that day.

We're divided into people groups and our people groups each.

Our languages, and not only languages, but culture and tradition.

And so that's where we left off in our last episode.

We were in Deuteronomy 32, and this story of Moses is an old man writing

a poem, writing a song, and it tells the story of the earth being

divided on that day according to, as we pointed out in the last episode.

And our best and oldest manuscripts, the earth is divided according to

the sons of Elohim, sons of God.

The sub says angels of God, but the working theory that we come out of, just

the plain reading of that passage is that the 70 nations, which is like the

perfect round number, are assigned to 70.

Elohim Princess 70 angelic leaders, and I guess we could assume their crew,

the guys that they lead, the other angels that they lead, and you can

say, Oh, there's no bible for that.

Well, you, you gotta go to Daniel.

10 in Daniel 10 20, you've got that story of Daniel is visited by an Elohim and

there is an angel that comes to see him.

And the angel talks about there being an evil Prince of Persia, who is an

angelic ruler and an evil prince of Greece, and that they resist the ways

of God and they resist the loyal.

Elohim of God.

And so you got that.

And Daniel, well I wanna strengthen this, this concept, cuz I really think it is,

it is biblical and it's in scripture and it actually explains a lot of things.

And it helps us deal with this same question.

And that's gonna be in Psalms 82.

And to help us I'm gonna as we study Psalms 82, and please go get your

Bibles if you didn't already, cuz you're gonna need to go verse by verse here.

We're going to make use of Robert Alter's.

Translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

He is one of the world's great Hebrew scholars, and if you are serious about

studying the Bible, you need to buy his life's big Magnum Opus three volume.

The Hebrew Bible.

He is from the Center of Jewish Studies at the University of California Berkeley,

and he has taught there for 50 years.

And so he does an excellent job on this passage and I, I find That even

his commentary is really interesting and that this is coming from someone

in the Jewish community as they study their scriptures with us.

I think it's, it's all the more interesting to look at.

We'll be right behind.

Okay, so let's dive into Psalms.

82.

And honestly, I can't say I have ever heard anyone preach off of this passage.

And if you look in the if you, if you have this in your Bible and your Bible

has any kind of like commentary notes in the bottom, you're gonna see commentators

start to squirm over this passage.

They are afraid to just.

Plainly.

And so they want to take it metaphorically.

They want to insert a word that isn't even in here, and that's the word,

judges, and they want to take out the word Elohim Gods, and they want to.

Insert the word judges because they just don't like the, the import.

And as you get into this passage, you're gonna see why I'm, why

I'm setting it up like this.

They don't like having to acknowledge that there's other Elohim because

we've worked so hard to be monotheistic and, and maybe what we just need

is a better understanding of what it means to be monotheistic.

But you know, it's the Bible itself.

That we are trying to unpack.

You know, we're not, we're not trying to take outside influences

and bring them into our Bible.

We're just wanting to read the Bible as it is and not be helped as we read our Bible.

Because that's where I think we've gotten ourself in trouble so

many times as bio students of the Bible throughout the centuries,

is someone comes up with a proper understand quotes, a doctrine there.

You know, a doctor even better if it's systematic.

Cuz then it can be all A is to B is to B is to C.

And it's like, Oh, look how nice and neat we've got this.

And then you run over and you bump into a scripture and it won't fit.

And so then it's all contortions and, oh, well this obviously can't

mean this, it has to be talking about.

And I, I just hate that.

It's always made me so uncomfortable when we come to that because

we're, you know, we're, you're not.

Think we're not to bend the scriptures.

You just let them frustrate you.

You let them.

Humble.

You, you let them bewilder you and you just keep coming before the

Lord and you keep reading and you saturate yourself, and then you

start to see things come together.

Sometimes if you don't go doctoring the text and doctoring the meanings, just

to try to make it all fit nice and neat, like, you know, it's like a crossword

what do you call this jigsaw puzzle.

And you can't make this piece fit.

So you take scissors and you know, you.

Kinda like trimming the square edge round, but later you'll find

you just weren't doing it right.

There's an answer there.

All right, so I just wanna read this as it is.

Psalms 82, God takes his stand in the divine assembly.

In the midst of the gods, he renders judgment.

I mean, that's just how it opens.

And this ties into a whole big kind of study that Michael Heiser became

famous for studying the Divine Council.

And how many times in the Old Testament, Yahweh, the creator, God

is seen as surrounded by multitudes of other supernatural, super

spiritual beings that he has created and who are subordinate to him.

He calls them sons clearly.

They have ranks, some of them are called Arc angels, Boss Man, Angels, and.

Are not called that.

Some of them are freaky looking to us, four faces and they're very bizarre.

They are different from us, but they are the also creatures of God and

they are in relationship to him and they're also clearly free will beings.

And they are a huge part of the Bible story.

And you can just say, I don't believe in those, so that's fine.

But the Bible believes.

And angels are a believed part of scripture.

There's doctrine of Angel and the Bible says a lot about these creatures.

It doesn't say enough to suit us, but it does say a lot.

And here it starts.

There is a court, there is a council, there is the assembly of

all Elohim, and Yawe is standing.

As a judge in the midst of this council, this grand assembly of divine beings

in the midst of the Elohim, he renders judgment and now he renders his judgment.

He is given his, he is giving his verdict about something and let's hear what it is.

He says, How long?

Will you?

Who's you?

It's some of the Elohim, whoever's in the, whoever's in the accused box.

How long will you judge Dish?

Honestly, how long will you show Favor to the wicked?

You know?

You not only, you know, court is a time when.

The, the weak and the innocent and the one who's been attacked.

It's the one place they go and they have to have a person who has

authority, who can stand and who can say which is evil and which is good.

You know, it's your one place in a society that an innocent.

Has to run to in hopes that someone will balance the scales and Yahweh

turns to the Elohim and says, it's you.

How long will you judge Dish?

Honestly, you know, not only do you not give a proper verdict,

you actually always choose.

The wicked person and you let them win.

Now this word judge, we gotta broaden our understanding of that

cuz we have a whole book of the Bible called the Book of Judges.

And if you read that book, you'll see that not one of those people

sits in a courtroom like a judge.

So we have a modern idea of judge it.

We need to be careful.

We don't read that back into completely this passage or the idea of judge, you

know in the book of judges, you basically understand that a judge is a person who

becomes bigger than others and they have influence and they use their influence.

To lead and the book of judges is there to show people who have, who have risen

up to have an authority over others, and they lead with a transcendent.

Moral or ethical compass, you know, they've got a higher standard.

And that standard as we understand it, is the will of God, the will of Yahweh.

The way Yahweh's heart is is the way a judge is supposed to

influence and lead and radiate their influence over other people.

In the midst of the gods, He renders this judgment.

Let me read you ALT's commentary.

He says, Now if you look in your like I've got the new King James

version, and although it mine has no commentary in the bottom still, even

the translator can't leave it alone.

He says, Lo him.

That is the judges, well, it doesn't say judges.

There's nothing in there about human judges and so alter dealing with

even other Hebrew scholars, he says.

The efforts of traditional commentators to understand Elohim here as judges

are unconvincing, God speaks out in the assembly of lesser gods and he

rebukes them for doing a wretched job in the administration of justice On.

Let me, let me keep reading.

I'm gonna read his footnote on the dishonest judging that they're doing.

The answer here is that the Gods Administrators of the Old Polytheistic

order, they impose a crooked scheme of justice on humanity, showing

favoritism to the wicked, and ignoring the please of the helpless.

So he clearly sees this as a courtroom drama about the Elohim, and Yahweh is

now judging the Elohim for the way they are influencing the nations of the earth.

And then there's that word say lie.

That just means sit and ponder this.

Stay tuned.

Now, let's go to verse three.

This was the initial.

It appears to be the initial set of orders that Yahweh gave the Elohim when

they were installed as influencers and leaders and, you know, judges in the Old

Testament sense of, of being a judge.

This was what he had.

Verse three, Do justice to the poor and the orphan vindicate,

the lowly and the wretched.

Free the poor and the needy from the hand of the wicked.

Save them.

Okay, so this this psalm has opened with the pronoun you,

Yawe is facing the other eoh.

That he has created who are subordinate to him, who, if we can tie this, this

is again, one of those decentralized stories, which are often some of

the biggest ones in the Bible.

So at some point, these Elohim have been placed in authority over humans,

and they have not led the nations that they influence toward righteousness,

but they have actually actively led.

Toward darkness.

We're talking about the problem of evil that we talked about earlier.

Okay?

Now we look at verse five.

He switches pronouns.

He says they, So it went from you.

And now he looks at they, and I believe he's talking about humans.

He says they do not know and do not grasp in darkness, they walk.

So you've done a pitiful job at leading the human race in all of

its people groups, all of its tribes, all of its nations, all

of its traditions and cultures.

You have influenced them because I gave you authority to influence them, and you

have influenced them toward wickedness.

And after all these years, they do not know, still, they do not grasp

the will of God still in darkness.

They're walking about the whole world.

And that's New Testament too.

The world lies in darkness.

There's still darkness, and he is accusing the Elohim of actively

promoting this darkness by favoring.

Raw by favoring the wickedness, by favoring the evil.

The thing that is the human problem already is our

fascination with the dark side.

You know how much more interesting if you're an actor and they give you

a bad guy or, or an evil villainist to play, It's like, Oh good.

I like playing this one.

You know?

Why are we more intrigued with the evil than the good?

Why is the good boring?

Same thing, so.

He, he lays it at the feet of the Elohim, and now he switches perspectives.

One more time from you to them.

Look for six.

To me, one of the interesting things about this Psalm is

that God himself is speaking.

Most times in scripture, it is a psalm about the Lord, you know?

Oh, praise the Lord.

The Lord is like this.

It's all third person.

But in this case, Yahweh himself grabs the mic.

He takes center stage and this, this whole Psalm is Yahweh himself

speaking, and this is what he said.

As for me, I had thought you were Elohim and the sons of the most.

were you all, you know, I, I, you have the privilege of being

in the presence of Yahweh.

I assumed I could trust you.

And so, you know, for me, this, it builds a pretty clear understanding

if I'm trying to design a cosmology that, you know, in the, the first

run, Adam is the image of God.

The world was.

In his hands and Eve's hands, they rebel.

World gets the deluge, and now we come back together.

Humans reunite.

They rebel against God a second time.

And at this point, God's even though commitment to the planet calls for

another practice, he distances himself from the human race, divides the world,

Deutero 32, world of humans into tribe.

Appoints them according to the Sons of Elohim, to angelic patrons

whose job it is to influence.

I don't know, honestly, I wish the Bible would say this a little bit

clearer, but I'm just gonna be looking.

And every angel story that I can find.

I'm just gonna try to figure it out.

You know, like it's sort of like, you know how sunflowers, they just sort of follow

the influence of the sun and they bend, And I think there's one understanding

of human societies that we reflect.

The spiritual forces that we cannot see, just like the radiation of the sun pulls.

You know, you can be in different parts of a forest and every tree is

bent the same direction, and it didn't set out from a seed to bend that way.

It bent that way because of the influence of the sun.

And there is an influence from the spirit world.

And the spirit world itself is divided and.

Is wickedness in high places, and that wickedness causes this spiritual

influence over human societies.

And the pillars of our societies our educational institution, our government,

our military nowadays, our mil, our media, these things are never neutral.

They always seem to have a dark bent.

If you've never read the book the War of Art Steven Pressfield talks about

just try to create something beautiful.

And he's not talking about this like as a Christian.

With the Bible as your guide.

He's talking as a Hollywood script writer saying, if anybody in the world

tries to create a beautiful thing, you will feel spiritual resistance.

It will come from inside of you and outside of you.

There are forces you must persevere through if you want to

do anything that's on God's side.

I think it's really a beautiful book to read about.

Spiritual resistance and spiritual warfare.

Well, you know, this passage that we're reading, Psalms 82, you know,

the battle between the rebel Elohim who are over the nations of the world.

So let's just do the math.

It says in Genesis 10, there are 70 nations.

In Dute on me 32, it says, The nations are divided according to the number of

the sons of God or the angels of God.

So you got these princes, and then Jesus trains 70 preachers and he trains them.

At the end of his ministry, he comes back from the dead.

The first words he.

are not, Hey, good news for you.

Your sins are forgiven.

You get to go to heaven.

You don't have to go to hell.

He doesn't mention anything about that.

Not that it isn't true, but it isn't what excited him and it wasn't the point.

The point was he said, I am now Lord of heaven and earth, and he

sends the 70 that he's trained.

Go to all the nations of the earth now.

So we, we go as the representative.

Of the Kingdom of God, and we go into all the nations and we plant

the flag that says the Elohim.

Human.

Jesus, the God man, Jesus is now Lord who holds together heaven and earth.

He is Lord of heaven because he is the son of the great Elohim Crown King, and he is

Lord of Earth because he is a son of Adam.

Crown King and he has purchased the earth by his blood and he is now the

rightful ruler of Heaven and Earth.

And go back to this psalm and look at verse eight.

You go from God's taking the throne and he points his finger at the Elohim.

And he says, This is what you've done.

And then he says, the humans, verse five, The humans do not,

They're still in darkness.

And in verse six, he said, As for me, I thought I could trust you.

And in verse eight, you hear this chorus, and I think it's a cho of

chorus of heaven and earth crying out.

And it says, Arise.

Oh God.

judge the earth.

You know, like that same word judge that he said they didn't do properly.

Influence lead in accordance with a high transcendent moral standard.

The will of God arise.

Oh God, Judge the earth for you.

Hold in a state, all the nations.

In other words, you hold the title to all the nations.

You have the right of creation.

Over all the nations.

You know, the, Actually I'll just read you again.

Alters commentary on it arise.

Oh God.

The Psalm concludes with a speaker who exhorts the one authentic divine being

the God to impose upon earth the reign of true justice to which he alone is committ.

I love that.

You know, he, he turned it over to humans.

We weren't committed to it.

He turned it over to the Elohim.

They're not committed to it.

They've actually become committed to wickedness, just like the humans

are committed to wickedness, But Yahweh is committed to a reign of

righteousness and true justice.

I'll read you one last quote from Al.

In the ancient world, the multiplicity of nations is associated

with a multiplicity of gods.

Each nation has a patron God.

You can see, for example, Jeff, those words to the amite king about yawe and

the amite deity kimmo in judges 1124, as well as a variety of gods and goddesses

that preside of the various realms of.

But now that order has proven to be judicially and morally bankrupt.

It is the God of Israel alone who holds in a state all the nations of the earth.

I just think this ties together whole Kingdom of God concept.

Why Jesus.

The, the reinstatement of the dream of God for the Earth, the take and what

the whole spiritual war of the church is all about is go to the nations of the

world and slam in the ground the flag of God's kingdom and declare to the people

of that nation and to the spirits over that nation, Jesus is Lord Jesus is.

Now what's gonna happen when you do that?

You're gonna get a reaction and you may very well lose your life.

And then Jesus said that.

He said, Go to all the nations.

They're gonna hate it . They're gonna hate you doing this.

Do it anyway.

Be faithful.

And when they drag you before the kings, why would a little evangelist

from a little unknown religion, Why would he end up in front of the king?

Well, it's because this is about authority over the nations.

This is about power.

This is about who gets to be the image of God.

And so Paul can say Jesus is the express image of God.

And so Jesus sends us as, Images and he breathes his breath on his people and he

sends us out to the nations and he says, Go to all the nations and declare to them.

I am Lord, and they may very well take your life from you, but you will end up

in front of power people and don't worry about what you're going to say because

the Holy Spirit will give you the words to say why spirit needs to speak to spirit.

It's not just that the humans need to go tell the other humans.

That's a beautiful part of this, but there is a transition and a transfer of

spiritual authority, and as the church goes, nation by nation and as humans

made in the image of God made from the dirt of this planet, we are this planet.

As a being walking around and as we walk around and we declare on behalf

of our planet that this is our king, we humans are loyal to King Jesus.

He declares authority over all the demonn powers.

We can cast out demons.

We can break down spiritual darkness.

We may end up paying for.

With our lives, but as we prove loyal to God, one by one the promise.

It's why the resurrection is such an important promise, not just that you'll

be spiritually conscious after you die.

That is not the end of the promise.

The end of the promise is you live again, when God has found his loyal

ones, those people get not just a little micro life that humans have.

Where you're alive, just like a piece of grass that comes up and we have

a few years and then we're gone.

But if in those years you stand loyal to Yawe, then you find yourself being

given a physical life that is eternal.

It never stops.

And we are not a problem to Yahweh with our free will,

even though we live forever.

So it's a beautiful story.

It's one big.

It's one big concept and it begins at the first verse of the Bible and it goes

all the way to the book of Revelation.

And Revelation is just a mirror of Genesis one through 12.

So anyway, this is exciting to me.

I think it answers a lot of questions.

I can understand it stirring up a lot of.

counter questions and I think we need to have some great open dialogue about this.

But this is where I'm gonna land it here, and I hope you've enjoyed.

Us coming to this point with the thread podcast.

Let's just keep digging into word of God and ask God to reveal these things to us

so that we can serve him better In our generation, we have a mission, not just a

mission to study a Bible and go to church, but we have a mission in the earth.