Psalm 72:4-7 “He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor. He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations. He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity will abound till the moon is no more. ”

Because it is all too easy for us to feel sorry for ourselves, to blame others for problems of our own making, we need to be careful not to be too quick to declare ourselves the victims .

But honesty, and Scripture, demands that we recognize that sometimes God’s people are the victims. People do wrongfully take advantage of us. We are the targets of unjust slanders and accusations. It isn’t wrong to recognize this and ask God to give us justice. We shouldn’t take matters into our own hands. God tells us not to seek our own vengeance. But the enemies of Christ’s people are the enemies of Christ himself. “He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.” If the matter isn’t resolved now, we can be sure that we will be vindicated on the Last Day. There are no ifs or maybes here. Our King will see to it.

Our King’s justice would do us no good if we were to find ourselves outside of his jurisdiction, however, or if his reign were to end. Solomon was writing 3000 years ago on the other side of the planet. But that’s not a problem for us. Our King is unlimited by time or space. “He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations. He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity will abound till the moon is no more.”

Solomon points us to the moon and the sun to help us get our arms around the truth that Jesus is not limited by time. The scene on the ground is changing around us all the time. Just think of the changes the place where you are sitting right now has gone through in the last hundred years. Around the world the forces of nature and the ingenuity of man are constantly changing the landscape.

But the heavenly bodies stay the same. Look up at the sun sometime later today. Step outside your door after it is dark, and look up at the moon and the stars. While the scene around your yard has changed, what you see in the sky looks the same as it did for an American Indian looking up at the sky from that spot 1000 years ago, or for Solomon looking up at the sky at night 2000 years before that. Even the sun and the moon don’t last forever, but they are the closest things to never changing and never ending we can see with our eyes.

Jesus’ reign as King is even more consistent and more enduring. What he considered good or evil in Solomon’s day is no different for us. More important, he loves us no less than he loved Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, John, the church fathers, or our own grandparents. His control of world events, or the details of our personal lives, has not slipped even a little from creation until now. As the author of Hebrews says so succinctly: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

So too, his justice is unlimited by time or space.