What’s Happening?
Psalm 75 says God has appointed a time for justice against the arrogant on behalf of the weak and poor (Psalm 75:1-2). While it might seem like the powerful and the proud cause the earth to move, it's God who's really in control (Psalm 75:3). So the psalmist warns the arrogant not to boast (Psalm 75:4). Their power is an illusion and their fate rests in God's judgments. It would be unwise to defy him (Psalm 75:5).
No one on earth can defend themselves against God's prosecution (Psalm 75:6). God judges with absolute clarity and equity. God has never condemned an innocent person. God always exonerates the humble. And God always and perfectly brings down the proud (Psalm 75:7). The psalmist says God's judgment is like a cup full of foaming wine that the arrogant guzzle to the last drop (Psalm 75:8). It's a metaphor for being made to drink an uncut dose of one's own medicine.
Mixing the metaphor, Asaph says the proud are like rams ready to fight God for dominance (Psalm 75:5). They raise their horns, ready to charge, but God simply cuts off their horns. Their source of strength is judged, removed, and given to the innocent people they have taken advantage of (Psalm 75:10). God reverses the fortune of the proud and gives them a just taste of their own medicine.
Where is the Gospel?
Every day the arrogant use their strength to exploit the humble. The good news for the vulnerable is that God will not leave injustice unpunished or the weak unprotected. The psalmist says God will judge not some but all proud people. This is important because none of us are immune from pride. All of us challenge God for dominance and demand that we live our lives by our rules instead of his. This means the same justice we celebrate is the same justice we should also dread.
Psalm 75 warns there is a cup in God's hand (Psalm 75:8). In the justice of God, if we persist in our pride we will be made to drink our own medicine. Those we deem beneath us will rise above us and God will reverse our fortunes. But God doesn't want any of us to die this way (2 Peter 3:9).
So God sent the one man who never raised his horn. Jesus held equal standing with God and refused to grasp at it, taking the position of a servant and going lower still, down to a criminal's execution (Philippians 2:6-8). He had already taught this psalm's justice to anyone who would listen, that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 14:11). Then he did it himself.
Human courts do the opposite of what Psalm 75 says God's court does. Pilate released a violent man and condemned an innocent one, then nailed a charge of arrogance over his head and executed him as a rebel who had grasped at a crown (Luke 23:18-25; Matthew 27:37). The horn that was cut off outside Jerusalem belonged to the only person who had never once raised it against God.
God overturned that verdict by doing exactly what the psalm says he always does. He brought down the exalted and lifted up the lowly, raising Jesus from the dead and seating him above every ruler and authority (Psalm 75:7; Philippians 2:9-11). Zechariah had sung about a horn of salvation raised up for God's people, and the resurrection is that horn lifted (Luke 1:69; Psalm 75:10). The powers that cut Jesus down were the ones disarmed and paraded (Colossians 2:15).
The cup in God's hand has not been emptied. Scripture's last word about arrogant power is that Babylon will be poured a double measure from her own cup (Revelation 18:6). What has changed is that a road now runs down and out of the company of the proud. In Jesus' own telling of this psalm's justice, the man who stood at a distance and admitted his guilt went home forgiven, while the man who catalogued his virtues did not (Luke 18:13-14). God gives his favor to the humble, and everyone who goes low with Jesus is raised with him (James 4:6; Romans 6:5). Our fortunes are still reversed. The reversal simply runs the other direction now, down into his death and up into his life.
See for Yourself
I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God who cuts down the exalted and lifts up the low. And may you see Jesus as the one who never raised his horn against God, was cut down as though he had, and was lifted from the dead as the horn of our salvation.