Psalm 139:19-22
Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.
The wicked are unloving and unlovely. These are hard words for us to hear. last week we didn’t
visit these. But they are part of the psalm, they have divine purpose. Let’s look at them. Ours
is a culture of professed tolerance/acceptance/affirmation—-of sin, lest we be ‘cancelled’. Just
look around and sadly you know it is true. And it beats down and boxes in the believer, the
one who truly loves and wants God’s ways to triumph. So, I muse, can we, dare we, pray this
prayer?—- Put the shoe on the other foot: am I too scared in some sense to own that I should
be incensed and offended (for the Lord’s sake) at blatant unrighteousness around me? And by
the tenor of my life do I live in such a manner as to, by my very existence, stand as an obstacle
to those promoting sinful ways and perversion of true justice? How active am I willing to be in
opposing evil? Will I suffer the cancellation or worse?
Reread these verses. They are a plea from one who knows God’s ways of right and wrong, and
is offended and threatened by those who stand in opposition to God. He calls on the Lord to
act and gives full vent to personal anger at God’s enemies. He invites God’s action not his own.
Jesus too saw unrighteousness in high places and nonviolently opposed injustice and
perversion of God’s laws and those who promoted it. One example below:
Mark 3:1-6. A Man with a Withered Hand
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they
watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might
accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said
to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”
But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their
hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out,
and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with
the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Maybe this part of the Psalm didn’t seem to fit “Holy week”. But we were nevertheless
reminded how Jesus’s life in opposition to entrenched power and perversion of God’s ways led
to His crucifixion. We were also graced to see afresh God’s power, over death and for
deliverance of all who will turn to Him, for forgiveness and deliverance from sin.
How then are we to respond? I offer that we hate the sin yet give space to love the sinner
praying that he turn. But if he does not our personal hatred will be the least the sinner has to
worry about, we are simply aligning our will with God’s ultimate judgment for the unrepentant.
But for those we protect from harm and those we influence to repent we serve as ‘little
Christs”.
David Boyd March 27, 2024