I used to read the Psalms of David thinking his language was hyperbolic and exaggeration but the more I grow in life the more I identify with his sayings. One of those hyperboles was David’s description of the wicked and how their actions affected him. I was often surprised that many of his Psalms were about deliverance, salvation and rescue from the enemy. It seemed he was always fighting and fleeing from the enemy, asking God for help, being in a shelter of some sort or hiding. I often wondered how it was possible to have so many enemies or people being after you and whether his description of the wicked was literal of just a figure of speech. So, for the longest time, I thought David’s case was just far off because he was anointed as king of Israel and he lived in a different time. However, I have come to realize that this is not specific to David but to the plight of the Christian in particular and of man in general because of the curse from the Fall. The Psalms give us a clear picture of what the Christian life is and at the same time what one must do to dodge the bullets that come at us from our enemies. In today’s post, my goal is to get us to see ourselves in the psalmist’s shoes and realize that our enemies are similar therefore we must cling to the LORD who has not left us to our own demise but gave us strategies to fight in this fallen world.
David’s description of his enemies or the wicked is often strong. For example, he describes his enemies in Psalm 5 saying: “…their heart is filled with destruction. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongue they speak deceit.” (Psalm 5:9) or in Psalm 10, “In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises”. He adds that the wicked “boasts of the cravings of his heart; blesses the greedy and reviles the LORD” (Psalm 10:2-3). David’s enemies were the wicked. People who had no regard for God, people who only looked to their own interests, people who spoke lies and sought to kill the righteous. Unlike us, David was clear as to who his enemies were and was not making friendship with his enemies. When you read the description of David’s enemies, you realize that the type of people he describes are not far off from our lives as I used to think. Essentially, these are people who love lies, they speak deceitfully with the intent to kill, they love conspiracy against the just with the sole intent to take away life, such people even encourage each other in their evil plans and in laying snares for the righteous (Psalm 64:2-6). Have you noticed how lying is highlighted in the description of the wicked? The Bible cautions us a lot about our speech. As James tells us “the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts…The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:5a, 6). God has a high regard for how we conduct ourselves in our speech. What we say matter to the LORD. We often think the wicked or our enemy is someone that is coming to us with a gun, or a thief or someone we just do not like because they have something we want, or they are better than us. While some of those thoughts might be good definitions of the wicked or an enemy, in the Bible, your real enemy is first identified by their view of God which then translates in their speech and actions. However, in our world, we seldom pay attention to speech. There is so much misinformation and disinformation that finding people that are truth-seeker is hard albeit not impossible. We who are children of God must be truth-seekers and evaluate our friendships and relationships through that simple lens. Lying in the Bible is not permitted, it is never welcomed, it does not befit a child of God, especially one who has been bought at the great price of the one and only Son of God, Jesus Christ. As previous enemies of God (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21), we cannot go back to our sinful ways, we cannot speak the way we used to, therefore we ought to talk like a child of God, like God Himself would. There is no lie in God, being His children and ambassadors of His kingdom on earth, our lives should represent our King in whom there is no deceit. The fact that we will be judged for every careless word we speak (Matthew 12:36) should cause us to be more careful with our mouths or simply shut those often. Many of Paul’s letters in the New Testament warned about false teachers which are another example of enemies of God or wicked people. And again, their wickedness is rooted in their speech that is full of lies. False teachers are called such because they speak lies. It is not because they are not “nice” people or because they are not “eloquent” or because they cannot be “hard-working” or insert any good quality you can think of, they are false because they are liars and God hates such people. Let us not be passive about that. It is time for us to evaluate people like the word of God expects us to evaluate them and not according to our flesh as Paul reminds us “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:16–17). Part of not regarding people according to the flesh is by not examining them based on what they do to us, how they make us feel but by examining them based on what the word of God says. We are new in Christ, therefore we ought to act and walk in the newness of life we have received in him.
So, maybe like me, you grew up thinking you did not have enemies, or that people could not be so wicked in the world, but I hope that as we have established, our definition of wicked is not always aligned with the Bible’s and according to the Bible’s definition, we can certainly identify wicked people in our world and lives. I pray this post helps you to pay close attention to the truth so that you can easily identify the lie and denounce it or hate it like David would say in Psalm 139, one of my favourites “Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies”. It is time we too start hating what God hates and love what He loves. May the Holy Spirit open our eyes to our blindness and cause us to repent and realign us to the Father’s will. May we learn to “test the sprits” as John commands us to before we embrace them (1 John 4:1). Amen.
A Word Aptly Spoken 