Psalm 52
Why do you boast about your crimes, great warrior?
Don’t you realize God’s justice continues forever? All day long you plot destruction.
Your tongue cuts like a sharp razor; you’re an expert at telling lies. You love evil more than good and lies more than truth. You love to destroy others with your words, you liar! But God will strike you down once and for all.
He will pull you from your home and uproot you from the land of the living.
The righteous will see it and be amazed.
They will laugh and say,“Look what happens to mighty warriors who do not trust in God. They trust their wealth instead and grow more and more bold in their wickedness.”But I am like an olive tree, thriving in the house of God. I will always trust in God’s unfailing love. I will praise you forever, O God, for what you have done. I will trust in your good Name in the presence of your faithful people.
This psalm was composed by David about Doeg, the Edomite who had betrayed Ahimelech and David... and then killed God's priest (1 Samuel 21-22). Ahimelech had supported David as he fled Saul. Doeg thought he was a great hero - even boasting about his deed. In reality, his deed was evil, an offense to God. David speaks of those who through deception and trickery try to gain benefit over others.
Have you lived and worked among people who boast, glorify themselves with slick words. They plan their strategy, rehearse, and then hit the stage—for all the praise and adoration - all at the expense of others. Their grievous words hit their mark straight on. This is the power of destruction that boasters and liars are so capable of and happy to revel in…until the Master Gardner shows up to savagely root out the evil, the untrustworthy, the deceitful, the liars.
I can get really caught up in people's undermining evil devices and so angered at their apparent success. It can cause me to want to repay their evil with my own evil - as so to be come one of them - just as proud, deceitful and boastful. Like a weed that grows where it’s not wanted, evil is tenacious, it crowds out Godly stuff I hope will thrive, and yet without proper deep-root weeding - it returns over and over again.
Here God waits for me, with that never-ending, un-imaginable love and kindness and mercy - stopping me to reflect - He is God and God alone. I want that evil to be yanked out of the ground of my heart, roots and all, by the One who has delivered, who protects the weak, the disgraced, the objects of scorn and evil words; so I can grow ravishingly in the garden of his Lordship. "Go ahead" God tells me, "Place your trust in me; you can do nothing on your own account, for only I can guarantee that you will flourish forever".
God, who is the Judge, will vindicate the interests of those who fear/trust in Him, and punish the pride of the ungodly.
