God’s Word for You

Psalm 62:3-4 A leaning wall

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, September 26, 2022

There is no other psalm where waiting on the Lord, trust, and hope are repeated so often as they are here in Psalm 62. “The whole Psalm,” says Luther, “rings with faith in God.” As before, we read the NIV-84 and also my own private translation to notice different ways of expressing David in English.

3 How long will you assault a man?
  Would all of you throw him down—
  this leaning wall, this tottering fence?
4 They fully intend to topple him from his lofty place;
  they take delight in lies.
  With their mouths they bless,
  but in their hearts they curse.  Selah

A little more wooden:

3 How long will you threaten a man?
  Do you all want to murder him—
  this leaning wall, this shaky fence?
4 Indeed, they plan to drive him from his exalted place;
  they delight in lies.
  With their mouths they bless,
  but in their hearts they curse.  Selah

Since David describes his lofty or exalted place, we can safely picture him writing this Psalm during his life as king. I divide David’s reign into four nearly equal parts. First, he was king in Hebron and began having children. Next, his army captured Jerusalem and from there David made war on many neighboring nations. That happy time ended with David’s adultery with Bathsheba, and there followed a grim decade marked by Absalom’s revenge and departure. Finally, the last ten years saw Absalom’s rebellion and, at the very end, Adonijah’s rebellion, both of which David survived. At last, in his final two or three years, his age caught up with him, he couldn’t keep warm anymore, and he died peacefully in his palace, handing the throne to Solomon.

Since David had many enemies, sometimes from King Saul’s followers, and sometimes among his own sons and their wicked advisors, we can’t say just when David wrote this Psalm, but he teaches us how to face our adversaries and our troubles. He looks to God alone for help. There were some who wanted to remove him from his lofty or exalted throne, but we understand that David was not just talking about his throne. The devil is a more dangerous enemy, and he wants to attack us and drive us out of our exalted place of being God’s Christian children. The devil is a liar and the father of lies, and when he lies he is speaking the only language he knows or understands (John 8:44). Wherever the devil sets up his camp, that place becomes a “city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims” (Nahum 3:1).

So the devil attacks us with whatever works in our culture and in our economy. What sells the best? Sex, envy, fear. These drive advertising, and that’s the core of the economy. The devil has always found ways to tell lies about sex and envy, and our growing culture of fear has worked well for him for a long time. Since the Spanish-American War, when hasn’t fear been a critical ingredient of the way the public thinks about the world?

But the Holy Spirit filled David’s heart and guided the king to teach us where our trust really belongs. A lesser man than David would claim that he alone can save the nation or make the country great, but David points away from himself and his life of sins and errors, and he points to God. For this reason the devil attacked David all the more, furious that his tactics didn’t drive David into despair or unbelief as it did with Saul and the wicked anti-judge Abimelech (Judges 9). So the Devil started to pummel David, hammering at him like a man bent on breaking down “a leaning wall, a tottering fence.” But the devil is not trying to break some rocks. He has shouted his intention; he wants to kill us and to destroy our faith so that we will be damned forever alongside him. The word translated “throw (him) down” is the word for murder in the Fifth Commandment (Exodus 20:13). This is a strenuous, violent, wicked act on the part of Satan, who despises God and will do anything he can to ruin our families, tear faith away from our loved ones, and plunge people into confusion and depression and despair. The devil wants people to stay away from the gospel most of all, and so he distracts poor, simple folks with all kinds of false claims and useless arguments. He gets people to become angry with their pastors and go shopping for a new church where the law means less and the gospel is avoided because that other pastor isn’t comfortable talking about sin and grace. The devil wants Jesus to become an example for people to follow, a painting on the wall, an idol that never speaks because so many churches have gagged the Son of God and made him silent. They want to talk about their own agendas, and not God’s word. So “with their mouths they bless, but in their hearts they curse.” That curse is more wretched and horrible than mere foul language. It’s the curse of damnation by those who turn from Christ. About them, Jesus said: “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:28), but he never said that we have to sit at their feet like a dog waiting to get kicked by a cruel master. And that’s what a false teacher is.

The cross Christ bore is what enables us to bear the little crosses of our lives. When we are attacked by the world, or the devil tries to murder us, or our own sinful nature tries to get away from our faith and go off on its own sprees for pleasure, gratification, revenge, or the idolatry of our own opinion, then God may use those troubles to draw us back to him. “Come to me,” he says, “all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He suffered many things in our place (Luke 9:22) to shield us from the Father’s wrath. Nothing the devil can ever throw our way will destroy that. Put your faith, your trust, and all your hope in Christ alone, and be comforted. You have a place with him forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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