Psalm 52
1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?
2 You who practice deceit, your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor.
3 You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
4 You love every harmful word, you deceitful tongue!
5 Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living.
6 The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you, saying,
7 “Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”
8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.
9 For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good.
Something I've been working on is watching what I say and resisting the urge to say something right away. There are meetings where I will purposely let multiple people speak before I provide my input, and there are situations where people ask me for advice, and instead of giving them direct advice, I ask questions. The reason is that I am working on controlling my speech and being more measured with my words. I want to get the most bang for the buck when I speak; to do that; I realize I have to spend a little more time thinking about what I want to say and how I want to say it. I spend time reading psychological counseling and business leadership/coaching books, and they say the same things; less is more. The tongue is powerful, and we should care how we use this organ. It is amazing what one of the smallest organs in our bodies can do.
Just think of what the tongue can do. It's more flexible than any other part of the body. It can enlarge, it can contract, and it can twist itself into any number of shapes. The tongue is essential to the digestive system. When we eat, it churns food around in our mouths, coating it with saliva. Then, when we swallow, it pushes the food on its way down the throat to the stomach. The tongue is also home to our taste buds; it tells our brains whether food is sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. The tongue is an early warning system, helping us avoid harmful foods and leading us toward foods that foster health.
The tongue resembles a muscle in many ways — mainly composed of muscle tissue — but it doesn't function like any other muscle in the body. It's not anchored to bone by ligaments like the muscles that move the skeletal system. The tongue moves freely on its own. The tongue has another, completely different purpose besides its essential role in the digestive system, and it's our principal organ of speech.
We all can be better about controlling our tongues or controlling our speech. I know I am not the only one who has had something happen and later thought, "I wish I had not said that," or maybe, "I wish I would have said this." We are all at some level, thinking or rethinking what we let come out of our mouths at a particular time. We can all think of someone we feel does not talk enough, or maybe someone we think talks too much.
A woman known as a harsh critic of other people once told John Wesley, "Mr. Wesley, my talent is to speak my mind."
"Madam," Wesley replied, "God wouldn't care a bit if you would bury that talent."
Words are the common coin of our social relationships. Sometimes we belittle them, disparaging political speech as "only rhetoric." We complain about trivial "small-talk" conversations, not realizing how subtly they function as the glue in many relationships.
Yet, words can be so compelling. Just think of what it means to hear someone say, "I love you" — or to hear that same person say, "I never want to see you again." Words can be as airy and insubstantial as dust motes floating in a sunbeam, or they can be deadly daggers, running us through to the heart.
Psalm 52 is what biblical scholars call a "psalm of imprecation." The target of the singer's righteous rage is anonymous, but it's not hard to discern that this enemy — "O mighty one" — is powerful. This adversary is treacherous in spirit and relentless in battling people of faith: a villain who loves evil and delights in "plotting destruction." Sometimes we need to verbalize our gripes and issues. Psalm 52 mentions a no-good, down, and dirty person. Someone who was a conniving politician that lied his way to the top, someone who loved evil more than good, someone who had a lying tongue, someone who trusted in riches and sought wealth.
To understand Psalm 52, you have to go back to first Samuel chapters 21 and 22. David was on the run for his life, hiding from Saul. While David was hiding, Doeg told Saul where David was hiding. Doeg snitched on David; scholars believe David was talking about Doeg when he mentioned all those bad things about them.
David was on the run for his life, and the priest Ahimelek helped David and gave David a sword and some food. Saul called for Ahimelek and got mad that Ahimelek helped David, so Saul had his conniving snitch/politician Doeg eliminate all the priests, women, and children in that town.
Be careful of political leaders or leaders in general who want to punish the pastors, priests, and prophets that don't blindly follow their program. God is not beholden to a political party, and a politician that tells you otherwise is lying. Politicians and political parties switch sides and platforms at the drop of a dime, so they can't always be aligned with God.
We don't have to get revenge. The psalmist says that God will break them down, and God will snatch them from their tent; it may look like they won for now, but if we just wait a bit longer, the righteous will see victory in the end. Won't he fight your battles? Won't he make your enemies your footstools? You have joy in sorrow and hope for tomorrow when you know it is not your battle to fight.
David says he is not going to trust the words of man; the psalmist says they will trust in God's steadfast love. We need to depend on God and God's love. The righteous reward is being grounded in God and connected to the source. We can choose to live for ourselves, or we can choose to live for God. The psalmist is like a green olive tree in the house of God. I have learned that green olive trees grow year-round in different conditions, and they don't get bothered by pests.
David is going to trust in the words of God, not man, stay connected to the source, which is God, and not let the pests bother him. I can only think that some of what David lived in Psalm 52 rubbed off on his son in Proverbs 3 because the father says, "I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever," and the son says, "trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding" we have got to stay connected to the source.
I like the word in verse 8; some translations say unfailing love, some say loving kindness, some say steadfast love, and some say mercy, but the Hebrew word they use is hesed. We know hesed whether we have ever said the word out loud or not. Hesed is a solemn promise, a covenant, a devotion, a willingness to not only feel someway but make a record about it.
Hesed is when I used to take my son to get haircuts, and they would be a problem; he would scream, cry, kick out of his chair, and try to grab the clippers, something about them and the haircut experience bothered him. So, when he got a little older and could understand, I would make a promise to him. I would say, son, if you don't kick out the chair or don't scream or throw a fit, I will take you to the toy store, and I will get you some candy after we leave the barbershop. So little Johnnie would repeat to himself all the way to the barbershop; I am the haircut champion, I am not going to scream, I am not going to cry, I am not going to kick out the chair. Johnnie would say this over and over until we got to the barbershop, and then he didn't scream, cry, try to grab the clippers, or kick out of the chair. After we both got our haircuts, I would take him to the toy store and buy him something, and then we would get lunch, and he would get what he wanted, usually ice cream or a cookie.
That promise I made to my son on the spectrum who does not like people touching his head was hesed; I, as a father, went on record with my commitment to my son because I had hesed for him. Your heavenly father has gone on record with his promises to you.
God has given us tongues to use as tools of righteousness. The words we fashion, using those tongues, can serve the cause of justice or injustice; of kindness or callousness; of compassion or exploitation; of love or hate. In choosing our words, may we choose wisely!
Once we have chosen wisely, we can be thankful; the psalmist says that he will thank God forever, not for just a little bit of time but forever. Forever is a long time, but that is how long God loves us and how long we should praise him.
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