Father Knows Best…

“My God, whom I praise, do not remain silent, for people who are wicked and deceitful have opened their mouths against me; they have spoken against me with lying tongues. With words of hatred they surround me; they attack me without cause.In return for my friendship they accuse me,but I am a man of prayer. They repay me evil for good, and hatred for my friendship.” Psalm 109:1-5

“But you, O Sovereign LORD, deal well with me for your name’s sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.” Psalm 109:21,22

“With my mouth I will greatly extol the Lord; in the great throng of worshipers I will praise him. For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save their lives from those who would condemn them.” Psalm 109:30,31

Psalm 109 is about a man who is under attack from rather unscrupulous persons. They care little for the truth, but care greatly about hurting others. They are untrustworthy and deceitful. They do not care about the hurt they are inflicting or about the consequences of their action. Throughout this Psalm the writer David calls for God to bring the hammer down on his enemies. Whereas some psalms are soothing, such as Psalm 23 and others are comforting like Psalm 91, Psalm 109 is very troubling to most because it is perhaps the strongest imprecatory Psalm that David wrote. The word imprecatory means to call down destruction on someone and much of Psalm 109 does exactly that.

Most of us have had the experience of being the recipient of terrible treatment from someone.  We have been slandered, had our character besmirched, and even had those who have tried to ruin our reputation.  If that has not happened to you that is great, but unfortunately it is not unreasonable to think it could happen.  There are some pretty unjust people populating this world.  Well, if we have even had some of these unjust things happen to us, we can identify with David.

Notice that these people are wholly unjustified in these attacks. David says they do this without a cause and we take him to be an honest man. He sees absolutely no reason for their accusations. They are afflicting him, upsetting him, and attacking him without cause. That very well may have been the case, but what should he do in response?  The writers in the old testament and even a few times in the new, vent themselves to God about their enemies and call for some pretty awful punishment for them. Should we call down curses on our enemies like that (as though we haven’t once in awhile already)?

I think David gives us a pretty good formula for dealing with these kinds of problems. First of all,  David commits the whole matter to the Lord in prayer.  In the first five verse he outlines his problems.  It is not as though God does not know them already, but by David verbalizing them, he can do a truth check on his own feelings.  Is this really what is going on?  Are these things really unjust?  Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? This is really important to do.  Why?  Because in verbalizing our woes, we may realize that our emotion is unfounded or maybe we are in the wrong or that our accusers need mercy.  By talking to God about it, we can decide on step two in the process.

If we decide that we should handle things differently, then we do.  Maybe instead of bringing wrath down upon our accusers, we should pray mercy for them.  Maybe we should confront them.  Maybe we should forgive them.  Whatever it is that we should do- we should do.  In the verses above, David has decided that he wants the hammer dropped down on his enemies.  By the way, with all his flaws, David was a man after God’s own heart.  If we call for God to deal out appropriate discipline to others, we better be disciplined in our own walk first.  Remember, we are all beggars just pointing other beggars to food. We better not be a kettle calling the pot black (old saying, but a goody).  If we are going to wish punishment on others, we better be sure we don’t deserve it ourselves.  Someone once said that if we point our finger at someone else , three of our fingers are pointing back  at us.

In verses 1-5 David commits the cause to God.  “But you, O Sovereign LORD, deal well with me for your name’s sake.”  He understands that the lord has said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” in both the Old and New Testaments.  (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19).  He says that vengeance is His! We shouldn’t try it; leave it up to God and don’t try to ‘get even,’ because if we do, we will only make matters worse. We will end up damaging others and creating all kinds of difficulties both for us and for them. The Lord is the  only one who has the wisdom to adequately to handle these kinds of a problems.  David recognizes that and commits the cause to God.

But David also understands that God’s name is involved in all this. When God’s people are being persecuted, then God is also being persecuted. After David thoroughly checks the situation and decides he is not being petty and checks his own heart to make sure he is not outside God’s will, he then calls on God to defend God’s name. When Paul was Saul and was converted on the road to Damascus, Jesus identified Himself by saying “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”  Saul was persecuting the Christians, but when he was persecuting them, he was also persecuting the Lord. God is involved in His people’s tribulations. David understands this, commits the whole cause to God and says, “God, you deal with it. It is Your problem. Your name is involved; you handle it on my behalf for Your name’s sake.”  That is also what we should do.

We should ask God to keep us from striking back when we have been falsely accused.  If we ride into town, guns blazing, there will probably be a lot collateral damage. If God rides into town guns blazing, He will only hit what should be hit.  We must ask Him to help us commit the cause to Him, trusting that He knows how to work these things out.  We might tell God what we think should be done, but in the end we need to turn the whole thing over to Him.  He will do, what He will do, in His own time and in His own way.  And it will be right and good in such a way that our feeble minds could have never done it as well.

While the prayers of David were severe, his personal actions toward his enemies were often gracious and kind.  David talked about Saul a lot in his prayers (Saul was out to get David).  Even though David cried out for God’s justice, David still extended mercy to Saul.  David refused to take personal revenge, even when he had the opportunity. When he had the chance to kill Saul, he cut off a piece of his robe instead (1 Sam. 24:1-8) and later he was conscience-stricken for the spirit which had prompted even this small this act (v. 5). David may have prayed fiercely, but his actions were absolutely gracious and kind.

We need to do the same as David. At the end of his prayer he shows the right attitude, the right reaction, and the right way to handle this kind of a situation.  Tell God what we think and step away.  If God decides correction is necessary, let Him handle it.  If He thinks mercy is necessary, let Him show it.  If He thinks we should be part of it, Let Him reveal it.  This kind of thing is way above our pay grade.  Let God take care of it.  There used to be a very popular TV show in the very old days.  It was called “Father Knows Best.”  I have to believe when it comes to the handling of our accusers, our “Father knows best.”  If He knows best; let Him do best!