Psalm 109

1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

4 For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.

5 And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

6 Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand.

7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin.

8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.

9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.

12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.

13 Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.

15 Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

16 Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.

17 As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him.

18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.

19 Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.

20 Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

21 But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for thy name’s sake: because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.

22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

24 My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.

25 I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they shaked their heads.

26 Help me, O Lord my God: O save me according to thy mercy:

27 That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, Lord, hast done it.

28 Let them curse, but bless thou: when they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.

29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

30 I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among the multitude.

31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul. (KJV)

Reading this psalm of David, one can look back to the time that he was running from Saul. At this time in his life he was in running from the law of the land and being hunted down as a criminal. During this time of running from Saul his name and reputation was being destroyed by Saul. The times of I Samuel seventeen and eighteen when David was the hero, the one who slew Goliath, the captain of a thousand men, the one that slew ten thousand were now history. It was not because of something evil that David had done, but the envy that Saul had of David. Just like Cain who slew Abel because Abel’s sacrifice was accepted by God and Cain’s was not, Saul desired to slay David because God’s favor was on David and not Saul.

The same can be said of Christ as he walked on this earth two thousand years ago. Reading the verses above a person can see a picture of Christ as he was accused by the religious leaders of wrongs he never did. The accusers in this verse have the same nature of Satan (who is the Great Accuser) in them.

As I was reading today (February 22, 2008) in My Utmost for His Highest) Oswald Chambers writes “Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men— will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us.”

Verse 21 is a verse that will conquer this fear for the believer, and it is this truth: “It is out of his goodness that we are delivered and not our righteousness; to him belongs the praise and glory for this great salvation.” So how must we approach those closest to us when like David they accuse us falsely and attach us. David gives the answer on how to approach these times in verse 4 “but I am a man of prayer”. Believe me it is hard when someone very close to you turns on you and seeks to destroys you and your reputation. At first you want to fight back and take the matters into our hands. However, if your desire is to be Christ-like then you soon discover and realized that this is an issue that only God can handle so you turn to him in prayer and remember what that we are to be Christ-like in everything we do. The very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men will someday be in place and we who follow him will reign with him, so wait on his return both in prayer and staying in his word.

As I read this psalm of David, I can picture the inward hurt that must have been in his heart. The cry for justice is alive in this psalm, however there is also a cry to God from David to deliver him from those that are attaching him. We as believers also face the same issues and struggles that David faced as we go about our daily routines. We see God’s loving kindness, his goodness, his mercies, and his forgiveness is always there for us as well as others to enjoy; however, it does come with a price. That price is the realization that our way is wrong, and we need to repent and turn from our evil way to God’s way. This is a price that many do not want to pay. Vengeance (the repayment of evil to those that did evil to us) is something that we must leave in God’s hand. The desires that David outlines in this chapter:

appoint an evil man to oppose him

let an accuser stand at his right hand
when he is tried, let him be found guilty

may his prayers condemn him.
may his days be few

may another take his place of leadership.
may his children be fatherless

may his wife a widow.
may his children be wandering beggars

may they be driven from their ruined homes.
may a creditor seize all he has

may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
may no one extend kindness to him

may no one take pity on his fatherless children.
may his descendants be cut off

may their names blotted out from the next generation.
may the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD

may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
may their sins always remain before the LORD

may the memory of them be cut off from the earth.
may the curse he pronounce be upon him

may this curse be like a cloak wrapped about him

may it be like a belt tied forever around him.
may this be the Lord’s payment to my accusers, to those who speak evil of me.

David believed these judgments were justified; however they are for God to execute and not us. This is an important truth that we must apply to our life also.