Why the abrupt change of tone in the middle of Psalm 139?

Well, hey everyone. I hope that you caught the message from this last Sunday. If you didn’t, please go online and watch it. My wife Shannon was part of our This is my story message series from this summer, and she shared about her own journey and her own life. And I want you to watch that message if you haven’t, not simply because Shannon did a great job, I thought, of sharing from her own faith journey, but because of what she shares from Psalm 139, which has been a personal favorite of mine for many years and also of Shannon. I remember as a college student encountering Psalm 139 and trying my best to memorize all 24 verses. That sounds like a lot, but I just I so love that Psalm because it talks about God’s omniscience, how he knows all things and there’s no limits to what he can do, and God’s omnipotence, there’s nothing he can’t do, and God’s omnipresence, he’s with us and all the things that we go through in life.

And yet there’s this abrupt change of tone once we get to verse 19. And Shannon didn’t talk about those, but I want to talk about them today because they’re really jarring. It’s such an abrupt change of tone that goes from the spirit of adoration and of worship for this great God who knows us and is with us to all of a sudden calling down calamity and destruction and punishment on God’s enemies.

Verse 19 comes right after verses 16, 17 and 18, which say, God, how how precious to me are your thoughts of me. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. Behold, when I wake, I am with you. And then verse 19, If only you God would slay the wicked, away from me, you who are blood thirsty.

They speak of you with evil intent. Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. What in the world? This abrupt left turn from this meditative Psalm of worship and adoration, all of a sudden calling vengeance, so to speak, on on God’s enemies.

What do we make of this? Well, this turns Psalm 139 just for a couple of verses from a Psalm of worship and adoration into a Psalm of uh like what we would call an imprecatory Psalm. There are several of them in the book of Psalms and I’ve personally preached on imprecatory Psalms in the past here at the church.

So we’re not going to spend a lot of time here in this video talking about imprecatory Psalms, except to say an imprecatory Psalms are Psalms in which the psalmist is writing about God’s justice against his enemies. And we have to understand, and this is the first observation here about Psalm 139, that we have to understand that these Psalms of imprecation, these imprecatory Psalms, are not written out of a sense of vindictiveness.

We’re still called to love God and love those who love us, but also as Jesus said, we’re to love our enemies. This is not to be contrary to that and to that spirit, but it is calling to mind God’s sovereignty and his holiness and his protection and God’s character into uh pleading for God to bring about justice in this world for that which is unjust, to make right that which is not right.

And so that understood, my first observation here about why this abrupt change of tone all of a sudden after all the verses that came before is perhaps the psalmist is feeling such zeal for God and for his honor, worshipping God that all of a sudden the psalmist feels led to say, why in the world would anybody even think of dishonoring this omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God?

You see, we want to worship a loving God who loves us and who knows us. We like that. But we have to also understand that God is righteous and that God is holy. And so when we worship God, we worship all of who God is. And so David, the psalmist who wrote Psalm 139, is thinking about God’s holiness while he’s also thinking about these other things.

And so he’s being kept sort of swept up, again, with zeal for the honor of God’s name. And in that spirit, it makes sense then that he would say, oh, and by the way, God, because you are these things, because you are holy, because you are right, would you please deal with this injustice in the world?

That’s my first observation. His second observation here is that, and this is a consistent theme throughout scripture, is that it’s reminding us that one cannot truly love God without also truly hating evil. We see that in a place like James 4, which says that friendship with the world is hatred towards God.

And so here in one Psalm 139, this is consistent with with a theme we see throughout scripture and that in order to love God, you also need to also hate evil. That doesn’t mean that you hate evil people per se in terms of, you know, hey, I’m going to take out wrath against them. It’s just reminding yourself that God is holy and reminding yourself that God will bring about vengeance.

He will avenge that which is wrong because that’s who he is and that’s in line with his character. And so if we’re going to say I truly love God, we also at the same time need to say I truly hate evil. Those things are not contradictory at all. And in fact, if we only just love God, but then we also tolerate evil, then that’s not truly loving God.

As the New Testament fleshes out further in places like the book of James or the book of First John, those types of places. One last observation here is that it’s interesting that after this abrupt change in tone that just seems out of left field here in Psalm 139, notice that David the psalmist then goes back to a simple prayer of humility.

It says this right after he’s saying, God, do I not hate those who hate you and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. And then in the very next verse to close out this Psalm, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And so my last observation is is that David recognizes how utterly hypocritical it would be for us to say, look at the bad things that all these people are doing, God, take out destruction and vengeance on them without also recognizing I too, apart from the grace of God, am one of God’s enemies because our sins separate us from God. We need God’s mercy.

We can’t simply point out the finger at other people without also exposing ourselves. And I love how the Psalm then comes back to that beautiful meditative prayer. Friends, I hope that you’ll wrestle with this in Psalm 139. Again, personal favorite of mine. I think if you spend some time with it that you’ll really uh come to love it and appreciate it as well.

But let’s not leave out those verses there that turn it into an imprecatory Psalm. Let’s wrestle with that as we recognize the great God that we serve, his love, his omnipresence, his limitless nature, as well as his justice. Let’s keep that in mind this week, friends. Thanks so much for joining us.