But those who turn to crooked ways the LORD will banish with the evildoers. (Psalm 125:5, NIV)
When it comes to sports, we have little trouble drawing the line between us and them. You cannot like both the Red Sox and the Yankees or the Packers and the Vikings. Lakers-Celtics, Man United-Liverpool, Flyers-Penguins—these are showdowns with both historical and contemporary contexts.
Perhaps the feeling isn’t the same in golf. We have our favorites, but with the fields so numerous and the common occurrence of surprise winners, the blood doesn’t run so hot between this player’s fans and that’s.
The feeling surely isn’t the same in today’s culture. Want to stand accused of the worst? Start talking of us and them. Draw stark lines between “our people” and everyone else. Call yourself right and the other side wrong, and you’ll find yourself being called all kinds of narrow or judgmental or bigoted. Better not to go there.
And then you read the psalms.
God has us protected. The mountains of his defense are going nowhere.Neither the psalmists nor the prophets were hesitant to apply the wicked label and call unrighteous people unrighteous. We find it in our next Song of Ascent, Psalm 125, and it’s almost unnerving. The people sang songs about this stuff?!
There are times when we allow the Old Testament to remain in the Old Testament, when the threads are not pulled through into the Gospels and the letters of the apostles. This is not one of those times. Jesus spoke strongly of the sins of the unrighteous; Peter, Paul, John, and James all condemned the evildoers among and against the church. They did not, to borrow from yet another sport today, pull punches. They taught under the awareness of Isaiah’s warning: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
And yet there is a balance. Even to the wicked, we bring forgiveness and mercy, as we have been shown. This is not a tolerance of sin but an understanding of it, a recognition of how desperate we all are for salvation we cannot forge for ourselves. It is an invitation to step across the stark line, from that side to this one.
There is another line drawn in Psalm 125, with the employment of a visual familiar throughout Israel. Look: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people now and forevermore.” Those mountains were the people’s great physical defense; God was their great spiritual one, just as he is ours today.
We do not need to fear the sins of the unrighteous, not in the sense that they will infiltrate our faith by their wicked ways. God has us protected. The mountains of his defense are going nowhere. We simply must keep ourselves within their boundaries, all the while looking for others to invite within their boundaries, too. We pray and we preach that they will become us, forgiven and blessed by our Savior and King.
—
Jeff Hopper
July 31, 2018
Copyright 2018 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
OTHER DEVOTIONS IN THIS SERIES
Ascending: Common Complaints (Psalm 120)
Ascending: In God’s Care (Psalm 121)
Ascending: Joy and Peace in Fellowship (Psalm 122)
Ascending: The Mercy We Need (Psalm 123)
Ascending: How Great An Escape (Psalm 124)
Ascending: Sorrow and Joy (Psalm 126)
Ascending: Work and Home (Psalm 127)
Ascending: ‘Blessed’ (Psalm 128)
Ascending: Set Free (Psalm 129)
Ascending: Finding Forgiveness (Psalm 130)
Ascending: Our Waiting, Impatient Soul (Psalm 131)
Ascending: Despite Our Sin (Psalm 132)
Ascending: Together in Christ (Psalm 133)
Ascending: Earth to Heaven, Heaven to Earth (Psalm 134)