He Wants Us

Psalm 139:19-24

Dr. Richard L. Strauss
January 1, 1992

 

Hatred is a horrible thing. It eats at us like a cancer, and sometimes it literally destroys us. Somebody said hatred does more damage to the container in which it is stored than to the person on which it is poured. And I agree with that. It's entirely true.

You don't have to be a great Bible scholar to figure it out either. Alex Haley, the author of Roots, made this statement concerning hatred in his own life that he struggled with. "Hate at its best will distort you. At its worst, it will destroy you, but it will always immobilize you."

Then the apostle John added his inspired commentary on hatred in 1 John, when he said:

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar" (1 John 4:20a).

That's pretty strong stuff. Rather clear, isn't it?

But I want to ask you a question this morning. Is it possible to hate someone with a holy hatred? David was a man after God's own heart. And yet he says in Psalm 139:

"Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You?" (Psalm 139:21a).

Well, I know that David wasn't perfect. You know it too, and he knew it. But was he wrong in expressing this hatred toward godless people? Some claim that he was. That he was entirely wrong, that this is totally inconsistent and out of harmony with the New Testament emphasis on loving our enemies.

How did this expression of hatred get into this psalm anyway? I mean, up to this point, it's been a majestic song of praise and adoration to God for who He is and what He's done:

Great and glorious truths about God. And then all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, David begins the fourth stanza by saying,

"Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God!
Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men" (Psalm 139:19)

Where in the world did that come from? I mean, it just seems to be something totally contrary to the spirit of this passage. And all of a sudden it drops on us. Well, it really isn't too difficult to figure this out. After reviewing how great God is and how much David appreciates Him, he remembers that not everybody feels that way about God. Some people actually despise Him and blaspheme Him. They want no part of Him. They oppose Him and His people. And that distresses David.

He realizes that God is not going to force Himself on those people. He asks them to submit voluntarily to Him, to yield to His will of their own volition, or if they refuse, they're going to have to face the consequences. And that's what this last standard is all about. That's why I've entitled it, "He Wants Us." He wants us. Not only does He know us and is with us, and did He make us, but He wants us.

You see, this rises out of His holiness. Not only is God omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent, but He is omnirighteous, all righteous. He is totally and completely holy and righteous, fully set apart unto holiness, and because of that He can't even permit sin in His presence. David himself taught us that back in Psalm 5.

"For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,
Nor shall evil dwell with You" (Psalm 5:4).

Sin cannot dwell in God's presence. So as out of character as this section might appear at first sight, it is totally appropriate. It's still about God and His great holiness and the relationship of people—sinful people—to Him in His holiness. So we might subtitle the psalm or this paragraph, "The Psalmist and the Sinners."

The Psalmist and the Sinners

So let's see what he says about the sinners. Well, the first thing is he actually prays for their destruction.

"Oh, that You would slay the wicked, O God!
Depart from me, therefore, you bloodthirsty men" (Psalm 139:19)

Now, it's important to understand that these people are just not moderately neglectful of God. It's not that they just don't pay much attention to Him. They are wicked. David says a strong word, and they are bloodthirsty. They are blatant and unashamed in their unalterable opposition to our holy God and to His people. They are godless, vile individuals, and their influence could turn multitudes of people away from the Lord. And the best thing that could happen would be for God to take them off the face of this earth, lest they influence others in their attitudes toward God.

That word bloodthirsty is kind of indicative of our culture today. It reminds me that the mayor of Los Angeles designated last September 13th as Freddy Krueger Day in Los Angeles. Now, I've never seen a Freddy Krueger film, and I don't intend to from what I have read about them. But I'm told that they are filled with obscenities and explicit violence and child Abuse. They depict and glorify blood thirstiness.

Now, I don't know anything about the mayor's spiritual life and I'm not making a judgment on that. I just think he made an unwise decision. And now I kind of agree with James Dobson's comments about the mayor's decision, which he published in his October newsletter. I quote:

"Yes sir, Mr. Mayor, you have provided our kids with a great role model to be sure. That's just what we needed. A day devoted to death and destruction in blood soaked Los Angeles where the murder rate has increased 53% in the first half of 1991."

Bloodthirsty. We magnify violence and it basically comes out of what's happening in our society. And because of the sinfulness of the human heart, David doesn't want to be associated with people who have that kind of an attitude and have no time for God. He says actually, "Depart from me." He wants to separate himself from them. He knows their influence on him will not be wholesome and helpful. So he wants to get away from them.

You know, that's worthwhile thinking about for a moment. With whom do you spend the bulk of your time? I'm confident most of you in this room probably have chosen as your closest and most intimate friends other people who share your faith in Jesus Christ. Most of you have. But maybe some here this morning have cultivated intimate friendships with unbelievers. Not just unbelievers, but blasphemous unbelievers. Godless people. I know some must associate with people like that at work or school. You just don't have any choice. They're there and you have to be there. Consequently you're thrown with them.

But the question is, whom do you choose for your closest friends? People who are blatant enemies of God and of Biblical values? Is that whom you seek out? Charles Spurgeon, a great 19th century British preacher once wrote, "Godless people are not the stuff out of which true friends can ever be made." True statement.

Now that doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves from unbelievers. By no means should we do that. There's no way we're going to win them to Jesus Christ if we have no relationship with them whatsoever. But I'm talking about spending most of our time in cultivating our closest friendships with godless people who contradict everything the Scripture stands for. That can hardly be edifying. To cultivate that kind of relationship with God-haters is not going to do us any good spiritually. And that goes for teenagers who want to be popular with their peers or business people who are trying to make a buck and consequently maybe stretch things just a bit in order to make that dollar. Or anybody else who cultivates intimate friendships with godless people for personal gain. That's what David's talking about.

And the New Testament teaches the very same truth that David is teaching us here. This is not anything unusual whatsoever.

"'Come out from among them
And be separate,' says the Lord.
'Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you'" (2 Corinthians 6:17).

David prays for their destruction. But read on where we see that he exposes their sins.

"For they speak against You wickedly;
Your enemies take Your name in vain" (Psalm 139:20).

He indicts them for two things. Number one, they speak against God wickedly. It almost sounds like it could have been written this morning rather than 3,000 years ago. Because the media continues to reflect an anti Christian bias. I'm sure you see it. I certainly do. Whenever I turn my TV on. I don't watch any of the programs that consistently do that. But every once in a while it comes through. Christians are usually characterized in a weird light. You know, they're always a little strange, always fanatical. They always do weird things. They lose control. They kill people or they have tics, you know. Something about them is different.

And then there's Ted Turner, who two years ago told a group of broadcasters, and I quote, "Christianity is a religion for losers." And that's what's reflected on the media at times. So we ban the Bible from our public schools. And prayer—we don't allow people to talk about God in schools, and yet allow the occult to flourish and encourage promiscuity by passing out condoms to high school students. And we wonder why our culture and our society is coming apart at the seams. They speak against God. It's become a way of life in our society.

Number two, they take God's name in vain. You hear it periodically on network TV. There's hardly a movie produced anymore that doesn't use the Lord's name in vain somewhere in the course of it. That seems senseless to me. For those of us who claim to love the Lord Jesus Christ, it seems absolutely and utterly senseless to me. For us to support an industry that demeans Him and brings reproach on Him, that's strange for us to do that. Why do we do that?

David had no intention of doing anything like that in his day. As a matter of fact, he actually admits to hating people who hate God. And that's where the questions begin to arise. So in the next two verses, David is going to explain to us why he hates them.

"Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against You?" (Psalm 139:21).

How can David say he hates people? Is that really consistent with God's love? Well, first of all, I think we need to understand that people in that culture commonly used hyperbole. I'm not rationalizing. This is a known fact. Read any literature of the day and this fact becomes obvious. They used exaggeration that was clearly carefully designed for effect. To hate someone in their minds did not necessarily mean to harbor personal animosity and vindictiveness toward them, but simply to reflect or to reject them and to disavow any loving, intimate association with them. That's the idea, to disavow any intimate and loving association with them.

But having said that, and I think that needed to be said to introduce these thoughts, it still seems difficult to harmonize this with the words of the Lord Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount.

"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44).

How do those two things go together? Would it surprise you if I told you that I don't think there's any contradiction here at all? I don't. You see, Jesus is talking about people who have wronged us personally, who oppose us personally, who hate us personally for our stand for truth or for any other reason. And God wants us to reach out to them in love and forgiveness, to show them the love of Jesus Christ.

David, on the other hand, is talking about people who hate God, who take a stand against Him. The issue is not personal animosity and vindictiveness against people who wrong David here, but rather the vindication of God's honor and God's holiness among people who have wronged Him, who have blasphemed Him, who oppose Him, who hate Him. It's God's honor is at stake here, not David's. The only reason David chooses to call them his enemies is because they have already established themselves as enemies of God. It's as if David is saying, if you knew my God like I know Him, you couldn't possibly hate Him. And if you do hate Him, then I can't possibly look favorably on you. That's what he's saying.

Dr. Edward Young, whom I've quoted before in this series on Psalm 139, puts it like this, and I quote, "Wicked men hated God, and their hatred was an evil emotion."

David hated, but his hatred was like God's hatred. It proceeded from no evil emotion, but rather from the earnest and thoroughly sincere desire that the purposes of God must stand and that wickedness must perish. Had David not hated, he would have desired the success of evil and the downfall of God himself. See, had he not hated these people who hate God, he would have been condoning their sin and pulling for the triumph of evil.

Dr. Young goes on to explain that this hatred must be shown in a positive way. Not by unkindness and vindictiveness toward those who hate God, but by faithfully loving, serving and obeying Him ourselves and continuing to live for His glory and His praise.

By the way, this really isn't so different from the New Testament. I can think of a number of New Testament passages right now.

"If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come!" (1 Corinthians 16:22).

That's pretty strong, isn't it? It's the same thing David's saying. Basically, people who oppose God, who hate God, demean Him, deserve our holy hatred. That's why David could say, "I hate them with a perfect hatred." It's a holy hatred.

The Psalmist and His Own Sin

Well, after thinking about the gross sins of those unbelievers and their antagonism against God, David begins to realize that his own life isn't everything that it ought to be. He can't help thinking about God's holiness and miss this point. He begins to sense that there are in himself some of the same sinful tendencies that he's observed in some of these godless unbelievers. I mean, even as a believer, some of these same things become expressed in his life. So he concludes this psalm by turning attention back to himself. And he finishes right where he started. After praying for their destruction and exposing their sin and explaining why he hates them, he invites God to examine him.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxious thoughts" (Psalm 139:23, NASB).

That's how the NASB and NIV translate it, and I think that's probably best. "My anxious thoughts." God's going to do this anyway. We know that He's already done it. Remember verse 1. David used this very same word for search when he says, "Lord, You have searched me and known me." I mean, God does searches. He knows what's going on inside of us. David is praying that He will do it all the more diligently and make those things that God sees there evident to David's own mind so he can confess them and turn from them.

David is praying, "Dig into my heart, Lord. Search me. Dig deeply into my innermost being. Explore down there way down deep, where wrong attitudes and wrong motives hide out things I may not even understand about myself. Test my innermost thoughts and feelings and desires and ambitions and motives. Yes, Lord, even those anxious thoughts. Those disquieting and disturbing thoughts that may hinder my fellowship with You and even open the door to sin in my life. Bring them to light, Lord, with the searchlight of Your Word."

It's the Word that discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, according to Hebrews 4:12. So you say, "The Word, Lord, use Your Word to expose my own sinfulness to myself so I can deal with it by confessing it to You and turning from it. Lord, let Your Word dig right down deep where the eye cannot see."

You see, we don't see everything about ourselves. Certainly other people don't see everything about us. We put on that facade and they see only a little bit. God sees it all.

Let me illustrate that from a story a couple months ago in Our Daily Bread devotional guide about two couples vacationing in England, driving along the shore of a large body of water. They were discussing whether that was the English Channel or some other body of water. They didn't know for sure. They saw two women walking along the road, and so one said to the driver, "John, pull over there and I'll ask those ladies if this is the English Channel."

So she rolled the window down and she called out, "Excuse me, ladies, is this the English Channel?"

And in typical British indignation, one lady said rather curtly, "Well, that's part of it."

That's part of it. You see, you don't see the whole English Channel from one vantage point any more than you can stand in the beach at Del Mar and see the whole Pacific Ocean. It looks rather vast when you look out over it, but all you see is a few miles. Most of it is not visible to your eye. Most of what's deep down inside of us is not visible to our own eye either. A large part of who we are and what we're like is not seen by others, and may even be hidden to ourselves. We don't always understand why we do the things we do or why we think the thoughts we think. And sometimes our motives are less than pure.

Are you willing to let God take inventory and bring those things to light so you can deal with them? There is a saying in the business world that the person who takes no inventories finally goes bankrupt. And there are probably some Christians running around who are spiritually bankrupt today because they have never invited the Lord to do a thorough inventory of their lives, like David does in Psalm 139:23.

You know, it's good to pause once in a while and take inventory, and we usually need some divine help in doing it to cry out to God, "Search me, O God, and know my heart." We need to take stock once in a while where we are.

I read an interesting old story about a young boy named Jimmy who stopped at a neighborhood store and asked the owner if he could use the telephone. So given permission, he proceeded to make his call. And his end of the conversation that the owner of the store overheard went something like, "Hello, Mr. Brown. I was just wondering if you needed anyone to cut your grass... Oh, you already have someone? Is he doing a good job?... He is. Are you sure you don't want to hire someone else?... Well, thank you. Goodbye."

When it was finished, the owner of the store said, "Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry that you weren't able to get the job."

And Jimmy replied, "Oh, don't worry, I already work for Mr. Brown. I was just checking up on myself."

You know, that might be a good thing for all of us to do. Check up on ourselves. Check in with the Lord. All right, dial through to Him. "Lord, how am I doing? What's deep down inside of my heart and my soul that might displease You, bring dishonor on Your name? What are some of those ugly things that I haven't dealt with that are deep down inside of me?" We don't always understand our own hearts, so we're going to need divine assistance. Are you willing to solicit the Lord's help, as David did? Are you willing to pray this prayer with David daily?

Search me, O God, know my heart. Try me, know my innermost thoughts and see if there be any wicked way—that literally means "way of pain," that is, any way that's caused pain for God or for others, or that will bring the pain of divine discipline to our own lives. Wicked way: way that displeases the Lord. "Bring it to my attention, Lord, so I can acknowledge it as sin and turn from it. Help me to understand my own heart so I can grow in Your likeness and reflect Your holiness and lead me in the way everlasting." "The way everlasting" is the way of righteousness that has eternal value, the way that counts forever. The way of godliness and holiness and righteousness and truth. "Lead me in the way everlasting."

You see, that's what God wants from us. Total devotion to Him. Absolute and complete surrender to His will. He isn't going to get it from those godless people we met earlier in this stanza. The question is, will He get it from us? That's the thought that confronts us as we conclude Psalm 139 today. Will He get it from us? Are you willing for God to expose all those innermost thoughts and attitudes and feelings, desires and ambitions and motives? Would you tell Him so? Would you pray with David?

"Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any way of pain in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

And then would you let Him do just that by getting into the Word? The Word is the searchlight that exposes the thoughts and intents of the heart. I don't mean just when you come to worship. I mean daily getting into the Word and asking God to show you your own heart in the mirror and the searchlight of the Word. And then let Him change you, produce in you His own holiness so that the world will look on and see Jesus in our lives.

Trusting Jesus as Your Savior

If you've never trusted Him as your personal Savior from sin, He knows what's inside of you. And I don't mean to be insulting, but it's true of all of us. I'm in the same boat as you are. What He sees is sin.

"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

God's glory is His own majesty, His own perfection. We fall short, far short.

"The wages of sin is death"—eternal separation from God—"but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).

Have you acknowledged your sinfulness and believe that Jesus died in your place and paid for your sin and received from Him forgiveness and eternal life? If you haven't done that, or if you're just not sure whether you've done it, we invite you to do it right now.

Let's bow our heads prayerfully in His presence, shall we? With our heads bowed reverently in God's presence, may I ask you if you know that you've been born again? That's the way Jesus put it.

"Jesus answered and said to him, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God'" (John 3:3).

You must be born again. That means you must have God's life, eternal life that comes through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you're not certain that you've received Him as your Savior, would you do it right now, just right where you sit?

Pray something like this in the silence of your own soul, where God sees and hears and knows.

Lord, I am a sinner. I acknowledge that freely. I can't deny it. And I understand that my sin separates me from You, but that You made a provision for me to be reconciled to You. Thank You, God, for sending Your son to Calvary's cross where He paid the debt of my sin. And Lord Jesus, come into my heart right now and wash me clean. Cleanse me from sin and give me eternal life.

Conclusion

Would you deal with those sins, Christian? Some of those sins lingering on? Would you deal with them today? Would you pray as David prayed?

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any painful way in me and lead me in the way, everlasting Lord, You hear, You see and You know.

Closing Prayer

God, I pray that decisions that are being made may be genuine and sincere and may produce changes in our lives, changes that bring glory and praise to the Lord Jesus, who loved us so very much. He sacrificed Himself for our eternal redemption. We pray in His name. Amen.

 

Continue to Psalm 139-4: He Wants Us