Psalms 139:21

Psalms 139:21

The Psalmist answers his own question: "Yea, I hate them right sore, even as though they were mine enemies." We should most of us reply quite differently. We should say, Hate them! We hate nothing. We try to obey Christ's command, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." "There is a way which seemeth right to a man, but the end of it is the way of death." I believe that this plausible, self-complacent language of ours indicates that we are in exceeding danger of wandering into that dark road, if we are not walking in it already.

I. The force of the sentence evidently turns upon the word "Thee." David knew that there was a Divine Presence with him. When he clave to this righteous Judge and Lawgiver, when he acknowledged His guidance and desired that all the movements of his life should be ruled by Him, then did he himself, and his fellow-men, and the world around, come forth out of mist and shadow into the sunlight. Everything was seen in its true proportions.

II. David hated whatever rose up against righteousness and truth in the earth, whatever sought to set up a lie. He felt that there were deadly powers which were working deadly mischief in God's world. In the inmost region of his being he had to encounter these principalities of spiritual wickedness. His hatred grew just in proportion to the degree in which he believed, trusted, delighted in, a Being of absolute purity and perfection.

III. Can it be that the blessing of our Christian profession consists in this, that we have acquired a patience of whatever hates God and rises up against Him, which David had not? Assuredly our Christian profession then does not mean the following the example of our Saviour Christ and being like Him. He was engaged in a conflict to blood against evil, in a death-struggle whether it should put out the light of the world or whether that light should prevail against it.

IV. Determine to hate that which rises up in you against God that first, that chiefly and you will hate, along with your indifference, cowardice, meanness, all your conceit of your own poor judgment, your dislike of opposition to it, your unwillingness to have your thoughts probed to the quick. And so with this hatred, deeply and inwardly cherished, will come the true, and not the imaginary, charity, the genuine, not the bastard, toleration.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. v., p. 309.