1 Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation.

2 Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.

3 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

4 For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.

5 The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.

6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.

7 But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.

8 Lead me, O LORD, in thy righteousness because of mine enemies; make thy way straight before my face.

9 For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue.

10 Destroy thou them, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against thee.

11 But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.

12 For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.

In verses 1-3, David cries out to the Lord to hear his prayer.

Verse 4 is one reason David has confidence that God will hear and answer: God does not take pleasure in wickedness, so David has confidence that the wickedness of his enemies will not prevail. We have that hope and expectation as well: ultimately evil will be taken care of and all will be set right. “The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,” as one song says. God’s timetable is not the same as ours: Israel had 10 wait 400 years for deliverance out of Egypt; some people in Hebrews 11 died without having seen the promises to them fulfilled. But quite often God does give us the victory, or at least a glimmer of it, in a shorter time. Verses 5-6 continue describing the wicked and what God hates about their activities.

In verse 7, David contrasts himself with the wicked he has just been talking about, not with a cocky self-righteousness, but with reverence and trust on God’s mercy. A true understanding of God’s mercy will lead to reverence, godly fear and humility as well as confidence in Him. That mercy is available to the wicked, too, if they would but humble themselves before Him.

In verse 8 David asks the Lord to lead him in His righteousness — again, nothing cocky or self-righteous there, but an utter trust in God’s righteousness. “Make Thy way straight before my face.” How often I need to pray that, that I might clearly know His way and what direction to take.

In verse 9 he goes back to describing the wicked from whom he needs deliverance, and in verse 10 calls for their destruction. In a sense that is a difficult passage because as New Testament believers we have been taught to love our enemies, pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us, etc. (Matthew 5:43-45.) One way to reconcile those two thoughts is to remember that David had not had that instruction yet. There is a sense in which more and more is revealed of God’s will through history. For instance, there is instruction in later books of the Bible about having more than one wife which Jacob did not have, instructions about not marrying a relative which Abraham did not have. In our own lives, God does not deal with everything all at once (and that is such a good thing — think how overwhelming that would be!) — when we’ve been saved 20 years we might be convicted about things that we weren’t at first. For instance, when I was first saved the Lord dealt with me about lying. Years later that was refined beyond just outright lies to conviction about not being manipulative with facts, not telling about a situation in such a way as to favor my actions. And I think that’s true historically. We have so much more of God’s Word today that the patriarchs did — and to whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).

On the other hand, though, I do remember around the time of Desert Storm praying that Sadam Hussein would either come to the Lord, or, if God knew that he never would, that God would take him out of the way. If I had lived in Hitler’s time I probably would have prayed the same way about him, and I probably should pray the same way about bin Laden.

“Let them fall by their own counsels.” That’s one way enemies can be defeated! That reminds me of David’s prayer in II Samuel 15: 31: “And David said, ‘O LORD, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.'” (I don’t know if this Psalm is talking about that same situation or not. I might try to look that up later.) If you read II Samuel 15 and the next couple of chapters, that’s exactly what happened. It’s a great story!

In verses 11 and 12 David again contrasts the righteous with the wicked and rejoices that he can trust in God’s defense.

It struck me in going through this Psalm that David expresses confidence in God’s mercy (v. 7), His righteousness (v. 8), and His defense (v. 11). And we can have confidence in Him as well!

You can read more meditations on this Psalm or share your own at Butterfly Kisses. It’s interesting each week to see what each different lady got out of the Scripture.