Christ my cleanser

Psalm 139:19-24 - Terrifying delight, part 4 – Jesus my cleanser

How much do we love God? Enough to take on his loves and hates? Enough to hate what goes against his law, what goes against his character, what goes against God himself? Do we love him enough to hate it no matter where it is found? Even if it is found in ourselves?

Let’s finish up Psalm 139 in a similar way to how we started it. It began with the understanding of God knowing us, everything about us, even our thoughts and words before we think and say them. It then transitioned to how because of this God guides us, strengthens us, and supports us. Then it sees God as our creator who cares so much about us that his thoughts toward us are uncountable. He is so amazing! Therefore, our whole lives should be engaged in his praise and worship. How do we worship him rightly? We love what he loves and hate what he hates, so, anything that opposes him must be destroyed, even if it is in us.

Destroy the wicked in this world (vv. 19-22)

Hate the sin?

As people who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and have been given the Scripture as the revelation of Christ, we aren’t allowed to make stuff up about God. Many sayings have slipped into Christian culture that leave us confused, like “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” But, a cursory reading of Psalm 139:19-22 does not seem to allow us to say this without qualifications.

So where did this phrase come from? Possibly a letter St. Augustine wrote in 424 A.D., where he said, “With love for mankind and hatred of sins.” The heart of it can be found in what Jesus said in Matt. 5:43–45 where he told us to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors.

Jesus is saying that we should love, not hate, our enemies. He also says that God the Father is a perfect example of this as he sends rain on his enemies. And so, we should not live in hatred toward those who hate us. But what is David saying here? And how does it square with Jesus?

The common view

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, was refuting the common view of the command to love your neighbor. People knew the law taught that they should love their neighbor. This is clear from Leviticus 19:18. Which says, “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” But they assumed a corollary, “…you shall hate your enemies.”

But we should note that the OT never explicitly taught hatred for one’s enemies. Exodus 23:4–5 says: “If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” And in Proverbs 25:21–22 it says, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”

Yet, it seems from Psalm 139:19-22, that hating God’s enemies was a pious thing to do. Thus, some Jewish groups, like the Essenes and many Rabbis, held that God’s people should hate those outside the covenant. The prevailing opinion for both Jews and Greeks at the time was probably this: “Hatred of a person’s enemies is legitimate. Prayer for the good of an enemy or persecutor is illogical.”

The reality is that based on the context of Lev. 19:18 they confined a neighbor to a fellow Israelite. It speaks of not hating a brother in your heart. Thus, they easily concluded that this command was limited to Jewish brothers, those inside the covenant. More than this, they saw what God’s people did to exterminate the Canaanites at God’s command, as well as the imprecatory Psalms, and concluded that this was both supported and even commanded. What they and we may miss, however, was that those and similar commands, including the Psalms, were judicial, they were not individual.

Judicial

David was not just a regular person, he was the king of Israel. David’s job was to protect Israel and to establish God’s kingdom in the Promised Land. David had to take back all the land that the Israelites had been given and had lost over the years.

David, as king was dealing with legitimate enemies of God. Evil empires who wanted nothing more than to wipe God’s people off the face of the earth. When David was fighting in battles, what was he to think?

He didn’t think as a regular man; he was thinking as the leader of a nation. He saw them through these eyes. These were not just personal enemies. David, had Saul hating him and trying to kill him and he did not retaliate. He had others who wanted him killed, or curse him, and he turned them over to God.

David, as God’s minister of justice in Israel, is asking God to purge the evil from Israel, from among God’s people. He asks God to destroy the wicked. He wants the wicked gone who blaspheme God’s name.

What is incredible about this is that the wicked are those who treat God as nothing. This is a violation of the 3^rd commandment and ultimately an affront to the creator of the universe. Verse 20 parallels Exodus 20:7, using the same Hebrew words. “Your enemies take you as nothing” and “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God as nothing”. You see, king David longs for a world where all is right and all worship and adore their King and Lord and don’t take his name in vain.

He concludes that those who hate God and oppose God are his enemies. Why? Because he loves God, and as king, he is God’s minister of justice for the common good. He says he hates them with complete or extreme hatred and counts them as his enemies.

Doesn’t it seem that even this is not consistent with what Jesus says in Matthew 5? There Jesus says that even God sends rain on his enemies. We, however, must not forget that Israel was in a unique situation because of the Promised Land. And though God does send rain on the wicked, he also told Israel that the Promised Land was theirs. And this, including the temple, was a critical part of God’s redemptive plan.

But, Israel as a body politic is now done. It is over and so a different economy and promise is in view. And so, we must not take the proclamation of a king of Israel at a particular time in history and make it our guiding principle. Instead, we must look to the true King and Judge of all and see how he interacted with individuals who hated him and look at how he interacts with his enemies as he rules.

Jesus’ teaching

When we look back to Exodus 23:4-5, Deuteronomy 22:1-4, and Proverbs 25:21, we see the command to love our enemies, not to hate them. And so, this is not a NT vs. OT thing. Jesus simply reiterated the principle that was there all along. Yet, he didn’t just reiterate a principle, he lived it. He willingly left heaven, took on flesh, lived, suffered being tortured and mocked on the cross, bore God’s eternal wrath, died on the cross, and was buried all for us, his enemies’s sake.

So, what do most people think about love? Love those who have been put in our care, love those that are within our band of brothers, leave everyone else alone, and hate our enemies. It’s ok to hate them, maybe even get revenge for what they did, just don’t injure or kill them. But Jesus teaches something else...something radical. He tells us that we are to “love our enemies and pray for those who are persecuting us.”

Love is what God does. It is a choice of His will. He chooses to allow the sun to rise on the evil and the good. He chooses to allow the rain to fall on the righteous, and the unrighteous, the evil and the good.

To love an enemy who hates you is to be like God. To love an enemy who persecutes you and tries to or puts you to death is to be like God. For no greater love is there than this that a man lay down his life for his friends. But more than this, listen to Romans 5:6-8: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

This is love. Not that we loved Him, but He first loved us. The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in those who God has called to be His children. This kind of love dwells in us. Therefore, Jesus says that if we are sons and daughters of our Father, we must love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.

So, what does the command to love a person mean? It is volitional. It is choosing to act for their benefit and well-being, whether we like them or not. It is concrete. We pray for them, asking God to save them, to bless them. It is doing good to them. It is greeting them. It is not simply a sentimental feeling for persecutors, but a heart-felt desire for their good. Prayer is a manifestation of love, and love and prayer reinforce each other.

I think the best way to look at these verses is to see them through the lens of Christ’s mission to seek and save the lost. We still hate sin and want to see sin rooted out, but not by our enemies being destroyed and judged themselves, but them being judged in Christ. We desire that all men, everywhere, repent and believe the gospel. We want them to glorify God by repenting of their sin, entrusting themselves to God’s mercy and having their evil put upon Christ. And so, instead of hating our enemies and persecutors, we pray for them, as Jesus on the cross, asking God to change their hearts and make them children of God.

Destroy the wickedness in me (vv. 23-24)

The heart of the matter

The heart of the matter is this...do we love God so much that we hate sin, even if it is in us. David went from enemies outside to the enemy inside. David hates sin everywhere, including in himself. Why? Because sin is an affront to God. It opposes him and God hates it. But it is easy to hate it outside you, and then conclude that the person we see it in should be destroyed. But this is bad thinking. They need forgiveness and repentance, just like us. They are in active rebellion against God in their heart and actions and need to turn toward him in repentance. Repentance isn’t simply being sorry for what we did but being sorry for the who that we are that would even dare to do such a thing.

And so, David’s prayer makes sense. He hates sin everywhere he sees it...in others…in him. So, he can pray for the wicked to be destroyed as king of Israel, because they seek to destroy God’s people and God’s kingdom, and so it needs to be rooted out there, but as a person, he also prays that God would dig down deep into him (search me: examine me deeply), into the core of who he is (know my heart).

He prays that God would dig down to core of his disturbing or disquieting thoughts and expose anything false there. This is a man who loves God so much that he is willing to be examined deeply by God.

Yet he continues and says that he wants God to see if there is any grievous way in him. The Hebrew here can be translated as hurtful way, such as any wicked habit, or as the way of idolatry, which is really rebellion against God. To help us understand what he is saying, we can look to the Greek translation of the bible at the time of Christ where it uses a word that translates this word as anti-law, lawless.

So, David wants God to expose in him, even if it is in his deepest, darkest thoughts whether there is a way of lawlessness, of idolatry, that seeks to set itself above God and do what it wants instead of what God wants. He wants to find the sin, the evil that is in him too, and have it rooted out.

It seems as if David wants God to root the way of evil out of himself because of his deep love for God, not simply to vindicate him from accusations. Notice how he is talking to God and not his enemies. You see, if his sin is exposed, he can repent of it, hating the who that he is that would have done that, and become a different person that doesn’t even desire those things. He wants all of this to be done so that he will follow God as he is led on the path to life with God forever.

So, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. If we truly love God, we will hate sin no matter where it is found...even in us. And we will, like David, seek to root it out of our lives, and desire it to be rooted out of other’s lives and the whole world.

Applying Christ

Have you ever thought about how much God hates sin? Look at Jesus! His person and work shows us how deeply God hates sin and rebellion against him. God the Father sent Jesus, the Son, empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear his hatred and wrath against our sin. As Jesus hung upon the cross, the sky darkened for 3 hours, then Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This cry from Jesus shows just how intensely God hates sin and rebellion. All God’s wrath for his people was poured out upon Christ. Christ came to seek and save the lost, giving his life for them, taking their wrath upon himself, and granting forgiveness to all who come to him. The offer is free and is to all who will trust in Christ’s work and give themselves to him. But, those who rebel against and reject this free offer, will ultimately experience God’s hatred and wrath forever.

Have you ever thought about how much God loves you? Throughout the Scripture God is shown to be so incredibly loving and merciful. From his mercy at the fall to his mercy in Christ, the entire redemptive history of Israel leading to Christ shows us that while we were his enemies, he loved us. The Father sent the Son to die for us while still enemies showing his immense love. The Son in the fullness of time, came, showing us just how high, how deep, how wide, how long his love is for us, dying for us while we were enemies. The Spirit worked in and throughout our lives and then gave us new hearts while we were still enemies. You see the entire Trinity loved us when we hated God.

Have you ever thought about how active you should be in rooting sin out in your life because of these two thoughts? If sin or evil is an affront to God and an insult to him, a misrepresentation of his character and nature, and if we are loved with this intense a love, what should we think about this sin or evil in us? How active should we be in rooting it out? David tells us that we should ask our gracious Lord to search us, to know us, to try us, and to see if there is a lawless way in us. David saw all that Jesus was going to do and could not bear to have sin rule over him. He hated it and wanted it eradicated. He knew that sin is the opposite of God and it brings death. He knew that he must be killing sin or sin would be killing him. David sought to eradicate sin and evil from the world and from himself. What is your view of sin and evil?

I end with the words of Paul that I pray for you every day, that express both the hatred of sin and the love of God because of Christ from Colossians 3:5–17, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”