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Psalm 52:2-7 (NIV)

Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God? You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. You love every harmful word, you deceitful tongue! Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you, saying, “Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”

Do you remember the story of Doeg the Edomite? It’s not a commonly studied section of the Old Testament, but it represents an unfortunately common human experience. King David was on the run, and King Saul, now possessed by an evil spirit, was after him. In his escape, he stops for food at Nob, where the Ark resided in the ancient tabernacle. Ahimilech was the priest on duty that day. David asked for bread and in a historic move about which Jesus later would comment (Mk. 2:25), Ahimilech gave him the loaves of the consecrated bread that sat on the table in the Holy Place…along with Goliath’s sword.

Nestled in the text in 1 Samuel 22 are these foreboding words, “Now one of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; and his name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s shepherds.” Now move ahead to the tamarisk tree where King Saul sat with his own spear in hand. With his servants around him he complained: “All of you have conspired against me . . . there is none of you who is sorry for me.” Then Doeg speaks up, a man ready with an inside word, and that was all it took. Ahimilech was summoned immediately by Saul, and he dutifully came with his entire household—a large number of fellow priests. In a moment he was tried and condemned to die, though he was an innocent man. But no servant of the King would do Saul’s bidding, except one. Doeg killed 85 unarmed priests that day, and “he struck Nob the city of the priests with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and infants; also oxen, donkeys, and sheep he struck with the edge of the sword.”

It is to this tragic story that David is reacting to in today’s psalm. His labeling of Doeg as a “mighty hero” is sarcastic, to say the least. Doeg was, in fact, a coward and a weasel who chose to do evil in order to advance his own career. Do you know anyone who might fit that general description? Have you known some “Doeg’s” in your life? There will always be evil people in this world…right up until the day that Jesus returns to set every wrong to right. You may be tempted to think that evil is winning or that evil people are getting away with their atrocities…but that is an illusion. God is the chief and primary witness in the courtroom where every single offence every committed by mankind will be adjudicated. Every evil deed. Every evil thought. Every evil word. And not only the sins committed, but the good that people refused to do. Sins of commission as well as sins of omission. When it came to his enemies and the wrongs they committed, David found peace by “trusting in God’s unfailing love” (v. 8) and remembered that his hope rested in God, whose “name is good” (v. 9).

Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Men must not too much fluster us; our strength is to sit still. Let the mighty ones boast, we will wait on the Lord; and if their haste brings them present honor, our patience will have its turn by-and-by, and bring us the honor which excelleth.” This does not mean that we are to be a doormat, as Christ has commanded us to “love our neighbors as ourselves” (Mt. 22:39), the implication being that you must love and care for yourself as well as your neighbor. But today’s psalm is about resting in God’s providence, power, and justice for the long haul as evil men advance – with apparent success – in a world that only offers them a temporary escape from God’s perfect justice. David proclaimed, “I will trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever” (v. 8) and we should do the same when it comes to the Doeg’s of the world.