from The Psalms: Jesus’s Prayer Book
by Douglas D. Webster
The psalmist clarifies the difference between good advice coming from well-intentioned advisors and good news coming from the revelation of God. In worship we confess that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and “knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Prov. 1:7; 9:10). Psalm 11 highlights the wisdom of God even when we fear that “the foundations are being destroyed” (Ps. 11:3). Yeats’s analysis is true: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blooddimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”[1] Yet in spite of dreadful circumstances, when the saints gather to worship in the name of Christ, they boldly declare with David, “In the Lord I take refuge!” (Ps. 11:1).
Good News
In the Lord I take refuge.
How then can you say to me:
“Flee like a bird to your mountain.
For look, the wicked bend their bows;
they set their arrows against the strings
to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart.
When the foundations are being destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”
— Psalm 11:1–3
David’s faith in Yahweh is resolute, but his well-meaning advisors are telling him to run for it. Their advice is clear: “Get out of Dodge”; “run for the hills”; “live to fight another day”; “flee like a bird.” His counselors have his best interests in mind. They cannot protect him from the enemy—the stealth archer who lies in wait under the cover of darkness. Their warning is urgent. The danger is imminent. The threat against the upright in heart is lethal. David’s advisors see the culture crumbling before them. They fear the breakdown of law and order and a rising tide of anarchy. They lament, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Many Christians can identify with this fear. Like David’s advisors in Psalm 11, they are ready to throw up their hands and run for the hills. But David is not buying it. The pragmatic wisdom of the world runs counter to faith and trust in Yahweh. His advisors may be accurate in their description of the dangers, but their good advice does not take Yahweh into account. They are forgetting the divine alternative—the good news. Their strategy is built on fear, not faith. David’s bold statement of trust sets the tone and recalls the courage of Peter and John before the religious pragmatists of their day, the Sanhedrin, when they said, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).
There are many instances of “flight” recorded in the Bible. If David had not eluded King Saul and “made good his escape,” he would have been killed by Israel’s king (1 Sam. 19:10). Jonathan warned David to flee, and David ran for his life. In Nazareth, at the outset of his public ministry, Jesus, the Son of David, infuriated all the people in the synagogue, and they rose up, drove Jesus out of town, and took him to a cliff to throw him off. “But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way” (Luke 4:30). At the beginning of his apostolic ministry, Paul evaded assassins in Damascus by being lowered in a basket through an opening in the city wall (Acts 9:25). But all these flights from danger were driven by faith, not fear.
David’s advisors meant well, but their advice missed the mark. Their judgment was based on external circumstances rather than internal convictions. The temptation to cut and run can be very real, and it can come in various ways. It may come in the form of capitulating to the culture on matters dealing with consumer appeal and church growth or self-expression and sexual ethics. Christ’s followers are tempted to listen to the voice of “marketers” and “progressives” who want to reshape the church according to the spirit of the times. Conforming to the ways of the world is a form of escapism and taking flight.
True Wisdom
The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord is on his heavenly throne.
He observes everyone on earth;
his eyes examine them.
The Lord examines the righteous,
but the wicked, those who love violence,
he hates with a passion.
On the wicked he will rain
fiery coals and burning sulfur;
a scorching wind will be their lot.
For the Lord is righteous,
he loves justice;
the upright will see his face.
— Psalm 11:4–7
David spells out the reasons for trusting in Yahweh: the sovereignty and justice of God. When, as Yeats wrote, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” the fact remains that the Lord is in his holy temple, symbolizing the Lord’s nearness. When “the foundations are being destroyed,” the Lord is on his holy throne, symbolizing his transcendence.[2] He is the architect and builder of the city with eternal foundations (Heb. 11:10). When “the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain” (Ps. 2:1), the psalmist knows that the Lord God is sovereign. “This King is in residence, not in flight.”[3] The prophet Habakkuk echoes these words to people tempted to live in denial of this immense truth: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (Hab. 2:20). The central truth of the psalm is that the “faithful fix their confidence on the heavenly sovereign and his plans, and not on earthly, human institutions.”[4]
“The Lord is in his holy temple” is a metaphor for the sovereignty of God years before Solomon built his temple. The real presence of God was never about a building. A similar truth is conveyed in the New Testament’s description of the church. We don’t find a single word about church facilities, but the apostles used concrete images for the community of God’s people. Their strength and solidarity were not reflected in church buildings but in their union with Christ Jesus and in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
The justice of God is achieved through his perfect examination and holy judgment of the righteous and the wicked. The psalmist uses anthropomorphisms freely without fear of misunderstanding. The Lord’s eyes take everything in. He never blinks. Nothing escapes his gaze. The apostle John’s description of the Son of Man’s fire-blazing eyes echoes David’s description.[5] Every idol is the object of a thousand human stares, but without a trace of any recognition. The idolater looks at the object of his admiration, but the idol sees nothing, knows nothing: “their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand” (Isa. 44:18). In the age of celebrity, idolized images demand attention. We are captivated by the daily viewing of media images of famous personalities that cannot return the gaze. But Christ’s penetrating and purifying eyes see us completely. “Search me, God, know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24).
God scrutinizes the righteous and the wicked in a process that is likened to testing metals.[6] In a fiery kiln of hardship the righteous are purified. The dross is burned away, leaving only the precious metal. But the “fire and brimstone” of God’s judgment burns up the wicked. The righteous are subject to a purifying fire, but the wicked, “those who love violence,” provoke the wrath of God. The psalmist uses the strongest language to express God’s hatred for violence. Literally, the Lord’s soul hates violence.[7]
This Old Testament perspective of the wrath of God against the wicked is in harmony with the New Testament perspective. Eternal torment and the lake of fire are not popular subjects in our day.[8] Yet Jesus repeatedly promised that on the day of judgment those who rejected the gospel would suffer a worse fate than Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 10:15; 11:21–24; Luke 10:12–15). The people of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba will rise up at the judgment and condemn a generation that had every advantage to receive the gospel but stubbornly refused (Luke 11:29–32). Jesus stated it plainly, “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day” (John 12:48). Repent or perish was a refrain that ran through his ministry (Luke 13:2–5). Jesus warned that even if a person were to gain the whole world, what good would it be if he lost his soul? (Matt. 16:26). “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” Jesus said. “Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).
Jesus uses graphic language to describe judgment. Hell is outer darkness, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28). Jesus warned, “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell” (Matt. 5:22). And again, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands and two feet and be thrown into eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8). Jesus offered these words of condemnation at the final judgment: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). On the theme of judgment, the language of Jesus and the Psalms draw on the same truth: “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear” (Matt. 13:41–43).
Psalm 11 begins with a statement of trust and ends on a promise of love. The counsel to flee has been countered by courageous faith. The Lord is in his temple; let the faithful say “amen.” “Things fall apart,” but the Lord is on his throne. The upright in heart are under fire, but the Lord has them covered. His devastating counterattack is a firestorm of fiery coals, burning sulfur, and scorching wind. The Lord hates those who love violence, and he defends the cause of the righteous. Security, stability, and unshakeable confidence are important, but for the upright in heart there is even more at stake. “God as ‘refuge’ may be sought from motives that are all too self-regarding; but to ‘behold his face’ is a goal in which only love has any interest.”[9]
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[1] Quoted in J. D. Webster, A Rumor of Soul, 43.
[2] Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 133.
[3] Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 73.
[4] Ross, Psalms, 1:341.
[5] Webster, Follow the Lamb, 51.
[6] Craigie, Psalms 1–50, 134.
[7] Ross, Psalms, 1:342.
[8] Webster, Follow the Lamb, 274–75.
[9] Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 74.
This post is adapted from The Psalms: Jesus’s Prayer Book by Douglas D. Webster. This title was released on May 23, 2023. If you are interested in adopting this book for a college or seminary course, please request a faculty examination copy. We will also consider requests for your blog or media outlets.
A Commentary for worship, devotion and reflection on the Psalter
The Old Testament Psalter testifies both to the universal human condition and the redemption wrought for believers in the person and work of Christ. In The Psalms: Jesus’s Prayer Book, longtime pastor and seminary professor Doug Webster distills ancient and modern scholarship on the Psalms into theological, canonical, apostolic, linguistic, and pastoral edification to students of Psalter. By focusing on both the most consequential and the less developed aspects of Psalm studies, Webster shows how living a Christ-centered life goes hand in hand with digesting the Psalms as a complete collection prefiguring Christ.
The volumes of The Psalms follow the internal divisions Psalms presents:
- Volume 1 (Book I of the Psalms)
- Volume 2 (Book II)
- Volume 3 (Book III-IV)
- Volume 4 (Book V)
- Designed with preachers and teachers in mind,
The Psalms strikes a middle ground between a technical commentary and a book of sermons. Webster offers pastoral insight in both interpretation and application of the Psalms for worship, unveiling purpose and significance for worship, devotion, and reflection.
