Psalm 36 - The Shadow of Your Wings

Read: Psalm 36 vs 1-12

Yesterday we were chatting to our four year old niece on Zoom. She is at that age where she is learning to talk, and every time you see her you are aware that her vocabulary is expanding as she learns new words and new ways to express herself.

As we grow and mature in Christian faith the Psalms teach us new words, and they teach us what those words mean. The word ‘wicked’ is a Bible word. It’s a word used over 100 times in the Psalms. Reading the Psalms stops us from using a word like this immaturely or inaccurately, but it also stops us from wrongly thinking that this kind of word shouldn’t be used or is somehow a word to be embarrassed or awkward around.

Understanding who the ‘wicked’ are begins with the title of this Psalm. David describes himself as ‘the servant of the LORD.’ In the life of faith this is a very common way for believing people to describe themselves (1 Corinthians 3:5, Philippians 1:1), in fact it is how Jesus described Himself (Luke 22:27). 

When we understand ourselves without any reference to God the Bible says everything gets out of place. With no fear of God before our eyes, we become fixated on who we are, we ‘flatter’ ourselves, and we lose any ability to detect sin in our lives (vs 2), since that word has no meaning if we are not accountable to anyone for the quality of the lives we live or the choices we make. 

It is at this point that the Psalms teach us that we become deceived (trying to make sense of life as a master, rather than as a servant). This, the Psalms teach us, is what leads to ‘wickedness’ and to ‘evil’. Like a polluted river what is wrong can be traced back to the source. It all goes wrong when we begin with a wrong picture of who we are (masters not servants). The Psalm is a conversational book, it is not a dictionary. Reading one Psalm doesn’t give us every angle on what a word means but Psalm 36 gets us started, an encouragement to source who we are in the ‘fountain of life’ (vs 9) and to go from there.

Prayer: Forgive me for flattering myself in my own eyes. Help me to find an identity that flows from who I am in you. Amen.