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A Minister friend of mine posted recently that he'd been facing false accusations.
He's a lovely guy. He didn't seem to be (as we say) 'in pieces'. But he did sound clearly hurt.
A number of good people responded quickly and supportively to my friend's post, and I hope that helped, but that sort of solidarity isn't always forthcoming and David, the psalmist who wrote our Verse for the Day today, certainly seems to have lacked it.
How do you handle a situation like that, David?
Well, he seems to be giving himself some advice in this psalm to strengthen his own faith.He's got exactly that sort of situation in Psalm 27.
He's preaching the best sort of sermon of all, here ... the sort that you preach to yourself! Here's how it ends:
"Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart and
wait for the Lord."
Psalms 27:14
How can you possibly SAY that, David?
WAIT for the Lord, when people are saying all manner of things about you?!
We live in a world of many words.
Words are waves of energy in clear air which ... in fact ... quickly lose their energy and dissipate.
You sometimes just need to WAIT.
Of course, there can be reputational damage. That can last a bit longer ...
But again, you often simply need to wait for the 'energy' in that to dissipate too, confident of the Gospel's deepest truths and that our critics know so much less about us than our Lord ... Who DELIGHTS to pardon us, by His grace.
What comfort there is in the fact that it is He Who will have the last word!
But it certainly does take it out of you to WAIT!
How do you manage to just wait?!
David is NOT simply telling himself to wait!
He's telling himself to wait for (or, better 'on') the LORD.
It is the special covenant-evoking Name for God that David uses here, calling on the covenant promises of the God Who had been so great a deliverer in his nation's history.
The self-exhortation to wait on the Lord is repeated, but separated by the words: "be strong and take heart" ... the very famous words the Lord promised to Joshua while commissioning him to lead God's people across the Jordan and into the Promised Land, where David was now enjoying the fruits of that bravery and taking heart, because he was now Israel's King:
"Be strong and brave!
You must lead these people in the conquest of this land that I solemnly promised their ☺
ancestors I would hand over to them"
Joshua 1:6
The Point
If we are believers we deal with a God Who is faithful to His promises to His people and Who has been faithful to them across Biblical time. But the words of those who accuse us falsely - although those words might run fast and wide - if untrue are pitifully short-lived.
Their words are simply not to be trusted, but the word of our faithful vindicator clearly are.
The words of our malicious critics may hurt us, but His is the responsibility to safeguard His faithful ones, and His word on His people is the word that both matters and lasts.
And THAT's how it comes about that when facing such things God's people can realistically be strong and brave.
The Takeaway
It's natural to be hurt by false accusations and by people who seek to give us a bad name.
But God knows all the worst things that there are about us, yet His covenant of grace to us won't be broken.
So, we can afford to ...
"Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart and
wait for the Lord."
Psalms 27:14
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