“Cut off His Head”

BIBLE READING: Psalm 109-115

                “Be not silent, O God of my praise! For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They encircle me with words of hate, and attack me without cause. In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer. So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.”                                           -Psalms 109:1-5            

                Commentators believe that as David writes this Psalm, there are a few specific names of enemies that he has in mind.  It could either be Doeg, Saul, Shemei or even Ahithophel that David is thinking about.  However, I want to spin this Psalm a different way so it applies to us today.  You very well may have enemies in your life that are speaking lies and evil against you, making your lives difficult. I however believe that the biggest enemy we face is one that all have in common.  Satan is an expert at creating a narrative in our minds that may be a little based in truth, yet he manipulates it to seek to destroy us.  Although he has no real power over us, he does have the ability to introduce thoughts and seeds of doubt that have the power to wreak havoc in our minds.  Just as he planted seeds of doubt into the mind of Eve in Genesis 3 as well as the attempts he made against Jesus in His temptations (Matthew 4 and Luke 4), he uses the same tactics in our lives today.  The more we hear his lies, the more likely we might begin to believe them.  When we begin to believe them, we develop feelings of guilt, shame and worthlessness.  Read the beginning of this Psalm again, but this time try to read it from your own personal perspective.  Then when you think of those “wicked and deceitful mouths” that are speaking to you with their lying tongues, try to identify them as the mouth of Satan and the mouth of your mind when you allow yourself to believe his false narrative.  Satan is our “Adversary” and our “Accuser”, in fact those are two of the Hebrew meanings of his name.  He is our “adversary” in the sense he is not looking out for your best interest and he is also our “accuser” in the sense he wants us to feel like an enemy of God.  It is his job to make us feel that our past and present sins have made us unloved, unable to be forgiven and worthless in the eyes of God and others.  Although the Bible may tell us none of those things have any truth to them, our minds can deceive us into thinking they are.  Remember, Jeremiah reminds us that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.  Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17.9).  The longer we allow the Devil a platform to state his case as our “accuser”, the more we are in danger of beginning to believe him.  I have often wondered what would have happened if Eve would have just not listened to that serpent.  If she had only believed the way most of us do in that the only good snake is a dead snake and cut off his head right then and there, how would life for her been different.  The ironic thing is that we can know what would have happened, because we are placed in the same situation as she was every day of our lives.  He will not stop being our “adversary” and “accusuer”, we cannot change that; but we can stop listening to him.  We can cut off the head of his lies and stop allowing him to corrupt our thoughts.  Instead of having a defensive form of attack, we can go on the offensive as David does with prayer.  We can begin to change our thought processes by a daily renewal of our minds (Romans 12.1-2) with the everlasting promises of God.  The truth is that God will always love us, He will always forgive, and we will always have value to Him.  As for the devil, we are just a tool, a pawn, an insignificant bystander he uses to attack God.  He will be quick to discard and dispose of you just as soon as you begin to believe his lies.  The trick for us is this…stop giving him your ear, turn you ears, your eyes and your heart to God.  Draw near to Him and allow Him to come to your rescues (James 4.8).  Let’s use the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God and let’s cut this snake’s head off!                                                                                                  MH