PREVIEW: Are you overcome with anger, or if you are distressed, or maybe even depressed because sin and sinners seem to triumph everywhere you turn, do what King David often did in his psalms: write a prayer where you not only pour out your complaint to God, but you extol his eternal character. Dwelling on the eternal character of God is the antidote to the spiritual road rage that threatens to consume you when you focus on the ephemeral nature of both sin and the sinner.
A Journey of Worship // Psalm 36:10
Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.
I have to admit it — I was really ticked off! I was fighting back road rage. I was considering intimidating the driver of the other car with hyper-close tailgating, or perhaps speeding up and cutting them off, or maybe even performing the dreaded PIT maneuver (and if you don’t occasionally watch car chase videos, you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about).
So what was my problem? Well, I was on the way to a birthday celebration — a friend had turned 90 — and the car in front of me had about every bumper sticker offensive to Christianity on it you could possibly imagine. The one that sent me over the edge was next to a culturally appropriated “fish” symbol — you know, the one that has feet and the name Darwin on the inside of our beloved fish. Anyway, right beside that bumper sticker was another one that said, “We Have The Fossils — We Win.”
I was beginning to hum “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “Stand Up For Jesus” and I would intermittently mumble, “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” (Judges 7:18) I was ready to pounce — in Jesus’ name, of course. But I didn’t do any of that. Rather, I eventually settled for calmingly passing the car that was causing my upset and giving the “Philistine” occupants my most righteous stare.
Drats! They didn’t even see me.
Okay, it wasn’t quite that bad, but I was more than a little ticked off. You, too, get that way sometimes when you see the unrighteous flaunting their disregard of God and their disrespect for Christians. As followers of Christ, we often long for the day God steps in to judge sin with a display of Divine justice that will leave no doubt )although when we consider the lives of the sinners we know and love, that prospect is rather frightening).
David was feeling that way in this psalm. Out of the twelve verses that make up Psalm 36, six are used to complain about the wicked (Psalm 36:1-4,11-12). But as David is venting, I think he comes to grips with the fact that there was not much, if anything, he could do about the evil residing in the hearts of those wicked people who were ticking him off. So, as he often does, he talks himself out of his “road rage” by focusing on the character of God: his love and faithfulness (Psalm 36:5), his righteousness and justice (Psalm 36:5), his protection and abundance (Psalm 36:7-8), and life itself (Psalm 36:9-10) that the godly find when they make the Almighty their sanctuary.
Dwelling on the eternal character of God is the antidote to the spiritual road rage that threatens to consume us when we focus on the ephemeral nature of the sinner. You’d think I would get that by now — but I guess, like David, I have to relearn it just about every other day. I’ll bet you do too!
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