“They speak worthlessness to one another; with flattering lips and with a double heart they speak….Who have said, ‘With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?’ … The words of the LORD are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times. You, O LORD, will keep them; You will preserve him from this generation forever” (Psa 12:2, 4, 6-7).
Within the literary context of a rebellion against God’s covenantal promises to His people and to the house of David (compare Psa 12:6 with 2 Sam 22:31), Psalm 12 describes the battle as a war of words. On one side, the wicked boast of “great things” (Psa 12:3), namely the overthrow of the LORD’s people and His Messiah. “With our tongue we will prevail; our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” (Psa 12:4; see Psa 2:3). On the other side are the words of the LORD, in which He promises to arise, save His afflicted people (Psa 12:5), and preserve them forever (Psa 12:7).
Every promise to His children and every prophecy about the future is absolutely reliable and perfectly true.
The question, then, is simple: whose words will we trust, the psychological trash talk of the enemy or the promises of the LORD? David makes the choice obvious by highlighting the inestimable value of God’s words on the one side and the worthlessness of the enemy’s words on the other. The enemy’s words are “shav” (v. 2 [3]), which in Hebrew means “worthless.” God’s words, by contrast, are like silver refined seven times in a furnace (Psa 12:6).
The tactics of the enemy of our souls have not changed. With his vast army of persuasive spokespeople speaking truths mixed with half truths and lies (see Gen 3:1, 4-5; Esth 3:8), we are bombarded with empty propaganda telling us that right is wrong and wrong is right. But we must remember that Satan is the father of lies. God, however, cannot lie. Every promise to His children and every prophecy about the future is absolutely reliable and perfectly true. Let us, dear friends, lay hold of God’s unbreakable words in the Scriptures, which King David reminds us are more valuable than the purest gold.
“They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb” (Psa 19:10).
