Sun 9:30a Class; 10:30a Worship; 11:35a Communion
Bible Bites
What Can Man Do To Me?
"The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?" (Psalm 118:6)
Actually, if history is any guide, others can do quite a lot to me. They can laugh at me, shun me, or slander me. They can rob me, beat me, or torture me to within an inch of my life. If they hate me enough, they can even kill me, in any one of a number of creative ways. I can be crucified, stoned, poisoned, gassed, shot, hung beheaded, pulled apart on a rack, burned alive; or simply left to slowly starve. Oh, yes, man can do quite a lot to me.
Knowing that the world can be such a cruel place, we look for safe havens to protect us from the threats of man.
Some of us are fortunate to have strong, stable families to shield us from the chaos of this world. But many oth- ers do not have that advantage. And among those who do, even those families cannot shield us from every injus- tice. Sometimes entire families may share the same cruel fate (think of the Holocaust).
Some people put their confidence in the government to guarantee their security. But governments can become corrupt or be overthrown. Then what? In all too many cases, the government is the very instrument of persecution that seeks to punish us.
Others-trust no one, and seek to secure their own well-being through amassing wealth. Surely, they think, money will buy safe passage through any threat. But as so many have learned the hard way, money can be a treach- erous friend, one that often brings its own set of problems.
The Psalmist offers another source of security, one that he claims will never fail: "The Lord is on my side."
Think about the implications of those words. God — the One who created and sustains all things — is my champion, my defender, my friend. His position is so far beyond that of the most powerful of men that he is not even in the same league. They can only hurt me in this life; He controls what happens in the next. If God is indeed on my side, then it really doesn't matter what man may do to me. Try as they might, they cannot touch the eternal rewards that my Father has promised me.
The poet is not flippantly dismissing the awfulness of the pain that others can inflict upon me. It hurts. But compared to what God has prepared for me later. This pain is but a temporary discomfort. I can stand up against the tyrants who threaten me, and challenge them to do their worst. Whatever they do, they can never overcome the One who stands beside me, and will deliver me in the end.
The challenge here, of course, is getting our minds to focus on a spiritual relationship with a Being who I can- not see, hear, or touch. That requires a disciplined approach to thinking about life and its responsibilities. If I want God on my side, then I must make the effort to be on His side in the great cosmic struggle between Good and Evil. I must respect God's word, honor Him in all I do, seek his guidance and help in fervent prayer. And I must learn what it means to love as God loves — even those who seek to do me harm.
