Psalm 12

Psalms 12:2, 6 (ESV)

[2] Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;

with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

[6] The words of the LORD are pure words,

like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

purified seven times.

We live in a time when you don’t know who to believe. “Experts” give us mixed messages and change what they are saying from month to month and week to week. Politicians are more interested in remaining in office than in serving the public, so they tell us what they think we want to hear. Their message is constantly changing. Media picks and chooses what stories to run and how to spin the stories so that they further a particular agenda. The result is that we don’t know who to believe so we choose to believe what fits with our own expectations and desires. Truth as truth has long disappeared, yet “The words of the LORD are pure words.” He can be believed.

 This Psalm concludes in verse 8, “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man,” yet God’s word will never fail. We have a digital thermometer that tells us the temperature inside and outside of the house. This morning my grandson insisted that the thermometer was broken because the temperature outside read 30.2. He didn’t understand what .2 meant. In his mind it was 30 and 2, or 32. He reasoned that it must be broken because it read 32 as 30.2. It made perfect sense in his mind, but it wasn’t true. It was thirty and two-tenths degrees outside. The thermometer was right, but his understanding of it was faulty. Similarly, God’s word is true and unchanging, but our understanding of it is sometimes faulty. In a world where nobody can be believed, God’s word remains true. Our task is to seek to understand it correctly. In a world where there is no such thing as truth, God’s word remains true. Listen to it. Meditate on it. Study it. Trust it.