BE BROKEN

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth.

Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies. Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed the tune of the charmer, however skillful the enchanter may be.

Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.

Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns — whether they be green or dry — the wicked will be swept away. The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked. Then people will say, “Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.”

Psalm 58

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I am currently taking a class called Deviant Behavior at Old Dominion University. The class is an elective course as I edge ever closer to finishing my Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology (currently just three classes from being done). I didn’t think I would like the class because my first feeling was that it would be a class that would be immersed in the dark places of society, places where people commit heinous acts of evil against others. A class like that would be pretty depressing and I wasn’t exactly wanting that but I needed a class that fit my schedule and offered flexibility (it’s an online course) so Deviant Behavior it was.

It didn’t take long for my early feelings of the class to be changed. For it was fascination in the introduction to read about what deviance really is, to read that deviance is any action, belief, or even physical characteristic that would receive a negative reaction from someone or some group in society.

Given this, that would make a lot of people deviant, many of which would have never thought of themselves that way. I know I didn’t.

But then I thought about each and every man and woman who have ever been created after Adam and Eve. I thought about the fact that we all are sinners, afflicted after the very first sin was committed in the Garden of Eden. Indeed, everyone has since sinned in their life, and given God’s hatred for sinful behavior, we all become deviant when we sin in His sight.

We might not think of ourselves as deviants but we are. And the Bible uses another word that makes deviant as a descriptor look soft in comparison. The word is wicked.

And so as people who are sinners, deviant and wicked by nature, let’s read the 58th Psalm and do it as if it were being written toward us:

Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth.

Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies. Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed the tune of the charmer, however skillful the enchanter may be.

Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.

Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns — whether they be green or dry — the wicked will be swept away. The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked. Then people will say, “Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.”

Not a happy, joyous psalm by any means but an important one nonetheless. For before we can ever hope to become the people God wants us to be through Christ Jesus, we have to recognize and acknowledge our absolute depravity before them. For we have no hope if we think we’ll be able to stand before God on our own accord and try and defend our lives as somehow worthy of heaven. That’s not going to work.

Instead, we have to realize that our only hope is through accepting Jesus as Savior, knowing He has paid the price for our sins at an incredible cost, a cost which included being fully broken – broken by our wickedness. Keep in mind that during communion we are asked to remember Christ’s body which was broken for us as we take the bread.   

So what are we to do in return? How can we ever repay Jesus who was crushed by the weight of our sins on the cross as He suffered and died for us?

We can start by being broken ourselves.

Go back to the psalm and look at the consequences David wished on the wicked who have gone astray ever since their birth, the wicked that he compared to cobras that could not be subdued by the charmer no matter how skilled they were. Indeed, God is the most highly skilled “enchanter” in all of creation and yet we, the wicked, are not easily moved to change by Him. We’re too stubborn and obstinate, too set on our own desires to allow the Lord’s desires to get first priority in our lives.

What did David suggest we, the wicked, need?

Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, like a stillborn child that never sees the sun. Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns — whether they be green or dry — the wicked will be swept away.

David asked that we be broken. Perhaps that is the first good step in the direction of righteousness – the step that says to the Lord, “Break my heart for what breaks Yours and mold me into the person You long for me to be.”

In closing, what parts of your life are showing you are still living in wickedness instead of righteousness? I encourage you to identify them and then ask for them to be broken within you so that Christ can enter in and inhabit the space where your sin once dwelled.

For Jesus is ready to bring you to a salvation and accompanying righteousness that will make you glad, glad because you have been taken from wickedness to holiness, from death to eternal life.

Will you be broken and receive Him today?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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