Now it is not an enemy who insults me—otherwise I could bear it; it is not a foe who rises up against me—otherwise I could hide from him. But it is you, a man who is my peer, my companion and good friend! We used to have close fellowship; we walked with the crowd into the house of God. (55:12-14)
In this Psalm, David describes a painful experience where someone was personally attacking him. We don’t know who it was that was “insulting him and rising up against him,” but he says it was someone close to him; not just close, but someone who was a friend and who used to worship with David at the house of God. Nobody enjoys being insulted or betrayed. We all want to be liked and it hurts when someone attacks us, but those attacks are even more painful when they come from close friends, close family or still worse, our church family.
We all know we are not perfect and we all know that “you can’t please all the people all the time.” Yet, we need some safe people that we know will love us and accept us no matter what we do. We expect our spouse to stand with us and we expect our children to always see the best in us. Nothing is more painful than when those who we considered to be “safe” end up betraying us. It is no wonder that people leave the church in this day and time. They see their “church family” as being a safe place, and when they are rejected, gossiped about, or sense hypocrisy it makes them run from cover and turn their back on the church for good.
Like David, we need to realize that people can let us down. Even those who are the closest to us can fail at the end of the day. The good news is that there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother who will never let you down; His name is Jesus. Later in this Psalm David puts it like this, “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” (55:22) Jesus is the safest of all safe people. We often say that God’s love is blind, but that is not true. In the immortal words of Rich Mullins, “at the foot of the cross there’s room for everyone, and love that is NOT blind. It can look at who we are and STILL see beyond.” God loves you no matter what. That is not an excuse to sin or permission to stay the same; for me, that is motivation to be better… to strive to be like Him.
