To the chief Musician,
A Psalm of David the servant of the LORD.
The transgression of the wicked says within my heart,
that there is no fear of God before his eyes.
For he flatters himself in his own eyes,
until his iniquity be found to be hateful.
The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit:
he has left off to be wise, and to do good.
He devises mischief upon his bed;
he sets himself in a way that is not good;
he abhors not evil.
5
Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens;
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the great mountains;
your judgments are a great deep:
O LORD, you preserve man and beast.
How excellent is your loving kindness, O God!
therefore the children of men put their trust
under the shadow of your wings.
They shall be abundantly satisfied
with the fatness of your house;
and you shalt make them drink
of the river of your pleasures.
For with you is the fountain of life:
in your light shall we see light.
O continue your lovingkindness
unto them that know you;
and your righteousness to the upright in heart.
11
Let not the foot of pride come against me,
and let not the hand of the wicked remove me.
There are the workers of iniquity fallen:
they are cast down, and shall not be able to rise.
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“The transgression of the wicked suggests to me” that he doesn’t fear God at all. I don’t know that the person characterized as wicked even thinks about God, much less fears him. This is not an ordinary sinner, a person who sins through weakness, fear, or impulse. This is a person who falls in the category of what we today call evil. He is the kind of person who cannot rest peacefully, but devises mischief upon his bed. He lies awake in the dark of night calculating how to do harm. It’s what gives him a reason to live. That first stanza is a grim assessment of the wicked, and there are so many in this world who are just like that.
I suspect the new atheists do not fall in that category. Rather I think of them as men whistling past the graveyard. The atheist hopes there is no God and lives in fear that God is there. They are trying hardest to convince themselves, and they are angry with Christians because our very presence and faith is a threat to their worldview.
“You give them drink from your river of Eden.” The choice of the Hebrew word, eden, here is suggestive of a return to Eden, a restoration of a lost situation. Followed by “the fountain of life,” is even more suggestive of the last chapter of the Book of Revelation with a river of life and the tree of life. Thus, the Bible comes full circle from Eden to Eden, and that which Adam lost is restored to all of us.
And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45 KJV).