Psalm 7

In this chapter of Psalms, God sounds a warning through David: Beware of sin. It always backfires and injures the one who engages in it. Here’s how David put it: “An evil person is like a woman about to give birth to a hateful, deceitful, and rebellious child. Such people dig a deep hole, then fall in it themselves. The trouble they cause comes back on them, and their heads are crushed by their own evil deeds.” (vs 14-16)

I found it interesting that David described an evil person like a pregnant woman. Because I know (from having been pregnant twice) that giving birth to a child is not a choice you make. It’s a natural, inevitable result of the pregnant condition. Those who are not pregnant do not give birth to children.

In the same way, those who are wicked eventually destroy themselves. It’s not a choice they make. It’s the natural, inevitable result of the wicked condition. As David said, “the trouble they cause comes back on them.” Just as a person who delivers a baby has to then deal with the responsibility of raising it!

What’s even more interesting to me, however, was what David said in the verses immediately preceding: “If a person does not repent, God will sharpen his sword; he will bend and string his bow. He will prepare his deadly weapons and flaming arrows.” (vs 12-13) He pictures God as being ready to strike at the wicked, yet then goes on to say that the way of the wicked ends in self-destruction.

This is why I say God is a siren. Sometimes we think it is God who brings an end to the wicked. But God wants us to know that sin is dangerous. The sword and the weapons and the flaming arrows aren’t for the purpose of destroying us, but to keep us from being destroyed. All through the pages of Scripture, God is sounding the alarm bell, warning us about what will happen if we continue down a wicked path: The hole we dig will be the one we fall into, and the evil deeds we do will come back to crush our own heads.

God has never needed to add anything awful to the already-grave consequences of sin. As Paul wrote in Romans 6:23, “Sin pays its own wage. The wage is death.” Sin is dangerous! That’s why God wants us to stay away from it, and that’s why He often acts like a siren—to get us to steer clear of the very thing that will ruin us.