Psalm 34

Okay, so this isn’t a blog about jumping off a building or overdosing on pills. This is a blog about sin and how God doesn’t want you to use it to kill yourself. This is about Psalm 34:21.

There is a battle raging in the Christian church (and the world, in fact) over the character of God. Sometimes this battle is unassuming, on the down-low. Other times, it’s center stage. But the central question in this battle is, What will God do to those who disobey Him, disagree with Him, rebel against Him, etc.? In other words, what will God ultimately do to His enemies?

As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the most important questions in the quest to know God better. For we may say that God is love, but if God destroys anyone who does not agree with Him, we might question the value of His “love.”

If a woman was contemplating marrying a man who told her that if she ever tried to leave him, he would kill her (and he would do it because he loved her so much), we would tell that woman to file for a restraining order, not a marriage license. Yet there are many who believe that God says the same thing to us—if you ever try to leave Me, I will have to kill you—but are still quite willing to sign up to spend an eternity with Him.

I wouldn’t want to live for eternity with a God like that any more than I’d want to live for one day with a man like that.

Fortunately, we don't have to. I think anybody who believes that God will destroy the wicked has not read Psalm 34! For it is quite clear in this chapter that it is not God who does the destroying: "Evil will slay the wicked." (vs 21)

I'm not sure it could be said any clearer than that. And this isn't some rogue translation of the verse. It is virtually the same in all translations:

Sin will kill the sinful. (NLV)
Sinners will be killed by their own evil. (NIRV)
Evil brings death to the sinner. (HCSB)
Wicked people are killed by their own evil deeds. (CEV)
Evil shall cause the death of the wicked. (AMP)
The wicked commit slow suicide. (MSG)

Of course, it is that last one, from The Message, that prompted the title of today’s blog. In the end, God doesn’t kill the wicked, because He doesn’t have to. Sin is slow suicide. But that’s precisely why God has warned us to stay away from sin in the first place—not because it somehow offends Him and He can’t stand to be in the presence of sinners, but because it will kill us!

It’s the same as telling my children to stay out from under the kitchen sink because I don’t want them getting into the cleaning chemicals. It’s not that I’m going to be required to kill my children for disobeying me if they drink the bleach. But if they drink bleach, it will kill them, and so I will do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen! That’s why—if they were determined to disobey me and get under the sink anyway—I might even engineer a frightful “Mount Sinai” experience in my home in an effort to make them think again.

In the context of the war that is raging over the character of God, it makes a huge difference whether God is holding a gun to our head, threatening to pull the trigger if we choose sin over Him, or we are holding the gun to our head whilst God is doing everything in His power to persuade us to put it down.

I don’t know which picture you currently buy into, but I can tell you which one is found in Psalm 34. It’s the picture of a God who doesn’t want to lose any of His children to suicide. So go on, put the gun down. God is not going to kill you, and He doesn’t want you to kill yourself either.