Psalm 52

The title of today’s blog is a quote from the beginning of today’s psalm from The Message version of the Bible: “Why do you brag of evil, ‘Big Man’? God’s mercy carries the day.” (vs 1) Other versions render it differently—God’s love will continue forever; God can be trusted day after day; Don’t you realize God’s justice continues forever?—but I thought none of them captured it as well as Eugene Petersen. God’s mercy carries the day.

No matter what evil people do, God is going to have the last word. In fact, His is the everlasting Word. Evil can’t get one up on Him, even if it can temporarily get one up on us from time to time. That means whatever is happening in this world right now is ultimately okay. And I know that must sound really weird, given the corona virus and all the other awful, disgusting things that happen in this world.

But God’s mercy carries the day. He is able to take all of those evil things and work through them to bless us. Really. I’m serious. He works through all the evil things to benefit us in ways that we couldn’t have benefited if we had never encountered such evil in the first place.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s think about it for a minute.

By enticing us into sin, Satan was hoping to separate us from God forever, was he not? He thought that once we had rebelled against God, we would be doomed and lost forever. And it’s true that thrusting our world into the hands of Satan has caused a great deal of trouble and suffering.

However… because of what Christ has done in response to this problem through His life and death, we are closer to God now than if we had never fallen into sin. As a result of Christ’s actions in meeting the terrible emergency of sin, there is a human being on the throne of the universe. In Jesus, God has bound Himself to humanity with a tie that will never be broken. Jesus is not only the Son of God, He is also the Son of Man (a title He preferred to go by while He was here). Thus, we—both individually and as a race of people—are more closely united with God now than before sin entered our world.

So, does that mean we ought to go around looking for trouble just so we can see God turn it into blessing? No, and neither should we be blasé about evil. But we should remember that no matter how bad things get, God’s mercy will ultimately carry the day. He is never outwitted by evil.

Sin in His universe is undoubtedly the biggest crisis God will ever face. And if He can meet that awful problem head-on and turn it into a great blessing for us, there is no doubt that He can bless us through anything we will face today or tomorrow. Evil doesn’t have the last laugh with Him. No matter what, His mercy carries the day!