Psalm 11
To the choirmaster. Of David.
In the Lord I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
Flee like a bird to your mountain,
2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
3 if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?
4 The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
5 The Lord tests the righteous,
but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
6 Let him rain coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.
Sermon quotes and references
What can the righteous do when morality is undermined & evil sweeps unchecked? It is frustrating to feel powerless in the face of crumbling foundations, and some become convinced that there is nothing that can be done. Added to this, some heed the poor advice to “flee”. When the foundations are crumbling the temptation is to stop speaking & stop being the city set on the hill. What can the righteous do? They can go on being righteous. And they can stand against the evil of their society. The one thing they must not do is, “flee to the mountains”! – James Boice, Commentary on the Psalms
How, then, do God’s love & His wrath relate to each other? One evangelical cliché has it that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. There is a small element of truth in these words: God has nothing but hate for the sin, but this cannot be said with respect to how God sees the sinner. Fourteen times in the first 50 psalms alone, the psalmists state that God hates the sinner, that His wrath is on the liar, & so forth. In the Bible the wrath of God rests on both the sin (Rom. 1. 18-23) & the sinner (Rom. 1. 24-32; 2. 5; John 3. 36).
Our problem is that in human experience wrath & love normally abide in mutually exclusive compartments. In our minds, love drives out wrath & wrath drives out love. We cannot think that a wrathful person could be loving. But this is not so with God. God’s wrath is not an irrational blind rage. It is a reasonable & willed response to offenses against His holiness. At the same time His love is a gracious gift, & is never generated by the loveliness of the loved. God, in His perfections, must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him. And God, in His perfections, must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God. – DA Carson, “God’s Love & God’s Wrath”