The Great Divorce: Hating Lies and Loving God Text: Psalm 31:6-8
Introduction: The World as a Vanity Fair
We live in an age that is drowning in vanities. Our culture is a great Vanity Fair, a bustling marketplace of worthless idols, each one promising satisfaction, security, or significance, and each one delivering only bondage and dust. The modern man is told to trust in everything but God. Trust the experts, trust the science, trust your feelings, trust the market, trust the therapeutic process, trust the consolidated power of the state. These are the gods of our age, and their temples are all around us. They are respectable idols, clean and well-lit, but they are idols nonetheless. They are, as David says here, "worthless." The Hebrew word is emptiness, a vapor, a puff of smoke.
The Christian life begins with a great act of defiance against this entire system. It begins with a declaration of allegiance that necessarily involves a declaration of hatred. To love the one true God is to hate all pretenders to His throne. This is not a matter of personal animosity or bad temper. It is a matter of covenant loyalty. A husband who is indifferent to his wife's suitors is no husband at all. A soldier who is friendly with the enemy is a traitor. And a Christian who wants to maintain a cozy neutrality toward the idols of his age has not yet understood the first thing about what it means to trust in Yahweh.
David, in this psalm, is in deep distress. He is surrounded by enemies, slander, and plots. He is in what he calls a narrow place. And in the midst of this constriction, he draws a sharp, clean line in the sand. He declares a great divorce between himself and the world of worthless idols. This is not an abstract theological point for him; it is the very ground of his deliverance. His trust in God is not a vague sentiment. It is a robust, muscular confidence rooted in God's character, specifically His lovingkindness, His hesed. And because God is this kind of God, a covenant-keeping God, David knows that his affliction is not the final word. God sees, God knows, and God acts. This passage teaches us that true liberty, a large place, is not found by accommodating the world's idols, but by hating them and running to the only one who is worthy of our trust.
The Text
I hate those who regard worthless idols, But I trust in Yahweh. I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness, Because You have seen my affliction; You have known the troubles of my soul, And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a large place.
(Psalm 31:6-8 LSB)
Hating Emptiness, Trusting Substance (v. 6)
We begin with David's stark declaration of allegiance:
"I hate those who regard worthless idols, But I trust in Yahweh." (Psalm 31:6)
Notice the structure here. It is a classic Hebrew parallelism of contrast. On the one side, you have hatred for a certain kind of person, and on the other, trust in the living God. The object of his hatred is not the idol itself, but "those who regard" them. He hates the entire system of idolatry, which includes the devotees. This is not a violation of "love your neighbor." This is covenantal hatred. It is a hatred for the rebellion, the treason, the cosmic stupidity of exchanging the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns that can hold no water. To "regard" worthless idols means to pay attention to them, to honor them, to look to them for help. The idols are "worthless," or as some translations have it, "lying vanities." They are nothing, and they promise everything. They are cosmic gaslighting.
What are our modern worthless idols? They are legion. The idol of self-esteem, where man makes a god of his own feelings. The idol of political salvation, which promises a secular utopia if we just elect the right people and pass the right laws. The idol of materialism, which teaches that the one with the most toys at the end wins. The idol of scientism, which bows down to a method of inquiry and pretends it can answer questions of ultimate meaning. To regard these idols is to build your life on a lie. David says he hates this. He wants nothing to do with it. His mind is made up.
The contrast is sharp and absolute: "But I trust in Yahweh." Trust is not a leap in the dark; it is a step into the light. It is a confident reliance on the character and promises of the covenant-keeping God, Yahweh. All trust is religious. The atheist trusts in the uniformity of natural law. The materialist trusts in his portfolio. The secularist trusts in the eventual triumph of reason. David says, I am placing my trust, my entire weight, on the person of Yahweh. This is the fundamental choice every human being must make. You will either trust in some created thing, some worthless idol, or you will trust in the Creator. There is no third option. The man who says he trusts in nothing is simply a man who trusts in his own autonomy, which is the oldest and most worthless idol of them all.
The Foundation of Joy (v. 7)
David's trust is not stoic resignation. It is the foundation for exuberant joy, as he explains in the next verse.
"I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness, Because You have seen my affliction; You have known the troubles of my soul," (Psalm 31:7 LSB)
The joy of the believer is not circumstantial. It is theological. David says he will rejoice and be glad in God's lovingkindness. The Hebrew word is hesed. This is one of the great words of the Old Testament. It is not just kindness or affection. Hesed is covenant faithfulness. It is steadfast, loyal, utterly dependable love. It is God's promise to be for His people, even when they are unfaithful. It is the glue of God's relationship with His elect. David's joy is not in the absence of trouble, but in the presence of God's hesed right in the middle of it.
And how does he know this hesed is real and active? He gives two reasons. First, "You have seen my affliction." God is not a distant, deistic clockmaker. He is not an impersonal force. He is a person, and He sees. Our afflictions, our pressures, our griefs are not hidden from Him. In a world that often feels blind and indifferent to our pain, this is a revolutionary truth. The God of the universe sees your specific, particular trouble. He is not overwhelmed by the macro-view; He is intimately acquainted with the micro-details of your life.
Second, and even more intimately, "You have known the troubles of my soul." The word for "known" here is yada. This is not just intellectual awareness. This is the same word used for the intimate knowledge between a husband and wife. It is experiential, relational, personal knowledge. God doesn't just know about your soul's distress; He knows it from the inside, as it were. He enters into it. This is a staggering thought. The transcendent God, in His hesed, condescends to know the anguish of our souls. This is a truth that finds its ultimate expression at the cross, where God the Son took on our flesh and knew the troubles of our souls to the point of death, even death on a cross.
From Constriction to Liberty (v. 8)
This intimate, covenantal knowledge of God is not passive. It is active. It is redemptive. It leads directly to deliverance.
"And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a large place." (Psalm 31:8 LSB)
Here is the result of God's seeing and knowing. First, the negative: God has not "given me over" or "shut me up" into the enemy's hand. The image is of being cornered, trapped, with no way out. Our enemies, whether they be spiritual forces, hostile ideologies, or sinful patterns, always seek to corner us, to limit our options, to tell us that bondage is our only reality. But because God is God, the enemy never has the final say. He can harass, he can accuse, he can afflict, but he cannot ultimately imprison one of God's own. God holds the keys.
Then, the positive: "You have set my feet in a large place." This is a beautiful Hebrew idiom for freedom, security, and blessing. Affliction is a narrow place, a tight spot. Deliverance is being brought out into a wide, open field where you can walk freely, without fear of ambush or entrapment. This is not just about physical safety. It is about spiritual and mental liberty. To trust in worthless idols is to live in a very small, cramped, and fearful world. Your world is only as big as your god. If your god is your bank account, you live in constant fear of market fluctuations. If your god is public opinion, you are a slave to the whims of the crowd. But if Yahweh is your God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, then you have been brought out into a very large place indeed.
This "large place" is ultimately found in Christ. In Him, we are freed from the condemnation of the law, the dominion of sin, and the fear of death. The gospel is the ultimate declaration of liberation. It takes us from the cramped prison cell of our own sin and self-righteousness and sets our feet in the boundless expanse of God's grace. It is a place of true freedom, a place to stand, a place to walk, a place to build.
Conclusion: Your Personal Divorce Decree
So what does this mean for us? It means that every Christian must have his own personal Psalm 31:6 moment. You must come to the point where you consciously and deliberately declare your hatred for the worthless idols that surround you and compete for your heart. You must issue a divorce decree to the spirit of the age. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot trust in Christ and in the approval of men. You must choose.
And when you make that choice, when you transfer your trust entirely to the Lord Jesus, you will find that your joy is no longer tethered to your circumstances. Your joy will be anchored in the hesed of God, His unshakable covenant love for you in Christ. You will know, with deep assurance, that He sees your every affliction. He knows the troubles of your soul. He is not a distant spectator; He is your present help.
And because He sees and knows, He will act. He will not abandon you to the hand of the enemy. He is right now, in this moment, working to bring you out of the narrow places of fear, and sin, and despair. He is setting your feet in a large place. That large place is the kingdom of His Son, a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It is a place of glorious liberty. Hate the lies. Trust the Lord. And walk out into the freedom He has purchased for you.