The Serpent's Tongue and the Savior's Hand: Text: Psalm 140:1-5
Introduction: A World of Vipers and Snares
We live in a world that has declared war on reality, and because it has declared war on reality, it has declared war on the church. The Christian life is not a quiet stroll through a well-manicured garden. It is a march through enemy territory. The Psalmist David knew this reality in his bones. He was a man of war, a man after God's own heart, and consequently, a man with many enemies. This psalm is not the abstract complaint of a man having a bad day. It is a field report from the front lines of a spiritual war that every one of us is engaged in, whether we acknowledge it or not.
The modern church, particularly in the West, has grown soft. We have been seduced by the spirit of the age into thinking that the primary Christian virtues are being nice, inoffensive, and agreeable. We want to be liked. But the Bible tells a different story. It tells us that the world is crawling with evil men, violent men, men who hate the light because their deeds are evil. And their primary weapon is not the sword, but the tongue. Their words are crafted in the dark, sharpened like a serpent's fang, and delivered with the venom of asps.
This psalm is a necessary corrective to our therapeutic age. It is a prayer that is raw, honest, and unflinching in its assessment of the opposition. David does not pretend that his enemies are simply misguided or that they have a different point of view. He identifies them for what they are: wicked, violent, and proud. And in the face of their malicious scheming, he does the only sane thing a man can do. He cries out to God for deliverance. This is not a sign of weakness, but of profound strength. The man who knows he is in a war and knows he cannot win it on his own is the man who turns to the Captain of the hosts. This psalm teaches us how to pray when the world shows its fangs.
The Text
Rescue me, O Yahweh, from evil men;
Guard me from violent men
Who think up evil things in their hearts;
They continually stir up wars.
They sharpen their tongues as a serpent;
Poison of an asp is under their lips. Selah.
Keep me, O Yahweh, from the hands of the wicked;
Guard me from violent men
Who give thought to trip up my steps.
The proud have hidden a trap for me, and cords;
They have spread a net by the wayside;
They have set snares for me. Selah.
(Psalm 140:1-5 LSB)
A Righteous Plea for Rescue (v. 1-2)
The psalm opens with a direct, urgent appeal to God. There is no preamble, no gentle introduction. The house is on fire, and David is calling the fire department.
"Rescue me, O Yahweh, from evil men; Guard me from violent men Who think up evil things in their hearts; They continually stir up wars." (Psalm 140:1-2)
Notice the two-fold request: "Rescue me" and "Guard me." This is the cry of a man who knows he is outmatched. He needs an extraction from his current predicament, and he needs ongoing protection from future assaults. This is the posture of faith. Faith is not a blind leap into the dark; it is a clear-eyed assessment of the danger and a confident reliance on the only one who can overcome it.
And who are these enemies? They are "evil men" and "violent men." David is not being uncharitable; he is being precise. The Bible does not shy away from calling evil what it is. These are not men who occasionally slip up. Their wickedness is not an accident; it is their nature. They "think up evil things in their hearts." The heart is the wellspring of all action, and their hearts are poisoned. They are not reactive, but proactive in their malice. They are strategists of sin, architects of anarchy.
And the fruit of their evil hearts is conflict. "They continually stir up wars." The wicked thrive on chaos. They hate peace, they hate order, they hate reconciliation, because these are all attributes of the kingdom of God. Their native element is the turmoil of strife, whether that is in a family, a church, or a nation. They are the agitators, the slanderers, the dividers. They cannot build, so they seek to tear down. They cannot create, so they seek to destroy. This is a spiritual law. A heart that is not at peace with God will not be at peace with his neighbor.
The Serpent's Arsenal (v. 3)
In verse 3, David identifies the primary weapon of these violent men, and it is not what we might expect.
"They sharpen their tongues as a serpent; Poison of an asp is under their lips. Selah." (Psalm 140:3)
Their violence is verbal. Their weapon of choice is the tongue. This imagery is potent and precise. They "sharpen" their tongues. This implies deliberate, calculated effort. Their slander is not a slip of the tongue; it is a carefully honed dagger. They practice their calumny, they refine their insults, they polish their lies until they are sharp enough to pierce a man's reputation and bleed him dry in the court of public opinion.
The comparison to a serpent is a direct echo of the Garden. The first great act of spiritual warfare against humanity was a war of words. The serpent did not attack Adam and Eve with claws and fangs, but with a question: "Did God really say?" He injected the poison of doubt, of suspicion, of rebellion, and it led to the fall of the entire human race. The children of the serpent have been using the same tactic ever since. Their words are not just words; they are venom. "Poison of an asp is under their lips." An asp's venom is deadly. It corrupts, it paralyzes, it kills. This is what gossip, slander, and lies do. They poison relationships, paralyze churches, and kill reputations.
And then we have that word, "Selah." While its exact meaning is debated, it most likely indicates a pause. Stop. Reflect on this. Let the weight of it sink in. Consider the deadly power of the unbridled tongue. The Holy Spirit puts a rest stop here so that we will meditate on the serpent-like nature of wicked words before moving on. Do not rush past this point. Recognize the danger.
The Trapper's Strategy (v. 4-5)
David repeats his plea for protection, this time elaborating on the cunning methodology of his enemies.
"Keep me, O Yahweh, from the hands of the wicked; Guard me from violent men Who give thought to trip up my steps. The proud have hidden a trap for me, and cords; They have spread a net by the wayside; They have set snares for me. Selah." (Psalm 140:4-5)
Again, "Keep me," "Guard me." The repetition shows the intensity of the threat. These men "give thought to trip up my steps." The Christian life is a walk, a path. And the wicked are obsessed with causing the righteous to stumble. They study our gait, they look for our weaknesses, they engineer situations designed to make us fall.
The root of this malicious scheming is identified here as pride. "The proud have hidden a trap for me." Pride is the original sin. It is the delusion that we can be our own gods, that we can define our own reality. And because the proud have rejected God's authority, they cannot stand to see anyone else walk in submission to it. The righteous man, by his very existence, is a rebuke to the proud. His walk with God is an intolerable offense to their autonomy. And so, they must bring him down.
The imagery is that of a hunter trapping an animal. "A trap," "cords," "a net," "snares." Notice the comprehensive nature of their efforts. They are not just setting one trap. They have laid a whole series of them. They have covered every angle. The trap is hidden. The net is spread by the side of the path. The snares are set. This is not a haphazard attack. It is a meticulous, patient, and deadly strategy. They use our own path against us, turning the way we must walk into a minefield.
And again, "Selah." Pause. Consider the subtlety of the enemy. The greatest dangers are often the ones we do not see. The devil is not a fool. He does not always come with a frontal assault. More often, he comes as a trapper, laying snares of temptation, of false doctrine, of worldly compromise, of flattering words that lead to a fall. We are to pause and ask God for discernment, to see the hidden cords and the camouflaged nets before our foot is caught in them.
Our Only Defense
So what is our defense in a world full of venomous words and hidden snares? It is exactly what David models for us here. It is a desperate, believing cry to God for rescue and protection. This is not fatalism; it is realism. We are in a fight that is over our heads.
The Apostle Paul quotes verse 3 of this psalm in Romans 3 to describe the universal sinfulness of all mankind. "The poison of asps is under their lips" (Romans 3:13). Apart from Christ, we are all these evil men. We have all sharpened our tongues against God and against our neighbor. We have all laid traps of self-justification and pride. The first step in dealing with the evil of others is to recognize the same potential for evil in our own hearts.
But for those who are in Christ, the story has been gloriously rewritten. The ultimate violent man was not David's enemy, but the Son of David, Jesus Christ. He took the violence of our sin upon Himself. The ultimate serpent was crushed by the seed of the woman on the cross. The poison of our sin was absorbed by Him, and He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs. The snares and traps of the devil were sprung and broken when Christ rose from the dead.
Because of this, our prayers are not the hopeless cries of a cornered animal. They are the confident appeals of a beloved child to a powerful Father. We can pray "Rescue me" and "Guard me" with full assurance, because our Rescuer has already won the decisive battle. He who was tripped up for us, who fell under the weight of the cross for us, is now our sure-footed guide. He knows the path, He sees the traps, and He has promised to keep us from falling. Our job is to stay close to Him, to listen to His voice, and to cry out to Him the moment we sense the serpent in the grass or feel the cord around our ankle. He is a very present help in trouble.