The Bible Study Podcast, episode 393. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Psalms with Psalm 56.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. Psalm 56 is yet another

Psalm of David, and very, very similar to Psalm 55. Again, tempted to skip over it, but I think

there's some things in here that we can learn from. And it goes like this. Be merciful to me,

my God, for my enemies are in hot pursuit. All day long they press their attack.

My adversaries pursue me all day long. In their pride, many are attacking me. When I am afraid,

I put my trust in you, in God whose word I praise, in God I trust and am not afraid.

What can mere mortals do to me? And so we find David in a little better

situation than he was last week when he was ready to run away. He still has enemies. He's still

running from them. And yet in this case, he is putting his trust in God and he's not afraid.

This is the same David who writes, a thousand will fall at my left 10,000 at my right. But basically, what does he have to be

afraid if he puts his trust in God? So still in a bad situation, but not on a bad day in

terms of his faith. But the part that I was interested in is actually the next part here.

All day long, they twist my words. All their schemes are for

my ruin. They conspire. They lurk. They watch my steps, hoping to take my life. Because of their

wickedness, do not let them escape. In your anger, God, bring the nations down. The part that I thought

was interesting here is the behavior of his enemies

in this case. And clearly his enemies as portrayed in this Psalm are evil. But one of the things

that we can learn for our lives, we can learn from those who are doing the wrong thing,

what the wrong thing is. And so if we look at the

behavior of his enemies, it is the opposite behavior than we expect for friends, if that

makes sense. So all day long they twist my words. They are looking for David's destruction.

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