“All the wicked of the earth You discard like dross; therefore I love Your statutes.” -Psalm 119:119

This verse follows in thought from the previous concerning the wicked. Just as God’s love is great toward His own, it remains true of His great wrath toward the unrepentant. The psalmist is sure of the coming judgment on the wicked, which causes him to cherish God’s promises and commands even more. Evil will not last forever since God has won the war. This is the good news which lightens the heart of every Christian. God will destroy the wicked. They will depart from His sight and be no more in His Presence or ours if we are in Christ Jesus. Trouble lasts for a night but joy comes with the morning. Amid the burning heat of your trials, you are being refined. Yet the imitators, deceivers and revilers are melted away like the dross they are.

John Gill, a pastor who preached in the same church as Charles Spurgeon one hundred years earlier, commented on this passage. He regarded those who made a show of being like silver and gold as nothing more than reprobate silver, rejected by God as a cheap imitation. For even Satan masquerades as an angel of light and his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). The Lord’s commands therefore serve as a means of preserving the believer. When we follow God’s ways in sincere and pure devotion we are kept safe, secure from destroying ourselves in sin, safeguarded from false teaching, discerning toward hypocrites and the vain things of this world.

Grace upon grace,

April