"To the choirmaster: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
1 Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone;
for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
2 Everyone utters lies to his neighbour;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
4 those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5 “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord;
“I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
7 You, O Lord, will keep them;
you will guard us from this generation forever.
8 On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the children of man."
Psalm 12
There are two elements in such a situation, one which remains as a constant and the other which is removed by the intervention of God. The constant is the fact of solitude, and the loneliness which belongs to the life of faith. All God's great ones are lonely men - Abraham, Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist knew this solitude and 'apart-ness' that is of the very essence of the work of God. The other element is the kind of despair or depression that God graciously intervenes to remove, and it is this that the rest of the Psalm is concerned with. This, then, is the paradox of the Christian life: we are commit- ted to a life of solitude if we go on with God, and yet God ever intervenes to deal with the oppression of evil men against us. Such is the understanding of the cry at the beginning of the Psalm for help amid prevailing faithlessness.
We should note the problem that David was facing - flattering lips and double hearts, the sin of one thing being said and another being thought in the heart. This is the curse and condemnation of flattery, which requires to be distinguished from true praise. It is the motive in each that is important. Flattery has an ulterior motive, and this is what exposes it as the shabby thing it is, a form of dishonesty which is inexcusable. Jesus said, 'Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay', that is, become known as a man whose word is of complete integrity. We must mean what we say and say what we mean. Far rather be silent than commit oneself to saying something we do not mean. Discerning people are well able to see through the insincerity and duplicity of double-talk and double- think.