Psalm 17:4

"Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer."

Words are an interesting quantity. There are times when they are most powerful indeed, and other times when they are exceedingly weak. Words can hurt more than wounds. Or they can provide healing to a wounded spirit. At the same time, depending upon who is speaking them, words can be believable or not. The believability of the word of a person is either his might or his undoing. As Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!" The power of a word is tied to the individual who has pronounced it. Credibility plays an important part in the process.

By themselves, though, words are simple collections of letters. As such they have no power. They may be read and understood. But beyond that they can do nothing. So, there is an extent to which the individual hearing the word has responsibility. For the most authoritative person in the world can pronounce a thing to be so, and the individual can still choose to discount what he has heard. So the power of words lies not only with the credibility of the individual that has spoken them, but also with the willingness of the hearer to receive what he has heard.

The weakness of words is an interesting thing to consider. As was said, being simple collections of letters, they are powerless. And what makes that interesting is that God Himself has chosen this simple approach to communicate great truths concerning Himself and the spiritual world. God is a great being. As such He could certainly grab our attention in many spectacular ways. Nothing is outside of His ability to perform. He could write His own name in the sky for all the world to see. He could move the stars to spell out His will so that everyone on the planet will see it. This is nothing to Him. But His choice of communication to us is with words. This means that His words are also submitted to the process described above. His words also are only as good as He is, only as powerful as the hearer chooses. There is a sense in which for any given individual the choice to ignore His words make them of no consequence.

In Psalm 17 David makes the statement that God's words have kept him from the paths of the destroyer. David was a hearer of the words of God. He took in the great, reliable, faithful character of the one that had pronounced them. And he determined that he would follow those words. As a result, David states here that he has been kept from the paths of the destroyer. To sum up, God said, "Don't follow them", and David said, "OK." God's words on the matter were of sufficient import to keep David out of trouble. David also speaks of such things in Psalm 1:1 where he says, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly..." There is the counsel of God, and the counsel of the ungodly. We are blessed, he says, when we choose to follow God's counsel, God's words.

We are surrounded by words. They are important to the carrying out of life. Every day each of us makes a qualitative judgment of the words we contact. Our judgment is based on the integrity of the one who has said them, and our own inclination to even let them make a dent in our lives. There is an extent to which the authority of the speaker influences the impact of the words. But not always. The words of God come from the highest authority in the universe. Yet we all can choose to take them or leave them. God Himself promises, though, that His words will not return void. His words will come to pass. Many ignore what He says, but that will not stop His words from being shown to be entirely true and reliable. In the end, many will despair for having ignored His words.

David testifies in Psalm 17 that following God's words is of great benefit. Have we also found that to be true? Or have we decided that His words are not worth consideration? Have we decided that the powerful words of the God of the universe will not take us to task, will not make a dent in our lives? His words will not return empty! He can be entirely trusted, and so can His words. All of us need to make that conscious decision to allow His words to have sway in our lives. For they will keep us from the paths of the destroyer. The ultimate destroyer is the enemy of our souls, the devil. It is clear that staying off of his paths is a good thing to do, for he is headed to eternal punishment. If God's words can keep us from that, then they certainly are worth learning, memorizing, knowing, applying, and following.

HJK