Psalm 12: A Prayer in the Midst of Lies

Introduction

"I invite you to keep the psalm open in front of you. It's a short psalm." This is how Eduardo Peres opens this message from Église Connexion (Paris Centre) on Psalm 12. He admits right away that this Sunday's psalm, last week's psalm and, small spoiler, next week's psalm all speak of rather sad, even depressing situations. So he allows himself a sad subject too.

That subject is lying. We are about to enter, and in truth we are already in, a season of elections. In France, people are preparing for 2027. In the United States there will be midterm elections, and an American election has an impact around the world, including here. There will also be elections in Brazil in a few months, less important and less far-reaching, but the preacher is Brazilian and he mentions them. This is the typical season when we find ourselves "in the middle of a tsunami of lies from both sides": twisted truths, speeches full of bad faith, true things phrased to make people understand something else.

Psalm 12 is a collective lament over the absence of faithful and truthful people. But it also contains God's answer: he rises to set in safety those who call on him. Eduardo Peres then shows three ways God keeps this promise, yesterday as today.

Outline of the message

1. A collective lament: faithful people are missing

The preacher immediately qualifies his picture: it is good that we live in a place where the people are consulted, and that matters. But election season is one opportunity among many to see how much a commitment to truth is a virtue we lack. "We would be so much better off if there were more people committed to the truth among us."

This is exactly the psalmist's observation. Psalm 12 begins with a cry: "Help, Yahweh; for the godly man ceases. For the faithful fail from among the children of men." (Psalm 12:1). Augustine, commenting on this psalm, notes that we often think of asking God for bread, good weather, the resources we need to live. Here, the psalm asks for a resource that is lacking: loyal people, truthful people.

Instead, "They speak falsehood every one with his neighbor. They speak with flattering lips, and with a double heart." (Psalm 12:2). Even when people compliment each other, these are flattering words with a hidden motive, a double heart.

• Lying, in election season or in many other circumstances, does damage.
• The lack of people committed to the truth, false words, unscrupulous manipulators and sins that take on the appearance of righteousness make the whole of society suffer.
• This is the reason for this lament, and it is a collective lament: a whole people sings it.

2. Our era recognizes itself in this psalm

Can we recognize our era in these verses? Eduardo Peres makes clear that he is not criticizing our time by saying "it was better before, today people are fake." No: this has existed ever since sin has existed in the world. Since then, lying has been everywhere. What he means is that the lament of Psalm 12 is still current. We miss loyal and truthful people, we feel that lack and we see its damage.

• The powerful lie to the people about their intentions, and lie to one another when they talk about their alliances.
• It is not rare for people to lie on their tax return or to the authorities.
• Companies are caught red-handed lying about the role they played in poisoning soil and water.
• In relationships, lying wreaks havoc, and apps are launched so that people can arrange adulterous meetings in secret, more conveniently.
• We tell ourselves lies mixed with scraps of truth. Social media shows lives that are not real, staged, shaped, retouched to create a false impression.

The preacher does not say that social media is bad in itself. He says that, in this psalm as in many other passages of the Bible, a lie is not only a factually false piece of information: it is also a true piece of information given with bad intent, the intent to harm or to plant a false idea in our minds. If we include that in the definition of lying, we have to admit that we live in a world saturated with lies.

3. Lying, the catalyst of sin

You might tell yourself that it is just one sin among all those we see. For Eduardo Peres, lying is not only a sin: it is the catalyst of sin, something that makes the processes of sin more powerful and faster.

• Man's first sin was provoked, tempted, by the serpent's lie (Genesis 3:1-5).
• In the first chapters of Genesis, the first murder in the Bible begins with a lie (Genesis 4:8-9).
• Outside the Bible, in our history, the worst genocides, the worst abuses, the worst tyrants were made possible by the power of the human word: lies, manipulation, threats.
• Even today, how many atrocities have stayed hidden in silence simply because someone said: "What are you going to do? If you say anything, it will be my word against yours and no one will believe you."

God created the world by his word. He created us in his image, with a word that has power. And this is how man decided to use that power.

The preacher invites each person to look at their own story. How many times have we been deeply hurt by a lie aimed at us, by a broken loyalty? We came to understand that we had been told things that, in the end, were not true. Or we had in front of us someone who used the truth as a weapon, to tear us down.

And we also have to admit that we are part of the problem: how many times have we used our words not to bless, but to wound, manipulate, lie? As we grow up, we realize that we have "a loaded gun" in our tongue. It is always ready to be used, and we can easily do harm, intense harm, if we use it. What a weight to know that this weapon is always there, that we cannot get rid of it, and that we must not use it. Especially in an argument, in a moment of impatience, against someone who should be the object of our love: a friend, a spouse, a brother, a colleague.

With this weight, we look around and we see the powerful. We see that those who have the fewest scruples about using these weapons that are words are sometimes the ones who climb the ladder of power. And we may wonder whether, in the end, this is not simply how the world works. Verse 4 reports their speech: "With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us?" The preacher admits it: this is a depressing description. "But honestly, is it false?"

4. God's answer: "Now I will arise"

This is the reason for this collective prayer: "Save us, Lord, cut short these lying words." In verse 3, "May Yahweh cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that boasts," the original text says that the Lord cuts, that he cuts short these flattering lips, these tongues that lie with arrogance.

God's answer comes in verse 5: "Because of the oppression of the poor, because of the groaning of the needy, now I will arise," says Yahweh; "I will set him in the safety he longs for." God intervenes not only because truth is trampled, but because people are oppressed by lies. God cares about truth, yes. But the whole Bible shows that he has a particular concern for those who are oppressed and have no help.

"I will set him in safety," in the original text, can be put this way: he places in his salvation those who seek him. And this is where we need to pay attention. Even if we cry out to God to put an end to those who spread lies, that is not exactly what he will do first. He says that he rises, that he intervenes, that he acts to place in his safe place, in his salvation, the one who asks him. It may seem like a detail, but the rest of the psalm confirms this reading: at first, God does not completely stop the lies, but he protects from lies those who call on him.

• The lament goes up to verse 4.
• God answers in verse 5.
• The people respond with assurance to God's proclamation in verse 7: "You will keep them, Yahweh, You will preserve them from this generation forever." In other words: you will preserve those who call on you from these people who use lies. The Bible du Semeur and the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, read: "You, Lord, keep us and will always protect us from such people."
• The last verses show that the psalmist knows the state of the world does not change right away: "The wicked walk on every side, when what is vile is exalted among the sons of men." (Psalm 12:8).

The desolate situation persists. It is the one the psalmist sees around him at the beginning of the psalm, the one the people return to in their daily lives when they finish singing, and the one we see around us today. Verse 7 says that God will keep us, verse 8 that the wicked prowl everywhere. This may seem contradictory, but the Nouvelle Français courant brings out this contrast with an "even if": you, Lord, will keep the oppressed, you will always preserve us from these wicked people, even if the wicked prowl all around, even if corruption spreads throughout humanity.

5. Pure words, like silver purified seven times

The psalmist's certainty is found in verse 6: "Yahweh's words are flawless words, as silver refined in a clay furnace, purified seven times." This metallurgical metaphor presents the Lord's words as something without impurity, without any mixture of falsehood.

• God does not use his word to deceive. He does not speak with a double heart, with a double intention. He has no hidden intention that would contradict the word he addresses to us.
• His word is true, pure, and powerful: he does not lack the power to fulfill it.
• We sometimes say something without intending to lie, "I'll do this for you," and then lack the power to carry it out. This is not the case with God. When he says something, when he promises something in his word, he has the power to fulfill it.

A legitimate question then arises: in what way does God keep his promise to protect from lies those who call on him? We look around, we open the newspapers, and we see that there are still victims of lies, manipulated people, people unjustly condemned. In what way does God keep his promise? The preacher finds in the Bible at least three ways.

6. First way: God preserves the truth despite the lie

In his grace, God does not allow truth to disappear completely. "Truth's lips will be established forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment." (Proverbs 12:19). It is also a popular saying: lies have short legs, they never get very far. Yet, we know it, lies always last longer than they should. God gives lies an expiration date that is always longer than they deserve, but the truth remains. God, in his power, makes sure that truth endures even in the face of opposition.

• Think of the truth of the Gospel, so often persecuted, so often perverted. So often people have tried to bury it or alter it, and yet it has never disappeared. It is still there, and many of its opponents and its alternatives are no longer there.
• Think of this truth that God has placed in the conscience of man and in Scripture: all men were created equal, there are no inferior races or impure types of humans among us. This truth has so often been questioned, perverted, obscured, and yet, despite the opposition that still exists, it is still there. God does not allow it to be totally forgotten or erased.
• Think of the truth of marriage, sometimes presented today as an outdated, oppressive institution that should be reformed, reshaped or even abolished. Despite the opposition, the truth that marriage exists for human flourishing, in a commitment of full faithfulness between a man and a woman, remains and will be kept by God. It will outlast yesterday's opposition and today's.

7. Second and third ways: Jesus, the Spirit of truth, and a world without lies

God saves us in Jesus and gives us the Spirit of truth. The psalm says: I will set in safety those who long for it. The ancient commentators identified this safety with Jesus. God places, hides in Jesus those who seek shelter. Jesus took our sins upon himself, including our lies. He suffered in his flesh the false accusations of those who put him to death, his trial, what was said about him. So he knows very well this world we see today, this overwhelming world described in Psalm 12, this lack of truth.

And in the very midst of his accusation, Jesus tells Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37). Pilate, who is somewhat the answer not only of his time but of every time, the cynical answer, replies: "What is truth?" (John 18:38). So Jesus was condemned and put to death in a balance of power where the deceitful word of the powerful seemed to prevail. Yet all of this happened so that God's true words, spoken through his prophets, would be fulfilled, and so that, raised on the third day, he would bring into his salvation all those who, by his grace, call on him.

He saves us and he gives us his Spirit of truth. John describes the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, who convicts us of sin, who convicts us of falsehood and who equips us to tell one another the truth. Paul writes it in Ephesians 4, starting at verse 22: it is about putting off "the old man, that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor. For we are members of one another." (Ephesians 4:22-25).

So, by his Holy Spirit, God cuts short our lying tongues, our deceitful desires, and he renews our minds. When the psalmist asks God to cut short lying tongues and lips, we should also know that, when God converts someone, he cuts short that person's lying lips. So we do not really have the right to adopt a defeatist posture toward lies, neither toward the lies around us, nor toward those that persist in our words and thoughts.

• When we ask God to protect us from lies, let us not be insensitive to the Spirit of truth who convicts us of sin. This is why, in the time of confession in the service, we ask God each time to forgive the sins we also commit by our words.
• If you see today that, in a particular context, you have twisted truths to manipulate or to hurt, that you have used your lips and the force of your argument to put someone down, listen to the word of God, which judges every arrogant and deceitful speech. Ask for forgiveness with true repentance, listening to the Spirit of God rather than to the inner speeches we produce to justify ourselves.
• If you recognize yourself today as someone who has been lied to, someone who has been crushed by words, this psalm is your prayer. God does not necessarily say that the lies will stop now, but he tells you that if you call on him, he rises to place you in safety. From today on, he takes care of the cry of the one who is oppressed by lies.

The preacher concludes with the third way God fulfills his promises: what we see at the end of Scripture. At Jesus' return, in the new creation, there will be no lies. In Revelation 22, the vile are outside: "Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." (Revelation 22:15). "Everyone who loves and practices falsehood" is not simply the last item in a list. It is what sums up all the previous categories. Loving lies, preferring them to the truth, putting them into practice: that is the summary of everything that has no place in the world to come, of what may have a place today but will have none in the world that is coming.

This is a hope for us, a promise to keep in mind, especially when we are exasperated by the world we live in. It is also an exhortation to already live in the practice of truth, because it is what will last. This is the very reason God equips us. It is what will have its place for all eternity.

Eduardo Peres ends with a prayer: that God would imprint these words on our hearts so that we can call on him in the midst of the lies that overwhelm us, outside of us and within us; that he would protect, encourage and strengthen those going through suffering linked to manipulation, lies or false accusations; and that he would make us sensitive to his Spirit, who convicts us of sin and equips us to tell one another the truth, with an upright heart.

Key takeaways

• Psalm 12 is a collective lament over a missing resource: loyal and truthful people. This cry is still current.
• A lie is not only false information: it is also a truth told with the intent to harm. Lying is the catalyst of sin.
• God rises because the needy are oppressed. He does not first stop the liars: he places in safety those who call on him, "even if" the wicked still prowl.
• God's words are pure, without a double heart, and he has the power to fulfill what he promises.
• God keeps his promise in three ways: he preserves the truth, he saves us in Jesus and gives us the Spirit of truth, and he prepares a world where lies will have no place at all.

Personal application

1. In what recent situation have you been hurt by a lie or by a truth used as a weapon? Have you entrusted this cry to God, as Psalm 12 does?
2. Your tongue is "a loaded gun": in which relationship (spouse, friend, brother, colleague) are you tempted to use it in a moment of impatience?
3. Is there a truth you have twisted, or an argument you have used to put someone down, for which you need to ask forgiveness with true repentance?
4. When you ask God to protect you from lies, are you also ready to listen to the Spirit of truth when he convicts you of sin?
5. How can you, this week, already live in the practice of truth, the kind that will have its place in the world to come?

Verses cited

• Psalm 12
• Genesis 3:1-5
• Genesis 4:8-9
• Proverbs 12:19
• John 18:37-38
• John 16:8-13
• Ephesians 4:22-25
• Revelation 22:15

Frequently asked questions

What is Psalm 12 about?

Psalm 12 is a collective lament: faithful and truthful people are missing, people speak falsehood to one another, they speak with a double heart. Eduardo Peres reads in it a cry that is still current, to which God answers in verse 5: because the needy are oppressed, he rises and sets in safety those who seek him.

How does God protect from lies those who call on him?

The preacher finds three ways in the Bible: God preserves the truth despite the lie, which lasts only for a moment (Proverbs 12:19); he saves us in Jesus and gives us the Spirit of truth who cuts short our lying lips; and in the new creation, at Jesus' return, there will be no more lies (Revelation 22:15).

Why is lying called a catalyst of sin?

For Eduardo Peres, lying is not only one sin among others: it makes the processes of sin faster and more powerful. Man's first sin was provoked by the serpent's lie, the first murder in the Bible begins with a lie, and the worst tyrannies in history were made possible by the power of the human word.