Pensees: The Song of the Slandered Saint

The Song of the Slandered Saint

There are few trials in life that hurt like slander. One of the most painful experiences a person can go through is to be misrepresented by credible and respected people to the loss of reputation, friends, ministry, and/or job. And yet this is sometimes the lot that God has prescribed for His servants.

Recently I was ministering to a couple who was dealing with the agony and loneliness of soul that comes from being lied about. However, it wasn’t the lie that bothered them as much as the fact that godly people found the liars credible. This poor couple did not know who to trust or who to look to. They were all alone in a maze of confusion, fighting bitterness and anger. It is a very difficult and complex trial to be slandered while in the ministry and to experience the ruin of your influence in people’s lives because of the irresponsible speech and listening of otherwise sincere and godly people. It is, in fact, their sincerity and normal godliness that lends credibility to their slander. Some slanderers are not godly at all but have managed to deceive good people with a pretense of holiness and godly concerns. No matter how it comes, slander results in an intense personal struggle for the slandered saint.

The Seventh Psalm has been called the “Song of the Slandered Saint.” If you have ever been slandered the last thing you feel like doing is singing! Yet, notice the last phrase of this Psalm: “I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High.”

In a series of three or four short posts, I want to examine the “Song of the Slandered Saint” in the interest of helping any suffering servant of God who may be still feeling the pain of misrepresentation, libel, gossip, or slander.

We will consider the Scenario of Slander first. In this section we will be encouraged to get the Right Perspective. Then we will meditate on the Sanctification of the Slandered One. We will be encouraged to get the Right Priority. Finally, we will examine Song of the Slandered One and be exhorted to get the Right Passion.

For today, I will simply post the Seventh Psalm.

O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me, let like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah

Arise, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake for me; you have appointed a judgment. Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you; over it return on high.

The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me. Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous – you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God! My shield is with God, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; he has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. Behold the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends.

I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High (Psalm 7, ESV).