How to Start Your Day Right: Silence the Wicked!
Every morning
I will put to silence
All the wicked
in the land. (Psalm 101:8)
Psalm 101 is mostly affirmations, self-talk taken right off the best of the web’s “best practices for great mornings” articles.
(Those articles seem to compose a large part of the internet. Or is that just my algorithm showing? Either way, it seems like what the Psalmist is doing here is going to be not just “something we should do too,” but something we might actually want to do. Something we tend to do badly with bad effects, which this Scripture can help change.)
These affirmations include:
“I will sing of Your love and justice… I will be careful to lead a blameless life… I will conduct the affairs of my house with a blameless heart… I will not look with approval on anything that is vile… I will have no part in what faithless people do…”
And they conclude with this: “Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land.”
What can this mean? “Every morning… all the wicked”? What is the psalmist describing?
He is not describing how, first thing every day, he travels through the entire region of Palestine and kills anyone who talks like wicked-talk. First of all, that’d be a lot of work. Second of all, what about the Sabbath? Sick days? Third, what qualifies as “wicked”? Asking for a friend.
So this is describing not-literal acts, but spiritual acts, in a poetical way.
What the psalmist is saying is this:
First, there is something that is so critical that he needs to do it every day: “Every morning…”
Second, this critical thing needs to be done thoroughly: “All the wicked…”
Third, this critical thing is silencing some voice or noise that is affecting him: “I will put to silence…”
Fourth, this voice or noise that needs to be silenced is wicked. It’s a voice undermining his praise, his faith, his priorities, his love, his holiness, his joy, and his strength.
The psalmist is saying that every day he needs to identify the voices in his life, in his mind and heart, that are influencing him away from faith in God. And he needs to turn them off.
Every day, friends, we need to walk to and fro across the land of our minds and hearts and silence certain voices. We need to eliminate voices that are working against our gratitude and praise. We need to silence those wicked voices encouraging us to pay less attention to what God wants us to give more attention to. We need to cut off the noise that invites us to forget God, forget our identity in Him, and forget His call upon our lives.
As we see in just the eight verses of this psalm, here are some suggestions for who and what to silence:
What voices are vile? What voices are faithless? What voices encourage faithless behavior? What voices seem to come from perverse hearts? What voices engage in slander? What voices are proud and self-important? What voices are speaking falsely?
“I will not tolerate.” (v5)
But instead, what voices sing of the love and justice of God? What voices praise? What voices encourage blameless living? What voices call us to pay attention to our home and family? What voices encourage faithfulness? What voices encourage careful speech, ways of speaking that show honor and are truthful?
“My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; the one whose walk is blameless will minister to me.” (v6)
What difference would it make if every morning we silenced the corrosive noise of the wicked? What difference would it make if we turned up the dial on the wisdom and song of the faithful?
These are the affirmations and morning practices of a faithful Israelite, one who desires the glory of the Lord and the goodness God invites us into. These were then, undoubtedly, the practices of Christ.
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.” (Mark 1:35)
What was Jesus doing? What was His morning habit? It was probably something He put together from the Psalms, for He loved what Holy Spirit gives.
I guess we can’t know exactly and for sure. But I know this, at least: I for one could use a little less of the noise of the wicked in my life and a little more of the wisdom and joy of Jesus. You too?
There’s gold in them-there hills. Andale.
Photo by Federico Respini on Unsplash
