3). He Warns Against Trusting In Man Of Any Level, Or In Brute Force, Or In Riches, And Calls On His Hearers To Recognise The Fact That Power And True Love Belong To God Who Deals With Men On The Basis Of What They Reveal Themselves To Be (9-12).
The Psalm is brought to its conclusion by a comparison between failing man and the unfailing God. Men are unreliable. They are full of emptiness and deceit. They are lightweight. Their ways are not to be trusted. Thus we are not to be like them. We must not set our hearts on oppression, dishonesty and greed. Rather we should look to the One Who is reliable, the One Who is always true, the One Who is full weight. For power belongs, not to men, but to God, and He is not only all-powerful, but also all-loving to those who respond to His covenant.
Men of low degree are only vanity,
And men of high degree are a lie,
In the balances they will go up,
They are altogether vanity.'
David recognises men for what they on the whole are, vain and empty, deceitful and lightweight. There are few who can be wholly relied on. Whether in low positions, or in high positions, they are out for themselves. Men in low positions are empty, like puffs of wind, here today and gone tomorrow, totally unreliable. They are only out for themselves. Men in high positions are deceitful and unreliable. They are a lie. They are for you one moment, and the next they have turned against you, depending on which way the wind blows. They too are only out for themselves.
Indeed if you put such men on one side of a set of balances, they are so lightweight that their side will shoot upwards. They have no ‘weight'. They are lighter than a puff of wind. They are insubstantial. There is nothing weighty about them. They have no substance. They oppress, they steal, they set their hearts on riches. They are not to be trusted.
Do not trust in oppression,
And do not become vain in robbery,
If riches increase,
Do not set your heart on them.'
Those who trust in God (the ones to whom the Psalm is addressed) are not to be like them. They are not to trust in oppression, heavy handedness and bullying. They are not to reveal their shallowness by engaging in theft and robbery. They are not to let wealth take possession of them. (They are rather to trust in God, walk honestly before Him, and hold on to wealth lightly. Their hearts are to be set on God).
‘God has spoken once, twice have I heard this,
That power belongs to God.
Also unto you, O Lord, belongs covenant love,
For you render to every man according to his work.'
In contrast to such men is God. Whilst men may appear powerful it is with God that power really lies. Indeed God has twice repeated the fact that power belongs to Him. He is over all. In the end all will be decided according to His plan and will. For He is Lord.
But with God there is no danger of His power being misused. For God acts in covenant love towards those who look to Him. He enters into a covenant of love with all who will respond to him, and behaves accordingly. Towards those who respond to His covenant He is totally reliable. He deals with men openly and honestly. He renders to every man according to his work. As Paul puts it. ‘To those who by patient endurance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, he gives eternal life, but to those who are factious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and indignation' (Romans 2:7-8).
Man is not saved by his works, but his works reveal what kind of a man he is. He either stands up to examination because His trust is in God, or he is weighed in the balances and found wanting because his trust is elsewhere.