"Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it."
Psalm 34:14
Part 2
Yesterday:
“Depart,” “do,” and “seek…”
“DEPART!” “Depart from evil.”(a)
Do everything in your power to get away from sin. That’s “get away from…, not “get away with sin.” Getting away with sin was our old life before salvation, now we “depart from evil.”
Today:
“DEPART!” “Depart from evil.”(b)
The intention here is to give it up and stay as far as possible, away from sin. We don’t want to give sin easy access to our lives.
A story is told of the little boy with his pet cat. Poor Snowball was a sick cat. By and by, the cat died, and the grieving boy buried his friend. He showed his mom the cat’s grave. She asked her son, “Why did you leave Snowball’s tail sticking out of the ground?” “I did that, so if I want to play with him later, it will be easy to pull him up!”
Isn’t that how we often want to deal with our sin? We bury it with just enough access to pull it up again when we want to play with it. This is not what David is talking about.
“Depart from evil,” is a key phrase that comes up several times in God’s Word:
“And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28:28).
“Depart from evil, and do good, and dwell for evermore” (Psalm 37:27).
“By mercy and truth, iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD, men depart from evil” (Proverbs 16:6).[1]
John wrote,
“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth” (1 John 1:5-6).
The question we need to take away from this is, “When it comes to evil, how much darkness am I willing to tolerate?” David would answer, “None!” How do you answer that question?
But it is not enough just to get away from evil. We need to take the next step, “DO” something. What? Come back, and we will talk about it tomorrow.
Quote: “Peace comes when there is no cloud between us and God. Peace is the consequence of forgiveness, God’s removal of that which obscures His face and so breaks union with Him”[2] (Charles H. Brent).
[1] Solomon must have thought this phrase was important: Proverbs 3:7; 13:19; 16:6; 16:17; and 17:13.
[2] Brent’s quote, Downloaded: Monday, June 29, 2020. From: https://www.christianquotes.info/top-quotes/19-beautiful-quotes-about-gods-peace/.