Have you ever believed someone’s words, only to regret it later? Every day, we are surrounded by voices telling us who we are, what we need, and how we should live. We hear these voices from our friends, our families, our teachers, social media, advertisements, and even from our own thoughts. Some voices tell us, “This is who you are.” Others tell us, “This is what you need,” or “This is how you should live.” The problem is not simply that there are many voices. The deeper question is: how do we know which words to believe?
Psalm 12 brings us into a world where words cannot be trusted. David begins by crying out, “Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.” He describes a society where people lie to one another, speak with flattering lips, and have “a double heart.” Their words are not merely careless. Their speech is deceptive and self-serving. They boast, “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
This is a world where human beings believe their own words are powerful enough to determine the outcome. “We will prevail,” they say. They trust in their own ability to speak, persuade, manipulate and control. There is no sense that they are accountable to anyone greater than themselves. Their words reveal their hearts: proud, deceptive and unwilling to submit to God.
Yet Psalm 12 does not leave us listening to the loudest human voice. In the middle of this corruption, God speaks. “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now arise,” says the Lord. God sees what is happening. He hears the groaning of the needy, and He promises to act. While human beings confidently say, “We will prevail,” God says, “I will arise.”
That contrast is important. Human beings may speak confidently, but their confidence does not make their words true. God does not need to compete with them. His Word stands above theirs. When the world says, “We will prevail,” God declares that He will arise and act according to His purposes.
This also challenges us to consider what happens inside our own minds. We often assume that every thought that comes into our minds deserves to be believed. But not every thought is true simply because we think it. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, writing about spiritual depression, asks whether we have noticed how often we are “listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself.” His point is that we can become passive listeners to our own thoughts, allowing them to speak to us about our failures, fears, circumstances and problems without bringing those thoughts under the truth of God’s Word.
Instead, we need to preach God’s Word to ourselves. We need to remind ourselves who God is, what He has done, and what He has promised. Rather than simply listening to whatever our minds tell us, we turn to Scripture and let God’s Word have the final say. This does not mean pretending that our struggles are not real. It means refusing to allow our struggles to become the ultimate authority over what we believe.
Psalm 12 then gives us another reason to trust God’s Word: human words deceive, but God’s words are pure. David describes the words of sinful people as lies, flattery and boastful speech. In contrast, he says, “The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.”
The picture is one of something that has been thoroughly purified. Human words can be mixed with falsehood, selfish motives and deception. God’s Word is different. It is pure. It does not mislead us. It does not flatter us into believing what we want to hear. It tells us what is true about God, about ourselves, about sin, about salvation and about how we are to live.
This means that we should not merely claim that we trust the Bible. We should seek to know God’s Word and His promises clearly. The more familiar we become with what God has actually said, the better equipped we are to recognise the voices that contradict Him. One practical way of doing this is to write down moments when we have seen God’s Word prove true—times when a promise of Scripture gave us the right perspective, corrected our thinking, or helped us respond faithfully to a difficult situation.
But Psalm 12 does not pretend that knowing God’s Word means we will live in a world without trouble. The world around David is still filled with wickedness. The godly seem to have disappeared. The wicked continue to prowl, and “vileness is exalted among the children of man.”
That is why the contrast between human words and God’s Word matters so much. The world shaped by human words oppresses, but God’s Word assures. Human words may create fear, confusion and pressure. God’s Word reminds us that the Lord sees His people and keeps them. After promising to arise for the needy, God says, “You, O Lord, will keep them; you will guard us from this generation forever.”
The Christian life therefore requires us to ask a very simple but searching question: whose word will we trust? We cannot avoid living among competing voices. The question is which voice will ultimately shape us. The word we trust becomes the word that actually shapes the way we live.
Psalm 12 ultimately points us beyond simply choosing God’s words over human words. The New Testament reveals Christ as the perfect Word. John begins his Gospel by declaring, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then he tells us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” full of grace and truth.
God’s Word is not merely information written on a page. In Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh. He is the perfect revelation of God—full of grace and truth. When every other voice competes for our trust, Christ remains faithful. When human words deceive, Christ is true. When the world tells us to trust ourselves, Christ calls us to trust Him.
So, in a corrupted world full of voices competing for our trust, God’s Word is the one voice we can trust completely. Human beings may say, “We will prevail,” but God says, “I will arise.” Human words deceive, but God’s words are pure. The world of human words oppresses, but God’s Word assures us that the Lord sees, keeps and guards His people.
The question is not whether we will listen to voices. We already do. The question is which voice will have the final word. Will we allow the voices around us—or even the voices within us—to define what is true? Or will we put our faith in the Word who became flesh, Jesus Christ, and allow His Word to shape the way we think, live and hope?
