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¹¹³ I hate the double-minded,
    but I love your law.
¹¹⁴ You are my hiding place and my shield;
    I hope in your word.
¹¹⁵ Depart from me, you evildoers,
    that I may keep the commandments of my God.
¹¹⁶ Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
    and let me not be put to shame in my hope!
¹¹⁷ Hold me up, that I may be safe
    and have regard for your statutes continually!
¹¹⁸ You spurn all who go astray from your statutes,
    for their cunning is in vain.
¹¹⁹ All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross,
    therefore I love your testimonies.
¹²⁰ My flesh trembles for fear of you,
    and I am afraid of your judgments.

We all get used to the temperature around us. If you swim, you can get into a pool and think “this is cold” but once you’ve been in for a while it feels fine. If you get off an aeroplane in a foreign country the heat can hit you, but after a few days you don’t want to come back to miserable England!

The same thing happens with the spiritual temperature around us. We can be lifted to take the Lord and his word more seriously by folk around us who obey, or we can too easily fall and drift if those we mix with don’t care as much.

It can be tempted to label the Psalmist as a bit of an extremist. Some may think he goes too far in his passion to hear and obey God’s word. But he reminds us how seriously we should be taking the word of the Lord. 

He loves God’s law (verse 114), he wants to keep it (verse 115). Yet he also expresses hatred for those who don’t. Is that going too far? Think about who “the double minded” (verse 113) and “evildoers” (verse 115) are. The double minded want things both ways - they claim to love the Lord but don’t trust and obey him. They are traitors, trying to belong to the world and the Lord at the same time. Evildoers don’t just disobey but they make life hard for those who do walk the way of the word. Both groups are trying to say to believers “come out from the hiding place and protection of the Lord”. They are putting the believer in danger. 

If we don’t see how serious this is, we will be tempted to join them. So it isn’t extreme to commit ourselves to love the Lord so fully that we don’t want to follow where they are going. 

However this isn’t a proud prayer. The Psalmist is also very suspicious of his own heart. Our own internal spiritual temperature regulator isn’t always reliable! So he prays the Lord will “hold him up” (verse 117). He shudders physically when he thinks about the Lord sometimes (verse 119). This is the kind of feeling you get when you look over the edge of a cliff. It is terrifying to come under the judgement of the Lord or to leave his path. 

We need to spend time with those who take God’s word this seriously. This isn’t a kind of strange extremism - it is a right recognition that the Lord is a holy God, and that his word is a double edged sword.