Sermon for MHBC (1 August 2021). You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays. Also available as a podcast here or by searching “Monument Heights Baptist Church” in your favorite podcast app.
The world is crushed under the weight of sin. A holy God has every right to sweep it into oblivion. David recognizes that in this psalm. That’s why he cries out for deliverance and salvation. And for David, the situation appears serious. He is near the grave. And this psalm speaks to our own predicament. We, too, need deliverance. Ultimately, we all have to reckon with God. And we are in desperate need of deliverance.
PETITION FOR DELIVERANCE (1–5)
Let’s take a look at v. 1: O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Notice the mention of anger and then in the parallel line there’s wrath. There are also the verbs rebuke and discipline. So David’s request is that the LORD would not rebuke him in the LORD’s anger and that the LORD would not discipline him in the LORD’s wrath.
This is worlds apart from how most of us think about God in the modern world. We don’t like to think about God being angry with us or discipline us. And as we talked about last week, we don’t like to think about God’s anger. We are OK with a loving God, but the idea of a God who judges or upholds justice isn’t something we like.
But David recognizes that he has to reckon with the LORD. Even though he’s making a petition to the LORD, he keeps his sinfulness in view. He isn’t pleading his innocence. He’s stating that the LORD has every right to rebuke him and discipline him. But he’s petitioning the LORD for mercy.
We learn something about our own prayer lives here. Our petition should keep our sin in full view. It is ultimately God with whom we must reckon. David has resigned himself to God’s justice. But he’s asking God to be merciful.
So David is in some sort of bad situation, but his first reaction is to recognize God’s providence or sovereignty over the situation. His first reaction is to recognize God’s justice in disciplining him. His first reaction is to recognize that God is just to discipline him—that in himself, David is not righteous.
Calvin comments on this psalm, saying the following: “From whatever quarter, therefore, our afflictions come, let us learn to turn our thoughts instantly to God, and to acknowledge him as the Judge who summons us as guilty before his tribunal…”[1] Now that may seem like a difficult thought to grasp, but Calvin isn’t just talking theory. He lived this by example.
He married late in life. His wife bore a son prematurely, who did not survive. In a letter, he wrote, “The Lord has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound in the death of our baby son. But He is Himself a Father and knows best what is good for His children.”[2] Again, such a view is difficult for us. This is why so many of the Christians who have gone before us seem otherworldly. This is how they endured life. This is how faithful and trusting they were.
The corrective to our modern way of viewing the world is to recover a robust view of providence. Providence is the theological term for God’s governance of the world. Consider how the first Southern Baptist Confession, The Abstract of Principles, defines providence: God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs and governs all creatures and all events; yet so as not in any wise to be the author or approver of sin nor to destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures.[3]
Such theology has sustained believers for centuries. It is a resignation to God’s goodness, His power, and His perfection. It’s the idea we’ve seen in preceding psalms such as Psalm 3, where David states in the midst of fleeing from his own son, I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me (v. 5). And yet, it is a doctrine that has all but been scrubbed out of modern religion. Consider the fact that our own statement of faith has 9 of the 20 articles from the Abstract and the article on providence was one that was deleted.
Why is the doctrine of God’s providence comforting? I think it is stated best in the Heidelberg Catechism, which one of our Baptist forebears named Hercules Collins adapted under the moniker “An Orthodox Catechism” (1680). I cite Collins here, who only differs from Heidelberg by three words: We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.[4]
That is precisely what we see in this psalm. We see confidence in a faithful God. That’s the basis of the petition.
Look at v. 2: Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. Here is an appeal for grace or mercy. Troubled is a key word that runs throughout this psalm. It pops up several times and actually has a nice contrast in v. 10 when the enemies will be troubled.
Verse 3: My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord—how long? So David comes to the LORD making his petition, asking for deliverance, asking how long.
Jesus appears to allude to this verse in John 12:27 just before His crucifixion. In John 12:27, He says, “Now is my soul troubled.” Then he petitions the Father for salvation, but he then says that this is His purpose. His purpose was to suffer in our place. And this gives us great confidence. Jesus drinks the cup of death for us. This allows us to bear up under hardship.
Many of you are no doubt familiar with the story behind Horatio Spafford’s famous hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul.” He had sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him to Europe while he stayed in Chicago to finish some business. The ship collided with another ship, sinking within 12 minutes. Of the 313 passengers, 226 drowned, including the four Spafford daughters. A small row boat spotted Mrs. Spafford floating on some wreckage and see was saved. Nine days later, she sent the telegram to Horatio, “Saved alone, what shall I do?” While on his way to meet his wife, Horatio was summoned by the captain upon crossing the spot where his daughters drowned. As the story goes, he went back to his cabin and wrote the famous words to “It Is Well with My Soul.”[5] The third verse is worth noting here:
My sin oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
my sin, not in part, but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more;
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
The comfort that he found was in the gospel—that Jesus suffered in his place. That Jesus’s soul was greatly troubled so that we might rejoice. This is the great hope of the gospel. It is not that you and I please God through our good works. It is that Christ has suffered in our place. And here in this psalm, David’s suffering is just a shadow of the suffering Christ, who would suffer once for all.
Then David appeals to God’s character. Verse 4: Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love. I’m borrowing language from Matthew Henry here, but notice how David pleads God’s mercy. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. This is what King Hezekiah does in 2 Kings 20 when he is near death. He pleads for the LORD’s mercy and he receives it.
David also pleads God’s glory. Look at v. 5: For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise? Now we know from the whole of Scripture that death does not mean we cease to exist. And that doesn’t seem to be David’s point here. His point seems to be that he won’t have the same opportunity to bring public praise to the LORD. So he appeals to that. His concern is with God’s glory.
Now the next two verses provide great poetic expression to the depths of David’s pain.
DEPTHS OF PAIN (6–7)
Verse 6: I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.
These are some really powerful metaphors. The Hebrew word drench has a more usual meaning of melt, so the word picture is David’s tears are melting his couch. Remember this is David who slayed lions and killed a great warrior named Goliath. But here he is overwhelmed by his affliction. He is overwhelmed that he may have offended or sinned against God. Matthew Henry commented: “David, who could face Goliath himself and many another threatening enemy with an undaunted bravery, yet melts into tears at the remembrance of sin and under the apprehensions of divine wrath.”[6] Again, he realizes he must reckon with God.
His eyes are weary from weeping. Verse 7: My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes. Here he seems to almost hit a breaking point, but this is also the transition because in the next verse, he begins to strike a note of confidence. And from this we learn an important principle: Our sorrows drive us to the Lord.
Again, we learn from our Christian forebears here. Cotton Mather married Abigail in 1686. They had nine children. Five did not survive early childhood. Then Abigail died in 1702 after 16 years of marriage. Cotton married Elizabeth in 1703. They had six children. In 1713 the measles epidemic came. Elizabeth died. Days later his infant twins died, then his daughter. On the back of a book, he wrote down the names of his children in two columns, writing at the bottom, “Of 15, Dead, 9.”[7]
I imagine that would come near breaking anyone. But shortly after all that heartbreak, Cotton wrote these words: “only let me obtain this one thing of Him; a soul full of Christ.” He was a man with a singular gaze on Christ. His affliction only drove him deeper to Christ.
And we can take comfort in an additional fact. Christ, too, was a man of sorrows. Isaiah prophesied about the one who would suffer. But even in that suffering, Jesus’s prayers were heard.
DECLARATION OF FAITH (8–10)
So David transitions in these final three verses to confidence. Verse 8: Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. Verse 9: The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer.
And then there’s the reversal I mentioned earlier. David has been troubled, but the LORD has heard, and now his enemies will be troubled. Verse 10: All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
So David strikes cords of deep despair in the first 2/3 of this psalm, but then he moves to complete confidence that the LORD will hear and reverse the situation.
And we can have an even greater assurance because this psalm is not ultimately about David. It is about a descendant of David. It is about a greater David—the real King. It is about Jesus. Our assurance that God will hear us and deliver us lies in the resurrection of Christ.
In this psalm, we hear the voice of Christ, who suffered for our sake. He suffered in our place, but that was not the final word. The truth that the LORD hears the cries of the psalmist and routes the enemies is most clearly seen in the resurrection of Christ. Look at Hebrews 5:7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
Or consider Paul’s explanation of Abraham’s faith in Romans 4. In v. 17, he says: as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
And then he makes this point in vv. 21–25:
[Abraham] fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
We worship the God who raises the dead. And Christ is our assurance. He was raised for our justification—for our righteousness. Apart from the saving work of Christ, apart from His death, apart from His resurrection, we would be crushed under the wrath of God. We would be destroyed. But Christ was delivered up for us. He was raised for our justification. We are called to repent and put our trust in Him.
Let me close by reading 1 Corinthians 15:17–18: And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
And vv. 21–23: But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Here lies our hope. It is in Christ because He has been raised. That is the claim. And we can share in His resurrection by putting our trust in Him. This is our deliverance. This is our salvation. And in Christ, we have hope in the deepest and darkest of places.
[1] Commentary on Psalm 6
[2] Letter quoted by T. H. L. Parker, Portrait of Calvin, p. 79.
[3] Article IV (available here https://www.sbts.edu/about/abstract/)
[4] Lesson 10, Q. 28 (available here https://www.thecalvinist.net/etc/1680%20Orthodox%20Catechism%20(Hercules%20Collins).pdf). Question 28 from Heidelberg (available here https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism).
[5] https://www.staugustine.com/article/20141016/LIFESTYLE/310169936
[6] Commentary, 3:210.
[7] Benge and Pickowicz, The American Puritans, 256.