Psalm 6 - Dead People Don't Talk

I am always a little surprised at how frankly David speaks with his God.  Turn, O Lord, deliver my life.  Save me for the sake of your steadfast love.  For in death there is no remembrance of You; in Sheol who will give you praise? (vs. 4-5)  David seems to be trying to picture a corpse rising up in the congregation of the saints to extol the greatness of God.  That would certainly turn heads at the next funeral, but we all know the dead, in their uninhabited bodies, do not speak.  It is this logic David uses with God.  If You allow me to die now, I cannot praise You for the answer You could give me if You saved me.  I could not say to everyone: "Look at how great is my God's loving kindness toward me!"  So, don't save me because I deserve it - save me because Your steadfast love is beyond describing.

Perhaps David caused his own misery.  Maybe his own sin put him in the position of needing a savior.  Can God be counted upon to rescue us even when we don't deserve it?  Think about it.  Here is a better question:  Do we ever deserve it ?  Even if in this particular instance David was guilty of a specific sin, there were times in his past that he was imperfect and yet unpunished.  God does not always save us from the ramifications of our terrible choices, but His love always causes His heart to open to the voice of a repentant child, restoring us to our relationship with Him. 

The absolutely breathtaking thing about our God is that He does not exact perfection from us before He loves and accepts us.  This is counter to what many Christians have been brought up to believe and certainly counterintuitive to those who reject the message of Christ. It is that very love and acceptance that leads us to seek forgiveness and try to please the heart of our Father. Contrary to popular belief, God is not in His heaven eyeing the world for the opportunity to bomb the best sinner out of existence like a heavenly game of Angry Birds.  He actually loves His creation and longs for the opportunity to rescue us from our own ways. 

Consider this verse from Romans 5:  ....but God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.   Not cleaned up sinners.  Just plain sinners.  Not even looking for a Savior.  God planned our salvation before we knew we needed it.  That is how thrilling He is.  Knowing we could not keep the commandments, He came to be the sacrifice whose blood covered all sins for all time.  Perhaps, as Paul says in Romans 5, we would die for a good person.  Christ died for the worst of us, too.

David is, of course, correct when he says we cannot open our mouths to praise Him as our casket hangs suspended over the open grave beneath.  That is too late to let people on this earth know of the wonder of forgiveness.  Today is a good day for that.  While you have breath.  Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord! (Psalm 150)

Psalm 6 - How long?

My soul is struck with terror, but You, Oh, Lord - how long? (v.3)..

Waiting.  Is it okay to tap your foot while you wait on God?  Not tapping in impertinence but just for something to do in the often quiet period of waiting for His answer.  I know that is better than going ahead with my own plans.  I have done that with very unfortunate results.  But there are just some times when, like David,  we cry out to God and in the midst of it cannot think of anything else to say but "How long?"  I can hear the desperation in his voice.  He is terrified of the onslaught that is rolling downhill toward him and, well, he keeps praying this prayer, so, where is God?  How long is this going to take?  God, my God, are you listening?

I wish I knew why God makes us wait sometimes.  I mean, I understand that since He has the full picture He knows past, present and future all at once.  Time is not progressing for Him, but He sees it all at once.  He is, after all, the God who was, who is and who is to come.  Knowledge of His prescience should give us confidence that all will be well, but most often it makes us wonder why He feels the need to test our metal. 

Waiting refines us.  Just think about it.  Here in Southern California, we wait on traffic and deal with our own road rage.  Why does waiting make us rage?  Because we have no control.  Ouch.  We want to tell God what to do to fix our situation and when, which is always now.  The biggest messes of my life have come about because I went on without God.  Trust me.  You would rather wait on Him.  And wait on Him for His plan, which almost always looks a whole lot different from yours.

Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings like eagles.  They shall run and not be weary.  They shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40)  This seems counterintuitive.  Waiting renews our strength.  It makes most of us angry.  But what if we waited without expectation?  What if we went before the Lord without our own preconceived plans about how He was going to make things work out?  What if we just said:  "My God shall supply all my needs through His riches in glory in Christ Jesus" and meant it with no strings attached?

I love the story of the wedding at Cana.  The hosts run out of wine for the wedding guests.  Embarrassing.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, gets wind of it and tells Jesus the predicament.  Then she tells the servants to do "whatever He tells you to."  Not giving her son some advice.  Not telling the disciples to go down to Albertson's and pick up some wine.  No preconceived ideas about how her son, The Christ, will accomplish great wine where there is none.  Just - "Do what He tells you to do."  It worked out great!  Best wine of the wedding.  Made from water in ceremonial washing jars.  Who would have thought?

Waiting today?  Maybe even in your anguish?  Hold on.  Hold on tight.  Wait without specific expectation because in His answer, God will blow your mind.  He will thrill you and you will feel you have mounted up with the eagles and are soaring above the circumstances.  This is not euphemistic.  I believe it!  You are not in God's waiting room for nothing. 

Psalm 6 - Is It My Fault?

Have you ever been through a crisis and thought:  "God must be punishing me" ?  I have.....  and I am in good company.  Remember Job's three friends?  Their best counsel was that he had sinned and brought all the agony of his present situation upon himself as judgment.  Most of the time, I do not need my friends to condemn me because I do just fine all by myself.  If I expect the Lord to treat me well because of my absolute obedience and unquestionable spiritual perfection, I am not only delusional, but lost.  I always go before the Lord in my imperfection.  David's cry in Psalm 6: 1-3 is that God not punish him for his sins.
Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger; do not discipline me in Your wrath. Be gracious to me, Lord, for I am weak; heal me, Lord, for my bones are shaking; my whole being is shaken with terror.  And You, Lord - how long?

Two of my best friends died of breast cancer and in my final conversations with them, the lingering question was, of course, why.  What had they done to deserve cancer and the subsequent ravaging of their bodies?  It took me years to settle this question for myself - why did they die so young and leave families behind?  I knew, of course, it was not for their sinfulness else I would have been annihilated alongside them.  It was because "our times are in His hands."  "Precious to the Lord are the death of the saints..." because they go home.  The cancer now eating through the marrow of her bones, one of those friends kept saying: "I did not think it would take this long to die."  And You, Lord - how long? When will this be over?

So why, then, does David cry out for the Lord not to punish him in His anger?  Obviously we want the Lord to wait until He is not so hot about our sin before He decides what to do about it.  Remember the Lord allowed David to choose his own punishment once (2 Samuel 24)?  David had sinned against the Lord by taking a census of the people in direct disobedience and had prayed that the Lord would take away his guilt. Angry, God sent the prophet Gad to articulate the choices David had:  three years of famine, three months of fleeing from enemies, or three days of plagues.  David's reply: "I have great anxiety.  Please, let us fall into the Lord's hands because His mercies are great, but don't let me fall into human hands."  As always, David counted upon the graciousness of His God.

When the world falls down around us, perhaps we should not be so quick to ask why.  To assume we have so displeased a raging God that catastrophe has befallen us.  Even if that is true, we have a God who "removes our sins as far as the east is from the west and remembers them no more" when we confess them to Him.  Romans 8: Therefore, no condemnation exists for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Great news!  I have Jesus to thank for that!  I cannot approach God in my own righteousness, but I have ready access to Him because Jesus is my great high priest. 

So even if I think I must put my hands in front of my face and shield myself from the wrath of God, my best defense against the wrongs I have committed is to trust in the great benevolence of a God who did not even spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.

Psalm 6 - Tired of Crying

Every day she cries her heart out.  It is hard for her to even get out of bed in the morning.  Her loss seems almost too great to bear.  The aching has become physical - a constant spasm of her soul. A throbbing in her heavy head that lingers on her pillow. The searing brightness of the morning sun streaming through her window is a mockery of the darkness of her circumstances.  What enemy has laid her so low?  I don't know.  Death?  Betrayal?  The awful repercussions of her own choices?  When she tries to breathe, the pressure of the semi lying cold and heavy on her chest allows only shallow wisps of air to navigate the narrow pathways to her lungs.  "Oh, God!" she wails with what energy she can muster.  Then tears again.

David understands:  I am tired of crying to you.  Every night my bed is wet with tears; my bed is soaked from my crying.  My eyes are weak from so much crying; they are weak from crying about my enemies. (Psalm 6: 6-7)  Interestingly, the psalm was to be played on stringed instruments.  Can you hear the violins whining out his sorrow?  Wish I knew the melody whose strains expressed the great misery of the man.  His enemies were certainly fierce.  Could they hear him from his room, weeping and inconsolable? 

I just talked to a friend who recently lost her father.  This was not her first loss.  A sister-in-law in a fiery crash along with her husband and a son;  a brother-in-law who took the lives of his entire family. Now this.  She gets out of bed every day because she has to, but her refuge is her bathroom where she puts a bath towel to her face and screams her grief into its terry softness until the anguish subsides a bit.  Then she wipes her face and opens the door back into her life.  She is still here.  She still has a life to live with and for others, so she cannot implode though her soul is deflated - exhausted and emptied in this season.  My friend is not alone in her place of respite.  He is there and He knows her heart. You have an account of my troubles.  Put my tears in Your bottle.  Are they not in Your book? (Psalm 56:8)

Hope is what we have when we know Him and yet have sorrow.  And purpose, though we are tossed about by the raging seas over which we have little or no control.  He is in our boat.  He will see us through.  So different from those who have no anchor for their lives.  Hosea 7 describes their circumstances: " I would save them, but they speak lies against Me.  They do not cry to me from their heart when they wail on their beds of pain." 

Our tears are not in vain.  They are bottled and precious to the Lord to Whom we cry out.  Our troubles are not borne in a vacuum.  We will get up from our bed of pain and live because He lives.  And, on a better day, we will help our sisters rise to meet the sun because we have remained.

Psalm 5 - Boasting

.....may those who love Your name boast about You...(Psalm 5: 11)

Go ahead!  Brag!  You have a lot to boast about if you know Him.  Think about all the things you can say about this Father of yours.  The Most High God.  Sovereign over everything we know about and all we cannot even fathom.  So powerful that He makes something out of nothing...just look at my life if you doubt that.  The Source of Everything, He holds everything together.  Our God knows all.  His loving kindness never ends and His mercy is so great that it includes me.  My protector, my song, my banner, my hope, my glory, my salvation, my King and Lord.  I will run out of room and still not have said enough to scratch the surface of Jahweh, my Abba.

Before the foundations of the world He chose me to be his child.  By faith I have been saved, and that faith did not even come from me, so I would not boast. (Ephesians 2)....except in Him.  Even the faith to believe Him came from Him.  A gift.  He is generous to give the Holy Spirit so that I can receive the very mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2).  Because God had a dream for me (and you) when He made us, He is faithful to bring it about (Philippians 2).  He goes before me in battle and it is His to win (I Samuel 17). I hide in Him because He is a strong tower I can run into (Proverbs 18).  My God is my teacher (Isaiah 30) and He holds my hand (Isaiah 40).

"I am the beginning and the end.  I am the only God.  Who is a god like me?  That god should come and prove it.  Let him come and explain all that has happened since I set up the ancient people.  He should also tell what will happen in the future.  Don't be afraid!   Don't worry!  I have always told you what will happen.  You are my witnesses.   There is no other God but me.  I know of no other Rock;  I am the only One."

So, you see, I am quite a braggard.  I love to talk about my Father because He is more than awesome!  He loves me!  Isn't that amazing?  I get to know the Creator of all that there is on an intimate level because He wants me to know Him.  My heart is singing right now just thinking about my Abba.  Sing with me.

Psalm 5 - My Shield of Favor

But let all who take refuge in You rejoice; let them ever sing for joy, and spread your protection over them, that those who love Your name may exult in You.  For you bless the righteous, Oh, Lord; you cover them with favor as with a shield. (Psalm 5: 11-12)

See the warrior standing bravely in battle, sword drawn and shield up?  See her winning?  Crushing those who crash into her, jousting safely behind her shield?  She is trusting in that shield to buffer the enemy.  Watch this warrior because she will be the last woman standing.  Why?  There is a force field about her that cannot be penetrated, and it is favor.  "This one you cannot touch,"  says the Lord, her shield.  "This one loves Me - exults in Me.  I cover her with protection."   And the warrior?  Sometimes she stands through the battle, weary and uncertain, and is amazed that her enemies are vanquished and she protected.  "Praise my God!" she shouts.  "He got me through!"  And that is music to His ears. 

Ever needed just to run to someone who could make it all go away?  Ever needed arms around you and the comfort of the rhythym of a beating heart against your own?  I have ached for that in a way that no human could really satisfy.  Another person cannot "make it all better."  Only God can.  I need His arms when the battle is raging and the enemy in hot pursuit.  Psalm 91 speaks again of refuge in God:

Those who go to the Most High God for safety will be protected by the Almighty.  I will say to the Lord,   "You are my place of safety and protection.  You are my God, and I trust You."  God will save you from hidden traps and from deadly diseases.  He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you can hide.  His truth will be your  shield and protection.

So, I will say to my God today:  "You are the only One I need to protect me and make me wise enough to see the hidden traps in my path.  I will run like a chick to its mother into the protection of Your open wings today, covered by Your feathers from deadly diseases and harmful choices.  I want to know You in such a way that Your truth is in the marrow of my bones - that it is an inherent part of my defense every moment of every day.  Though it makes no sense, given my fallen nature, I welcome the shield of your favor over me; in fact, I cannot live without your blessing spoken over my life.  I rejoice in You, my sovereign, holy, loving Father, and with my life I will seek to exult you to the world."

Psalm 5 - Testing the Heart

Today I am thinking I don't really know anyone like the people David describes in Psalm 5 when he says: My enemies' mouths do not tell the truth; in their hearts they want to destroy others.  Their throats are like open graves; they use their tongues to tell lies.  God, declare them guilty!  Let them fall into their own traps. Send them away because their sins are many; they have turned against You."

Proverbs 26:28 says:  Liars hate the people they hurt.  Hmmm.  Ever been lied to?  Ever lied? Ouch. Maybe the reason it is so egregious to God is that is plays out just like hate.  Why would you lie?  Usually to cover your own rear end.  Then you are telling the person confronting you that she is too stupid to know the truth and was really wrong to trust you in the first place.  Telling the truth can be hard when it is an admission of guilt, so you would rather the other person look bad and not you. 

But what about lying when it is NOT about guilt?  When it is for selfish gain?  Lying to set a trap for someone.  That is the one I have a harder time with.  Surely that is evil.  A demonic Ponzi scheme that sets someone up so the liar gains while everyone else loses.  Do I know people like that?  Maybe.  That is the trouble with deceit.  It is deceiving.  We fall into their schemes like one would fall into an open grave....they push us into their decay.  If they cannot be honest with man, they will not be honest with God.  Their rebellion makes them vulnerable to judgement - not ours, but God's. 

If someone in his/her heart wants to destroy others how will I discern this?  How do I keep away from these people?  I think maybe they aren't always so slick, like the used car salesman who would sell you a lemon just to get it off the lot and make a commission.  You might expect that.  But when you have been taken by someone you trust, that makes you cynical because it hurts.  Liars keep us off-balance because we expect people to tell us the truth.  It is treacherous to be involved with them because the motive of a perpetual liar is our destruction to their gain.

 

Be careful of flattery, then.  Mawkish words that lure you into a connection with a deceiver.  Choose carefully those you draw into your heart's inner circle.  Don't give too much away too quickly, before you have tested the fruit of their lives.  And ask the Father to give you a discerning heart like His so that you do not become the butterfly trapped in the widow's web.  The crucible is for silver, and the furnace for gold, and the Lord tests hearts. (Proverbs 17:3).