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Mostly life is pretty hard, but sometimes it seems unbearably hard. Sometimes
I feel as if I stumble from one difficult or painful situation to the next
with no let up.
I know that he disciplines me because I am his child. I accept that even
though I may not like it. But sometimes God’s discipline seems severe
and heavy-handed and unending. Sometimes it feels as if everything
in life is a discipline and there is no enjoyment.
Psalm 39 explores this very theme of the crushing severity of God in disciplining
his sinful servant David. It is a confronting Psalm because David speaks
plainly about the complete misery of his life, mouthing of at God with real
anger and bitterness.
And there is no happy ending. David’s misery is as great at the end
as at the start, yet David manages to grab onto some solid points to enable
him to cope with God’s discipline.
Let’s look at the text as David struggles to handle “the misery
of life” (1-6). From the first sentence, it is obvious that David is
stirred up about his situation in life.
Unlike Psalm 38, David is not responding to a particular situation of illness.
Rather he is thinking about the circumstances of his life in general. It
would appear that David felt his life was just one long string of painful
situations with no relief from the Lord.
And David was not happy with God’s unrelenting discipline, Verses 10
and 13. But he was still determined to try and keep a lid on things, verse
1 David resolved not to complain openly against God’s discipline, because
he knew that would only give unbelievers around him an opportunity to mock
God.
David’s loyalty and sense is to be commended. If we didn’t learn
anything else from this Psalm, this would be a good lesson in itself. One
of the worst things we can do is whinge about God’s goodness and care
in front of unbelievers. Yet some Christians do.
We don’t have to complain against God directly, complaining about the
situations we are in often has the same effect. Because we give unbelievers
an opportunity to say things like, “I thought he was a Christian who
trusts God” or “If that’s what God is like, then I want
no part of him.”
But notice also in verse 2, something else was happening for David. There
were good things that he might have said while he was struggling but didn’t.
Perhaps he was so annoyed at God’s treatment that he was playing tit
for tat. If God treats me bad, then I’m not going to say anything good
about him.
Anyway, David couldn’t keep his resolution. There’s an encouragement
for all of us who have made resolutions before the Lord and were unable to
keep them. Eventually his growing anger and resentment at God’s dealing
with him got the better of him and, verses 4-6, David finally bursts and
blurts out his concerns to God.
Commentators disagree about verses 4-6. The majority has concluded that the
content of David’s outburst to God is not recorded and that these verses
are a positive request for teaching from David.
But it’s more reasonable to take verses 4-6 as his angry and bitter
outburst against God. And it’s more human and real for us because it
goes like this. “Lord I didn’t want to say this in public because
it is going to sound so awful, but you need to know just how annoyed am at
you deep down inside.”
Verse 4. Lord can you tell me how long before I die? I want to know how many
more years of misery I have left. Since life is so horrible and painful,
then the sooner it’s over the better. So what is it Lord another 5
years or 10 years of suffering and discipline from your hand?
Verses 5-6 are a further bitter complaint. It’s as if David is saying,
What is the point of life anyway? Life is so short, and I am so small in
the overall scheme of things. And life is so uncertain that I don’t
ever know if will get to enjoy the things I have worked so hard for before
I disappear like a puff of steam.
If this interpretation is right, then it is pretty blunt stuff that David
serves up to the Lord. What’s the point of it all, is really what David
is saying. I don’t understand why given that life is so short and uncertain
anyway, it also has to be miserable under your constant heavy hand of discipline.
Friends, allow me to offer you some encouragement by way of application.
The encouragement is to feel free to be brutally honest with God. David’s
angry and bitter outburst to God was not wrong, in fact going to the Lord
was the right thing to do.
The fact is that from time to time we secretly feel like David felt. Life
crowds in on us and we feel it is so heavy and awful and sometimes even feel
as if there is no enjoyment in life at all.
But making all this worse, some Christians think they could or should never
speak so honestly to God about it with a view to understanding what is happening.
But David’s model to us is to go before the Lord and spread out your
concerns before him and ask him to help you understand what is going on in
your life.
Moving on, the tone of the psalm changes in verse 7 and becomes more positive
revealing David’s fixed points in his ongoing misery (7-13).
It seems as if David, having got all his pent up emotion out, now settles
down and regains a grasp of some basics that enable him to press on, even
though his circumstances show no sign of changing or being relieved.
Verse 7, he reminds himself that knowing whom is more important than why.
It is as if David asks, verse 7, “Where does all this leave me? Where
do I go from here?” He concludes that the only way forward is to trust
the Lord, simply because he is the Lord.
He still cannot understand why God seems to be dealing with him with such
crushing severity, but his anchor through it all is that he knows the God
who is making it happen. That enables him to press on and hold his life experience
in tension.
Verse 10, he feels God is being heavy-handed and is at times resentful and
confused. But, verse 11, he knows God’s dealings are always for correction
and redirection and training in righteousness. So he can trust God even though
he can’t understand him.
Friends, it is precisely the same for us in those times when the pain of
life overwhelms us. We cannot always understand what God is doing in our
lives and why he is doing it. At such times our only comfort lies in confidence
in the fact that God disciplines us as Children and, therefore, for our ultimate
good.
Verse 8, he reminds himself of the complicating factor of his sinfulness.
I think David recognises that his sinful responses to God’s dealings
actually make the situation worse in his mind. Perhaps he is thinking specifically
of his festering anger and bitterness that led to his outburst in the previous
verses.
Perhaps David recognises that he made the situation worse by thinking of
himself as a victim of God’s random punishment, rather than a wayward
child that needed some pretty heavy-handed discipline before he would learn
the lesson God intended.
Again, verse 8, often all whingeing and complaining before unbelievers achieves
is to leave himself open to more unpleasant circumstances as unbelievers
then ridicule him because of what he said about the God he is supposed to
trust and serve and love.
So David begs that the Lord might deliver him from such a sinful and painful
course of action in the face of his ongoing pain and suffering.
Friends, how true is this of us? We so easily develop a victim syndrome that
makes us wallow in self-pity. In our minds we conclude that we are the victims
of God’s indiscriminate punishment, that we certainly do not deserve.
At times we even go as far as to think that God is some sort of a sadist
who enjoys hurting us, and whose only purpose is to make us miserable. It’s
just like how teenage children always think they are victims of parental
cruelty and injustice rather than thinking they really needed a heavy hand
because they refused to listen any other way.
We need to ask the Lord to forgive us for this and help us avoid doing it
in the future.
Verse 10-11, he reminds himself of the Lord’s purpose in his suffering.
In Psalm 38 David recognised that suffering for God’s special people
was always corrective and not ultimately destructive.
But look at verse 11. Not only does God make his correction felt to expose
sin in his children and turn them away from it. But it has the extra effect
of weaning his children away from trusting in earthly things. David has now
come to see clearly that things in this life he previously thought were precious
and lasting are really as worthless as a moth eaten garment that has no beauty
left in it.
Perhaps it is in the light of this new understanding that David writes verse
10. Perhaps he is saying that he has finally learned the lesson God intended
and therefore God can ease up on him.
Friends, as C.S. Lewis writes, sometimes we leave God little alterative but
to be severe with us, because we refuse to find our happiness and security
in him and insist on finding it in things the world offers us.
Verses 12-13 He comforts himself with the reality of God’s special
care of his people. As David draws this poem to a close, there is no easing
of his circumstances. Verse 12, his tears are still flowing. Life continues
to be miserable for him. Therefore, his point of comfort is very interesting.
He learns the lesson of history.
He finds comfort in the notion of being a stranger or pilgrim in this life.
Like all God’s people before him, the circumstances of life leave David
feeling as if he has no fixed abode in this world. He cannot feel easy and
relaxed in a world where misery and instability and everything temporary
confronts him.
But feeling like a stranger or alien or pilgrim opened up new possibility
of comfort because he knew that God had promised special care for such people.
In fact it was enshrined in the law of Israel.
David comforted himself with the fact that while God’s care and concern
may not always be evident or visible in circumstances of life, it is always
real and always true and always secure.
And tied to this is the implied thought that a real home lies somewhere else
and that one day the pilgrim will be home where he can relax and enjoy life.
Friends let me finish by taking you to Hebrews 12:1-13. The Christians were
facing relentless persecution and death from the government, scorn from their
Jewish family members because they had turned to Christ, and general ridicule
as neighbours and workmates scorned Christ and the gospel.
Its not hard to imagine they were feeling crushed and confused by God’s
dealings with them. What hope is offered them? Verse 1, life is described
as an endurance race. It will be full of pain and reqire real effort.
But press on because Jesus knows better than anybody else what it is to be
crushed, quite literally, under God’s severe hand. So he is our model
and our reference point. Go to him when life seems unbearable and God’s
dealings are impossible to understand, because he knows what you are feeling.
And remember that God character is working in your life for good. He is committed
to care for you in the very best way, including heavy-handeddiscipline when
that is necessary for our good.
Friends with that perspective we can enjoy the subdued confidence and security
shown by David. There is no cheering and clapping and pretence that life
is wonderful when it isn’t, like some would pressure us today.
But as we look to Christ knowing he knows how we feel, knowing he is working
for our good always and knowing that really he is our home where tears and
awfulness and pain will one day be no more, should enable us to press on
tomorrow. Amen
David Calderwood is Pastor of Elermore Vale Baptist Church in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. calderwood at idx.com.au
