Psalm 25 begins with a deep expression of trust in the Lord and ends in lament. David begins by expressing his deep faith and gratitude in the Lord. David puts his hope in who the Lord is, turning to the Lord to show him his ways, to teach David how to walk his paths, to guide him, and to teach him the Lord’s truth. David then asks the Lord to remember his great mercy and love while forgetting his sins. The context of the psalm is that David feels under pressure from enemies and doesn’t want to be shamed, which is why David places his hope in the Lord. Shame often flowed out of guilt or humiliation, usually because of sin or failure; shame also came when you placed your trust in someone unworthy of trust, someone who’s betrayed you.
This psalm is a prayer rooted in a maturity of faith in the Lord, a calm assurance that the Lord is for him. David’s confident that the Lord is trustworthy; knowing that faith and trust in the Lord is a solid foundation for life. Those who trust in the Lord will not be shamed. This is why David’s not ashamed to turn to the Lord for instruction in life and for forgiveness for his sins.
We trust in the goodness of the Lord; we turn to him for instructions on how we should live to please him: we study his Word to learn how to be a godly follower of Jesus. God gives Israel instructions on his ways, teaching them his wisdom, giving them a pattern for life that leads to flourishing and being who he’s calling us to be, allowing us to experience his presence as we keep the demands of his covenant. David’s likely thinking of Mt Sinai where God led Israel after freeing them from slavery and gave them the 10 Commandments, laws on how to organize themselves as a nation, and the tabernacle. David’s confidence in the Lord is a powerful affirmation to the people that God is trustworthy, good, upright, loving, merciful, and faithful to his people.
David’s confident that he’ll never be put to shame for trusting in God, and this confidence carries on in verse 20. David expresses this trust even as the tone in the psalm changes from praise to lament and a plea from David for God’s presence and deliverance. In verse 16, David asks the Lord to turn to him and be gracious to him, for he’s lonely and afflicted. The words David uses here also mean deserted, abandoned, and wretched. David’s feeling like the Lord’s turned away from him so that he’s no longer seeing or looking at David.
David identifies two reasons for God turning his face away for a time: the first reason is that he’s surrounded by enemies. David regularly faced foreign enemies in the nations around Israel. David faced enemies within his own family, his son Absalom rebelled against him to try to take the throne of Israel for himself. David also created enemies within Israel through some of his sinful selfish decisions at different times in his life, leading to times where he felt abandoned and alone.
Scripture reminds us that we have enemies we often don’t recognize. The world’s our enemy; James points this out in his letter while calling the people to submit to God; James 4:1–6, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.”
We’re easily seduced by the world. It takes submission to God to resist its allure. Jesus has some tough words to Jews who believed in him but believed being Jewish saved them; John 8:42–47, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” Our identity and salvation don’t come from our ethnic background, it comes from faith in God!
Jesus shows them that the devil’s actively working against them to make them deaf to the truth. 1 Peter 5:8 warns, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Even our own hearts can be an enemy; Solomon writes in Proverbs 19:3, “A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord.” Solomon knows that we’re sinners at heart, even though we try to fool ourselves that it’s good enough to simply be a nice person.
The second reason for David feeling as if God was turning his face away, is his sin. He identifies the sins of his youth, but he knows that even as an adult, his iniquity, or sin, is great, “Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good,” “For the sake of your name, Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.” Sin separates us from God, we see this already in the Garden of Eden, the first thing Adam and Eve do after they sin is to hide from God. God’s holy and detests sin and separates himself from sin, throwing Adam and Eve out of the garden. Right after they disobey God, God promises to send someone to crush the serpent’s head and restore the relationship between God and humanity. Yet we don’t receive it without a response on our part. It’s like being given a gift and then putting it aside and never opening it. You may have the gift, but you’ve never accepted it or the relationship and so in reality it’s not yours. Sin separates us from God because in our sin we reject God. This leads to David’s feelings of loneliness. This is why the promise of God’s presence is so powerful; it shows that God’s mercy and grace is real, but we won’t really understand grace and Jesus’ sacrifice in the cross for us until we understand the weight of our sin.
David recognizes his need for God’s presence, grace, and mercy, and especially God’s forgiveness. David knows he has to be honest with himself and God about his sin and confesses it. Understanding our sin leads us to really understanding the grace and mercy found in Jesus. The psalm strongly links our prayers for deliverance and guidance to confession of sin. David likely wrote this psalm when he was older; as we grow older and get to know ourselves and God better. When we’re younger, we often aren’t aware of our sin or how sinful we can be. David turns to God and asks for forgiveness, but he also has the desire to change; this is why David asks for the Lord to instruct him, guide him, and teach him God’s ways. Repentance is the desire to change, this is Jesus’ main message, “repent and believe, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
We choose trust in God because of Jesus’ grace and mercy, in the forgiveness found on the cross and the empty grave. We see it in Jesus’ birth and God crossing that chasm between us that sin creates. Like David, we place our trust in God, knowing he sees us. Henri Nouwen writes, “To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. This requires not only courage but also a strong faith. As hard as it is to believe that the dry desolate desert can yield endless varieties of flowers, it is equally hard to imagine that our loneliness is hiding unknown beauty. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is a movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.” Moving from loneliness to solitude comes from moving towards God in confession and repentance, trusting his mercy, humbly seeking his presence and grace. When God turns to us and sees us, our loneliness fades and hope is restored.
No comments:
Post a Comment