It's Psalm 39. This is a fairly
short psalm, so I want to re-read through it tonight. This is the
second part on this chapter of Scripture. It's a psalm about
a man who is suffering under the chastisement of God. You'll see that in the middle
of the psalm, where it says, in verse 10, remove thy stroke
away from me. I am consumed by the blow of
thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct
man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like
a moth. So those are, that's said because
of the chastening hand of God upon this man, the psalmist.
But that's the middle of the psalm. You can see in the beginning
of the psalm, the first three verses, that he was intent, he
was resolved not to speak when he was in the company of the
wicked. And we went over several reasons
for that last week. But let's reread it tonight.
It says in verse one, David is speaking, I said, and when he
says I said, he's really talking about what he resolved to do
in his own heart and mind. He said, I said I will take heed
to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. So he doesn't want
to sin. with his mouth, he doesn't want
to say what's sinful, and he doesn't want to speak if speaking
is sinful. So this was his intention, his
purpose was not to sin with his mouth. He said, I will keep my
mouth with a bridle. And the word bridle really means
a muzzle, like you would muzzle a dog. He's not going to speak
at all, not just a bridle, but a muzzle. He says, I will keep
my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. So his
great concern here is not to sin against God while the wicked
is with him. And then he says, I was dumb
with silence. He didn't speak at all. I held
my peace, even from good, and my sorrow was stirred He says,
my heart was hot within me while I was musing, the fire burned,
then spake I with my tongue. So this resolution he had made
not to sin against God with his mouth by what he said in the
presence of the wicked, he held that for a while until the fire
within him burned and he spake. That's what the last part says
here. So we can see here that, as I
mentioned last time, His purpose to not sin against God by speaking
with his words in the presence of the wicked had several reasons
for that. And we'll go back and summarize
those, but let's go on in verse four. Now after having resolved
not to speak and so sin against God in the presence of the wicked,
now when he does finally speak, notice he speaks to the Lord.
He says, Lord, make me to know mine end. He's not speaking to
the wicked. He's not just talking to himself.
Before he had not said anything to the wicked and he had spoken
to himself when in verse 1 he said I said So he was he was
thinking about these things and he was thinking about what he
should say or shouldn't say and his main Concern was that he
sinned, and of course that would bring dishonor to God if he sinned
in the presence of the wicked, so he didn't want to do that.
So now when he finally does speak, though, he turns all of his inward
thoughts and what he had been speaking about to himself and
refrained from speaking to the wicked Now he turns his words,
his mouth, to speak to the Lord. He says, Lord, make me to know
mine end. So the rod of God upon him had
made him very low. It had made him sorrowful and
made him feel his frailty. And so he talks about that. He
said, Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days,
what it is that I may know how frail I am. He's talking about
how short his life is. And as I mentioned last time,
one of the commentators said this is a funeral psalm. It's a psalm of sorrow and mourning. And so he's saying that here.
He said, Lord, make me know my end and the measure of my days,
what it is, that I may know how frail I am. So now we can see
that the psalmist has kept himself from talking to avoid sinning
so that the wicked wouldn't hear him sin. And his resolve not
to say anything led to him finally speaking, but he's speaking to
the Lord. And what he's saying here is that he was a man who
was very frail. He was not only heavy with sorrow
and heavy with his burden of God's hand upon him, but he realized
through all of that he was very frail. And that actually is the
effect of God's chastisement. It makes us feel frail. And then
he goes on. Behold, thou hast made my days
as a handbreadth. Thou hast made my days as a handbreadth.
That's just the measure of this part of your hand. This is the
palm of your hand, four fingers. He said, you've made my days
as a handbreadth. It was the smallest measure. There's the
handbreadth. There's the cubit, I think was
from the tip of your hand to your elbow. And then there was
other things they would use to measure. But here it's a small
measure, just a hand breadth. In Isaiah 40, the Lord says that
he's made all the nations, the waters of the earth, he can
hold them in the hollow of his hand. Just this little part with
your palm open, he can hold that, all the waters of the earth in
the hollow of his hand. And God frequently uses in the
Hebrew culture and their language, They used those kinds of things
to measure and to refer to them. And here he's referring to how
short his life was by comparing it to just the width of his hand.
It wasn't in fathoms or whatever other measures they used back
then. all kinds of measures. When they
measure the temple, they had a rod, and so they used all sorts
of different things, but it was a very short thing, just a hand
breadth. So he said, You've made my days
as a hand breath. My age is as nothing before thee. Remember in the book of 2 Peter,
it is that the verse chapter three of 2 Peter, Peter says
that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand
years as one day. But here he says, my age is as
nothing before you. So my life is insignificant.
in measure in any comparison to God. That's what he's saying.
I'm frail and my life insignificant in its length. He's really saying
that in myself, I'm nothing. He goes on. Verily, every man
at his best state is altogether vanity, empty, nothing, void. Like in the beginning, the earth
was without form and void. That's what he's talking about
here. My life is nothing. Every man and his best state
is altogether vanity. He felt that himself and he knew
that that vanity was common to the human condition. The fallen
sinful man is vanity. And his life is vanity. A man's life is subject to change
and subject to death. And so men are vanity in that
sense. The book of Ecclesiastes by Solomon,
the preacher, uses those words over and over. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity under the sun. Considered just in this life,
in this world, in what we are in our flesh, we are altogether
vanity. That's God's word, that's the
way it really is. And we feel it a little bit when
we look back at our life. Looking back always makes time
seem shorter. It's when you're anticipating
something that you want, it seems like a long time, it takes a
long time. But when you're looking back, it seems very short. Think
of those times as a child when you looked for something. We
used to go down to a fishing, I mean swimming place. We lived
in Redding and it got very hot. And we would look forward to
my dad coming home from work and driving us all down to the
creek, where we went swimming and bathing, actually. It was
very cool and refreshing. But after you got done with it,
you might have been down at the swimming place for a couple of
hours. When you got done driving home, it seemed like, man, that
was a short trip. I was looking forward to it all
day, and now it's over. So that's the way it is. So he says, my
age is nothing before thee. Verily, every man at his best
state is altogether vanity, selah. And then he says, surely every
man walketh in a vain show. Now, to walk in a vain show means
they're trying to project an image. Everyone does this. It says here, we all do this.
We walk to please others. We want others to think well
of us, or we want to avoid something. It's called either the fear of
man or the praise of man. And we're all subject to this
sinfulness as our natural selves. We want others to be happy with
us. We don't want to rile them up.
Oh, maybe we do. But everything we do is for our
own gain. And so he says, we walk in a vain show. And that
vain show is really what it says in the book of Galatians. He
says, everyone in the book of Galatians, he says, everyone
who wants to make a fair show in the flesh, They desire you
to be circumcised. That's what the Judaizers did.
Men who trusted in their works were trying to get disciples
to themselves because they wanted those people to be circumcised
to be like them. They trusted in their own works.
If they had others who did, then they could be on the top. of
the pecking order. They could be the high part of
the hierarchy, and others would look up to them, and then they
could compare themselves to these underlings, these disciples of
theirs in this system of works. And they even thought that in
that vain fair show that they would make in the flesh, that
God himself should recognize them. And this attitude that
God should recognize me or that men should recognize me, this
is what we're born with. Children like to be recognized.
You'll see them light up if they're not shy. You'll see them light
up when someone they want recognition from recognizes them. And remember
the Pharisee in Luke 18. in Luke 18, he wanted recognition
from men and he wanted recognition from God. And so he prayed with
himself. He talked about, he says, I thank
thee that I'm not like other men. Right away, we know he's
comparing himself to others. This is the nature of works religion.
We always find in works religion, people are in a hierarchy of
comparisons, but in the gospel, Jesus said, he that will be greatest
among you will be your servant. So there's no show. There's no
show. There's only service in the gospel. But in works religion, there's
only show because it's all about comparison. Even when people
serve the Lord or serve one another in works religion, it's always
for show. They're trying to keep a record of their own performance. They're trying to make sure that
they're dotting the I's and crossing the T's in order to keep themselves
looking good so they would have confidence before God and men.
So that's what he's talking about here. Every man walks in a vain
show. It's empty. And he says, surely
they are disquieted in vain Disquieted means they're not quiet. They've
set aside peace. They've abandoned peace for this
stress and anxiety to go about to establish their own righteousness.
either in the eyes of others or in the eyes of God. Whatever
it is, they're trying to paste up themselves and cover the sin
within. But the gospel makes us real.
The gospel makes us honest. We don't have to pretend. We
don't have to put on airs. Why would we? We're sinners and
nothing at all. Jesus Christ is our all in all.
So if Christ is all and we're nothing, then we certainly aren't
anything in comparison to others. We're just as much of a sinner
as anybody else. In fact, when the Lord teaches
us about our sin, we don't think about ourselves as greater in
any way, but less. We think of ourselves as being
the chief of sinners. So he's talking about that here,
verse six. Every man walks in a vain show.
Surely they are disquieted. They've stirred themselves up. They're anxious about things
and they're working. They're in vain. He heaps up
riches. Now to heap up riches, we understand
what that means. We think of rich people who spend
all their life to gain, to get land, to get possessions, to
get wealth and to get position in order to establish a security
so that a trouble doesn't come to them. That's what money does. Money allows us to isolate, to
insulate ourselves from the disturbances of life, doesn't it? For the
most part. But after a while, we realize
that money doesn't actually do that, so we see misery among
the rich just as well as among the poor. But anyway, men vainly
think that acquiring goods and possessions insulates them and
makes them more secure. And so Jesus said, you cannot
serve God and mammon. You can't serve God. You can't
trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in riches. You can't
do it. And he's not talking only about
the riches of life, the things that we can accumulate in this
life, which are all passing and temporal and rusting. We think
of things like gold and diamonds as some kind of riches or maybe
stocks or something. Everything fades and devalues,
even gold. people invest in gold. It just
goes up and down like everything else. So it doesn't matter what
it is. You heap up riches in vain. He does not know who shall
gather them. It says in verse 6. He doesn't
know who's going to gather them together after he's gone. He
might waste them. He doesn't know that he might
leave them to a waster. And certainly this is true with
our own efforts to establish a reputation before men and confidence
before God. When we ourselves go about to
seek recognition from God or to justify ourselves before God,
we're actually digging our hole deeper and God will hold us accountable. So that's what this gathering
here, he knows not who will gather them, the Lord Jesus Christ will
hold him to account. He doesn't realize that he's
gonna have to give an account with these riches that are just
rags. The best that we do are rag,
filthy rags before God. So it's not going to hold up
in the day of judgment. It will prove not only to not
hold up, it'll actually prove to damn us because he says in
Romans chapter nine and 10, the Jews who refused to submit to
the righteousness of God, which is what Christ did in his sin-atoning
death, they held stubbornly to their own righteousness and refused
to submit to Christ. So what are they left with? Well,
they're left with their own, and they have to answer God in
their own person. They don't have a surety or an
advocate or a mediator. They don't have a substitute
because they wanted to represent themselves in court, the court
of heaven. So they don't know who shall
gather them. They don't know that they're going to give an
accounting to the judge. Well, they know it, but they've
bludgeoned their conscience so that it's not an immediate problem. In verse 7, now, he's talked
about his own frailty. He's talked about how he's spoken
of these things to God. He understands these things now
even more acutely because of the rod of God upon him. And
he doesn't find among men anyone that's any different. All men
are vain. He can't look to any man. In
verses 1 through 3, he's not going to justify himself before
men. He's not going to go to men for help. He's not going
to plead his cause before men. He hasn't sinned against men.
It's not the rod of men that's against him. It's God's rod.
All these things have led him to hold his silence and not complain
under the rod of God. Because as the Lord Jesus Christ
did, when he was chastened for our sins as our substitute and
surety, he held his peace. He didn't complain. He trusted
in the Lord. He submitted to God's hand, His
will. He loved God even under the chastening
of His hand. And that's what believers want
to do. But we realize our frailty. We realize that we're no different
than others. So now in verse 7, after confessing the fact
that he was no better than others, he was frail, his days were short,
he goes on, he says in verse 7, now Lord, what wait I for? What am I looking for? Have I
disquieted myself to heap up riches either in this world or
in my own filthy rags righteousness? No, no. He says in verse seven,
what do I wait for? My hope is in thee. And this
is such a blessed thing. He not only doesn't speak to
the wicked because he doesn't want to sin against God in their
presence, his highest concern is that he would honor God and
praise him from the heart and before others. And so he says
in verse seven, what is my hope? Am I doing what the wicked do? They disquiet themselves in order
to gather things and heap up riches, not knowing who will
gather them? No. He says, here's my hope.
The Lord is my hope. My portion. The Lord is my portion,
he's my inheritance, my lot. It's what God has given me is
himself. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God
has given us all that he is. Remember Colossians 2 verse 9,
the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, Christ given by
the Father for us is the emptying of all that God is in order to
save us from our sins. God has given himself for us
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's given himself
to us, not only for, but to. It wasn't a detached transaction. It was an intimate transaction,
a transaction where he not only put himself in our place, but
then came to us with himself, with all that he is in the communion
of his eternal holy person through his spirit, teaching us through
his works of saving grace all that he is in his character and
his eternality. So he says, my hope is in thee.
Here's what he wants. Lord. under the rod with all
this pressure that was within me while I was trying to hold
my tongue in the presence of the wicked, not sinning against
you, and all my cries and recognizing my own frailty, the brevity of
my life and the foolishness of men who seek to establish their
own righteousness and riches in this world, to secure themselves
a place in this world so they're not disturbed. He says, here's
what I need. Deliver me from all my transgressions,
not just one or two or a lot, but all of them. He had sinned
against God. God's hand was upon him, brought
him low. He knew his frailty. He knew
the shortness of his life. It resulted in him crying out
to the Lord. It made him feel how weak he
was. He came to the realization, the
Lord is all my hope. My portion is the Lord. My inheritance,
my riches, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, so deliver me
from all my transgressions, and make me not the reproach of the
foolish. All they want is to see my failure,
because in my failure, they would look to you and say, he's saved
by grace, he claims it's all of grace, and look at his miserable
failure. God must be a failure. He must
not be able to fulfill his promises. He doesn't want that, so he says,
don't make me the reproach of the foolish. He says in verse
9, I was dumb. I opened not my mouth because
you did it. The Lord did it. He's the one. If God has done it, then it's
right. If God has done it, then it's
best. And if God has done it, then trusting God, we submit
to it, we know that whatever God does, it's good, it's for
our good. And God, he says in Revelation
chapter 3, 19, he says, For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. He rebukes every son whom he
receives. And then he says in verse 10,
he did it, the Lord did it. He says, Lord, remove your stroke
away from me. I am consumed by the blow of
thine hand. Here you can see as a child who
was chastened by his mother or his father and he feels it acutely
and he's not pleading his innocence. He's not pleading anything. He
says, Lord, take away your stroke from me. I'm consumed by the
blow of your hand. He says in verse 11, when thou
with rebukes does correct man for iniquity, he's talking about
himself. It's my fault. It's my sin. Thou makest his
beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity, Selah. Every man is a sinner. All have
sinned. And every man is vain, therefore,
in his life. Lord, take away your rebuke. Take away your chastening hand.
It's because of my sin. Lord, take it away. You see,
this is calling on the Lord, isn't it? What's the difference
between calling on the name of the Lord and what men do in religion? Well, you see it here in this
Psalm. He's talking to God, he's speaking from his heart about
his own sinfulness and weakness and nothingness in himself. And then he's calling on the
Lord as the one alone against whom he sinned, the one whose
hand is upon him, the one who must justify him and forgive
him and take away and deliver him from his sin. He's calling
on the Lord to save him. And when we call on the name
of the Lord, we're calling on Him, who He is, for what we need
as sinners. It's that simple. Whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. What a promise
here. So he says, when thou with rebukes
dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume
away like a moth, Surely every man is vanity. You've seen moths. They seem like they're only alive
for a day. In the night, they're flapping
against the light. You take your hand and you hit
them and they're dead. They just seem like they're nothing.
The sun comes out and their wings melt and they're just nothing.
Verse 12. Now in verse 12, notice he's
bringing the whole matter to a conclusion here. He cries out,
Lord, hear my prayer and give ear to my cry. Answer me. Not only listen, but when the
Lord hears his people, he answers them. So give ear to my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears. He's not expecting that God will
reward him for being so sorrowful as if his tears have merit. He's
appealing to God's mercy and compassion. He's not looking
for recognition to himself or his works or his accumulated
self-righteous wealth or his importance as a man, as a king,
a prophet, or some other great thing. He's putting himself with
all other men as vanity. And then he says, hold not thy
peace at my tears, for I'm a stranger with thee. I have no one else
to go to. You're my hope. Deliver me from all my sins.
And then he says, I'm a stranger with you. The Lord himself was
a stranger in this world, wasn't he? It says in John chapter 1,
he made the world, and he was in the world, and the world did
not know him. He came to his own, and his own
received him not. He was a stranger in the world,
the Lord Jesus Christ, when he came. They thought he was strange.
They didn't like God, they didn't like to keep God in their knowledge,
and so they looked at Christ and they hated him. That's what
the world does. So now the psalmist, he's identifying
himself with the Lord as the one he had clung to, he had been
clinging to him as one who was cast out by men, and he says,
I'm a stranger with you. There's nothing in this world
that holds me here. I'm living my life as a stranger,
just passing through, nothing in this world. I'm not holding
anything in this world because my life is in Christ. Christ himself is my life. My
citizenship is in heaven. All my desire is in the Lord,
my portion. That's it. And so we live this
life now, he goes on the next verse, he says, oh spare me that
I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Now here what he's saying, we
would think, why would the psalmist ask the Lord to prolong his life
in this world? Spare me. Why would he do that? I could see if it was just spare
me from judgment, but he's asking the Lord to withhold his hand
of chastisement in this spare me, but also that he may recover
strength. He had been made weak, and now
he wants to be restrengthened. For what purpose? He says, before
I go hence and be no more. When our life in this world ends,
From the region of this world, we're gone. We're no more going
to be in this world. Not in this world, not in this
life. In the end of the world, when
the Lord Jesus Christ gathers his people to himself and recreates
all things new, we'll be in that heaven and in that earth. We'll
be with the Lord Jesus Christ. but not anymore in this world.
So why then would the psalmist ask the Lord to spare him and
to allow him to recover strength before he goes hence? Well, as
I thought about this, I think there's a couple of verses that
helped me, encouraged me along this line. So I want to bring
those to your attention. Let's see if I can find them
here. It's the one thing problematic
about making all these notes is finding them after you've
made them without just rereading them. Okay, so here's my thinking
on this. When I think about other people
in scripture who were similarly facing God's chastening hand
for their sins and asked the Lord to spare them and to deliver
them from whatever was afflicting them. Let's first think about
Hezekiah. Remember Hezekiah? He had a sickness
and he, whatever it was, he asked Isaiah the prophet about it.
And Isaiah told him, okay, you need to do such and such. And
this is actually in Isaiah chapter 38 and verse 17. I'm going to
just take an excerpt from this whole event here. Listen to Hezekiah
here. He says, behold, in Isaiah 38
verse 17, behold, for peace, I had great bitterness. but thou
hast, in love to my soul, delivered it from the pit of corruption."
Now, Hezekiah was told by Isaiah he would recover from his sickness,
and so he's thanking God and praising Him because he would
be delivered from the pit of corruption, which is the grave.
He says, thou hast delivered my soul from the pit of corruption,
thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. for the grave cannot
praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee, they that go down to the
pit cannot hope for thy truth. So now overlay that on this prayer
in the end of Psalm 39. The psalmist says, spare me that
I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. Doesn't
that sound a lot like Hezekiah? He was asking the Lord to take
away the sickness that would be the cause of his death, and
the Lord did. And because of that, he reflects
now how the Lord, in love to his soul, delivered him from
the pit, cast his sins, Hezekiah's sins behind the Lord's back.
In other words, he put them away. He put away his sins. They were
no more. They were not to be found by
God himself. Like it says in Jeremiah 50,
verse 20, in that day, the Lord will search and he will not find
our sins. So he's celebrating that. He
says the grave cannot praise thee. Death cannot celebrate
thee. They that go down to the pit
cannot hope for thy truth. So Hezekiah wanted to live for
what reason? Because in living he could hope
for God's truth. to see it and to praise God in
life. He goes on in Isaiah 38, verse
19, he says, Hezekiah, in his prayer, he says, the living,
the living, he shall praise thee as I do this day. The father
to the children shall make known thy truth. So Hezekiah is bringing
out a very important truth. Dead people cannot praise God. The dead people cannot hope in
God's truth. Therefore, he wanted to live.
He wanted to live that he might hope in God's truth and praise
the Lord for casting his sins behind his back, for delivering
him from the pit, and all of that out of love to his soul. Now, this is just saying that
believers, remember what Jesus told the Sadducees when they
questioned him about the resurrection? He said, haven't you read what
God said to Moses out of the burning bush? He says, I am the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. And so Hezekiah wants to be among
the living. So in this psalm, it's the same
way. We can understand it in the same way. I want to live
that I might hope in your truth. I want to live that I might declare
your goodness, your love for my soul, in casting my sins behind
your back and delivering me from the pit of corruption, from the
grave, from death. And that is what our salvation
is, is being delivered from these things. Now, our body is dead
because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness,
and because Christ is in us, then though the body is dead,
we shall be quickened, we shall be made alive in our body and
our body will be changed to be like His glorious body. But that's
the essence of this prayer of Isaiah in Isaiah of Hezekiah
in Isaiah chapter 38. But there's another commentary
on this verse and it's found in Philippians chapter 1. In
Philippians chapter 1 and verse 19 The Apostle Paul is reflecting
on the fact that there were many things that were potentially
going to appear, at least at first glance, to be the opposite
of what his hope was. And this is true of our lives
as Christians. It's true of what happened to
the Lord Jesus Christ. There's this pattern in scripture,
and therefore in life, in God's truth, that the things that God
has promised to us and are sure, even though they are promised
and sure, we go through events and circumstances in our lives
that make it look like, it makes it appear as if what God promised
us is not coming to pass, but the very opposite of that. And
you can read about this in many places in scripture, but take
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as a premier example. To the
disciples, this was the great failure. To the Pharisees and
the scribes and the soldiers and everybody else, it was a
great victory. The kingdom of Satan could have declared victory
at that point. He's dead. He's in the grave.
He's got a stone over his tomb. You know, we've gained the triumph
here. But in God's promise, He was going to raise him from the
dead, and his death was going to be the death of death in our
salvation. So, in Philippians chapter 1
and verse 19, the Apostle Paul is saying similar things. He
says, I know that this, whatever that was that he's talking about,
and in Philippians 1 it was that there were those who were opposed
to the gospel. He says, I know this shall turn
to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the
Spirit of Jesus Christ. So you pray, God gives, the Lord
Jesus Christ gives me His Spirit. and it will turn to my salvation,
and this is, he says in verse 20 of Philippians 1, according
to my earnest expectation, that's what hope is, an earnest expectation,
and my hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all
boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in
my body, whether it be by life or by death. Now, here the psalmist
is saying, spare me that I may recover strength before I go
hence and be no more. In Hezekiah's case, he was healed.
In the apostle Paul's case, he said, whether it's life or death,
I'm confident and I'm earnestly expecting that Christ will be
glorified in my body. Now here's a man who understood
that the purpose of God, the will of God, the work of Christ,
all for him as the elect of God, the redeemed of the Lord, that
one who'd been not only purchased but given the Spirit of God,
he's saying his body, would be the vessel in which Christ would
be glorified and magnified either by life or by death. He goes
on in Philippians 1 verse 21, he says, for, to me, to live
is Christ. And to die is gain. So if I live,
it's Christ. If I die, it's gain. I personally
will benefit in death because I'll go to be with the Lord Jesus
Christ. But if I live, it's all Christ. So it'll be better, he
says, if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor.
Yet what I shall choose, I don't know. I want not. For I am in
a strait, I got these two things, I'm not sure what to do, betwixt
two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is
far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful
for you. And having this confidence, I
know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance
of joy and faith." So the apostle was happy. even if he died or
if he lived. If he lived, he knew he was gonna
undergo all sorts of afflictions and imprisonment and persecutions,
but it would be for the sake of the church, of Christ. So
for me to live is Christ. He'll be glorified, and He is
my life, so it's all Him. If I die, it'll be Christ. I'll
be able to go to be with the Lord. I'll be with the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, in His life, it would be more beneficial for
the church, but in His death, it would be just the consummation
of what He had believed Christ for, which is to see His face.
The psalmist is asking the same thing. Spare me that I may recover
strength before I go. I want to hope in your truth.
I want to declare your goodness, your love to me, delivering my
soul from the pit of corruption, the grave, death, the pit. They
cannot celebrate the living. I want to be among the living.
And so he's talking about his resurrection. And that's what
gets us to the essence here of this psalm in the end, is that
the Lord Jesus Christ, as the subject of this psalm, not only
says in verse five, where he says, every man at his best state
is altogether vanity, And he says in verse four that I may
know how frail I am, how short my life is. He's talking about
how he himself became weak. having taken to Himself our nature,
our body, and our soul. He was made of... He made Himself,
it says in Philippians 2, 7, of no reputation. And the word
there, no reputation, it's also translated in the New Testament
as vanity or vain. Nothing. Empty. Of no use. In other words, To all outward
appearance, he was no different than a sinful man. He says in
Romans 8 that he took on the likeness of sinful flesh. The likeness of sinful flesh.
That's very close to vanity and frailty, isn't it? And he himself
did die. He says in Hebrews chapter two,
verse nine, that as the children were partakers of flesh and blood,
he also took part of the same, that through death he might destroy
him that had the power of death. And in verse nine of Hebrews
two, he tasted death, that he might deliver us from death.
So it was necessary for him to be frail, to set aside his reputation,
to identify with us in our weaknesses, and to be subject to death. But
then at the end, At the end of this, in verse 13, he's talking
about his own resurrection. In the Lord Jesus Christ, in
his resurrection, he desired to be raised from the dead, to
celebrate how God had delivered him from death and how In that
deliverance, he had delivered all of his people from death
so that he would declare his father's word and his father's
name to his brethren. And in the midst of the church,
he would sing praise to him. He would give them his spirit.
He would commission them with the gospel. He would build his
church. The gates of hell would not prevail
against it, all because he arose from the dead. And so spare me,
take away your chastening hand. God did not spare his son, but
delivered him up for us all. But then he raised him from the
dead for our justification." So there we have the answer here
of his prayer. So I see all these things here
in the psalm. Take a look at the notes if you
want a more lengthy and probably a more coherent explanation. what I have been thinking about
here. Notice in this psalm how the
one the psalmist is crying to is the Lord. The one he's crying
to is the Lord. He says he is his hope. The one
thing he wants is to be with the Lord and be delivered from
all of his transgressions. He wants his prayer to be heard. He has no one else but the Lord.
He's a stranger on earth. And he wants to be spared, he
wants to be among the living in order to give God praise,
to celebrate his goodness towards him, his love. And this is the
cry of every believer. And what a blessing it is that
our Lord Jesus Christ would so identify with us, that he would
so take on our case, that it would be almost indistinguishable
in the prayer of him, in our own prayer, in our own frailty
and vanity and sins. He did it as our substitute in
surety, and we do it looking to Him as all. And so we call
upon the Lord, save us. We don't ask for recognition
to ourselves. We ask God to recognize Christ
for us. Let's pray. Lord, like the publican,
do not consider our sins, but consider your Son. So we pray,
Lord, save us. You alone can save us from our
sins and deliver us from the stroke that should be upon us
to receive what we deserve. We ask you not to give us what
we deserve, but to give us what Christ has done. not for anything
in us, but all by your grace, not for our glory, all for your
glory. And we pray this for all who
hear us tonight. We pray that it would be before
your throne, in heaven, in your court, and you would confess
our name in heaven and before the angels, and that you would
bring us to yourself, that we would not be disappointed at
all in anything of our hope. Our hope is the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have no confidence in ourselves, but we trust him entirely. In
Jesus' name we pray, and for his glory, amen.