Psalm 39. I hope that you've
turned in your Bible to Psalm 39. Perhaps you've even had a
chance to read it. I wanna read it with you. This
psalm is a psalm I have never really studied. I have been,
I've read it and I have the fourth and fifth verse in my Bible have
been underlined and some comments were written about the seventh
and eighth and a couple of the other verses. But I always wonder
when I read a psalm like this, it doesn't seem to me immediately
obvious what it's talking about. And then also I read what other
men had to say, like John Gill, and Charles Spurgeon, and Robert
Hawker, and I don't know, Matthew Henry, and John Calvin even. And so in reading these men,
various opinions seemed to come out about it. But before I read
what they had to say, I read it over and over myself to try
to understand it, and I have to say that it still seemed difficult
for me. Some things seemed clear, but
other things seemed obscure. So I'm excited about going through
this psalm with you tonight, because I believe that I do now
understand it at least a little bit, and hopefully that will
be helpful to you and me as we consider this psalm and what
the Lord has to say to us through it. It's always important that
we try to take the words of God to ourself that we see the glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ in those words, and that's what I hope
to be able to see in this psalm tonight. OK, so let's read Psalm
39. It says in verse one, I said,
I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue. I will
keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me. I was
dumb with silence. In other words, I didn't talk.
I held my peace even from good. and my sorrow was stirred, my
heart was hot within me while I was musing the fire burned.
Then spake I with my tongue, Lord, make me to know mine end
and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how frail
I am. Behold, thou hast made my days
as an handbreadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee. Verily,
every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. Now the word Selah is a pause,
a musical pause, and it means at least that, but I'm not going
to get into the meaning of it now. I've done that before and
I just want to continue reading here, but I'm just pausing here
because it says Selah. In verse 6, Surely every man
walketh in a vain show, surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches. This is
a characteristic of every man. It's talking about a single person,
though. He says, he heapeth up riches,
and knoweth not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait
I for? My hope is in thee. Deliver me
from all my transgressions. Make me not the reproach of the
foolish. I was dumb. I opened not my mouth,
because thou didst it. 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. Surely every man is vanity."
Sila. That's the second time he said
that, and he said it in both times after declaring that every
man is vanity. Hear my prayer, O Lord. and give
ear to my cry, hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger
with thee, and a sojourner as all my fathers were. O spare
me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more. All right. So if you look at
this psalm, as all of the psalms do, it's not only a song, but
it's a song out of a context, out of a situation, some circumstance
that led to the writing of this song and that led to the great
burden that David felt when he wrote this psalm. And so that's
the first question that I had when I was reading this. He immediately
jumps in in verse one and says, I said, I will take heed to my
ways that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my mouth with a bridle
while the wicked is before me. And then in verse two, I was
dumb with silence. He didn't talk. He wasn't talking. He said, I held my peace even
from good, and my sorrow was stirred, and my heart was hot
within me while I was musing, the fire burned. Then spake I
with my tongue. OK, so those first three verses
beg the question, what prompted him to say all of that? Where
was he when he said this? He said he was determined, he
was resolved not to speak when he was with the wicked. And so
we wonder, why? Why was he not speaking? So that's the first question
I had here. But notice in verse four, when he did finally speak
what he spoke about, verse four, 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 says, Behold, thou hast made
my days as a hand-breath, and mine age is as nothing before
thee. Verily, every man in his best
state is altogether vanity. And then, look over in the last
verse, he says, O spare me that I may recover strength before
I go hence and be no more. So it's clear, and this was pointed
out in a number of the commentators on this psalm, that this psalm
is a song of mourning. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. So it's a mourning
song. And in fact, one of the writers
said, it's a beautiful elegy, which means it's a funeral song.
And a couple of places I was reading, Spurgeon quoted one
of the early writers back in the 1600s who had written a sermon,
which was a sermon at a funeral, and he used this psalm. So this
psalm is a very, mournful him. And so that's the first thing
to point out here. And we get that from this verse
in verse four, make me know my end. My days are short here,
it's like a hand breath. My age is nothing before thee.
And then every man has this, every man's vanity. And he asked
the Lord to spare him in verse 13. Why would he ask the Lord
to spare him? You would think that as a believer,
he would want to go to be with the Lord. And so, especially
if he's feeling so sorrowful. And so those are some of the
questions that I wanted to bring to your attention too. And you
also see this in verse 12, this sorrow he's speaking about here.
He said, Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Hold
not thy peace at my tears. And he says, I'm a stranger with
thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were. Okay, so we understand
him to be talking about his place in this world. He's like a passer
through. He's a pilgrim. He doesn't have
a permanent place here, very temporal, and he feels it. He's
strange to the people and the people are strange to him. and
he doesn't feel like this world is his home. So, all these things
were there, but notice in verse seven and eight, notice this. Now, remember, he had resolved
not to speak in the first three verses, and he felt the shortness
of his life in verses four and five, and in verse 13, he cried
to the Lord to spare him before he goes. from there and is no
more, meaning no more in this world. But then in verse seven,
now, when he's really getting it down and drawing the string
tight, notice what he says in verse seven. He says, and now,
Lord, what wait I for? He's commented about all men
are vanity and in verse 6 he said everyone walks in a vain
show and that they are disquieted for nothing. They put themselves
under stress and anxiety for nothing because they heap up
riches to themselves and they don't know what's going to happen
after they die. So he says, now what do I wait
for? He turns his attention to the
Lord and he says, why am I talking? Why is this pent up desire to
express what's on my heart and mind bearing me down? What is
it? And notice what he says in verse
seven. This is very dear. This is very
dear in this psalm. He says, now Lord, what wait
I for? My hope is in thee. Wow, doesn't
that take the load off? He says, my hope is in you, Lord.
In fact, he asks in verse eight, deliver me from all my transgressions,
make me not the reproach of the foolish. So we see here that
the psalmist shares our situation, doesn't he? We have one hope,
it's the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't have another hope, not
in this world, not in ourselves. In fact, the one desire, the
great desire we have, is that the Lord himself would deliver
me from all my transgressions. That's what it says in verse
eight. So I say all these things in kind of a thumbnail sketchy,
scratching at this psalm way, so we can begin to understand
this in a way that we, I think, can really appreciate what's
going on here. So it seems to me, now when I
think about what's being said here, it seems to me that the
beginning of the psalm, the first three verses where he resolves
not to speak, David is reflecting on what he had resolved to do
in the past. as a result of what he later
observes and prays for in the present, which is in verse 11
through 13. In verses 11 he says, ?When thou
with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, you make his beauty
to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity.?
So you can feel him now He himself is feeling the sting, the weight,
the lash of God's hand. He says, hear my prayer, O Lord,
and give ear to my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears. He's crying. For I am a stranger
with thee, I have no one else, and a sojourner, as all my fathers
were. He identifies with all those
who came before him, who were the Lord's people. O spare me
that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more." That's
the present. That's the present distress and
sorrow he's feeling, but he reflects back from that to verses one
and three when he says, I said I will take heed to my ways and
that I sin not with my heart while the wicked is before me,
I won't say anything. So I think if we understand that
relationship to verses one and three to the rest of the psalm,
it helps me understand this now. So David looks back reflecting
on what he resolved to do because of his present distress and feeling
the stroke of God's discipline, his chasing hand. And so he begins
the psalm by unburdening his heart. And his burden was that
he previously had determined to keep silent before the wicked.
We don't know exactly why, but we'll get to that. And the reason
he had resolved, or the context in which he resolved to remain
silent while he was with the wicked, was that he was under
the pain of God's chastisement, which he expresses in verse 11,
when he said, When thou with rebukes corrects man for iniquity,
you make his beauty to consume away like a moth, and every man
is vanity. If you look at verse 9 also,
he says, I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because you did
it, thou didst it. Remove thy stroke away from me,
I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. So he's weighed down
heavily by God's chastisement. And under this, he has resolved,
under this chastening hand of God, he feels the sorrow of it,
the pain of it in himself, and he prays to God to deliver him
from it, from all his sins, because that's why he was under this.
He said that in verse 11, when you with rebukes correct man
for iniquity, so it was for iniquity that he was rebuked by God. So
that weighing heavily upon him, he thought back how when that
was his case, he had resolved not to speak, not to even speak
in the presence of the wicked. And then he says in verse 3,
look at that, while he was not saying anything, He resolved
not to speak in the presence of the wicked. He says, even
from good in verse two, he says in verse three, my heart was
hot within me while I was musing. He was thinking about all that
God was doing, his own sufferings under that, his sorrows and tears
and his prayers, his words. He was thinking about his own
case, thinking about God's promises, who God is, his character. and
what he could pray. And as he was thinking about
that, it says, it was like there was this swelling pressure within
him that suddenly burst forth and caused him to say something
at the last. That's what verse three is saying,
okay? He spake. but why has he resolved to keep
silent, okay? So I wanna give you some reasons
as I thought about this from scripture, why he was silent.
And I think by thinking about these things, it helps us to
appreciate what the psalmist is doing this, what he's saying
in this psalm. Okay, first of all, the one who's
speaking here is David. And as we've seen so many times
before, David is a prophet who's speaking ultimately of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it says in Colossians 118,
in all things Christ must have the preeminence. So preeminence
means he has the first place. David, by natural descent, was
the father, or Christ was the seed of David, it says in scripture. And he was the seed of Abraham.
In other words, he was the one promised by God to come through
them in a natural way, by his physical body and soul. But he was David's Lord in his
true character as God and Lord. He was Christ. So David spoke
of Christ. David spoke of his Son, who was
also his Lord. And that's the thing we want
to keep in mind. The psalm is the cry of a believer as a mourning
A sorrowful song, but it's preeminently the cry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So why would he say in the first three verses, I'm not going to
say anything in the presence of the wicked? And what does
it mean that he didn't even say what was good? I mean, when we
have, when God's rod, for example, think about it when you were
a child. Hopefully when you were a child, your parents at some
point administered discipline to you and you felt the sting
of it for your wrong. And the effect that that had
on you, if they administered it properly, is that it made
you quiet. It made you submissive. Any kind
of discipline that we bring on our children should make them
submissive. And if it doesn't, it means that
they're probably laughing inside instead of being made submissive
and they're still trying to be the boss and trying to take control
of things. But when the Lord disciplines,
it always has the effect that He intends. It makes us quiet
and submissive. It makes us meek. It makes us
poor in spirit. It makes us mourn. It makes us
meek. It makes us hunger and thirst
for His righteousness. Now that's what I understand
the psalmist, David, and every believer is expressed here through
David, but preeminently the Lord Jesus Christ. So why would he
say in the first part that he wasn't going to speak? Well,
first of all, because he was not going to, under the rod of
God, under his chastening hand, he wasn't going to seek mercy
from merciless men. He wasn't going to open his mouth
to those who were afflicting him or slandering him, saying
all manner of evil against him falsely. He wasn't going to open
his mouth to ask them for mercy. Because men are merciless. And to ask them for mercy is
to play to their desire, their lust for the whimper and the
cries under their unjust affliction. So that's the first thing. In
fact, in 1 Chronicles, and also in 2 Samuel 24, but 1 Chronicles
21, it says this. David was being chastened by
God in 1 Chronicles 21, and he said this. He said to Gad, he
said, I am in a great strait. God gave him three choices. Do
you want to experience famine for a time? Do you want to experience
being chased by your enemies for a long time? Or do you want
to experience something else? I can't remember what it was.
And David said, I'm in a great straight. You know, I'm I really
have no wiggle room here. Let me fall now into the hand
of the Lord, for very great are his mercies. But let me not fall
into the hand of man. So David didn't have anything
to do with the wicked insofar as seeking mercy from the wicked.
Because he knew that men were merciless, and he didn't expect
mercy from them. The mercies of the wicked are
cruel. And there's a verse in scripture that says that. The
tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. So there's no relief
from the wicked. Because man is cruelly merciless,
he had no desire to seek that. In fact, Jesus said this to the
Pharisees. He said, go learn what this means. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. So they clearly were not merciful.
But he tells them, you go learn what this means. I will have
mercy and not sacrifice. I am not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. So the Lord Jesus Christ himself
was merciful because God was merciful. And he is God. He is the express image of his
person. But man is not merciful. He's merciless. Man is cruel
and he's unjust and he's untrue in all of his ways. So the persecution
of all the prophets and of Christ prove that man is wicked and
merciless and cruel and unjust and untrue. He's deceived and
he deceives. So that's the first reason why
David was silent when he was with the wicked under the chastening
hand of God. It's because there's no mercy
with the wicked. He would never appeal to them,
you would never go to court with the wicked for mercy when you
need mercy from God. Okay, the second reason he was
silent is that he did not put his trust in man. Why would he
call upon men for help and aid when he didn't trust in men?
He didn't put his trust in men. It says in Jeremiah 17 that a
man is cursed who puts his trust in man, but the man is blessed
who puts his trust in the Lord. That's Jeremiah 17. in many other
places. So why call on man who cannot
be trusted, who himself is a deceiver? You wouldn't do that. God is
true, it says in Romans 3, 4, but every man is a liar. God
is true, but every man is a liar. So that's the second reason.
The third reason that he would be silent when he was with the
wicked is because man would not help him and could
not help him, even if he could trust him. He wasn't able to
help him and he wasn't willing to help him because of his cruel,
merciless character. It was not against man that David
had sinned, it was against God. Therefore, it wasn't man who
could or would forgive him. If man said, I forgive you like
a priest, a Catholic priest would do, my son, your sins are forgiven
you. That's blasphemy. God alone can
forgive sins. So why would he appeal to trust
in man or to ask a man for forgiveness? The stroke was from God. The
sin was against God. Only God could forgive him. Only
God could remove the stroke. So that's why he didn't speak
to the wicked. He had resolved not to open his
mouth to the wicked. He was under the chasing hand
of God. He was only going to take his prayer to the Lord. And so this is a it's so far
this we can see is a great lesson to us, isn't it? That when we're
in trouble, we trust in the Lord. We don't put our trust in man.
We don't appeal to men for their mercy when we need mercy from
God. And we ask God to, we confess
our sins to the Lord, not to man, and we ask God for forgiveness
and deliverance from our sins. And so that's the obvious things
we see that here. And then, also, the fourth reason
is that it was the Lord who made him sorry. It was the Lord who
brought upon him this stroke. He said, I opened not my mouth
because thou didst it. This is why David didn't open
his mouth. It was because God's hand had
done it, and he knew he deserved it. It was not man's chastisement,
it was God's stroke. And that you see in verses nine
and 10. Now the fifth reason, I know it sounds like we're just
gonna keep going here down the line, but it's helpful, I think,
to see these things from this psalm itself. The fifth reason
he would not open his mouth to plead with men is that if we
speak for ourselves, we make ourselves the ultimate authority.
So here's something that children often don't get when dad or mom
take a spanking them for something they didn't need a spanking for,
is that when they continue to protest, It wasn't my fault,
it was Billy's fault, or whatever they say. I didn't mean to do
it. I'll never do it again. They
keep blathering on, then they're just making noise. But when they
get quiet, then the father or mother stops spanking them. And
this is something that the believer knows, is that when God has our
full attention, We get very quiet, don't we? To anybody else. because our heart is going out
to the Lord, isn't it? It's appealing to God. So we
don't open our mouth to plead with men. If we speak for ourselves
to plead with men, we're making ourselves some kind of authority,
but it is our wisdom to keep silent under the rod of God so
that if God himself speaks for us, that's what we want, right?
Under the rod of God, we want the Lord himself to speak and
plead for us. If God speaks for us, then who
can speak against us? Now here we begin to find a great
comfort in all of our trials. Because God has promised that
he does speak for his people, doesn't he? If it is God who
justifies, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. That's
the comfort of our Father. God himself says, who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? God has dealt with them. Who is he that's going to condemn
them? God has justified them in the
Lord Jesus Christ. What a comfort that is. So as
Christ himself prayed, and which his people prayed in him, who
are to follow him by taking up the prayer, to Him who prayed
for them. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ
prayed in Psalm 35. Listen to these words in Psalm
35. We went over this already, but I'll remind you. He says
in verse 1, Plead my cause, O Lord. Now this is the Lord Jesus Christ
under the hand of God's chastisement. Plead my cause. The chastisement
came from wicked men. So he's pleading to the Lord.
He doesn't plead to them. He pleads to the Lord. Plead
my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight against
them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler
and stand up for my help. Draw out also the spear and stop
the way against those that persecute me and say unto my soul, that
you are my salvation. Say it. I am thy salvation and
say it to my soul. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
in Psalm 35 is expressing that he did. That's what all of his
people following him do. And that's what's done in this
Psalm in the same way. He holds his peace when he's
with the wicked because he asks the Lord to plead his cause The
Lord's cause, which is his cause, this cause of Christ and the
cause of every one of his elect. Do you know that God's cause
is the same cause as Christ's cause? It was to save his people
from their sin. And that's the cause of God's
elect. That's the cause God has for
them. And that's what they want. So this is the cause we ask him
to plead. And how how can we plead? The the Lord himself has
to be our advocate. And he has to plead to the judge
over all that the judge over all would decide on our behalf
because of Christ and plead against our enemies. And our enemies
are our sins. So that's a... The other thing
here is that in this other reason why he was silent is that he
would not open his mouth to plead as the authority or as the lawyer
against his enemies. He would let the Lord plead.
Like it says in, I think it's Zechariah chapter three, where
the angel standing by says to Satan,
he says, the Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. The Lord rebuke thee. That's all you need. If the Lord
is for me, no one can be against me. Now, my sins, and just a
little diversion here, my sins are my great foe. Aren't they
yours? That's what the psalmist says
here in verse eight, deliver me. as a captive, as one who
is being afflicted, deliver me from all my transgressions. So
my sins are all my foe, my great foe, and I cannot deliver myself
from them, can I? Only God can, and only God will. And he does so only by Jesus
Christ. And I want to read this to you
in Romans chapter 7. We've read it so many times,
but it's helpful to see these basic essential points of the
gospel in these two verses. Look at Romans chapter 7. He says in the last two verses,
he says, oh wretched man that I am. Now that's the first point
in the gospel, our sin. God teaches us what we are, a
wretched sinner. And not just that we've done
sin, but that we are sin. We're sinful, we're wretched.
And then he says, who shall deliver me Well, who's gonna? He can't deliver himself, so
he's asking, who? Who? Who shall deliver me from
the body of this death, this sinful man that I am? He says
in verse 25, I thank God. God alone can. God alone did. That's what he's saying here.
And how? Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is the gospel,
isn't it? I'm a sinner. I can't deliver
myself. I need someone to deliver me.
Only God can. God did it by Jesus Christ. And
that's what's happening here in this psalm here. He's saying
he's crying out to the Lord. He doesn't appeal to men. Only
God can help him. And he trusts that he will. So
he appeals to him. Now, in light of this fifth reason
why David resolved to keep silence before the wicked, I want to
take a slight diversion from the springboard of Psalm 35. And while we do so, I also want
us to see in this diversion that it is Christ who fulfilled Psalm
39 in a preeminent manner. So again, in Psalm 35, where
the Lord says, plead my cause, O Lord, with them that fight
against me, that then strive with me, fight against them that
fight against me, and so on, take hold of shield and buckler,
stand up. So men and devils opposed my
savior when he undertook to do the will of God and answer heaven's
supreme court for all my sins. Men and devils opposed him in
that. And their opposition and their
hostility arose because of my sins. They wouldn't be there. They wouldn't be enemies if I
wasn't a sinner. So it was all my fault. The entire
matter, the issue, was my sin against God in heaven, against
my faithful creator, against my holy sovereign. But God took
the initiative. He undertook to save himself. And he appointed Christ to do
so. Christ himself interposed in
this initiative and in this purpose of God. He undertook to bear
all the guilt and all of the filth that I was in my person
and in all that I did. He shouldered all of my sin and
all of the judgment of God's justice that I deserve so that
he, bearing my sins, bore the reproach and slanders of the
enemy that arose from my sin. So being slandered and so being
mercifully persecuted, he answered God for me with himself. And
this is what a surety does. And his answer was by the will
of God. God appointed him to this for me. God gave this to
him to do. As he says in John 10, 17, he
commanded him to lay down his life and take it again. He was
to bear all of this in silence because he became guilty with
my sin. And it says so in Isaiah 53,
as a sheep before his shears is dumb, so he opened not his
mouth. He bore all of this without pleading
for mercy to merciless enemies who never knew God, who knew
no righteousness, who knew no justice, and who knew nothing
of grace, and who showed no mercy, but who served only their own
sinful pride and rebellion in their pride to unseat God and
destroy his son and to defame his holy name and character and
overthrow his sovereign rule and holy cause and purpose of
grace and his saving work. That's what men wanted to do,
is overthrow God and Christ. That's the devil's work. They
wanted only to throw down his crown to the ground, to kill
his loved ones, nor did Christ while before God, bearing all
of the guilt and reproach that I was, vindicate himself before
wicked men." He didn't justify himself to men, did he? He did
not even take his rightful place as the judge of all to judge
them for their great evils when he was under the judgment of
God himself. He kept silence. Why? Well, first, because he
was guilty and he knew he deserved what God brought for my sin that
he willingly bore as his. That's why he was truly guilty.
Second, because he first answered God for me with himself and then
he advocated for me against all my accusers with his own blood.
He pleaded his own justification that his father pronounced when
he raised him from the dead and exalted him to his own right
hand. And because Christ advocated for me to God at God's right
hand by his own intercession, that place of victory and favor
and honor and authority that God gave him to, as King Ahasuerus
gave to Mordecai in the Book of Esther, he says, you just
write whatever you want in the king's name. He said, do all
that pleases you against your enemies, against the enemies
of my people, for their eternal salvation, for my eternal life,
for my inheritance and blessings, all those blessings which are
by grace and by Christ merits alone. Shall I therefore, shall
I not therefore keep silent, I myself? Shall I not look to
him and cry to him to plead for me against my sin according to
this cause of his? His work, His prayer, His word,
His sovereign right, and His sovereign rule, His truth, His
righteousness, and for His glory. Isn't that our cry? So we can
join the psalmist in this, can't we? In his silence, because he
laid it all on the Lord. He rolled his case on Jehovah. Therefore, let me cry to the
Lord Jesus Christ most high and look to him to answer God in
all for me with himself and thus silence all of my accusers because
of all my sins. So that was the diversion I wanted
to take there to show you how this psalm unfolds to us and
reveals to us the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for his people
as he depended on God to deliver him when he stood before God
in our place for us to answer all with himself for our sins
and to endure the reproach and the slanders and the spitting
and buffeting and all the suffering and the death and all the shame
that he bore from men who were wicked, so our salvation is expressed
in that. Now the other reason I see that
he's silent was not only did he not want to justify himself
before men because he relied on God, but because he knows
that the wicked want to see, the psalmist knows that the wicked
want to see him fail. Because if he fails, if he expresses
something with his mouth under the under the rod of God that
they can latch on to, even if it's even if it's true, they'll
latch on to it and twist it. And they'll use the good words. They'll use them slanderously
against him. So he keeps silent the whole
time. You see, and then I want to say one more thing
here, and I'll stop here because we could probably continue on
here, but the other reason I think that David, by prophecy Christ,
refrained his lips while he was among the wicked is because of
this very important reason. In Hebrews chapter 2 and verse
12 it says this, the Lord Jesus said this, I will declare thy
name unto my brethren. In the midst of the church will
I sing praise unto thee. Now, think about this. The Lord
Jesus Christ would not allow devils, when he healed men, he
would not allow devils to speak. Devils knew who he was, but he
told them, be quiet. He rebuked them if they tried
to make him known who he was. It wasn't their job to proclaim
his praise. And nor was it his place, Christ's
place, to proclaim his praise, his father's praise, to the wicked,
but to his people. So he says, I will declare thy
name not to all men, but to my brethren. In the midst of the
church will I sing praise unto thee. He refrained his lips while
he was among the wicked because he reserved his praise to God
for when he was with the congregation of the Lord. So that's why he
did this. Christ prayed for his people,
and he revealed himself to his people, but he did not reveal
himself to others. And so when he spoke to his disciples
and to the people in parables, his disciples asked him, why
do you speak to them in parables? He says, because to you it is
given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to them
it is not given. And that he even said more than
that, he says, less seen and hearing, they be converted and
I should heal them. So it was definitely not his
will to sing God's praise or to reveal his father to the wicked. All right. So I want to stop
there tonight. We'll have to go on with this
the next time because there's far too much to cover here in
this one time here. So we'll take this up next time. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you that even in this psalm under the chastening of Your hand,
David felt such great sorrow and he felt such anguish of soul
that he was still concerned with your glory and your honor. He
was fully persuaded that only you could help him, so he appealed
only to you. He put all of his trust in you.
You were his hope, he had no other. And he appealed to you
to save him from all of his sins. And so we see in this, Lord,
our own condition and our own need. And we can take such comfort
that by the warrant of your word, given by your Holy Spirit concerning
your way with your people who are sinners in themselves. And
especially as we see your dealings with your son for us in this
psalm, even in this psalm, we can see your hand of mercy that
you delight in mercy. You came to call sinners to repentance. And we pray, Lord, that you would
speak now to each of our hearts and cause us to come as those
who can do nothing to deliver themselves, who know they can't,
and they cry to God and find that He has done that in the
Lord Jesus Christ, and so they're thankful. So they can say with
the Apostle Paul, thanks be unto God. that He shall deliver us
to the Lord Jesus Christ. What a blessing this is. All
of our troubles serve to bring us to that place where we see
that all of our victory is given to us by our Savior for what
He did, for what He died. In His name we pray and for His
glory, amen.