Psalm 38, let's read this Psalm
together. Oh Lord, rebuke me not in thy
wrath. Neither chasten me in thy hot
displeasure, For thine arrows stick fast in me, And thy hand
presseth me sore. Now I have to pause here because
we just jumped right in and began reading these words and it's
clear that these words are not to be taken lightly or considered
as just another piece of information lying on the table like the newspaper.
but they are the outpouring from the heart of a man under great
affliction, no greater affliction than this affliction. And he
cries to the Lord, O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, neither
chasten me in thy hot displeasure, for thine arrows stick fast in
me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in
my flesh because of thine anger. Neither is there any rest in
my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone
over mine head. As a heavy burden they are too
heavy for me. My wounds stink and are corrupt
because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down
greatly, I go mourning all the day long, for my loins are filled
with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore-broken,
I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord,
all my desire is before Thee, and my groaning is not hid from
Thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me. As for the light
of mine eyes, it is also gone from me. My lovers and my friends
stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off. They also that seek after my
life lay snares for me, and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous
things and imagine deceits all the day long. But I as a deaf
man heard not, and I as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth,
thus I was, as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no
reproofs. For in thee, O Lord, do I hope,
thou wilt hear, O Lord my God. For I said, hear me, lest otherwise
they should rejoice over me. When my foot slippeth, they magnify
themselves against me. For I am ready to halt, and my
sorrow is continually before me. For I will declare mine iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin. But
mine enemies are lively, and they are strong, and they that
hate me wrongfully are multiplied. They also that render evil for
good are mine adversaries, because I follow the thing that good
is. Forsake me not, O Lord. O my
God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord,
my salvation." It's clear that this is a cry of a desperate
man, isn't it? Psalm 38 is one of the psalms
in Scripture that's called the Penitential Psalms. There are
six psalms that are identified by people. as the penitential
Psalms, and in each of them David cries out to God for mercy as
one who feels the anger of God in his own soul, the oppression
of his enemies, and the weight of his sin against God. He confesses
his sin, but there are Besides these six Psalms, which would
be Psalm 6 and Psalm 32 and this one, and others like Psalm 51
and so on, there are more Psalms, I think, in Scripture than just
these six that are penitential Psalms. For example, Psalm 80,
where it says, Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause thy
face to shine, and we shall be saved. Or in Psalm 85, where
he talks about how God has taken away his wrath, And so, in whatever
Psalms, though, the Holy Spirit has recorded the prayers of a
sinner crying out to God with the assurance that the sinner's
prayer is heard in all such cases, those prayers, and that person
who is praying, that suppliant, becomes very dear to us, doesn't
he? They who have sinned against
our God are very dear to us when we hear them crying out to God
for His mercy, because we ourselves also are sinners. Isn't that
true? And they teach us that there
is forgiveness with the Lord, that He forgives us according
to His lovingkindness, according to the multitude of His tender
mercies. He forgives in righteousness, and therefore it's all by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's what we know from the
rest of scripture and from these psalms here is that this psalm
is a prayer. In this case it was a confession
of David to God for his sin that he had committed against God.
Now Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 9. that as he sat and
meet at a house, many publicans and sinners came to him. Notice,
publicans and sinners. There's no denying that the spirit
of God is telling us the character of these people. They came to
him and they sat down with him and his disciples. And when the
Pharisees saw it, they said to his disciples, why does your
master eat with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard
that, he said to them, they that be whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick. You hear that word, sick? In
this Psalm, what you hear is how the arrows of God stuck fast
in him, how he had no soundness in his flesh, how his bones had
no rest because of his sin, how his iniquities were a heavy burden,
too heavy for him to bear, how his wounds stink and were corrupt,
and that there was no soundness in him, in his flesh, because
of his foolishness. That sounds like what the Lord
Jesus said here, the physician is for the sick, the sin sick.
He goes on in Matthew chapter nine, he says to the Pharisees,
when they asked this question of his disciples, why does your
master eat with publicans and sinners? He said, you go and
learn what this means. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. I am not come to call the righteous
but sinners to repentance." Now that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's why he came into the world. He did not come here to call
the righteous. He came here to call sinners. to himself in faith, in repentance
from unbelief, trusting Christ, knowing God in him. That's why
he came. That's why God created the world.
That's why God ordained that there would be a fall of mankind
into sin in their father, Adam, and there would be a recovery
of his elect in the Lord Jesus Christ, the second man. It was
so that we could know God. We cannot know God apart from
the Lord Jesus Christ, apart from the gospel of his salvation,
how he came, who is God, as man, bore the sins of his people,
took them away, and in doing so brought them to God. This
is phenomenal. This is who God is. So we know
this only by the entire account of redemption. And when I read
these verses in Matthew, my thinking here, and especially in the light
of Psalm 38, is how much I need a sin physician. I need a physician
to heal the sickness of my sin, and the only one who can do that
is the Lord Jesus Christ. So with these publicans and sinners
now, let us gather at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ as we
look at this Psalm. Now in this psalm, the psalmist's
prayer, in this psalm we see that he confesses that his sin
is his sin. It's all his fault. He calls
it my foolishness, my sin, my iniquities, and many other things.
And his sin, in this psalm, we see it brings pain, pain to him. And his pain is because he has
sinned against God. It's not so much that he's looking
forward to eternal damnation and crying out for that. He feels
the pain right now in his life. And this pain that God brings
upon him is a deep pain. He says, I am troubled. I am
bowed down greatly, going mourning all the day long, mourning like
a person who mourns for the dead, mourning over his sin. My loins
are filled with a loathsome disease. This is a deep pain. And he says,
there's no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken.
And the other thing we see about this pain is that it is inward.
It is inward. A lot of times people think that,
well, if I've done wrong, God's going to get back at me for that. Maybe he's going to burn my house
down or break my car down or something like that. But the
affliction of God in the affliction, the chastisement of God upon
his people for their sin is inward. Primarily, it is inward. Outwardly,
we might have trouble, but the outward problems are nothing.
It's the inward, as we're going to see as we look at this psalm.
So it's deep and it's inward. He calls it inward because he
says in verse eight, for example, the disquietness of my heart
It's his heart is the problem. He says also, my heart panteth,
in verse 10. And he says, thy arrows stick
fast in me, and there's no rest in my bones. You see, it's deep,
and it's inward, and it is intense. It's intense. His iniquities,
he says in verse four, have gone over my head as a heavy burden.
They're too heavy for me. He has no recourse, no way to
remove his sin, no way to remove the pain of his sin because it's
inward and it's from God. It's from God's own hand. He
says, thy hand presseth me sore. And this pain is therefore from
God. It's from God's hand because
of his sin. He admits it. This pain that
I'm suffering is because of my sin. And it is his sin that causes
him the pain. That's what he describes here
when he says, there's no soundness in my flesh. He's describing
the pain of his sin in his heart, in his mind, in his conscience.
That's the pain. But yet, even though this is
the case, that he confesses his sin, notice this. He doesn't
forsake the Lord. He doesn't go into a tunnel of
darkness. of despair, as if there's no
hope, as if God is unable to do the impossible, that God is
not merciful, God is not gracious, that even though He's just, He's
only just, He's austere, He's too hard to possibly even look
upon a sinner. He doesn't go into that deep,
dark depression, does he? No, he petitions the Lord, his
God. He makes his prayer, his supplication to the Lord. He
knows that God is just. He knows that he's a God of wrath.
He knows these things about him in his justice and wrath, and
yet he also knows that God, he knows God, that he delights in
mercy. So this man is a man who knows
God. and he prays according to his
knowledge of God. Not only does he feel the weight
of his sin and the sorrow of it because he knows God, but
he also knows that God is the one against whom he has sinned
and therefore it is God alone who can forgive sin. In his wisdom
and in his grace, God actually displays all of his character
in dealing with the sins of his people. And he knows that. And
so this man is a godly man. We see that here. He knows that
God delights in mercy, that he's full of grace and truth, as Jesus
Christ came to reveal him. And in all of his prayer, he
has this one desire. You see this in verse nine. He
said, Lord, all my desire is before thee. And that desire
is that the Lord would deliver him from sin and all that sin
brings. And he says it, so in verse 15,
he says, in thee, listen to this, in verse 15, in thee, O Lord,
do I hope. Thou wilt hear, O Lord, my God. And in another translation, he
says, I hope in you, O Jehovah, O Lord, my God, you will answer. Not only will he hear, but he
will answer. And so this Psalm is that answer. This psalm is the answer of God
because it's the Spirit of God who penned this psalm through
the words of David as a prophet in the confession of sin. And
this is a confession that God heard and that God delivered
the one who's praying here from. And that we see is the answer
of God here. And we're going to see that as
we go through this. that his hope is in the Lord, his God,
and he calls him his God and his Lord, and he is confident
that he will hear him and that he will answer him. So that's
just the introduction to this psalm. And now I wanna ask some
questions, some questions to lead our thoughts and to pique
our interests in what is said here. Is God angry with his people
when they sin? That's one question. I was at
the hospital with my brother-in-law today and had some time, I was
looking out the window, I thought, as I think about this psalm,
some questions come to mind. Is God really angry with his
people when they sin? Another question is, what happens
to us when we sin against God? Does God bring enemies against
us? Sickness, death? Or does he bring something after
we die? Why do bad things happen to us
anyway? If bad things happen to us, who's
responsible for it? Is God? Who's in control of us
and control of the consequences of our sin? How do we defend
ourselves against the enemies of our soul? Will God allow a
defense against enemies if we're sinners? Is it even possible
with God that he would give us a defense against our enemies
who are our enemies because of our sin? How do we escape their snares,
the snares of our enemies and their deceptions and their attacks?
Like you hear people say, well, you need to rebuke the devil,
or the devil made me do it. How do we recover from this inner
pain that we feel because of our sin? How do we recover from
the fear that we feel because of our sin and the sorrow and
the depression and the sadness, the poverty of soul? and the
confusion of our mind and our unrest and our lack of peace,
the anxiety and the shame and the embarrassment even of our
sin. Can we be brought again to know
peace after we've sinned? Can we be made joyful again after
we've been sorry for our sin? Can we have hope? Can we know
love? Can guilt be removed? Can sorrow
due to sin be turned into joy because of righteousness? Is
this even possible? Can sickness be turned into health?
Can depression be removed and turned to joy? Can death be cancelled? Can our debts be cancelled? You
know what it's like to be under debt. I hate debt. I feel sorry
for people under debt. It's a constant burden. Don't
you? Don't you feel it? But what about our debt of sin?
Can that debt be cancelled? Can we who hated God know His
love? Even the love of God. So those
are the questions that came to my mind as I'm looking at this.
Well, this psalm answers those questions. This psalm does it.
The answer to all of these is seen in that the psalmist here,
though guilty and though under a sense of God's anger and wrath
and punishment, prays and he is heard. What is even greater
news is that the one praying is praying and is heard for those
who cannot even understand the depths of their own sin. And
that is the key to the over flooding comfort and a message of good
news that flows from this psalm. That the one praying and confessing
sin and saying here at the end of the psalm for example, he
says, I will, let's see, where is it? Let me find it here. In verse 18, in verse 18, I will
declare mine iniquity. I will be sorry for my sin. Now think about that honestly.
We have all sinned, and no doubt if you're a believer, you have
felt great anguish and concern for yourself because of your
sin. I think the most common concern that we have is, could
I even be the Lord's because of my sin? If I sin like this,
if I treat God's goodness with such disdain that I would rebel
against His goodness and commit this sin that provides some temporary
exaltation of my pride or satisfaction of my lust or something for an
eternal blessing with God? Can I be the Lord's? Those kind
of questions haunt us, don't they? And so that brings sorrow. But this man's sorrow is greater
than that. It's not just that he himself
might not be the Lord's, but what he has done against his
God. His concern here in this psalm
is that his sin is against God. Because all sin has to be against
God, and therefore God himself has to deal with it. And so that's
what he's saying. He's coming to God without any
ability of his own to get rid of his sin or any of the consequences
that sin brings, knowing that it is against God. And what is
God going to do about it? So he just pours out his heart.
He puts all of his hope and trust in the Lord as a sinner. in this
psalm. And so we see that. It's the
one praying who is a sinner, and yet the key, the great comfort
of this psalm is that the one praying here, he is praying as
one who understands the depths of sin, and who, when he confesses
that sin, has no mixture of hypocrisy, no ulterior motives. He understands
that it's against God only. that he has offended God, that
he is the creature, has offended the creator, the Lord of glory,
all of his goodness. And so he feels the depths of
it. And when he confesses this, he is truly sorry for his sin. And when we confess sin, even
if you could possibly identify a point in your life where you're
the most sorry for your sin, There's always a mixture of doubt
in it, isn't there? Where you know, I'll probably
do this again, and what am I going to do about me, about myself
as a sinner? And so there's all these, the
confusion of these thoughts that come to our mind, even in the
confession of sin, and yet this man, This man who's confessing
has no such hypocrisy. Understand this about this psalm.
This psalm was given by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. Therefore,
the words of this man are not spoken in hyperbole. He's not exaggerating. Nor is He saying things that
are not true. He's saying what's true about
Himself, and He's saying what's true about God, and He's saying
what's true about the way God deals with sin in His people,
and how ultimately He will save them from their sins. And so,
all these things are here in this psalm. The one who is praying
here not only understands the true depth of sin and can honestly
confess without any mixture of hypocrisy, but in sincerity can
confess his sin as being sorry for it, but he also can endure
whatever consequences, true consequences that sin brings from the hand
of God. And you can see that here, that intense inner affliction
that comes upon his soul. It's intense. It's from God's
hand. It's painful to his inner self. It really passes description. The words here capture it very
well, but we can't even enter into it by these words because
it is so deep. The psalmist takes all of this,
he endures all, he answers all, as the sinners substitute. And that's what we need to see
here. The one praying here in the first instance was David.
But in fulfillment of this, according to the New Testament, The Psalms
were given as telling also as a prophecy of the Lord Jesus
Christ and his sufferings. And we might wonder, I don't
know if you ever wondered this, that's a really large claim. Is there anything that you can
give us to support that claim so that we're not just taking
what somebody said for it as the way it is? I don't want your
hope to depend upon the word of a man, especially not mine.
And so let's turn to Psalm 53 and look at this for just a second
here, because since this is the key to the psalm, then we need
to understand, is this truly the key? Look at Isaiah 53. I don't know what I said, I might
have said a different chapter, a different book of the Bible.
Isaiah 53, and listen to these words now, now that we've read
how this man, I'll remind you of what he says here, he says,
God's arrows stick fast in me. His hand presses me sore. No
soundness in His flesh because of God's anger. Neither is there
any rest in my bones because of my sin. My iniquities are
gone over my head as a heavy burden. They're too heavy for
me. My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I'm
troubled, which means perverted and twisted. I am bowed down
greatly. I go mourning all the day long.
My loins are filled with a loathsome disease." Do you hear his sorrow?
Do you hear his pain here? Now listen to Isaiah 53 and look
at this. He says in verse 3, he is despised
and rejected of men. He's a man of sorrows acquainted
with grief. and we hid, as it were, our faces
from him. He was despised and we esteemed
him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and the word here is also diseases, and carried our sorrows or plagues. We did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded, He was wounded for
our transgressions. Our sins wounded Him and He was
wounded by God inwardly in His body and His soul because of
our sins. He was bruised for our iniquities
and the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes
we are healed. Go on down to verse 10. It pleased the Lord to bruise
Him He hath put him to grief when thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin. He shall see his seed. In other
words, the Lord Jesus Christ would see all those for whom
he died. saved by his redeeming work,
he shall prolong his days, God would reward him with eternal
days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand,
God's will would be done, and all of his people gathered, and
God would be glorified, and Christ glorified, the enemies destroyed. Verse 11, he shall see of the
travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his knowledge,
the Lord Jesus Christ, shall my righteous servant justify
many, for he shall bear their iniquities." There it is. He
will bear their iniquities. He was wounded. His soul was
made an offering for sin. God bruised him and it pleased
God to do so and he was satisfied. He saw the travail of his soul
and was satisfied. Verse 12, therefore will I divide
him, a portion with the great," in other words, he was exalted
to the highest place, to the right hand of God, "...he shall
divide the spoil with the strong," those he saved, they're strong
because they're strong in him, "...because he poured out his
soul to death," notice, he was numbered, accounted with, the
transgressors, "...and he bare the sin of many." and he made
intercession for the transgressors. That's what Psalm 38 is, intercession. He's praying as one who sinned
because our sins were made his and yet, and that really was
the fact. I mean, he felt the guilt, he
felt the shame, he felt the pain because they were truly his.
You don't feel guilt if you're not guilty. You don't feel shame
if you don't have cause for shame. He was responsible for what was
done. He was made responsible for it.
He had to answer for it before God. He stood in our place before
God with our sins and felt all that we would have felt because
of our sins. They were really made his. They
were lifted from us and he bore them on himself. Transferred
from us, like the high priest in Leviticus 16, 21 to 22, He
confessed all the sins of all the children of Israel over the
head of that scapegoat and sent that goat out into the wilderness,
the land of forgetfulness. That's the Lord Jesus Christ,
our high priest, confessing our sins over his own head as the
Lamb of God and bearing them away from us, before God, and
from us forever. And so we see that Psalm 38 is
his intercession as the sinner, and this is the way he made intercession
for us. He bore our sins before God. He bore them, and he pleaded
with God to hear him. and to receive him and he was
heard. Now, this is beyond our belief
really. It's too incomprehensibly wonderful
and yet too mysterious for us really to enter into here. Notice
in this Psalm, in Psalm 38, he says, he talks about his sin
and yet he expects God to hear him. Now that's a mystery, isn't
it? Isn't that a great mystery? That
a sinner would expect God to hear them? Truly, God does not
hear sinners. The blind man in John chapter
nine, I think in verse 31, he said, we know that God doesn't
hear sinners. Well, there you have it. And
yet God hears this man who confesses. By his own admission, he's a
sinner. His foolishness, his sins, his
iniquities. His wounds stink, they're corrupt. In Isaiah chapter one, back to
Isaiah again, I'll give you this other statement about these wounds
and bruises. And this is another familiar
text of scripture, but let me read it to you. So as we get
this, he says in verse five, why should you be stricken anymore,
the Lord asks, concerning the nation of Israel for their idolatry? In other words, all of God's
people, like the nation of Israel, were stricken because of their
sins. Why should you be stricken anymore?
You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even
unto the head of it there is no soundness. Notice Psalm 38,
there is no soundness in my flesh because of mine, of thine anger,
because of mine iniquities. Back in Isaiah chapter one verse
six, the whole head, I'm sorry, the head is, from the sole of
the foot even into the head, there's no soundness in it but
wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. That's what he said back
in Psalm 38. My wounds stink and are corrupt,
putrefying sores, like an open, festering wound, the sin wound. And God made it so that that
wound would be made loathsome and filthy and shameful and stinking
and reproachful and humiliating. And the Lord Jesus Christ took
that humiliation. And for that, For that humiliation
that he endured in the eyes of God and in the eyes of men, men
did not esteem him. They hid their faces from him.
And they, even though he had done no wrong, they hated him.
They hated him because he bore the sins of his people. He was
made in the likeness of sinful flesh and they hated him because
he came to bear the sins of his people. How could you hate someone
like that? And yet, that's what we are by
nature. So you see, these words here in Psalm 38 about His no
soundness and the wounds and the bruises and everything, it's
all a way of depicting the effects of sin in us, in our mind, in
our heart, in our conscience, how it It corrupts everything,
doesn't it? It's like rottenness in fruit. You put
one bad piece of fruit in a box and the whole box eventually
gets rotten. Or mold in bread or anything
like that. Cancer in our bodies. That's
the way sin is. It corrupts. So the key to this
psalm, again, in the answer to all these questions, is God angry
with His people and can I have any hope as a sinner, is in the
fact that this psalm was written by God through the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit and the pen of David, out of his own experience
in his own sin, to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ who bore our
sins and was wounded for them. And in being wounded for them
and in confessing them, he was making intercession for the transgressors. And God heard him because there
was no hypocrisy. It was all perfectly sincere.
And when God heard him, he saved him. Look at the last verse of
this Psalm. He says, Forsake me not, O Lord,
O my God, be not far from me." Who as a sinner could even say
that? Forsake me not. If you've sinned,
God's already forsaken you as just a man, as a mere man. But
here he says, forsake me not, O Lord. He takes the position
of one who is a godly man, and yet who is a sinner, simultaneously. And that's the great mystery
of this psalm. And in other psalms, like Psalm 32, and Psalm 51,
and Psalm 6, as we've looked at, all these psalms, we find
David confessing his sin, especially in this one that we're looking
at. And we resonate with that. We read this psalm and we find
such great comfort, especially when we have found Some sin has
come to our awareness about our own selves, and it has brought
us so low that we can't hardly talk, have communication with
other people. Or when we do, we know that we're
putting on this mask, and we feel the weight of that. But
here, the Lord Jesus Christ, he feels this, and he's doing
this as for us. Yet, in confessing that sin,
he also says this in verse 20. I'm sorry, in verse, which is
it? Yeah, verse 20. He said, I follow good. I follow
good. Forsake me not, O Lord. O my
God, be not far from me. He identifies the Lord as his
God, and himself as the Lord's. And he says, make haste to help
me, O Lord, my salvation. So right away we know that this
man is a godly man and yet he's a sinner. How can that be? That's
a paradox. That's a mystery. So this fact here that the prayer
is from the man of God, we know that this is true because of
verses 20 through 22 and other places in this psalm. It has
to be. He's a sinner and yet he trusts
God. He's under chastisement and yet he has hope. He expresses
confidence that God is going to hear and answer and save him.
And this was by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, so we know
that it did happen. And so therefore we know that
this man is both godly and sinful. Not his own sins, but the sins
of his people made his. Okay, so given that, we have
these questions. Does the Prince of Life die?
Does the Prince of Life die? Isn't the Lord Jesus Christ called
the Prince of Life in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 8? Is the Lord of Glory
robbed, I'm sorry, is He robed in humiliation before His enemies,
bearing the reproach before His enemies of the sins of His people
in His own person, and that reproach even before God? Is He the Lord
of glory robed thus in humiliation with our sins, made His, laid
on Him? And does He stand with our sins
in the sight of holiness above in this psalm? Doesn't He? Is
Jesus Christ the righteous here made sin, as it says in 2 Corinthians
5.21? Does God the Son become the Son
of Man? And does the Son of God learn
obedience as the Son of Man by the things which he suffers,
to be our mediator before God? In Hebrews chapter 5, verse 7
and 8. Is David's son David's Lord? Is the Word truly made
flesh? Was God manifest in the flesh?
Now these are quotations from Scripture. Aren't they mysteries?
God even says this is the great mystery of godliness. God was
manifest in the flesh. Did God send His Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh, as it says in Romans 8.3? Was the Creator,
who is equal with God, born of a woman who was created? Did
He become man, and as man did He become the servant of men?
Has the judge of all taken condemned sinners into union with himself?
And was he condemned in their place? And with him are they
now justified by the eternal spirit in his resurrection from
the dead? These are the words of scripture. You see, does God
hear sinners? These questions should reverberate
through our mind as we read the mystery of the gospel unfolded
to us in Psalm 38, as we look through the lens of the New Testament
and see it explained there. This is our Savior. This is our
salvation. We believe, we have believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we're saved by Him, by His own
faith. Doesn't it say that in Galatians
2.16? We're not justified by the works
of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we
have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by
the faith of Christ. By the faith of Christ. And we
see that faith here as our substitute, as the mediator, as the son of
man and son of God in one person praying for his people, bearing
their sins, God answering him, God hearing him, God delivering
him from sin and from death, and that deliverance is our justification
into our salvation. So that when we take this prayer,
we go to this psalm as a sinner, and we want to take these words
to God and confess our own sins, realize that even that, even
that confession of our own sins should draw us to and lift up
the Lord Jesus Christ so that we could see it was His confession. It was His life. It was what
He did in our place that is all of our salvation, so that we
can enter into the worship and praise of this psalm. Let's pray.
Father, we thank You for Your goodness. The Gospel reveals
our salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and You have made
Yourself known in Him, and we see You in Him. What a sight,
what a vision of our God. We would never have been able
to love God had it not been for this view of yourself in our
Savior, that you would save us from our sins. He took our place,
He bore our reproaches, He bore our sins before God, and He endured
humiliation before men and their shame and spinning and mocking.
while he did so because he loved his people, he loved his father,
and he despised that shame and he endured it all for the joy
that was set before him that he might have his seed and bring
them to God and make him known to them in himself. What a glorious
Savior. In his name we pray. Amen.