Are you ever so fearful or anxious about something that you lose sleep about it? Are there things out of your control that you toss and turn over? Maybe it’s so bad that you even cry. If you’re like this, you’re definitely not alone, and in fact, King David struggled with this kind of anxiety.
In Psalm 56, David laments that his enemies are constantly out to get him, and then in verse 8, David wrote about God:
“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?”
What David means is that God sees all of our anxiety and every detail about how it affects us. He counts every time we toss and turn at night. He counts every tear you cry, and keeps track of them all, because he cares.
This realization causes David to write in verses 10 and 11:
“In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
Prayer or any religious practice won’t always cure anxiety, but as long as we suffer, God knows and cares about it. We can trust Him to provide for us, sometime between now and eternity.
As Paul wrote about the glory of our salvation:
“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”[1]
Psalm 119 is memorable in many ways, including that it is the longest chapter in the Bible, with 176 verses. But the Psalm was also designed to be memorized in Hebrew, with 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In Hebrew, each stanza has 8 lines that each begin with the same letter.
It is also memorable for its topic: a lengthy meditation on God’s law and its positive, multi-faceted qualities. The Psalm uses 8 words to describe God’s law, and all 8 appear in 5 of the stanzas while every stanza has at least 6 of them. [1]
However, in addition to meditating on God’s law, at least 7 verses also refer to affliction and/or its benefits in one way or another:
“This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.” (verse 50)
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” (verse 67)
“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” (verse 71)
“I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” (verse 75)
“If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” (verse 92)
“I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word!” (verse 107)
“Look on my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget your law.” (verse 153)
Why the repetition? By repeating the idea of affliction in this Psalm, the writer wants to make one more thing memorable: in our affliction, God is faithfully present, giving us life, teaching us, and reminding us of His goodness. His steadfast love remains, even when this broken world and our own sinful condition present endless difficulty.
The law cannot save us, and affliction in this world is difficult, but “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” (Romans 8:28-29)
What God uses all things for, and what He has predestined, is that His people will be conformed to His holiness: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6). Even affliction, in God’s hands, contributes to our development in holiness.
As J.I. Packer sums up these verses from Psalm 119 in his book, Rediscovering Holiness, “God’s faithfulness consists in his unwillingness that his children should lose any of the depths of fellowship with himself that he has in store for them. So he afflicts us to make us lean harder on him, in order that his purpose of drawing us into closest fellowship with himself may be fulfilled.”[2]
Whatever our affliction, God will deliver us and bring us to glory. Amen.
[1] According to the Reformation Study Bible [2] Packer, J.I. Rediscovering Holiness (1992), P. 268. I “miraculously” discovered this quote within ½ hour of posting this blog, then had to add it, and repost.
John the Baptist announced the coming of Jesus, baptized Him, and led the way for His ministry to begin. This John was identified with “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight’”[1] prophesied in Isaiah 40:3-5, which says:
“A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.’”
Is Isaiah talking about a massive, miraculous geological event, creating an easier route for Jesus to take to His kingdom? Perhaps in the future something like this will happen, but I think Isaiah is saying that God’s power over nature is a symbol of His power to reform and perfect us into the character of His Son Jesus.
Before Jesus comes into our lives, we are a spiritual wilderness full of uneven ground and rough places. The path of our salvation begins in this wilderness, an unorganized chaos of thoughts and desires. We are like “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” However, the power of the LORD enters our low valleys – our guilty secrets, shame and depression – which will be raised up. It progresses through our mountains and hills – areas of pride, self-sufficiency, and our desire for power – which will be made low. God, with the same power that created the universe, removes all obstacles to the coming of His kingdom to us, and to the world. He has given us His word, His Spirit, and fellow believers to strengthen us, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:13-14)
John the Baptist called his followers to confession and repentance. In announcing the coming of the kingdom of God, John anticipated a time when our internal and external wildernesses will become a paradise. Until then, we each have different hills and valleys, different uneven and rough areas. Until then, the world remains full of false doctrine, cunning, craftiness and deceit.
Today, pray that the powerful voice of our LORD will reach into your wilderness and remove obstacles on the path to His kingdom. Pray that His word and His Spirit will reveal His glory. Pray that all believers will answer the call of “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” to build up His church.
Life is often a battle with inconsistency. We go from feeling good about our situations and God’s favor, to feeling like we are in a spiritual desert, and back again like a pendulum. Knowing this, God provides verses like Psalm 126:4-6, which says:
“Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negeb! Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
The metaphor is a comparison to the south of Israel, which has a very dry climate, yet experiences flooding in a rainstorm. The Negeb also is mentioned in the story of Caleb and his daughter Achsah. Her inherited land was in the infertile Negeb, and she asks him also for springs of water, which he gives her.[1]
Like Achsah’s father Caleb, our Father God also provides for us in our seasons of trouble. Here, the Psalmist compares tears to seeds, reminding us that in the dry times as well as the times of overflowing blessing, God is with us, using those circumstances. Our current loss is future gain, and our current time of suffering is bound and measured by God’s will, like the Babylonian exile was measured at 70 years[2] and the year of Jubilee came after every 49 years[3]. After our time, we will enter His rest and rejoice eternally.
In this life we may experience spiritual and emotional extremes, like drought and flood in the desert. Don’t overreact to the pendulum swing but count your tears as seeds. Pray that He will restore your fortunes and thank Him that our seasons are in His hands.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4
[1] Joshua 15:18-19 [2] Daniel 9:2, 9:24 [3] Leviticus 25:8
A recent post was about Jeremiah’s comparison of false religion to a broken cistern, with God alternatively being “the fountain of living waters.”[1] Jeremiah lived when most of God’s people – including most of the priests and prophets – had turned from Him to follow other gods. As Jeremiah remained faithful, correctly predicting that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon, he was persecuted, including this instance in Jeremiah 38:6, where King Zedekiah’s officials “took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.”
Since God is “the fountain of living waters,” the only path to eternal blessing, it’s incredibly ironic that Jeremiah, one of the few remaining faithful prophets and therefore a rare source of God’s “living waters,” should be cast into a cistern with no water. Perhaps it was broken. King Zedekiah thought he could silence the “living waters” Jeremiah represented by casting them into a cistern, trading truth for falsehood.
Later, Jeremiah seems to recall the cistern experience in Lamentations 3:52-57, where he said:
“I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, ‘I am lost.’ ‘I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’”
Returning to the book of Jeremiah, we read that Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, heard of Jeremiah’s situation and pleaded his case: “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they did to Jeremiah the prophet by casting him into the cistern, and he will die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.”[2] This unlikely source – a foreigner – was Jeremiah’s deliverance from God to rescue Jeremiah from the well. Ebed-melech gathered 30 men, “Then they drew Jeremiah up with ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.”
Jeremiah was not the only Old Testament figure to suffer for his faithfulness. Many years earlier, King David also referred to “sinking in the mire” in the Messianic Psalm 69, verses 14-15:
“Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.”
David knew this feeling of sinking came not because of his sin, but when he was faithfully serving his Lord. David’s “sinking in the mire” happened under these circumstances from verse 9 of the same Psalm:
“For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.”
In Jeremiah’s case, as well as David’s and that of Jesus, whom Psalm 69 foreshadowed[3], we know that cannot judge our faithfulness based on whether it improves our circumstances. When we do, we might stop being faithful because it seems we are “sinking in the mire.” Being reproached by the world and feeling down aren’t the circumstances we prefer, but “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[4] Through these and all other circumstances, God develops in us deeper trust in Him.
Therefore, with David may we pray:
“But as for me, my prayer is to you, O LORD. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.” – Psalm 69:13
And in His time, He will deliver us, perhaps in ways we don’t expect.
Coda
In 1995, Christian rock group Jars of Clay released their self-titled album, and the track “Flood” has similar themes to this post. The song was also a mainstream hit, charting as high as No. 12 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart,[5] amazing for a song that is essentially a prayer like David’s in Psalm 69.
