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Repentance
Psalm 6: 1-10
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A PRESBYTERIAN PSALTER - by Pastor Max A Forsythe |
A Translation of the Text:
For the choir director with strings,
an eight-string harp. A Psalm of David
01 O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
or discipline me in Your wrath.
02 Have mercy on me LORD , for I am weak,
heal me, LORD , for my bones ache,
03 My soul is in anguish,
how long, O LORD, how long?
04 Turn, O LORD, and deliver me,
save me because of Your unfailing love.
05 For in death [there] is no memory of You,
who praises you from the grave?
06 I am worn out with groaning,
all night I flood my bed [with weeping],
and soak my couch with tears.
07 My eyes grow weak from sorrow,
they fail because of my many adversaries.
08 Away from me, all of you who do evil,
for the LORD has heard my crying voice.
09 The LORD has heard my supplication,
the LORD has received my prayer.
10 All of my adversaries shall be ashamed
and greatly dismayed,
They shall turn back,
they shall be suddenly disgraced.
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Translation
Notes:
01 This
is the first of the penitential psalms. It is apparently
written in the midst of a deleterious sickness. 04
Remember the old Calvinist children's prayer? "If I should
die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to
take." 08 May
those who do not realize the power of prayer be gone when
his prayer is heard.
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Meditation on the Psalm:
Our psalm today is the first of the penitential psalms to be found in the Psalter. In this psalm David expresses the sorrow for, the humiliation in, and the hatred of sin that all of God's children desperately need to learn. Some commentators suggest that the unity of this psalm is destroyed by the addition of the last three verses which are not in keeping with the desperate mood of the beginning. However, abrupt mood changes and emphases may just as equally be the strange work of the Holy Spirit which is not well known even by some who would comment upon God's Holy Word.
The theme of this psalm is simple, it is repentance and the last three verses shows us the relief of our psalmist's desperate need. Our author of this psalm was David the King. Given his high and mighty station in life, we would seldom think that he would share the common doubts and fears. Yet, the contents of the psalms credited to David in the Psalter show us a man whose concerns are eternal, kingship is but a calling given through the providence of God. The life and writings of David show us more than anything else the inner working relationship between God and a man called for His purpose. Even today, all of us who are called into Christ's Church are required to wrestle with theological issues that we may not quite understand.
The repentance theme of this psalm is an issue that like David we dare not take lightly. Do you see the holy fear in David's heart, do you sense his desperate anguish, do you know his exhaustion of pleading for mercy? If you do not, then perhaps you should reconsider the truth of your repentance this day! Verses one through three identifies David's fearfulness. Certainly, we do not know the circumstances of David's situation in this psalm. But, we can certainly sense the reality of his anguish. What can bring a person to this low estate? One of Spurgeon's notes contains the observation that there are two methods by which God rebukes and disciplines His children. The first method is the witness of His Word. By that we mean not only the clear teaching of what we read and hear in the Scriptures, but also the application of that Word in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The second method is the use of events and persons to chasten our rebellious nature and thus bring us to our knees.
We today are more fortunate that many of the Old Testament saints, in that we have various copies of God's Word, if we would but open it and pray for right understanding. Even as we neglect that word or even ignore its instruction, God by every means at His disposal will alert us to the necessity of coming to terms with His awesome and righteous holiness. If we will not love Him, He will be our judge. If that does not give you pause than consider a statement even more frightening. If He has not loved us, we will spend eternity in Hell.
Is this David's righteous fear? Certainly, we little understand the fate in store for those who worship not our God today. Very little has been written or heard in the last thirty years about the subject of hell. The last Media reference I remember was a few weeks ago when it was reported that the Vatican would soften it teaching on the subject. Unfortunately, any recent history of the arguments for and against the subject are unlikely to bring about the holy fear that we sense in our passage before us today.
David here in this passage is in desperate straits as we can tell by his emotional words. Can anyone read verse four and say that David's experience is only imagined? "Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of Your unfailing love." David pleads for the Lord to turn and grant him mercy. Here we should know the truth of David's just deserts. His fear was well founded, the truth of his deserving hell was real just as it is for all of us. Yet, David has heard of God's mercy, he has sometime in his life been instructed to repent and seek the salvation of the Lord. But, David is fearful that he will die before he knows that salvation.
In verse five he observes that the place of the dead will be too late to remember or even to praise. David's worry about his eternal salvation stirs him to night long groaning, weeping. His bed is drenched with tears and his eyes are all but cried out. In David's case, it was possibly enemies and foes who drove him to this severe distraction. Certainly, we may all be affected by the trials and tribulations of life, we may even on occasion be driven to our knees. We too may seek the Lord's salvation. Certainly, we see in David's case several of these penitential psalms so that we know he wrestled repeatedly with his sinful nature. Perhaps we may wonder just when David's repentance became real? In the several penitential psalms, was David always sincere in his sorrow for sin or was he sometimes like the common crowd only sorry for his sorrow?
I have noticed a lot of our immature people today, are very sorry when they justly deserve punishment for some infraction. But, very often they are only sorry that they got caught. In the same way, very many people who are driven to their knees by some particular event in their lives, are glad only when the trials of that particular event are removed. You see, too often we are all not sorry about sin, but only about our suffering because of our sin. A temporary fix, a quick confession and a deadened conscience is what most people really want.
What each and every sinner desperately needs is a dramatic change like the one so evident in the language of this particular psalm. See the swing in David's mood in the last three verses? Here is solid literary evidence that something has happened in the course of David's prayer. He will separate himself from the heathen and put as much distance from them as possible. And the reason is stated in the second phrase of verse eight. "The Lord has heard my crying voice." The Lord has seen our need and in the wisdom revealed to Paul showed us in Romans 8: 26 that: "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." We have seen this groaning in verse six and now in the last three verses, the work of the Spirit is completed. In verse nine David affirms that "The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord has received my prayer."
This is the proof in repentance that we need to know. We need to be assured that heaven is our home. When we first hear of the promise of salvation, it is the Spirit that turns our hearts toward home. And well should we speed our footsteps in that direction because in the last verse David prophetically sees the certain eternal disgrace of the wicked. Even those who hound David to his knees will be ashamed and dismayed and suddenly they too will go home. But heaven is not their home, no their disgrace will be found in hell.
David's experience in this psalm is important for us even thirty centuries after he wrote these words to share the anguish of his situation. The important question before each person who reads or hears this meditation is the same that before David. How do you react to the Word or discipline of God? Now some of you may say, what discipline? I don't have any trials or troubles that would make me whine and tremble like this David character! If that is the true situation you find yourself in, I am very sorry to suggest that you are a long long way from heaven. But, if there is any sympathy at all with David's anguish, if there is even a hint of spiritual understanding of the wrath that David has escaped, then there is hope that you may escape eternity in hell.
If this sympathy is present, then by all means follow David's pattern, plead, weep, even beg that the Lord might do for you what He so clearly did for David. This is our prayer for you as well. Amen.
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Resources Used: |
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Spurgeon, C.H. |
The Treasury of David. | |
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Psm 006a |
28 April 91 & 31 January 99 | |
Translation Resources:
Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old
Testament
New Geneva Study Bible (NKJV)
The Jerusalem Bible Very useful
for poetic structure
New American Standard Bible Best
translation for verse meaning
New International Version Best
translation for paragraph meaning
Spurgeon, C.H. A Treasury of David.
The essential theological anchor
Bratcher, Robert G. & Reyburn, William D. A
Translator's Handbook on the Book of Psalms.
Barthelemy, Dominique et al. Preliminary & Interim
Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project.
Dahood, Mitchell. The Anchor Bible: Psalms 1-50.
Very limited use.
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