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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock—I can still hear as plain as day the cacophony of countless clocks hanging on walls in clock stores I have visited over the course of my life. The “tick-tock” of the clocks and watches wound and driven by springs is so identified with a properly functioning timepiece that even clocks and watches powered by electricity often mimic the sound—tick-tock. Regardless of whether or not you have such vivid memories of or even have ever been in such clock stores, you no doubt can relate to the passage of time. We may usually think of time moving at a constant rate, but we can also speak of time “flying” when we are having fun or of time “crawling” when we lie awake at night unable to sleep, perhaps seriously ill, maybe even at the point of death. David, the Divinely‑inspired psalmist whose words of Psalm 38 we prayed earlier, surely experienced such “crawling” of time. Reflecting on Psalm 38, tonight we continue our sermon series on the Seven Penitential Psalms, with this fourth psalm in our series, very similar to Psalm 6, which we prayed and reflected on several weeks ago.
More than twice as long as Psalm 6, however, especially in detailing the physical consequences of David’s sin, Psalm 38 seems to have the number of its stanzas determined by the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Like one other psalm (Psalm 70), Psalm 38 is designated by a Hebrew term that is variously thought of as indicating its role in confession (Weiser, 323), as a petition (NIV), for praise (Leupold, 308), or for a “memorial” (Keil-Deltitzsch,20; confer Leviticus 24:7). Psalm 38 may possibly have come in sequence with other psalms related to David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah, but we ado not know for sure either Psalm 38’s occasion or the specific illness from which David suffered, nor should we suppose that David’s experiences are limited to what the historical books of the Old Testament record about him (Leupold, 307). We can safely conclude that David’s illness mentioned in Psalm 38 was severe, like arrows sunk into his flesh and a hand pressing down upon him; that the illness caused David’s family and possibly false friends to withdraw from him (Leupold, 311); and that the illness also provided David’s enemies with an opportunity to charge David falsely and otherwise persecute him.
In Psalm 38, David knows that he sinned, and David attributes to his sin his suffering of body and soul, the physical and psychological torment that seems to have taken him to the point of death. David’s understanding of his suffering as consequences of his sin is not ruled out by Jesus’s statement, which we heard in Sunday’s Gospel Reading, that people who suffered from either human or “natural” calamities are not worse sinners than anyone else (Luke 13:1-9). Indeed, by nature, we all are equally sinful in God’s eyes, whether we have broken His holy Law one time in what we might regard as the least-offensive way or whether we have broken His holy Law countless times in what we might regard as the worst way. Even if we had failed to keep His Law in only one point, we are accountable for all of it (James 2:10), and so we deserve not only consequences of our sin but also punishment for our sin. God’s righteous anger and wrath should do far more than afflict our bodies and souls temporarily; His righteous anger and wrath should torment us physically and psychologically, now and for eternity. And so His righteous anger and wrath would torment us, if it were not for His mercy and grace for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In Psalm 38, David bewails his suffering, but he also exhibits a calm of weariness and of the confident expectation of rescue from afar (Keil-Delitzsch, 22). David acknowledges the depth of his sin and his own inability to do anything about it. David confesses his iniquity and is sorry for his sins. David paradoxically pleas to his righteously angry God for mercy and absolution (Leupold 310). David knows that the Lord is aware of his longing and sighing, and David “waits for” or “trusts in” the Lord to answer him. That waiting is not so much marking the passage of time as it is confidently expecting and trusting God to deliver him. In Psalm 38, David lays out a number of reasons why God should deliver him, but ultimately God only delivered David, as God delivers us, because of His mercy and grace for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. The God-man Jesus Christ knew no sin of His own but was made to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus Christ was forsaken by nearly all His family and friends for us. As we heard in tonight’s Passion Reading, Jesus Christ was falsely accused and stood silent for us. Jesus Christ bore our sin to the cross and there was forsaken even by God the Father—the very punishment we deserve. When we, led by the Spirit and as we did tonight with David’s own inspired words, acknowledge the depth of our sin and our own inability to do anything about it, when we confess our iniquity and are sorry for our sins, when we plea for mercy and absolution, know that the Lord is aware of our longing and sighing, and “wait for” or “trust in” Him to answer us, then God, in His mercy and grace, truly forgives our sinful nature and all our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. And, God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin through His Means of Grace, that is, through His Word and Sacraments.
One of my fellow Kilgore Rotarians is a tax accountant; and today at lunch I asked him if he was keeping his head above the water of his work, and he said no, that he was drowning. You and I may know the feeling! In Psalm 38 David likens his sin to waters that threaten to drown him, and we can think of Holy Baptism, which in part indicates that our sinful natures should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that our redeemed natures should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. As Psalm 38 may have been used in connection with a memorial meal offering (Weiser, 324) that was intended to bring the person making the offering to God’s remembrance (Keil‑Delitzsch, 20), we can think of the Sacrament of the Altar, by which Jesus Christ is not only brought to our remembrance but also comes to be really, physically present here in bread that is His Body and in wine that is His Blood, for us to eat and to drink and so for us to be strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life everlasting.
In this life, we will still suffer both consequences for our sin and other afflictions of body and soul, even though Jesus Christ has borne the punishment for our sin on the cross. Perhaps David’s not detailing his illness helps us better apply his psalm to ourselves and our own afflictions (Neale‑Littledale, 606-607). Like David, we may feel overwhelmingly alone and we may think that our enemies are going unpunished, but we can be like deaf mutes, who neither pay attention nor respond to our enemies’ false charges but “wait for” or “trust in” God to answer, that is to deliver and to vindicate us in His way and time.
At the outset I mentioned clock stores with their cacophonous tick-tock, tick-tock, tick‑tock. Those stores were exciting places to be at the quarter, bottom, and especially top of the hour, when all the different chimes, cuckoos, and other sounds reverberated throughout the store. Psalm 38 never quite crescendos to that jubilation, but David, despairing of himself, continues to “wait for” or “trust in” the Lord (Keil-Delitzsch, 25). Like David, we know that the Lord will not forsake us, that our God will not be far from us, and that the Lord our salvation will hasten to help us, until we rest with Him in eternity, in no time at all.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +