“'Mourning into Dancing': Hope in God’s Redemption (Psalm 30)” | 9/6/2020
Psalm 30| 9/6/20 | Will Duval
This morning, we’re gonna continue our study of the “Psalms of Hope”. We began in Psalm 13 - “How Long, O Lord,” and our hope in LAMENT. We spent two weeks in Psalm 23 - “The Lord is my Shepherd,” our hope in God’s CARE. Last week we examined Psalm 27 - “Whom Shall I Fear?”, our hope in God’s PROTECTION. And this morning, we’ll be looking at Psalm 30 - “Mourning into Dancing,” and our hope in God’s REDEMPTION.
The word “Redeem” can have a few different connotations - to “compensate for a fault”, to “buy back”, “to clear a debt” - but in the most general sense, in biblical terms, it means “to bring good out of bad”. To bring good out of bad.
When I was in college, I was very into intramural sports, especially beach volleyball. My junior year, we had lost in the finals to Sigma Nu, our archrivals. But we bounced back my senior year with an even better team, and sure enough, we were slotted to face SigNu again in the championship game. Well, leading up to the big game, I had developed a cough, that had persisted and grown worse for a matter of WEEKS. I had tried all the over-the-counter allergy and cough medicines, to no avail. And it was getting debilitating enough that I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to play in the finals. So in desperation, I reached out to my father, who was a physician, and he prescribed me some Prednisone. Now, if you’re not familiar, Prednisone is a pretty powerful steroid. And I honestly can’t remember if it helped my cough or not, but what I DO remember is feeling like I could jump clear over the NET in that championship game. The Sigma Nus didn’t stand a chance! I guess technically our name on the IM trophy should have an ASTERISK beside it, since I was doping.
But my point is that sometimes God takes what looks to be a pretty dire, hopeless situation, and brings out of it a glorious result that is even better than if He had spared you the heartbreak in the first place! I can think of plenty more significant examples in my own life, with Polly. God has redeemed the early, difficult years of our marriage, to make it stronger today than it would ever have been otherwise. God has redeemed our infertility, and used it to bless us through adoption. Elijah wouldn’t be our son today, if we didn’t suffer from infertility. And I’m sure you can think of your OWN examples as well: Maybe God has used the recent lockdown and work and school closings to bring your family closer together… Perhaps you met your spouse at an AA meeting… Maybe you went to the doctor for a cough and he found that cancer before it got so bad it was untreatable… We ALL have our own examples of God taking something that was BAD, and using it, transforming it, REDEEMING it, for Good.
The quintessential BIBLICAL example is the story of Joseph. Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt by his own brothers, and eventually thrown in prison after his master Potiphar’s wife lied about Joseph. But God REDEEMED Joseph’s life, and used him powerfully to deliver not only the Egyptians from the threat of famine, but to rescue his own family as well; Joseph’s father Israel moved them to Egypt to escape the famine. And after Israel died, Joseph’s brothers were terrified that he would finally exact his revenge on them, but what does Joseph tell them? ““Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people[b] should be kept alive” (Gen 50:19-20). Our God brings good out of evil.
That is our theme, our hope, our JOY in Psalm 30 this morning: God’s redemptive power. We’re going to examine 6 life-threatening dangers that God specifically promises to redeem us from here, to overcome evil with good, and we’re gonna consider how EACH points us ahead to God’s ULTIMATE act of redemption, which fulfilled all SIX of these prophetic promises: the death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus. Jesus claimed that all the Law & the Prophets - the entire Old Testament! - found its fulfillment in Him. That means there are at least 3 different ways of reading any OT passage; there is the:
1) Past Historical reading: what did this passage mean in its original context; to its historical author and audience; in the case of Psalm 30: King David and his 10th c. BC Jewish subjects. There’s also the:
2) Present-Day reading: what does this passage mean to ME and YOU, today, in our very different 21st c. American context? But the most important of ALL, according to Jesus himself, is the
3) Prophetic reading: how does this passage anticipate and illustrate JESUS?
I want to consider all THREE of those readings - Past, Present, Prophetic - as we work our way through God’s SIX acts of redemption, here in Psalm 30. Lots to get to! So...
Would you stand with me, as you’re able, for the reading of God’s word. Psalm 30:
I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
3 O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.[a]
4 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.[b]
5 For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.[c]
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
7 By your favor, O Lord,
you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
8 To you, O Lord, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
9 “What profit is there in my death,[d]
if I go down to the pit?[e]
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me!
O Lord, be my helper!”
11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
12 that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY...)
-
Right out of the gate - before we even begin VERSE 1! - we find in the very context of Psalm 30, a fascinating clue pointing us to these multiple readings or interpretations - Past, Present AND Prophetic. Your Bibles probably include a superscription that reads something like: “A Psalm of David. A song at the dedication of the temple.” Now, what’s so INTERESTING about that is: who built the Temple? [Solomon], right. David’s SON. So how are we to understand this contextual note, if there’s not even a temple to be DEDICATED yet, in David’s day? There are 3 possible explanations:
1) We know that David made preparations for the Temple, he purchased the Temple mound on which it would be built, so perhaps he composed this song - Psalm 30 - to be sung at its completion, later, by Solomon. Because David of all people, whose own sinful AFFAIR with Bathsheba had led to the birth of Solomon, wanted Israel never to forget God’s REDEMPTIVE power, to bring good from evil. That’s one interpretation.
2) Some scholars suggest the superscription was added later, and it refers to the dedication of the SECOND Temple (which was rebuilt 400 years later by Zerubbabel after the Jews returned from exile in Babylon). And we know that Psalm 30 has come to be recited by Jews every year at Hanukkah, the feast which commemorates the dedication of the second temple, to this day. More of a present-day reading.
3) But there’s a THIRD, prophetic interpretation. James Johnston suggests in his commentary that (236): “As a Christian it is hard to read this superscription without remembering that Jesus described his own body as the temple. Jesus said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19)... When we read Psalm 30 in the light of the New Testament, this song celebrates the dedication of Jesus’ own body on the cross. Jesus is the temple, the place where we meet God. When God the Father raised him from the dead, God the Son sang this song for joy.”
So already, before v1, we’ve got Past, Present, and Prophetic implications.
Now, if this psalm is all about REDEMPTION, what does God REDEEM us from?
1) from SATAN (v1).
David begins in v1 by PRAISING God, “extolling” Him, “for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me.”
A past-historical reading recognizes that David had literal “foes”, LOTS of them, all throughout his life - Goliath, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Syrians, the heckler Shimei, King Saul, Saul’s son Ishbosheth, his own son Absalom… So David is praising God here, for protecting and sustaining him all 70 long years of his life.
But there’s a present-day application for us as well. I told you a few weeks ago: we aren’t really cool enough to have true “enemies” nowadays; that’s the stuff of superheroes today. But the Bible reminds us that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but… against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) That we have a real enemy, a spiritual enemy, Satan, who prowls around like a lion seeking to DEVOUR us.
And some of us this morning need to be reminded that as believers we are AT WAR. Maybe you’ve heard the illustration before: there are 2 types of Christians - Cruise ship Christians, and Battleship Christians. Cruise ship Christians just kind of drift casually, luxuriously through life, content to enjoy life’s pleasures on their leisurely path toward Heaven. Battleship Christians are on a MISSION. We know that life is fleeting, and the days are evil, so you better make the most of the time, REDEEM the time (Eph 5:16). The apostle Paul exhorts us to “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day”. Our enemy is constantly flinging “flaming darts” at us, that is, if you pose ANY threat to him whatsoever. If you’re a Cruise ship Christian, Satan will just leave you alone. Cuz you don’t threaten his kingdom of darkness. Don’t over-spiritualize this too much this morning. There is real DARKNESS - “present DARKNESS”, “forces of evil” - in our world today. Since I walked up to begin preaching,
-80 kids have died of hunger, malnutrition. One every 12 seconds.
-An estimated 1,300 people were trafficked for sex or slave labor. One every second. And...
-2,500 babies have been killed worldwide, by abortion. More than 2 per second.
Friends, there is REAL evil in our world, Satan is on a mission, HE is in battle-mode, the question is: are WE? What are YOU doing to join the fight? There is no place for cruise ships in wartime.
But here’s the PROPHETIC fulfillment in Christ: if you have trusted in Jesus in faith, He has set you FREE from your enslavement in the ENEMY’s army, in order that you might join the good fight. The apostle Paul says “God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col 1:13)
That “You were once dead in your trespasses and sins… following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air… we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us… made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:1-6)
God raised us up with Christ: David says here in v1: “you, O Lord, have drawn me up”. It’s a Hebrew metaphor; literally, the verb refers to drawing a bucket of water up out of a well (VanGemeren, 509). That’s the picture. There’s something inherently CREEPY about wells, isn’t there? Peering down into this dark HOLE that descends into the bowels of the earth. Anyone remember the movie “The Ring”. It’s STILL one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen in my life. But one of the scariest images from the movie, is the WELL. It sends shivers down my spine just THINKING about it. Talk about EVIL!
David says God has drawn me up out of the pit, the darkness, and not let our foe, Satan, rejoice over our demise.
2) God redeems us from Sickness (v2)
David says, v2: “O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.”
God is the Great Physician. He declares in Exodus 15:26 “I am the Lord, your healer.” Ps 103:3 He “[God] heals all your diseases”.
You say, ‘wait a minute, I’ve heard about this theology; the “name it and claim it” stuff. The health and wealth gospel; if I just pray hard enough, God will heal all my diseases. We have a couple who recently joined our life group, who converted from being Christian Scientists. They were telling us a story last week about a little girl who contracted a perfectly treatable infection in her foot, but her parents refused treatment for weeks; the neighbors heard her SCREAMING in agony, and called an ambulance; the parents sent them away and just kept praying… eventually her whole leg had to be amputated. And then the family got SHAMED for taking her to the hospital to save her life; their faith was too weak.
This is sick stuff. And it is a perversion of the TRUE gospel, the good news of God’s word, that Isaiah 53:5 “by his stripes - Jesus’ stripes - we are healed.” That 1 Peter 2:24 “Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin… By his wounds you have been healed.” THAT is the kind of healing we most desperately needed, friends, and praise God, THAT is the kind of healing Christ has accomplished for us. Spiritual healing.
Jesus said ““Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”” (Mark 2:17)
So I ask you this morning: do you realize that you’re sick? Have you admitted to yourself and to the Lord that you suffer from a 100% eternally FATAL, but 100% TREATABLE disease of the heart, known as SIN, and confessed that you don’t have the CURE; you need the Physician?
You can be HEALED today. Trust in Jesus - his wounds, his stripes, his sacrificially atoning death in your place on the cross, so that you could be spared the wrath of a holy God against your sin and instead be RECONCILED to the Creator and Lover of your soul - trust in HIM AND. BE. SAVED. HEALED.
You say, “Well aren’t you over-spiritualizing things again? Doesn’t God promise in Psalm 103:3 to heal ALL our diseases?”
Johnston explains (238): “God heals everyone who belongs to him. His plan is to heal us completely by raising these weak bodies from death. God does give lesser healings in this life sometimes [Some of you at West Hills have experienced that; miraculous stories of God’s healing power. The doctor gave you a year to live, and now 10 or 15 years later you’re completely cancer-free. And I exhort you ALL: if any of you gets sick, James 5, you come tell me and the elders and we will absolutely PRAY for you, for your healing. But what does God promise, in James 5? “the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, [save him HOW?] and the Lord will raise him up. (There it is again) And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” God doesn’t promise physical healing, but rather spiritual healing. So even if God doesn’t provide bodily healing in this life, even if He doesn’t heal your body until He gives you a NEW one in Heaven, a resurrection body, Johnston says, “Don’t diminish God’s healing through death as if it was second best. The ultimate healing comes when God raises his loved ones from the dead, just like he raised Christ our Lord.”
And that’s a perfect segue way to point #3...
3) God redeems us from Sheol (v3)
V3: “O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.”
Before Jesus, when a person died, they went to Sheol. It’s depicted as a pit, down in the heart of the earth. The faithful went to a part of Sheol sometimes referred to as “paradise”; the wicked to a place of torment. But in either case, there was a sense in which you DIDN’T WANT to be there. Because life is better than death, even the “paradise” section of death. So the psalms are FILLED with prayers for God’s deliverance from Sheol, from death:
The psalmist asks: “What man can live and never see death?
Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? ” (Ps 89:48)
And David answers: “Bless the Lord, O my soul…
3 who forgives all your iniquity…
4 who redeems your life from the pit,” Sheol. (Ps 103:2-4)
He writes “The cords of death encompassed me…
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice...
He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters… (again, with that image)
he rescued me, because he delighted in me.” (Ps 18:4-6, 16, 19)
Similarly, Ps 116: “The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me…
4 Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!”
Gracious is the Lord, and merciful…
For you have delivered my soul from death...
9 I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.” (vv3-5, 8-9)
Ps 49:15 “ God will ransom - or REDEEM - my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me.”
Ps 71:20 “You will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
you will bring me up again.”
Resurrection! THAT’s what the psalmist is talking about, friends; resurrection isn’t just a NT thing. There are 3 recorded resurrections in the OT, and the word David uses for “restore” here in Psalm 30, v3 - God restored my life - is the same verb used of the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 8:5 when he raised the Woman of Shunem’s son up from the DEAD! Think of Jonah after 3 days in the belly of the fish, think of Joseph coming up out of the pit… they’re ALL pictures, shadows, prophetic prefigurings of a much GREATER resurrection to come!
And my present-day application question for YOU is: Do you know the One who has the power to restore, to revive, to redeem YOUR life up from the grave?
Jesus had a friend named Lazarus, who died. And when Jesus came to Bethany, he found Lazarus’ sister Martha upset and heartbroken. But Jesus said, “Don’t worry; “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” That he’ll go down to SHEOL. Only to wait. Wait for the Messiah to come and finally BREAK the shackles of death for good, and empty the cells of Sheol. And Jesus replies: THE WAIT IS OVER. “I am the resurrection and the life.[d] Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)
So I ask you again, friend: Do you BELIEVE in Him? When your name gets called and your time is up, what... or WHO are you COUNTING on? All the money in the world won’t be able to REDEEM you then, buy you back from the grave, turn THAT evil into good. Jesus asked “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? ” (Mark 8:36-37) There’s no EXCHANGE rate; all the money in the world won’t save you. I’ve known LOTS of incredibly wealthy people in my life who have passed away; you know what all their money got them in the END? A nicer hole in the ground! You can’t take it with you, friends.
Do you believe in the One who can “bring YOUR soul up from Sheol”? Who can “restore YOUR life up from the pit”? Who can promise you: “though you die, yet shall you LIVE”! In fact, you’ll NEVER die, in the true sense of the term.
Can you look death in the face, and say with the apostle Paul:
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin… But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15:55-56)
And that’s another good transition, to point #4 - because Paul says, “The sting of death is SIN.” Elsewhere, he says, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). What our sin rightfully EARNS us is death, eternal separation from a holy God. You go way back to the garden of Eden; God told Adam and Eve - ‘On the day that you eat the fruit, break my one rule, disobey me… SIN, you shall surely DIE”. And they did, spiritually. And ever since then - Romans 5:12 - “death spread to all men[e] because all sinned”; we were all just passing the disease around, for thousands of years, with NO vaccine. You want to talk about a long wait?! We don’t know the HALF of it; COVID is nothing. And we’re not talking a 2 or 3% death rate; try 100% fatal. For thousands of years. Waiting for the cure. Until Jesus says THE WAIT IS OVER. But even a thousand years BEFORE Jesus, David prophetically announced his coming. And assured us that...
4) God redeems us from Sin (vv4-5a)
David says, vv4 & 5: “Sing praises to the Lord...
For his anger is but for a moment,
but his favor is for a lifetime.”
What’s God MAD about? God doesn’t get MAD at our sickness… our sorrow… our suffering… he gets COMPASSIONATE about those things. But you know what makes God ANGRY? SIN. Sin. That’s what David is referring to in v5.
The past-historical context, the occasion for David’s writing Psalm 30, is detailed for us in 1 Chronicles ch21. We don’t have time to read the whole story. But the long and short of it is: Satan incited David to take a CENSUS, to number Israel. God had told him NOT to - it doesn’t matter how many troops you’ve got; that’s not where your hope in battle lies anyway, in the strength of your numbers; I, YAHWEH, am gonna fight your battles for you. But David sins. And David knows how much sin ANGERS a holy God.
One of our favorite hymns here is “In Christ Alone”. And there’s that great line in verse 2 where we sing: “Til on that cross, as Jesus died; the WRATH of God, was satisfied.” Some churches won’t sing that. When the song was released back in the early 2000s, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. tried to buy the rights to it, so they could change that one line to “On that cross, as Jesus died; the LOVE of God, was magnified.” They liked the rest of the song, they just couldn’t get over that one line. The WRATH of God?
In Prov 8:13, God says, “Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.”
Psalm 5:5 “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.”
Psalm 11:5 “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”
And friends, if you don’t understand, if you can’t accept, the WRATH of God against sin, then the cross of Jesus will make ABSOLUTELY no sense to you! If our sins didn’t actually cause a rift between us and a holy God, if God didn’t HATE sin, and have to make a way for it to be DEALT with, his wrath appeased, justice satisfied, then what did Jesus even DIE for?
I’ll tell you what he died for. He died to redeem us from the curse of sin. We read Romans 5 and 6 earlier; here’s the LAST half of those passages:
“Sin came into the world through one man… and death spread to all men[e] because all sinned… But if death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Rom 5:17)
“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 6:23)
Because “his anger is but for a moment,
but his favor is NOW for a lifetime.” An ETERNITY... ETERNAL life!
5) God redeems our Sadness (vv5b, 11)
David cries: “Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning…
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness”
These are the most famous verses in the whole psalm, and I’ve run clear out of time to exposit them. It’s a good thing they really don’t NEED a lot of elaboration. “Weeping lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Jesus doesn’t REMOVE our sadness; he REDEEMS it. He doesn’t say “Come follow me, and you’ll never cry again.” No, sadness won’t be fully eradicated until the new heaven and new earth of Revelation ch.21, when “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”” (v4)
But for now, there’s still weeping. There’s still cancer. There’s still COVID. There’s still divorce. There’s still unemployment. There’s still infertility.
Even JESUS wept! The shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus? WEPT. When he found out about his friend Lazarus’ death. But joy came in the morning, when he arrived at the tomb and said, “Lazarus, come out.” And HE GOT UP.
Weeping tarried for TWO nights, when Jesus himself was laid in the earth. But JOY came on that third morning! When the women went to visit HIS tomb, and the angel of the Lord said, “Why are you weeping?” And seeking the living among the dead; He is not here. HE IS RISEN!”
And friends, I don’t know what has YOU crying this morning, this week, but what I DO know is that while God hasn’t promised to REMOVE your sadness, He HAS promised to REDEEM it. That not a single TEAR of ours is ever wasted, with our God. That God “collects our tears in his bottle” (Psalm 56:8); what a beautiful image. Because he is making sure to redeem every last ONE of them.
6) Lastly, God redeems us from Our Strengths (vv6-10, 12) -
David confesses: “As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
7 By your favor, O Lord,
you made my mountain stand strong;”
Remember the context: David took the census so he could BOAST in how many people HE ruled. How powerful his army was. How expansive HIS kingdom was. In researching this week, I heard a scholar estimate that adjusted for inflation, David’s net worth was about $40 BILLION dollars! You wanna talk about PROSPERITY?! That’s the kind of prosperity that’ll tempt even the BEST of kings to think, “I can NEVER be moved”. I’m untouchable. But David reflects back on it now, years later, and realizes, “it was only by YOUR favor, O Lord, that I was so prosperous.” I can’t BOAST in any of this; God - YOU did it ALL! YOU “made my mountain stand strong”. And then minute that you “you hid your face - v7; to humble me, to put me in my place, to punish me for the sin of taking that census so I could boast in MY OWN strength -
I was dismayed.”
We have a tendency to minimize our weaknesses and BOAST in our strengths, don’t we? Psalm 10:3-6 says “For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul…
In the pride of his face[b] the wicked does not seek [the Lord]...
He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;”
If you’re convinced, in your pride, that you can’t be moved, then you will NOT seek the Lord. In Christianity, we call this “FUNCTIONAL ATHEISM”. You might say you still believe in God, but practically speaking, you live like YOU’RE HIM. In your pride and your prosperity, you become a god unto yourself.
So what do we do, when we realize we’ve become functional atheists? We cry out to God for mercy. Mercy is NOT getting what you deserve. Satan. Sin. Death. Sadness.
Redemption turns things upside down. Redemption flips them things on their heads. Death becomes LIFE. Sadness becomes gladness. Strengths become weaknesses, and weaknesses, strengths.
The apostle Paul says: “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:9-10) I officiated Ryan Gibson and Aly Smith’s wedding yesterday. You know what I PRAYED for them? I prayed for weaknesses. For hardships, for calamities? Some of the family glanced up like, “What’s this guy DOING?!” Because when they are WEAK, it will drive them back into one another’s arms again, and more importantly, back into their heavenly FATHER’S arms.
And when we humble ourselves, and run to HIM in our weakness, we will be able to say with David, “that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” Because THEN, the joy of the LORD will be our strength. The glory of the LORD will be our passion.
Let me end with this: the answer to David’s question, in v9 - “Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?” - is YES! Jesus said, “Even the ROCKS will cry out and praise me, if you fail to.” Make no mistake: God WILL be praised. At the name of Jesus, every knee WILL bow, and every tongue WILL confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; the question is: will you bend your knee WILLINGLY, humble YOURSELF, of your own volition; lay down your strengths and your pride to worship him instead; or will God have to FORCE you to bend your knee on that day.
Jesus said, “The proud will be humbled, but the humble will be EXALTED.” All you need is need. The sick get the doctor. Cry out to him today. And redemption can be yours.
Let’s pray.