Desperate Times

Lord, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, and do not punish me in Your burning anger.  Psalm 38:1  NASB

Do not rebuke – Have you ever prayed a prayer like this?  Have you reached the point, long after the Lord has redeemed you, long after you recognize your sinful condition and your desperate need for grace, where you are still overwhelmed with fear of God’s judgment?

This is a prayer of intense intimacy.  David doesn’t address God in formal terms.  This is not a recitation from the Common Book of Prayer.  This is right from the heart.

The opening phrase does not show up as a verse in English.  It’s almost a sidebar, but it’s important.  “A psalm of David.  To bring to remembrance.”

What is it that David wants to remember?  His sinful acts?  His rebellious disobedience?  These are usually the last things we want to recall.  We stuff them away in the “forgiven and forgotten” closet, hoping that our fellow human beings are as willing to throw them into the depths of the sea as God is.  But not David.  He deliberately brings them to mind.   He may not be confessing some specific indiscretion in the following verses, but he is clearly thinking about a host of actions that he took against his God.  And it is that totality of perversity that weighs on his soul.  He looks back and sees the amassed accumulation of his sin.  He sees that over and over, in spite of grace and forgiveness, he has wandered from the path of righteousness.  The fiery brand of guilt sears the flesh of his soul with an indelible imprint.  He doesn’t deserve God’s love or God’s favor.  Like Isaiah, he wails, “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips.”

We live in an era of “forget-forgiveness.”  We put the emphasis on the dismissal of our unrighteous catalog of thoughts and behaviors.  We compartmentalize guilt.  It belongs on the shelf right alongside those old toys and discarded high school yearbooks.  Don’t remind us of our past failures.  We are a people fixated on the future.  Look ahead, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you memory erasers.  No, says David.  I need to remember.  I need to know what I am really like without Him.  I need to remind myself that I am not so capable, not so wonderful, not so spiritual.  There is no credit due me in this life.  My memories are my safeguards against pride of ownership.  My memories are useful ego deflators.  They show me what I would certainly prefer to forget, but when I forget I have the tendency to pretend that I am not really like the person who cheated on his spouse, defrauded his employer, lied to his children, took advantage of his friends.  Kodak moments must register the capacity of my sinfulness.  If all I recall are the moments of light and joy, what reason will I have from coming back with thanksgiving?  Memory cancels pride.  Let me remember.

David uses the Hebrew word zakar in a passive sense.  He wants “to bring to memory,” “to cause to be remembered.”  One nuance of this verb is the idea of acknowledgement.  Yes, I am forgiven.  But also, yes, I need to acknowledge the reason that I must be forgiven.  When I am before the holy God of Israel, I stand only because He lifts me.  God does not love me because of who I am.  He loves me because of who He is.  There can be no other explanation for my presence before Him.  “Lord, let me remember – and worship.”

“LORD.”  The Hebrew text is not the word “Lord” but rather the personal name of God, never spoken.  Worshippers were careful to substitute the word “Lord” whenever they saw God’s name written in the text.  “YHVH” writes David.  David does not address God’s status or position of divinity.  He uses God’s intimate name.  This God is no stranger to him.  They know each other.  All the more reason why David should recall his sinfulness.  This God knows all about it.  This God is closer than his best friend.  Closer than a brother.  There are no excuses and no exceptions.  YHVH signals a conversation from the heart.

“in Your wrath do not rebuke me” we read in English.  But the Hebrew is more dramatic.  The first word is the prefix “Not.”  David has fixed the emphasis on what is most desperately needed.  “Yahweh, not in your wrath,” he says.  “I know that Your jealous rage is kindled against my sin.  I know that I cannot stand before You, a holy God.  I know that Your breath will extinguish my life forever because I am a man of unholy acts.  But God, Yahweh, my God, my personal God, do not.”  Do not send me away.  Do not separate me from You.  Do not cast me aside in spite of my sin.  I remember who I am.  Desperate without You.  As dust before You.  Without pardon.  “Do not.”

David’s plea is focused on God’s wrath.  We don’t hear this very much anymore.  We want to forget our sins in order that we don’t have to deal with His wrath.  Push it all far away in the dark recesses of that ancient past, in the Old Testament, where God was mysteriously unpredictable and destroyed those who dared to rebel against Him.  Leave all that talk of vengeance and anger and wrath on the other side of the Incarnation.  We want a God of peace and love and forgiveness.  We want a God who blesses and protects and takes care of our every need.  We don’t understand a God of wrath.  But the man after God’s own heart understood wrath.  And it terrorized Him.

The Hebrew is alarming and strident.  “Not to me your wrath.”  In Hebrew, qeseph, that is, anger aroused by someone who fails to do his duty.  We see the word in Deuteronomy 29:28 where it is linked with the necessity of atonement.  This is a verb that assumes a relationship.  It is not the verb you would use to express anger about a falling stock market or a new tax form.  It’s not about a failed computer or a broken lawn mower.  This word is used when anger is turned toward someone who has failed to do something required of him.  This is a personal relationship failure, a failure to keep trust.  Used here it is the expression of God’s reaction when His holiness is maligned, ignored or questioned.  God’s wrath is inseparable from His love and jealousy concerning His children.  It is an expression of protective custody over what He regards as His own.  There is no sin without wrath.  The fact that God turns away His wrath because He favors us with love does not give us any claim on moral worth.  It is God’s choice to love us, not our merit that requires His response.  What we deserve is wrath.  And David, the man who knows the heart of his Lord, understands this.  “YHVH, do not cause Your wrath to fall on me.”

We must notice that David offers no excuse.  He does not begin this cry of desperation with a defense.  He doesn’t even mention the possibility of excuse.  He only asks for mercy.  In his outcry he already admits his guilt.  His choice of language shows that he knows his sin.  David has no solution for his moral collapse.  Unless God withholds wrath, David is lost.

“Do not rebuke.”  Yakah.  To convict.  To judge.  To reprove.  Perhaps the translation does not give us the fullest appreciation of David’s plea.  Literally, “Yahweh, not to me in your wrath judge.”  Don’t bring the gavel down.  Don’t declare the case closed.  Don’t issue the sentence.  David chooses a Hebrew word that vividly describes the same intensely personal relationship.  Yakah is a word that belongs in the courts of law.  The judge sits behind the bench, hearing the evidence.  This is no trial by jury.  The judge will decide the fate of the accused and his verdict is final.  David pleads, “Yahweh, the great Judge of the universe, do not issue your verdict based on my failure to perform the duty you expected of me.”  Yakah is a frightening word for us.  It is a word that allows no appeal.  When we know our sin, when we know that we stand guilty before the high court of creation, yakah can mean only one thing.  David sees his life unfolded before the Lord.  He sees the smallest indiscretion and the largest rebellion.  He sees it all, from the misspoken words to the adultery and murder.  Yakah hangs over his head like the guillotine.

Jonathan Edwards once preached the sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.”  This example of colonial ecclesiology used to be required reading in American history.  Today it has passed into obscurity, along with a culture that has any fear of qeseph and yakah.  When sin disappears over the moral horizon, so does the fear of God.  Wrath and judgment sink with the setting sun.  But they are not gone.  They are only out of sight until the scorching light of the new day dawns.  Unless we cry out with David during the dark night of the soul, that new day will come blazing with both wrath and judgment.  Tonight, when we feel the hand of God pressing in the dark, our cries must reveal the desperation of the guilty begging for mercy.  In the dark we must confront the hideous nightmares of our transgressions.  There is no profit in pretending that forgiveness yesterday wipes away our need for God’s unmerited abstention today.  Forgiveness is a moment-by-moment reprieve based on God’s unwavering character.  Forgiveness is His decision, not mine, and I am very glad for that.  Were forgiveness based on my adherence to the trust relationship presupposed by qeseph¸ my dark night would end in a moral nuclear holocaust.  God tells me that He will not change His mind about His love for me, but that does not mean that I can stand before Him claiming my justification.  The righteous are so because of God’s faithfulness.  By (His) faith the righteous will live.

David continues where most of us would falter.  He looks squarely into the eyes of the man in the mirror, sees the nightmare of secret sins, and opens his life again to searing, divine examination.

“and chasten me not in Your burning anger”

The Hebrew verb yāsar is used ninety times to describe a combination of punishment and instruction.  Our proclivity toward the Greek educational model has removed from the contemporary culture any concept that pain and suffering have educational benefit.  We have forgot the lesson of the hot stove.  But God has not forgotten nor has He removed consequence from the cosmos in order to accommodate our endorsement of psychological mythology.  Pain teaches.  The absence of pain entails the absence of life-protecting education.  In the Greek based model, education became the accumulation of information and the commitment to self-realization.  But in the Hebrew model, education was based in the covenant relationship with the Creator.  Education was about right-living much more than it was about right-thinking.  A simple man could more easily stand before the living God justified by his faith in God’s character than could the theoretically educated philosopher or theologian who knew all the facts but had no living experience of trust.

God uses pain as a means of correction and instruction.  Yasar and its derivative musar speak about corrective discipline.  Consider the passage in Deuteronomy 11:1-7 where the discipline of the Lord is described in terms of the punishments experienced in the exodus.  David pleads that God not discipline him from burning anger.  David recognizes that his life in the hands of an angry God will be torturous.  God may discipline.  God will discipline.  But let it not be motivated from wrath.  “Correct me if You will, Lord, but not from the heated passion of rage.”  David knows that the heart of God is a heart of compassion, the first word used by God Himself in self-description (Exodus 34:6).  David urges this very personal God to display compassion and mercy in spite of the enormity of his sin.  He calls on the deepest characteristics of the God of Israel, characteristics that will mollify the wrath he has engendered by his disobedience.  When David faces his own moral bankruptcy, he knows that justification and rationalization are impossible.  Mercy is his only hope.  And mercy requires a God moved by compassion rather than rage.

Can you identify with David’s emotional state or are you so far away from a God who is enraged at sin in your life that you can’t even imagine what it would be like to fear the consequences?  Most of us today have been seduced by a glacial shift in our concept of God.  Slowly, over centuries of erosion, we have lost sight of the God who hates sin.  We have replaced that God whose very presence on the mountain brought a thick cloud of terrifying darkness and horrible flames.  We have “moved on” to a God who could never contemplate the destruction of human beings simply because they didn’t happen to hold certain beliefs about His authority.  After all, those Old Testament metaphors are clearly outdated.  Today God is our “higher power,” resting comfortably removed from the tragic events of this world until we mount an effort to enlist His assistance for the benevolence of our kind.  God has successfully completed His anger management therapy and is now the kindly old Santa Claus who brings good gifts to his enlightened children.  Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, famines even environmental disasters are uniformly viewed as unholy twists of fate.  They cannot be the handiwork of an angry God because God cannot be God if He is judgmental and vengeful.  God must always be the perfect loving Father (as we define the concept).  Would you dare to suggest that the destruction of a city or an entire country was the sign of God’s anger over sin?  Only if you wish to be dismissed as a fanatic or worse.  In at least one regard we have something to learn from the Islamic Jihad.  God has no reason whatsoever to tolerate our laziness about sin.  And when God gets angry, watch out!

David sees the enormity of the consequences of sin.  He sees it on a national scale and on a very personal scale.  His awareness propels him into emotional despair.  If we have never touched the foul stench of our own depravity, how can we celebrate the incalculable love of a God who would redeem us?  If we have never confronted the caged beast within, how can be express eternal gratitude for the God who removed our chains?  Thankfulness is directly proportionate to desperation.  In a world that does everything possible to avoid emotional trauma there is little room for spiritual good news.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus sought those who lived on the edge of civilized society.  They could not escape desperation.  They were ready to hear a message of hope as they faced a reality they could not avoid.  But we are different.  Until the twists of fate disrupt our carefully crafted myths of control, we are crippled by our affluence.  We take Wellbutrin instead of weeping.  We buy Prozac as a substitute for prostration.  The Bible for us might as well contain the verse, “For he who has much, little will be understood.”

“God, grant me poverty of soul, and if I cannot find the desperation for You within me, then bring me to desperation another way.”  Could you pray such a prayer?

Topical Index: faith, desperation, rebuke, Psalm 38:1