Added Emphasis
When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. Psalm 32:3 NASB
About my sin – You know that translators and editors add words to the text to “make it flow” better in English. But sometimes they add entire thoughts. This appears to be one of those times. Yes, it’s true that the opening verse of this psalm extols the blessing of forgiveness so we might conclude that verse 3 poses the opposite. But the text doesn’t actually say this. It says, “When I kept silent.” It does not include “about my sin.”
This allows the experience of silence to be much more than shame over disobedience. Suddenly the text is speaking about all those times when we feel as though there is nothing more to say, when we are “played out” and life seems eternally gray. Perhaps some of your thoughts are like mine:
How do I go about writing to the Lord of hosts? What can my mere words mean to a God who created the mind, the hands, even the thoughts that bring them to the page? You know all my struggles, all my sorrows. You know every secret, even those I hide from myself. My true self stands before the scalpel of Your eye.
Great agony fills my soul, O Lord. From the vast howling wasteland within, I stumble over parched land. Cracked lips and flinty tongue announce my thirst. There are dry bones around my heart. I am anawim. Oppressed. Downtrodden. Broken under the yoke of sin and despair.
You promise a gentle burden, but I know only the weight of failure. You promise peace but I know only war. You promise joy. My life is sorrow. I am crushed by the days. Toil greets me by morning. Exhaustion by night. Your hand is heavy upon me, Lord. I am but a servant, unworthy it’s true. But still I belong to You. Will You not offer the crumbs from Your table, even to the undeserving. For Your loving kindness, Lord. For Your mercy. I know no good thing resides within me, but still I plead. Where else can I go to find life? There is only You.
Your words of comfort in past days are brittle now. No honeycomb. No sweet savor. I see the rod of chastisement, stripping my life with every blow. But Lord, am I to die under Your correction?
Your children speak of abundant life. They claim victory. They extol success. I am Your child too. What has happened to me? Where is Your strong arm of support? Where is the pleasure of Your company? Where do I find the evidence of Your care?
You are the God Who answers. No wooden statue. Not deaf to Your people. Yes, I know You whisper. But even in the quiet I do not hear You. It is a silence I fear. If You abandon me, Lord, what shall I do? There are no potions to bring You back. No contracts or payment. No pleas or promises. You will have mercy on those whom You choose. Lord, let one of them be me.
Topical Index: silent, Psalm 32:3
David learned (yes, up close and personal) “If we confess our sins..” David’s sin could no longer be covered up, but rather (thank you Nathan) revealed/uncovered quite clearly. And what a trail (called a mess!) sin leaves. Destruction everywhere… Homes, businesses, government – the “wages” (consequences, y’all) of sin (very much evident) is death.
From Adam and ever since – the problem, our problem – no.. – “my” problem has been sin. For those who need definition, “sin is transgression of the law.” God says “Thou shalt not..” and? David (and me) did what God said not to do.. We both (all have sinned,btw) transgressed (a nice way to say “disobeyed?”) what God said “not to do.
But wait! – There’s more! For not only doing what God says not to do, we also don’t do what God says to do!
Yes, sins of commission and sins of omission. Long story short? “All have sinned..” Jew or Gentile.. all who breathe have sinned… “therefore..”
“But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So He said to the man.. (Mark 2:10) “Ask.. and you shall receive.. Seek.. and you shall find.. Knock.. and it shall be opened unto you.”.
David’s need and mine are the same. To “err” is human? Et tu, David?
God’s promise (and provision!) What David (and Adam and I( all need is “restoration of relationship.” For you see, ~ God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him ~ (John 3.17)
What else do David and I share in common? A psalm of David (and me!) ~ Oh, what joy for [all] those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!! ~
Friend, “it is written.” ~ In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace! ~ (Ephesians 1.7)
[Just] Ask and you will receive.. Hallelujah! Amen!
“By His mercy we are not consumed”. The “waste howling wilderness” is on the inside of me. It is a product of long ages of transgression; not just mine, but of all that went before me and of all that are around me, too. Yes, “trespasses” are where I got trashed by someone else’s choices overstepping my boundaries. The entire makeup of the planet is reeking and rolling in the consequences of transgression. There is no escape. The only reason any of us are drawing breath at all is because of grace and mercy. Someone is constantly having to override the results of bad choices so as to give us yet another chance to choose. Someone is constantly offering incense before the Father on behalf of all of us, too. But, somehow, we have this illusion that none of that should affect us? What planet do we think we live on?
How do we expect to walk where Yeshua walked and not encounter life as He did; where all those choices culminated in that cross? We are commanded to pick up that cross and continue the same. If we do not feel the weight (experience) we will never do anything about it. All of us are in dire straights. Only some of us are lucky enough to be able to discern to some extent how bad it is, and none of us really know how bad it really is because none of us are able to handle that experience. We have to look to the cross to understand fully. But the cross was about ME, too, and that waste howling wilderness that I find there.
What do I have the authority to intercede for? What I find in my experience, for the Tree limited me to that. If the problem of starving children in Africa or the secret sin of my greatgrandfather is going to be able to be dealt with, I am going to have to accept some of the responsibility for the fallout. If I am going to be the reconnection necessary to fix the problem, I am going to have to consent to the experience of the fracture that requires it. This has nothing to do with someone else’s sin becoming my sin; it has to do with the consequences of that sin.
If it is true that unresolved sin in the community continues to plague the entire community, then injustice anywhere affects all of us. I think the acknowledgement of the “butterfly effect” is the world’s way of observing this fact. We must make a move for justice; for catching and hauling the perpetrators before the Throne; for confessing the sins of our forbears, too; for taking responsibility for the unresolved sin of all of us, before we no longer suffer from the consequences. We DO suffer from the sins of others; it DOES curse us, and there IS something we must do before we can be at peace
The Body must learn to move together; to take responsibility for itself as one whole, but the purpose of that Body in this world is likewise to intercede for justice (and its accompanying grace) for an entire planet gone awry. These are the lessons I see when I look at the model of that ancient Hebrew community. This is HOW the call to be salt and light manifests in the world. The entire world should feel the effect of this intercession, too, and it should call it to account, too. I think the Return hinges on us becoming willing to turn around and face the disaster we are stuck in the middle of; collectively as that Body, as well as individually, and pick up that cross and follow our Head. Hello, “waste howling wilderness”!
The flesh is consequence-averse; it runs, denies, blames, redirects,. medicates. But disaster must be faced before it can be fixed, whether it be the epigenetic expression of my genes in response to the choices of my forbears, or the injustice the planet is roiling with because a child is starving; somebody is going to have to intercede before something can change. And let it begin with me. Amen.
Oh, man did I need to hear that!
Skip, have you written on the passage from Hebrews 10:26-31? A certain fiery expectation, and all of that?
Thanks,
Drew
There may well be a shroud of ‘fear’ laying wait at the edge of ‘silence’. Where are you God? Why don’t I sense your presence? Is it all emptiness that I, my ‘self’, fills with numinous substance, such as You? I called; did you hear me? Did you answer, but my internal ‘antenna’ was ‘tuned’ to some other frequency? What ‘channel’ are you broadcasting on, for I have flipped through many and can’t find you? I sit in silence and I wait. But I take comfort in the wait, for I have seen answered prayers. And so I embrace the silence of your presence, for you have taught me over and over through your Holy Writ, the importance of remembering. I constantly add to my ‘memory bouquet’. You know what we are mentally capable of and what we are not. You know that ‘background noise’ inundates us constantly, so that listening for you becomes problematic at best. My mind listens for that still small voice. Have I filtered you out like chaff? Must you constantly forgive me for that? I wait in silence often, for I am truly undone unless I sense your ‘voice’. And in the sounds of silence lay the foundations for a life reclaimed, renewed and restored, that I might in some way, reflect your image, into your good creation. Working for the Kingdom, God’s rule and reign on Earth, as it is in His heaven is often spent in waits of silence. What would you have me do Lord? Never shrink from that question nor the silence that might well be attached to that prayer.