1. O Lord,
rebuke me not in thy wrath. Rebuked I
must be, for I am an erring child and thou a careful Father, but throw not too
much anger into the tones of thy voice; deal gently although I have sinned
grievously. The anger of others I can bear, but not thine. As thy love is most
sweet to my heart, so thy displeasure is most cutting to my conscience. Neither
chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Turn not the rod into a sword; smite not
so as to kill. True, my sins might well inflame thee, but let thy mercy and
longsuffering quench the glowing coals of thy wrath. Let me not be treated as
an enemy or dealt with as a rebel. Bring to remembrance thy covenant, thy
fatherhood, and my feebleness, and spare thy servant.
2. For thine arrows stick fast in me. He means both bodily and spiritual griefs, but especially
the latter, for these are most piercing. God’s law applied by the Spirit to the
conviction of the soul confronts sin, wounds deeply and rankles long; it is an
arrow not lightly to be brushed out by careless mirthfulness, or to be
extracted by the flattering hand of self-righteousness. The Lord knows how to
shoot so that his bolts not only strike but stick. It seems strange that the
Lord should shoot at his own beloved ones, but in truth he shoots at their sins
rather than them, and those who feel his sin-killing shafts in this life will
not be slain with his hot thunderbolts in the next world. And thy hand
presseth me sore. The Lord has pressed him down with the weight of his
hand, so that he had no rest of strength left. Conviction of sin is a piercing
and a pressing thing, sharp and sore, smarting and crushing.
3. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine
anger. Mental depression tells upon the
bodily frame; it is enough to create and foster every disease, and is in itself
the most painful of all diseases. Soul sickness tells upon the entire frame; it
weakens the body, and then bodily weakness reacts upon the mind. Neither is
there any rest in my bones because of my sin. Deeper still the malady
penetrates, till the bones are affected. No soundness and no rest are two sad
deficiencies; yet these are both consciously gone from every awakened
conscience until Jesus gives relief. God’s anger is a fire that dries up the
very marrow; it searches the secret parts of the belly. A man who has pain in
his bones tosses to and fro in search of rest, but finds none; he becomes worn
out with agony, and so in many cases a sense of sin creates in the conscience a
horrible unrest which cannot be exceeded in anguish except by hell itself.
4. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head. Like waves of the deep sea; like a black mire in which a
man utterly sinks. Above my hopes, my strength, and my life itself, my sin
rises in its terror. Unawakened sinners think their sins to be mere shallows,
but when conscience is aroused they find out the depth of iniquity. As an
heavy burden they are too heavy for me. It is well when sin is an
intolerable load, and when the remembrance of our sins burdens us beyond
endurance. This verse is the genuine cry of one who feels himself undone by his
transgressions and as yet sees not the great sacrifice.
5. My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my
foolishness. Apply this to the body, and it
pictures a sad condition of disease; but read it of the soul, and it is to the
life. Conscience lays on blow after blow till the swelling becomes a wound and
suppurates, and the corruption within grows offensive. What a horrible creature
man appears to his own consciousness when his depravity and vileness are fully
opened up by the law of God, applied by the Holy Spirit! It is true there are
diseases which are correctly described in this verse, when in the worst stage;
but we prefer to receive the expressions as figurative, since the words because
of my foolishness point rather at a moral than a physical malady. Some of
us know what it is to stink in our own nostrils so as to loathe ourselves. Even
the most filthy diseases cannot be so foul as sin. We shudder to think that so
much evil should lie festering deep within our nature.
6. I am troubled.
Wearied with distress, writhing with pain on account of sin revealed within me.
I am bowed down greatly. Nothing so pulls a man down from all loftiness
as a sense of sin and of divine wrath concerning it. I go mourning all the
day long. The mourner’s soul-sorrow knew no intermission; even when he went
about such business as he was able to attend, he went like a mourner to the
tomb. The whole verse may be the more clearly understood if we picture the
oriental mourner covered with sackcloth and ashes, bowed as in a heap, sitting
amid squalor and dirt.
7. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease. A hot, dry disorder, probably accompanied by loathsome
ulcers. Spiritually, the fire burns within when the evil of the heart is laid
bare. Note the emphatic words: the evil is loathsome; it is in the loins,
deep-seated; the man is filled with it. Those who have passed through
the time of conviction understand all this. And there is no soundness in my
flesh. This he had said before, and thus the Holy Spirit brings humiliating
truth again and again to our memories, tears away every ground of glorying, and
makes us know that in us, that is, in our flesh, there dwelleth no good thing.
8. I am feeble.
The original is “benumbed,” or frozen. A heat of fear, a chill of horror, a
flaming desire, a horrible insensibility—by these successive miseries a
convinced sinner is brought to death’s door. And sore broken. Crushed as
in a mill. The body of the sick man appears to be all out of joint and smashed
into pulp, and the soul of the desponding is in an equally wretched state. I
have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Deep and hoarse is
the voice of sorrow, and often inarticulate and terrible. The heart learns
groanings which cannot be uttered, and the voice fails to tone and tune itself
to human speech. When our prayers appear to be rather animal than spiritual,
they none the less prevail with the Father of mercy.
The more closely this portrait of an awakened sinner is
studied in the light of experience, the more will its striking accuracy appear.
It cannot be a description of merely outward disorder, graphic as it might then
be; it has a depth and pathos in it which only the soul’s agony can fully
match.
9. Lord, all
my desire is before thee. If unuttered,
yet perceived. Blessed be God, he reads the longings of our hearts; nothing can
be hidden from him; what we cannot tell to him he perfectly understands. The
psalmist is conscious that he has not exaggerated, and therefore appeals to
heaven for a confirmation of his words. The good Physician understands the
symptoms of our disease and sees the hidden evil which they reveal; hence our
case is safe in his hands. And my groaning is not hid from thee. Sorrow
and anguish hide themselves from the observation of man, but God spies them
out. None more lonely than the broken-hearted sinner, yet he has the Lord for
his companion.
10. My heart panteth.
Here begins another tale of woe. He was so dreadfully pained by the unkindness
of friends that his heart was in a state of perpetual palpitation. The soul
seeks sympathy in sorrow, and if it finds none, its sorrowful heartthrobs are
incessant. My strength faileth me. What with disease and distraction, he
was weakened and ready to expire. A sense of sin, and a clear perception that
none can help us in our distress, are enough to bring a man to death’s door,
especially if there be none to speak a gentle word, and point the broken spirit
to the beloved Physician. As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone
from me. Those who were the very light of his eyes forsook him. Hope, the
last lamp of night, was ready to go out. Here we have some of us been; and here
should we have perished had not infinite mercy interposed. Now, as we remember
the lovingkindness of the Lord, we see how good it was for us to find our own
strength fail, since it drove us to the strong for strength; and how right it
was that our light should all be quenched, that the Lord’s light should be all
in all to us.
11. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore. Whatever affection they might pretend to, they kept out of
his company, lest they might be made to suffer through his calamities. It is
very hard when those who should be the first to come to the rescue are the
first to desert us. In times of deep soul trouble, even the most affectionate
friends cannot enter into the sufferer’s case; let them be as anxious as they
may, the sores of a tender conscience they cannot bind up. Oh, the loneliness
of a soul passing under the convincing power of the Holy Spirit! And my
kinsmen stand afar off. As the women and others of our Lord’s acquaintance
from afar gazed on his cross, so a soul wounded for sin sees all mankind as
distant spectators, and in the whole crowd finds none to aid. Often relatives
hinder seekers after Jesus, oftener still they look on with unconcern, seldom
enough do they endeavor to lead the penitent to Jesus.
12. They also that seek after my life lay snares for me. Alas for us when in addition to inward griefs we are beset
by outward temptations. David’s foes endeavored basely to ensnare him. If fair
means would not overthrow him, foul should be tried; but prayer to God will
deliver us, for the tempters can be met and overcome by those who are led by
the Spirit. They that seek my hurt speak mischievous things. Lies and
slanders poured from them; their heart was forever inventing lies. And
imagine deceits all the day long. They were never done. When they could not
act they talked, and when they could not talk they plotted. Bad men never have
enough of evil. They compass sea and land to injure a saint; no labor is too
severe, no cost too great if they may utterly destroy the innocent. Our comfort
is that our glorious Head knows the pertinacious malignity of our foes, and
will in due season put an end to it, as he even now sets a bound to it.
13. But I, as a deaf man, heard not. Well and bravely was this done. A sacred indifference to
the slanders of malevolence is true courage and wise policy. It is well to be
as if we could not hear or see. Perhaps the psalmist means that this deafness
on his part was unavoidable because he had no power to answer the taunts of the
cruel, but felt much of the truth of their ungenerous accusations. And I was
as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. David was eminently typical of
our Lord Jesus, whose marvelous silence before Pilate was far more eloquent
than words. To abstain from self-defense is often most difficult, and
frequently most wise.
14. We have
an advocate, and need not therefore plead our own cause. The Lord will rebuke
our foes, for vengeance belongs to him; we may therefore wait patiently and
find it our strength to sit still.
15. David
committed himself to him that judgeth righteously, and so in patience was able
to possess his soul. Hope in God’s intervention, and belief in the power of
prayer, are two most blessed stays to the soul in time of adversity. Turning
right away from the creature to the sovereign Lord of all, and to him as our
own covenant God, we shall find the richest solace in waiting upon him.
Reputation may be cast into the mire, but in due time the godly character will
shine with unclouded splendor.
16. For I said, hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice
over me. The good man was not insensible,
but he dreaded the sharp stings of taunting malice; he feared lest either by
his conduct or his condition he should give occasion to the wicked to triumph.
This fear his earnest desires used as an argument in prayer as well as an
incentive to prayer. When my foot slippeth, they magnify themselves against
me. The least flaw in a saint is sure to be noticed; how careful ought we
to be, and how importunate in prayer for upholding grace! We do not wish, like
blind Samson, to make sport for our enemies; let us then beware of the
treacherous Delilah of sin.
17. For I am ready to halt. Like one who limps, in danger of falling (1 Corinthians
10:12). How small a thing will lame a Christian! This passage refers to
weakness caused by pain and sorrow; the sufferer was ready to give up in
despair. And my sorrow is continually before me. He groaned under a body
of sin which was an increasing plague to him. Deep conviction continues to
irritate the conscience; it will not endure a patched-up peace, but cries war
to the knife till the enmity is slain. Until the Holy Spirit applies the
precious blood of Jesus, a truly awakened sinner is covered with raw wounds
which cannot be healed nor bound up, nor mollified with ointment.
18. For I will declare mine iniquity. The slander of his enemies he repudiates, but the
accusations of his conscience he admits. Open confession is good for the soul.
When sorrow leads to hearty and penitent acknowledgment of sin it is blessed
sorrow, a thing to thank God for. I will be sorry for my sin. It is well
not so much to bewail our sorrows as to denounce the sins which lie at the root
of them. To be sorry for sin is no atonement for it, but it is the right spirit
in which to repair to Jesus, who is the reconciliation and the Saviour.
19. But mine enemies are lively, and they are strong. However weak and dying the righteous man may be, the evils
which oppose him are sure to be lively enough. Neither the world, the flesh,
nor the devil are ever afflicted with debility. If the devil were sick, or our
lusts feeble, we might slacken prayer; but with such lively and vigorous
enemies we must not cease to cry mightily to our God. And they that hate me
wrongfully are multiplied. As we are no match for our enemies in strength,
so also they outnumber us a hundred to one. Wrong as the cause of evil is, it
is a popular one. More and more the kingdom of darkness grows.
20. They also that render evil for good are mine
adversaries. Such would a wise man wish his
enemies to be. Why should we seek to be beloved of such graceless souls? It is
a fine plea against our enemies when we can without injustice declare them to
be like the devil, whose nature it is to render good for evil. Because I
follow the thing that good is. If people hate us for this reason we may
rejoice to bear it: their wrath is the unconscious homage which vice renders to
virtue. This verse is not inconsistent with the writer’s previous confession;
we may feel deeply guilty before God, and yet be entirely innocent of any wrong
to our fellow-men. It is one sin to acknowledge the truth, quite another thing
to submit to be belied.
21. Forsake me not, O Lord. Now is the time I need thee most. When sickness, slander,
and sin all beset a saint, he requires the especial aid of heaven, and he shall
have it too. He is afraid of nothing while God is with him, and God is with him
evermore. Be not far from me. Withhold not the light of thy near and
dear love. Reveal thyself to me. Stand at my side. Let me feel that though
friendless otherwise, I have a most gracious and all-sufficient friend in thee.
22. Make haste to help me. Delay would prove destruction. The poor pleader was far
gone and ready to expire; only speedy help would serve his turn. Affliction
gives new life to our pleading, and drives us with eagerness to our God. O Lord my salvation. Not my Saviour
only, but my salvation. He who has the Lord on his side has salvation in
present possession. Faith foresees the blessed issue of all her pleas, and in
this verse begins to ascribe to God the glory of the expected mercy. We shall
not be left by the Lord. His grace will succor us most opportunely, and in
heaven we shall see that we had not one trial too many, or one pang too severe.
A sense of sin will melt into the joy of salvation; grief will lead on to
gratitude, and gratitude to joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
