I said, “I will guard my ways,
     that I may not sin with my tongue;
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle,
     so long as the wicked are in my presence.”
I was mute and silent;
     I held my peace to no avail,
and my distress grew worse.
     My heart became hot within me.
As I mused, the fire burned;
     then I spoke with my tongue:

“O LORD, make me know my end

     and what is the measure of my days;

     let me know how fleeting I am!

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,

     and my lifetime is as nothing before you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah

     Surely a man goes about as a shadow!

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;

     man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?

     My hope is in you.

Deliver me from all my transgressions.

     Do not make me the scorn of the fool!

I am mute; I do not open my mouth,

     for it is you who have done it.

Remove your stroke from me;

     I am spent by the hostility of your hand.

When you discipline a man

     with rebukes for sin,

you consume like a moth what is dear to him;

     surely all mankind is a mere breath!

 

“Hear my prayer, O LORD,

     and give ear to my cry;

     hold not your peace at my tears!

For I am a sojourner with you,

     a guest, like all my fathers.

Look away from me, that I may smile again,

     before I depart and am no more!”—Psalm 39 

Introduction

Christmas can be such a hard holiday for many people. Perhaps you feel like you are going to punch someone if you hear another “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year” kind of song. For some of you here, Christmas is the hardest time of the year. It reminds you of all that you don’t have or all that you have that is dysfunctional and not celebratory. We sometimes forget that the Christmas Story has much that is dark—just recall the wailing and mourning of the mothers in Bethlehem who had their children murdered by the evil ruler Herod.

But Advent is a season of hope because it can look at the darkness square in the face and say it maybe pervasive, but it is passing—no, not just passing, but preparatory. The pervasive darkness of night sets the stage for the dawning of a new day. The first coming of Jesus was the dawning of a new day. The Second Coming of Christ will usher in the fullness of that day—the pervasive, permanence of the light and the removal of night. No more night. No more tears. No more pain. So much of what we experience in this fallen world is dark, but it is the dark before the dawn.

We tend to forget that we live smack dab between the two comings of Christ. If Advent refers to the coming of Christ, we could say that one problem we have is “Advent amnesia.” We are duped into thinking that the darkness is all there is, or we forget that this world is not our home, and we are just passing through. Advent is a healing balm for our amnesia.

Psalm 39 is a powerful healing balm, but it will taste bitter. It is not sugar-coated at all. This bitter pill is a powerful antibiotic—it attacks our amnesia and brings us back to level-headed, razor sharp clarity. What is the powerful, healing, hard message of Psalm 39?

Main Point: God’s painful discipline powerfully pulls us to God. It is like God’s lasso —no one likes to be lassoed—unless you are blindly headed toward a cliff.

Let’s look at how this psalm is structured to make this point. The structure is difficult, but most commentators rightly divide the Psalm into four stanzas. There are some clues to help us see it has been structured like this in a finely balanced way. The four stanzas are finely balanced in terms of number of lines: 5, 3, 5, 3. They are also finely balanced in terms of number of words: 24 words; 36 words; 37 words; 22 words.

The message poetically builds to the main point (the first two stanzas are necessary for the response found in the last two).

The first (vv. 1–3): Feel the burn (24 words)
The second (vv. 4–6): See Your Breath (36 words)
The third (vv. 7–11): Hope in God (37 words)
The fourth (vv. 12–13) Hear my prayer (22 words)

1. Feel the Burn  (vv. 1–3)

I said, “I will guard my ways,
     that I may not sin with my tongue;
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle,
     so long as the wicked are in my presence.”
I was mute and silent;
     I held my peace to no avail,
and my distress grew worse.
     My heart became hot within me.
As I mused, the fire burned;
     then I spoke with my tongue ...

Psalm 39 is not a psalm for having a holly, jolly Christmas. This is real life and it hurts real bad. Life is not all candy canes and sugar plums. Let’s be straight up with what we see in this life. We see many things that cause us distress. On top of all the sin we see outside of us, we have the added danger of the sin inside of us. David especially focuses on being careful with what he says.

The situation here (as we will see in a moment) is that the Psalmist is sitting under the unpleasant discipline of God for his sin. David did not want to speak while under God’s discipline for fear of what he would say in the presence of the wicked. David knows his own sinful tendencies with his tongue. He is tempted to spout off in the presence of the wicked, but he is afraid of giving the wicked more arrows of mocking to shoot against God and his people. This is a mark of spiritual maturity: David is self-aware of his own sinful tendencies, yet he has a desire to please God. David wanted to please God even when disciplined by God. 

So David appeared composed on the outside, but he was boiling on the inside. His heart became hot. The more he thought about it (mused), the more the fire was stoked. We are going to see a song at the end of the service that says: “It’s so hot inside my soul—I swear there must be blisters on my heart.” The heat is blistering inside of David and could not hold it in any longer. Now let me ask a question. When you reach the point that you cannot hold something in any longer? Who do you tell?

David went to God. His words were like hot coals, the kind that you need tongs to even pick up. So he brought them to God. Do you do this? Do you rush to social media? Do you fire off a fiery email? Reach for the cell phone? David went to God. Spurgeon said, “It is well that the vent of his soul was Godward and not towards man. Oh! If my swelling heart must speak, Lord let it speak with thee” (Treasury of David). David does not speak out and lash out at God, he pours out his heart to God. But what he asks for may surprise you. He does not ask for judgment to be poured out on the wicked like in Psalm 37—he asks for God to pour out wisdom on himself.

2. See Your Breath (Breadth) (vv. 4–6) 

“O LORD, make me know my end

     and what is the measure of my days;

     let me know how fleeting I am!

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,

     and my lifetime is as nothing before you.

Now and only now does he extend the lesson out for all of humanity—after lumping himself in with the rest …

 

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah

     Surely a man goes about as a shadow!

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;

     man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!

David knows all of these things. This is not new information, but it needs to seem new and fresh. It needs to sink in deeper so that it controls our outlook and perspective on life. He has lost a proper sense of perspective on life. David asks to know how small and how limited and how fleeting he is and everything he sees around him.

He needs to be reminded about what life really is. He uses many images. Let me expound three of them: (1) handbreadth, (2) breath, and (3) shadow. First, a proper perspective on life measures it as a “few handbreadths.” It measures a few inches. This is humbling— not even a foot is a proper measure—but the hand. The hand was one of the smallest units of measurement in the ancient world. A handbreadth was the measurement of your four fingers across (roughly three inches). My life is about nine inches long.

We did the same thing in Isaiah 40 with the hollow of God’s hand. We can’t fit a tablespoon of water in the hollow of our hand—not even close to a liter or a gallon. God can fit all of the oceans in the hollow of his hand (332.5 million cubit miles of water). The same contrast comes here. When compared with God and his eternality, my limited life is measures up to basically “nothing.” You might object to saying “nothing.” At least call it nine inches. The point is how small that is in comparison to the immensity, the enormity, the grand scale of the glorious greatness of God himself. This life is a grain of sand compared to all the sand on all the beaches of the world (the life to come—eternity).

Second, all mankind stands before God as a “mere breath” (v. 5). Sometimes on a cold winter day, I will go outside and literally see my breath and say, God remind me—I just saw a picture of how brief this life really is. How long does it last? —a few seconds. This is humbling because everyone else is in the same boat. No one stands out as being exceptional. 

Third, another image David uses is the “shadow” (v. 6). We think of this world as so solid and meaningful. The Bible says it is as solid as a shadow. Making this world your home is like trying to build a house that stands on a soap bubble or a shadow. Ultimate meaning can only be found in the One who is ultimate reality. If this world is a shadow, then nothing in it can be the substance. We have to look outside of it to the One who made it and sustains it. He is self-existent—existing by his own power and upholding the universe by the word of his power. This world is as solid as a shadow. God is the solid rock Mountain that cannot be moved.

Life here in this world measures a few inches, lasts a few seconds, and is solid as a shadow. Did anyone walk into church thinking of life on that scale? We need this teaching or else we will become self-absorbed with everything around us. We start to think that the world revolves around us instead of life orbiting around the gravity of God.

In 1715 King Louis XIV of France died after a reign of 72 years. He called himself “the Great.” He also made the infamous statement: “I am the state!” His court was one of the most lavish in history and he planned his own funeral to make an extravagant statement. His body lay in a golden coffin in the great cathedral Notre Dame. All the great heads of state were given a candle and one special candle was set upon Louis’ golden coffin. The court preacher, Jean Massilon, was given explicit instructions at the climax of the service to tell everyone to blow out their candle so that only Louis was left. But suddenly Jean Massilon descended the pulpit steps, blew out the candle on the coffin and said these simple words: “Only God is great.” In the hour of death, this truth is more obvious and irrefutable than ever. At the moment of death, we see God alone is great and man is not.

It is even more humbling when you consider what that short space of time is filled with: “turmoil” (v. 6). It is not calm and smooth and light and fluffy. It is not smooth sailing. It is stormy and scary. The point is that we should not hope in this world. This world cannot be a lasting source of joy and peace. Ecclesiastes 1:2 uses a Hebrew word for empty or meaningless that is used three times in Psalm 39—vv. 5, 6, 11.

“Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath” (hebel) (v. 5).

“Surely for nothing (hebel) they are in turmoil” (v. 6)

“surely all mankind is a mere breath (hebel) (v. 11).

It is empty. There are voices in secular society that are trying to get us to see the same thing. Shakespeare puts a similar message in the mouth of Macbeth:

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing (act 5, scene 5 of Macbeth).

Some people agree that this life is a breath. There was a Broadway stage play by Samuel Beckett called Breath. It was a stage play with no human actors, lasting for a grand total of 35 seconds (I wonder if those ticket prices were discounted or prorated?). Here is the play: The props are a pile of trash on the stage. The trash is lit by a light that is dim at first, then gets brighter (but never fully) and then dims again. No words except a recorded cry at first, an inhaled breath, an exhaled breath, and another recorded cry. Between birth and death, you get to be trash for a short time.

Is that what you believe? Without God, that is what you get. If the dominant view of origins taught in our schools is right, then you should have the intellectual integrity to swallow the pill you have made for yourself.

A culture that prides itself in being secular—free from the shackles of belief in God—needs to also come to grips with what that means for what you really believe. You cannot fight the feeling that you are insignificant and worthless because you know this: The universe doesn’t care about you. Bertrand Russell (famous philosopher) has pressed us in his writings to intellectual honesty of despair:

Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving. His origin, his hopes, his beliefs are the outcome of accidental collocation of atoms. All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, inspiration and brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system …. Only on the firm foundation of “unyielding despair” can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

Unflinching honesty leads to unyielding despair. What a message: Don’t worry about your life because nothing you do will make any difference in the end. It makes no difference to the universe. You could be a good person or a serial killer—it doesn’t matter. Trying to smuggle in meaning at this point is dishonest—it is cheating. There is no accountability (because there is no God), but neither is there any meaning. You make your own meaning but then you die and become extinct and find it was all meaningless anyway. 

The bracing realization that life is so short and so empty drives us to define real life beyond this life. We will look for lasting joy beyond the grave and we will refuse to look to this world for our hope and help. It is empty … apart from God. We need to look to an eternal and external source of salvation. 

Make me rightly to know and estimate the shortness and uncertainty of human life, that so, instead of suffering myself to be perplexed with all that I see around me, I may cast myself the more entirely upon Thee.— J.J. Perowne

The distress drives the Psalmist to the God of the ages.

That is what happens now in verse 7.

3. Hope in God (vv. 7–11)

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?

     My hope is in you.

Deliver me from all my transgressions.

     Do not make me the scorn of the fool!

I am mute; I do not open my mouth,

     for it is you who have done it.

Remove your stroke from me;

     I am spent by the hostility of your hand.

When you discipline a man

     with rebukes for sin,

you consume like a moth what is dear to him;

     surely all mankind is a mere breath! Selah

David needs deliverance. He also needs protection from bringing reproach against God so that he is the object of scorn. Notice that David is not stiff-arming God’s discipline. He is not spouting off against it. He is embracing it. He has no objection or exemption or argument against it. He simply asks for God’s deliverance. God controls the timing and he is praying for God to cut the discipline mercifully short. Holiness hurts. Discipline destroys the things that have distanced us from God. Sin is a love affair in which we leave God as our first love. The world has seduced us away with its sweet-sounding promises and they sound believable because of our sinful desires.

Discipline does not destroy us—it destroys what we hold dear so that we will follow God more nearly and love him more dearly. Do you see that point in verse 11? “When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him” (v. 11). Because of our sin, God will either consume what we hold dear or those things will consume us. Listen to 1 John 2:15–17 …

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Discipline drives us to the point where we come to hope in God and see the wisdom of God so we do the will of God. We are forced to look away from the world long enough to look again at God and return to Him as our first love and true wisdom. It is a blaring wake up call to jolt us from the slumber of the seduction of this world— because we remember this world is not our home—we are sojourners. That is the word David uses in his final prayer to describe himself:

4. Hear My Prayer (vv. 12–13)

“Hear my prayer, O LORD,

     and give ear to my cry;

     hold not your peace at my tears!

For I am a sojourner with you,

     a guest, like all my fathers.

Look away from me, that I may smile again,

     before I depart and am no more!”

The Psalmist has come back to see that the temporary nature of life means that this world cannot be his home—his place of rest and peace. He is a sojourner, a temporary visit to this world on the way to his eternal home—like the entire family of faith. This is remarkable wisdom when you gather together what David has taken to heart now in this psalm: Life is a short stay in a foreign land far from home.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.— 1 Peter 2:11

God disciplines us, not to war against us, but to war against sinful passions that wage war against our soul. Do we live like life is a short stay as a sojourner passing through a foreign land on our way home? Or do we settle down and try to make this world something it is not meant to be? A lasting, permanent place to dwell in peace, safety, and joy.

Verse 13 may shake some of you the way it shook me. Let’s look there together. “Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!” That last verse threw me off at first because it sounds like David’s joy and smile would be found not in God’s presence, but in God’s absence. The Psalmist elsewhere asks God’s face to shine upon him; here he asks God’s face to look away.

This is exactly what Job said in his suffering in Job 10:20, “Are not my days few? Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer.” If I only have a short time left, I would like to enjoy it (not spend my days being disciplined).

The reason in the context is because God’s holy gaze is hot, like the scorching sun when disciplining us for our sin. It is not pleasant; it does not feel good at all. It is hot and it hurts. He is asking for relief from discipline, not total abandonment. He is not saying, “I never want to see you again.” He is wanting God to turn his anger away and put an end to his time of discipline because he knows that the time he has left is short. The discipline has worked. It has pulled him back to God. Now he asks that the discipline be removed.

Main Point: God’s painful discipline powerfully pulls us to God. The Psalmist asks for grace to own the fact that we are all going to die. Death is not some rebellious power that works outside of God’s control. Life and death are in his hands. Death is a boundary marker that marks the end of earthly life—it is fixed and irrevocable. All the days ordained for us were written down in God’s book before one of them began. One man I read about would actually write the number of days he thought he had left at the top of his journal every day because he wanted to keep it in front of him. He didn’t do this because he had a death wish and despised life—quite the opposite—he wanted to make the most of every day that God gave him. We must live in the light of these limitations, these boundaries. We cannot live rightly until we think about life rightly.

Possessions
How does understanding life make an impact on the way we approach life? The brevity of life strikes a serious blow against sin like covetousness. Here is why: Covetousness buys into a lie about what life is. Covetousness buys into the lie that life really equals the amount of possessions one has. We think we are in one of those game shows where the contestants have three minutes to go through a store and grab all the stuff they can before the time runs out. The bigger the cart and the better the stuff—the more life you have. Jesus taught the exact opposite. One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”— Luke 12:13–21

Conclusion

Holiday hustle and bustle may blind you to the beauty of Christ. Your life consists in the riches of Christ.

Surrender don't come natural to me
I'd rather fight You for something I don't really want
Than to take what You give that I need
And I've beat my head against so many walls
I'm falling down, I'm falling on my knees, God please
And the Salvation Army band is playing this hymn
And Your grace rings out so deep
Makes my resistance seem so thin. … So hold me, Jesus.

I am praying that the work of Christ would seem like a stirring symphony now. We will see what he did in the Gospels for us. We will see it pictured in Communion and sing it—may it be like the Salvation army band playing out and may the sound of grace ring out—and weaken our stubborn resistance so that we cry for Jesus to hold us again.

David tried to be silent while being disciplined for his own sin; Jesus kept silent while suffering for our sins. Listen to 1 Peter 2:22–25,

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Christ did not suffer because God wanted to bring him back from his straying; he suffered so that God could bring back others from straying forever. Christ came to bear our curse—and he refused to curse the very people who drove the nails into his hands. He didn’t scream at the soldiers, “Don’t you know that I am God you little peon!?” He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). 

When you feel that God is silent in your suffering, look to the suffering of God.

Look again at Jesus in Gethsemane. His disciples are sleeping and he is sweating drops of blood all alone in anguish. One of Andrew Peterson’s songs says, “He kneeling in the garden, silent as a stone, all his friends are sleeping and he is weeping all alone. The man of all sorrows, he never forgot, what sorrow is carried by the hearts that he bought.”

At the end of this service, the benediction will come from Numbers 6 (vv. 24–26). 

The LORD bless you and keep you;
     the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 
     the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

The reason I can give that benediction is that Christ purchased the smile of God over you. There are times that you can’t see it or feel it behind the clouds, but look to the cross and you know it is there. Behind a frowning providence, God hides a smiling face.

Look at what else he purchased. He endured the cross for the joy set before him. There is joy coming. He purchased for you the promise that burns in your heart: no more tears, no more night, no more sickness, cancer, darkness, fear—only warm, radiant light and the immeasurable love of God on display for his people.

Sermon Discussion Questions

Outline

1. Feel the Burn (vv. 1–3)
2. See Your Breath (vv. 4–6)
3. Hope in God (vv. 7–11)
4. Hear My Prayer (vv. 12–13)

Main Point: God’s painful discipline powerfully pulls us to God. 

Discussion Questions

• Why is David’s heart “burning” in Psalm 39?
• David resolves to be silent. When he finally speaks out, what does he ask for?
• How do the first two points of the psalm lead to the third point about hoping in God?
• In verse 12, what does it mean to be a sojourner? At the end of the psalm, why does David ask God to look away from him?
• How is Psalm 39 a window into the life of Christ?

Application Questions

• What are some specific lessons learned from this psalm? How do you plan to put those lessons into practice?
• What things are burning within you that you need to share with God in prayer? How will you ask for wisdom?
• How does this psalm change the way you think about yourself and about God? Is it good news that pulls you to God, or is it hard news that makes you want to run from God?
• How can you cultivate thanksgiving for what Christ has purchased and live in light of it?

Prayer Focus 
Pray for a grace to know the measure of our days. Pray for a grace to hope in God and live like sojourners who confess that this world is not our home.