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July 9/10, 2016
Jason Meyer | Psalms 30:1-12
I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O LORD,
you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!—Psalm 30
Introduction
I was in Florida this week for a family wedding. Every TV in the airport was talking about the Alton Sterling shooting in Louisiana. I woke up Thursday morning, went to the breakfast bar in my Florida hotel lobby and the TV report suddenly started telling the story of a shooting in Minneapolis. I discovered that it was about three miles from my house.
I watched three or four videos about the shooting. I was supposed to be working on my sermon, but I couldn’t focus. I was transfixed with shock and horror. I was overcome with emotion. A woman (named Diamond) in the car watching her boyfriend (Philando) bleed to death before her eyes, crying out to Jesus for mercy and screaming, “Don’t tell me that he is gone.” Her four-year-old child who witnessed the whole traumatic event and then tried to comfort her mommy—“Its okay, Mommy, I am right here with you.” Horror. Sheer, heart-breaking horror.
The afternoon and evening were jarringly different—a change of focus and a change of scenery to a beach wedding. I put on the garments of rejoicing. Many laughs together, lots of good food to eat together. That night, another jarring jolt as I went to bed to the news of the Dallas police shooting. I went to bed in the garments of mourning. Sorrow, tears, grief for Officer Brent Thompson, Officer Patrick Zamarripa, and three officers who have not been publicly identified [when I wrote this sermon]. The most haunting image was seeing the police officers saluting their fallen and slain brethren. Then coming home on Friday to reports of officers being targeted and ambushed all over the country. It is too much to take in.
At the same time, Psalm 30 has been my food and drink. Living with it and memorizing it—trying to dig my way into the heart of the passage the way a worm eats its way into the core of an apple. This sermon is the convergence of those three things: the contemporary world of today, the ancient world of Psalm 30, and the gospel of Jesus Christ that serves as the bridge between them.
The main point is: Praise the Lord because his mercy turns our mourning into dancing.
Let’s take a moment to walk through the movements of the text.
I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.—Psalm 30:1–5
The verses consist of both personal (vv. 1–3) and corporate (vv. 4–5) praise. Verse 1 establishes the context for the Psalm. David praises God for drawing him up—like drawing up a bucket of water from a deep well. God did not let David’s enemies gloat over him in triumph.
Verses 2–3 give further clues as to what he was facing. David was sick and near death. He was not in the pit of Sheol, but he was close—his enemies had already buried him in their own minds. Sometimes we talk about being so near to death that we have a foot in the grave. That was David. David cried out to God. God answered and restored his life.
Verses 4–5 now extend the lesson to all of the people of God. What God has done for one person is good news for all peoples because his actions reveal his attributes (his character and holy name—who he is, his holy reputation). Specifically, David found that God’s anger is short-lived (for an instant), but God’s favor is life-long (for a lifetime). The parallel shows that weeping may last a short time (the night), but joy will come back a short time later (morning)—not simply because of a random ebb and flow, but because God is good and merciful.
David desperately needed this reminder about God because he had fallen into the pit of presumption.
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O LORD,
you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.—Psalm 30:6–7
Verses 6–7 help us understand the reason for God’s anger (v. 5). David had sinned. David was hardened by sinful self-confidence and presumption in his prosperity. Prosperity can be a greenhouse where presumption grows. Trusting in God can morph into presuming upon God. His unfailing love is so unfailing that we can fail to be amazed by it. Our sin is so sinister that the shift can be subtle. Instead of standing on the promises, we begin to sit upon the premises. We stop feeling thankful, we stop feeling the glory of undeserved grace and favor and goodness. It begins to be assumed in apathy. David’s awareness of grace and thus his awe had dried up. He no longer was living a life of praise. Presumption can be the biggest praise killer of them all. David lost a sense of shock and awe for how good God was to him as an undeserving sinner.
God hid his face from David. God responded to his sin by letting David feel what his life would be like without God. David was dismayed (v. 7)! Without God, we have nothing. No life. No hope. No future. David stopped presuming upon grace and began pleading for it.
To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”—Psalm 30:8–10
Verses 8–10 are thrilling to me. Notice what David does. He entrusts himself to God. Do you see it? Do you see the counterintuitive step of faith? The hardest thing in the world to do is to entrust yourself to someone who is angry with you. How can David entrust himself (even in his guilt) to the mercy of God? Because he knows God. He knows His merciful character.
So David pleads for mercy. Notice his prayer. It lands on people as strange at first glance. How will my death profit you? David is not saying, “I don’t deserve to die. It would be unjust to let this happen to me.” He knows that he is guilty. His presumption is gone. He has reconnected his life with his purpose for living.
This is not a self-centered prayer, but a God-centered prayer. The purpose of my life is to make you supreme. To sing your praise. To testify to your grace and glory and faithfulness. Help me to do that with my life. I want breath in my lungs so that I can use it to tell of your greatness. Dust does not have a voice. It can’t tell of your greatness the way I can. Preserve me for that purpose. David asks for mercy not to presume upon it, but to praise God for it.
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!—Psalm 30:11–12
Verses 11–12 testify to David’s joy in recovering his purpose in life to praise God. My mourning has turned into dancing. My sackcloth has been replaced with gladness. My glory will sing your praise and not be silent. I will give thanks to you forever.
No one really knows when David sang this song. The superscription at the beginning says “a song at the dedication of the house.” ESV interprets the house as the temple, but others say it could be David’s house. What is clearer is the parallel between what David learned in this Psalm and what David learned in 2 Samuel 24, which led to the purchase of the place where the temple would be built.
David sinned when he commanded a census to be taken. He wanted to see how strong they were and how many mighty military men he had. It seems that he took God out of the equation and was putting his hope in his military. David’s heart was pricked and he repented before the Lord.
God sent the prophet Gad to David and gave him three options as punishment for his sin: (1) Three years of famine, (2) three months of fleeing from his foes, or (3) three days of a plague. Which would David choose? How would he determine which option to choose?
Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”—2 Samuel 24:14
David chose to fall into the hand of the Lord because his mercy is great. The plague killed 70,000 men from Dan to Beersheba, but God stopped the plague (the angel of death) when the angel came to Jerusalem. Very appropriately, the land for the temple was purchased at the place where the plague stopped (2 Samuel 24:25).
What David discovered is one of the high moments of understanding God’s mercy anywhere in the Old Testament. It is safer to put ourselves into the hands of God (even after we have sinned against him) than anywhere else.
Here is why that is more profoundly true and timely for us today: the gospel. God’s wrath and just anger were turned against a world of sinners. In the gospel, God sent his Son into the world to save sinners. He came to earth as the Messiah, the Son of David, the King. Jesus faced what David faced, the terror of death and the pit. His foes were gloating over him. He turned to God in the moment of terror. The next Psalm is also his story—“Into your hand I commit my spirit.” But he was not rescued from death, he was delivered over to it. He went deeper down into darkness than David. He was forsaken for a moment on the cross. Unlike David, he was completely innocent and sinless. Why was God’s just anger poured out on him? Psalm 22 tells the story of how he was forsaken (v. 1) so that God’s people could be accepted and forgiven (v. 22).
Great David’s greater Son went deeper into darkness and entered into three nights of weeping. But he was also lifted higher than David—drawn up from the grave, he forever exchanged the grave clothes of mourning for the garments of resurrection gladness. Now we have a safe place to run in our guilt. We can cast ourselves into the hands of God because we see they are nail-scarred for us and we will find mercy so that we can live a life of praise forever.
Application: The Gospel and the Dark Night of Weeping
How do you cast yourselves upon the mercy of God in this dark night of weeping?
In the face of suffering, Christians do not start with the sovereignty of God, but with the suffering of God. Our God suffered. Don’t miss the magnitude of this for sufferers. God knows suffering—not intellectually from afar, but experientially by drawing near. God became a sufferer in the incarnation. He bled and died. The Son of God did not stand at the end of death with one foot in the grave. His whole body went there—buried in the darkness of death’s tomb. There was mourning and weeping for three days.
Pause and stand in awe at this point. What other religion in the world has an answer to suffering like this? A God who does not stand far off and witness suffering, but a God who draws near and experiences suffering! The cross shows the character of God and perfectly shows the point that we can cast ourselves into his nail-scarred hands.
The last point made it clear that Jesus did not have only one foot in the grave, but his whole body went into the grave. This point says, “And don’t forget that his whole body came out of the grave in victory!” There was a battle in the grave and he came out victorious. He has defeated death. There is victory—grave clothes replaced by the garments of gladness forevermore. So there can be praise forevermore. Come, Christians, join to sing—he defeated the sting of death. Death will not end the strain—alleluia, amen.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.—Hebrews 2:14–15
Resting in the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord means that we are not enslaved to the fear of death. We either entrust ourselves to God or we are enslaved by fear. Don’t fear a defeated foe.
Christ’s victory created a family. A family in which there is no longer black or white, slave or free, male or female—all are one in Christ. A family set free from the fear of death. A family that will not stew in hate because we are lavished by his love.
A united church is the only hope for a fractured world. This will be the hardest part. We know we can fall into the hands of God and find a safe place of mercy and compassion and understanding—a safe place for our tears—we know they will not be judged.
But can we be an extension of that love—is your shoulder a safe place to cry? Will you judge the tears or join the tears? We do not tolerate one another; we are called to weep with one another—mourn with one another.
The church is a place with a unique calling in which we say to each other: I am willing to listen to you. I am willing to cry with you. Our unity in Christ can conquer racial animosity or racial apathy.
Race baiting is a ditch (race is always the issue), race blindness is a ditch (race is never an issue). I am calling for family compassion—no baiting or blindness. The church is called to racial empathy, not racial animosity or apathy. The church should be a place of mercy and compassion and brotherly and sisterly love, no matter what differences are obvious on the outside. We should say to every person of color here: We will strive to be the kind of people that will be a safe shoulder to cry on, a safe place to express your fears and tears and anger and frustration and confusion and doubt.
For example, will we listen when we hear our black brothers and sisters share their fears? I have heard from many of you, but I will quote someone else so that I don’t quote you and leave you vulnerable.
“My wife has to beg me (a grown 37-year-old man) not to go out to Walmart at night, not because she’s afraid of the criminal element, but because she’s afraid of the police element. Because she knows that when the police see me, they aren’t going to see Mika Edmondson, pastor of New City Fellowship Presbyterian church. When they see me, they aren’t going to see Mika Edmondson, PhD in systematic theology. When they see me, all they’re going to see is a black man out late at night. And she knows we’re getting stopped at 10-times the rate of everybody else, arrested at 26-times the rate of everybody else, and killed at 5-times the rate of everybody else. Black Lives Matter can see the injustice in those statistics. How can Black Lives Matter see the value of black life better than we can? Why does Black Lives Matter care more about the value of my life than you do” (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-black-lives-matter-the-new-civil-rights-movement)?
Now, how will you respond to this? Will you respond to him and say:
“No one believes the police are perfect, on the whole they tend to use force appropriately to protect their own lives and the lives of others. Moreover, racial disparities in the use of force are largely explained by racial disparities in criminality” (National Review article; read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429094/black-lives-matter-wrong-police-shootings).
Is that your answer—to justify what he has experienced solely because of statistics? Is your first impulse to argue with him or weep with him? Many in our society view this man as a statistic. Do you know how dehumanizing it is to be treated as a statistic, as a risk assessment? It feels so dehumanizing. Black men commit more crimes, therefore I view you with more suspicion. That is his experience.
Now show me a place in the Bible that says, “If you think you are right, then that person loses the right to be received in a compassionate, tender-hearted way. You don’t need to weep with them if you can quote statistics that say that people’s suspicion of them is in proportion to the amount of crime that others in his demographic commit.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience....—Colossians 3:12
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.—Romans 12:15–16
Hug your black brothers and sisters. Love them fiercely. Stand up for them boldly. Weep with them tenderly. Let us be a place where Romans 12:15 is lived out. As H.B. Charles Jr. says, “The Bible exhorts us to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). It doesn’t tell us to judge whether they should be weeping.” I am asking you to avoid policing other people’s pain.
Wouldn’t we say the same thing to a Middle Eastern believer who was always treated with much more suspicion at the airport for being a terrorist? Could you not feel compassion for him—at least mourn the fact that you don’t face that look of suspicion that he faces often?
Mika Edmundson says:
“It grieves me deeply to say there’s no evangelical movement robustly, consistently, and practically affirming the value of disparaged black people. So we must be careful how we criticize Black Lives Matter in the absence of an evangelical alternative” (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-black-lives-matter-the-new-civil-rights-movement).
At this point, I would love to be part of an evangelical movement that is an alternative to Black Lives Matter, but as a Pastor I am more focused on being a local church that is an evangelical alternative. I have two sons of color. This hits home for me. They are part of my family. But so are all the people of color in this church—my family and your family. Will you dismiss all of their fears and concerns with a one-sentence broadside: “You are just playing the race card”? Will you cover the whole issue with a blanket that keeps it out of sight: “If people like you would quit talking about it, the issue would go away.”
That response is an intellectual form of turning aside and ignoring the man bleeding on the side of the road like the priests and Levites that Jesus’ parable condemned. It is a way of intellectually ignoring the issue, shutting it down before it has a chance to search your biases and prejudices. It shuts down the process of compassion and empathy so that you never linger long enough to feel what others feel. You don’t take seriously what other people feel, so you never reach the point where it comes close enough to your front door to really feel it for yourself.
Playing the race card—racial issues are off the table? Are you saying, “You are falling into the ditch of overreacting”? I am going to speak very directly to you because I love you. Do you think that white people in the church of Jesus Christ have been characterized by overreacting to racial issues? We have a rap sheet, dear friends—hear me and don’t shut me down—we have a rap sheet of sinfully underreacting to racial issues and civil rights issues.
There are police officers in this church. Tell them you love them. Their lives matter too! What other profession is there where you wake up every morning and potentially give your life for strangers. They protect even the people that are protesting against them. When the bullets fly and the protestors run, the police run toward the bullets. Will you stand with them and pray for them? Pray for wisdom and discernment. The stakes are incredibly high. Split second decisions need to be made—and they have to take life. Some of them are afraid: “If I make a mistake, will my church vilify me?” No, we will weep with you and walk with you. Will you listen to them as they tell stories of unjust accusation—pulling over someone late at night (not even knowing their ethnicity) only later to get hit with charges of racism and discrimination? Will you weep with the wife or with the parents of police officers who tearfully fear that their adult children will not make it home some evening? Will you weep with the children of police officers who fear that they will wake up and not see their Daddy or Mommy in the morning?
We don’t just talk about justice and mercy. We can’t have faith without works. We can’t have words without actions. Notice that our work for justice and mercy does not become the gospel (like the social gospel)—it is empowered by the gospel and finds its first expression in a family created by the gospel.
We have a deeper, fuller message than Black Lives Matter. What hope does Black Lives Matter have to offer? The message that all lives matter (even the marginalized) is a true message. But what redemption story are they telling? What message of hope do they trumpet to all within earshot?
Conclusion: Grieve With Gospel Hope Until We Rejoice Together Forever
We grieve like those who have hope. We have the indestructible hope of those who will one day dance on the streets that are golden. Hope of those who will one day exchange the clothes of mourning for the festive garments of celebration. The wedding feast is coming. We live in a sinful world of bias and terror and lack of compassion, but we are going to a world where all sin is thrown into a lake of fire. We are separated from it forever. Death and the fear of death are swallowed up in victory.
We entrust our lives into the keeping of the God who is sovereign and the God who suffered so that he could showcase his mercy to us forever. We will not return to dust without a voice. Our voice can go on giving him praise forever and ever and ever. “When from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on. When from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be. Through eternity, I’ll sing on.”
It is heart-breaking to hear a four-year-old girl say, “It’s okay, Mommy, I am right here with you.” It is faith-building to hear an Almighty Father say, “It’s okay, son or daughter, I am right here with you to the very end.” Without Christ, your sobbing will never stop. The tears are not temporary—they will only get worse. The day that is coming is the day when in an ultimate sense all tears will be taken away from one part of humanity called the family of God, and one part of humanity will always have weeping and gnashing of teeth. One will always have sorrow, one will always have rejoicing and dancing.
Sermon Discussion Questions
Outline
Main Point: Praise the Lord because his mercy turns our mourning into dancing.
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to be a united church in the midst of a fractured world.