When things fall apart in a relationship, our natural tendency is to turn away from the one who has hurt us. Probably at some time in your life, most of you have experienced great pain that came from a close relationship that went sour. Let me share with you a great piece of advice I heard long ago for dealing with conflict in marriage.
When you are angry or disappointed or upset with your spouse, your natural inclination will be to turn away. Instead, make a conscious effort to turn towards your loved one, and communicate with each other. That’s the way you work out your differences.
The same thing is true with our relationship with God. When we find ourselves disappointed or angry or upset with God, or feeling guilty and thinking God is angry with us, we also tend to want to turn away from God. Instead, learn to turn towards God and talk to God about how your feel.
That is exactly what David did in many of the Psalms he wrote. One of the most powerful things in the Psalms is David’s ability to express his feelings, both positive and negative, to God.
Often, we think we ought to speak carefully and wisely and with big important words when we pray to God. But God wants us to pour out our hearts to him, expressing our true feelings.
You can tell God your deepest, angriest, most hateful thoughts and feelings. It’s okay! And guess what? God won’t be surprised, because he already knows what is truly in your heart!
In fact, God wants you to pour out these feelings to him in prayer, because when you do, he can begin to heal your brokenness. As long as you keep your feelings inside and act like everything is okay when it’s really not, God can’t really help you. If you can learn to be honest with God, then God can begin to bring healing in your life.
In the Psalm we are reading today, David is addressing God. He has already gone through a difficult time, and in that difficult time, he tells us he cried out to God for help.
The Psalm doesn’t tell us what the event was that caused David so much pain. It could have had to do with failure in battle, or it could have been a time of physical or mental illness, or it could have been the time he was alienated from God because of his sin with Bathsheba. You may remember the story—King David was attracted to a woman named Bathsheba. As king, he used his power to send for her. Knowing that she was married to Uriah, a man in his army, David slept with her, and she subsequently became pregnant.
Not wanting to be caught, David recalled Uriah from battle, and gave him the opportunity to spend some time with his wife, hoping Uriah would sleep with his wife, and later assume the child was his. But Uriah was such a dedicated soldier that he would not allow himself to go to his wife while his men were at war.
David had a problem. So he commanded that Uriah would be put in the front line where the fighting was fiercest, where he knew Uriah would die. Uriah’s commander followed David’s instructions, and Uriah was killed in battle. After Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, had mourned for her husband, David sent for her and she became his wife. And God was very angry with David, who was not only his friend, but the King of Israel.
So God sent his prophet, Nathan, to David. Nathan told King David a story. Here’s what Nathan said: (2 Samuel 11-12)
"There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
Well. How do you think David reacted to this little story Nathan told him? He was enraged! It says,
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over
Then, Nathan told David that God was going to punish him. And David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." David confessed his sin, but God still punished him by causing the son born to David and Bathsheba to die.
God was very, very angry with David. David thought he could get away with his sin, but he certainly didn’t. Eventually, God did forgive David. But I want to suggest that God’s anger was because God was truly broken-hearted over David’s sin.
Many years earlier, when God chose David to succeed Saul after Saul had disobeyed him, God told Saul, through the prophet Samuel, “You acted foolishly…You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you…But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart…” The man after his own heart who God had chosen to be king was David. Now, David, the one God had said was a man after his own heart, had failed miserably.
Perhaps it was after this incident that David wrote this psalm. Because David, in his sorrow, turned his face toward God, repenting and recognizing God for who he was. If David could repent and be restored to God, there is hope for us, too.
Here is the Psalm David wrote; Psalm 30:
1 I will exalt you, O LORD,
for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 O LORD my God, I called to you for help
and you healed me.
3 O LORD, you brought me up from the grave;
you spared me from going down into the pit.
4 Sing to the LORD, you saints of his;
praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.
6 When I felt secure, I said,
"I will never be shaken."
7 O LORD, when you favored me,
you made my mountain stand firm;
but when you hid your face,
I was dismayed.
8 To you, O LORD, I called;
to the Lord I cried for mercy:
9 "What gain is there in my destruction,
in my going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me;
O LORD, be my help."
11 You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.
All of us have times when life seems to be very heavy. Perhaps, like David, we have become trapped in our own sin. Or perhaps someone has treated us unfairly or hurt us. Some of us have suffered great loss and grief. Others face serious health issues. Some of us have pain that goes way back to our childhoods.
What can we learn from David? We can learn to take all of our pain and grief and anger and put it in God’s hands. David says, “O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me.” If you call out to God for help, he will heal you, too. Your healing may not happen the way you want it to—sometimes, for example, we ask for physical healing, and God brings spiritual healing instead. But God does bring healing.
And David says in the Psalm, “rejoicing comes in the morning.” Another translation puts it “joy comes in the morning.”
The kind of joy that God brings might not look like blissful happiness and a life with no more problems. The joy that God brings is more like a deep sense of peace that comes from knowing in the very core of our being that God is God, and that God is good. That no matter what life brings our way, God will be there, and in the end he will triumph over sin and pain and evil. That is the joy of our salvation and the joy of knowing God.
David had lots of problems, but he knew how to turn to God with his problems, rather than turning away from God. That’s why he was able to say,
“You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
As we come to the table of the Lord’s Supper, we are once again invited to turn our hearts towards God. That’s why we often take a few minutes to confess our sins.
The ways of the world have muddied our boots, we have gone our own way rather than God’s way, and we have forgotten whose we are. In confession, we remember that we are God’s children, and we come to him, confessing our sin and asking for a clean start. Take a moment for silent confession. Be honest with God—he knows you already anyway. Turn your heart toward God and ask him to forgive you and restore you to a right relationship with him. Let him restore to you the joy of your salvation.
Pause
In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul said this:
16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Amen
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