The Fear of God

Lord, I Wait for You

Dr. Larry Thorson
August 31, 2008

Psalm 38 (A Psalm of David)

1 LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down on me. 3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin.

4 My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. 5 My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. 6 I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.

7 My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. 8 I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. 9 All my longings lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. 10 My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.

11 My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. 12 Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they scheme and lie.

13 I am like the deaf, who cannot hear, like the mute, who cannot speak; 14 I have become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.

15 LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God. 16 For I said, "Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip." 17 For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.

18 I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin. 19 Many have become my enemies without cause; those who hate me without reason are numerous. 20 Those who repay my good with evil lodge accusations against me, though I seek only to do what is good.

21 LORD, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God. 22 Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior.

When I was in Scotland I made a pastoral call on a retirement age woman named Stephanie. Three times a week Stephanie sits in a stuffy room in an old hospital built in 1902 receiving dialysis. Dialysis is when your liver won’t work so they have to pump your blood out, purify it and put it back in. She sits in that room from 8:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon three days a week.

As I talked with Stephanie I learned that two years ago she had been a woman of good health with one exception; her knee wouldn’t work. While in a routine knee replacement surgery she had a heart attack that required medicine to thin her blood which killed her liver and blinded her. In addition, while in the surgery the surgeon made a mistake and clipped her leg muscles rendering her leg permanently inoperable.

What do you say to someone like that? I told her the biblical story of Job, how God allowed Satan to take away everything Job treasured to see if he worshipped God for God’s sake or for the blessings God gave him. She had never heard that story. I prayed for her and left.

On my walk back to the church I knocked on the door of a 42 year old man named Graham. While I was in Scotland, not long after I had arrived, Graham was driving his work van back from a job and may have fallen asleep at the wheel and killed three 18 year old teenagers. No one knows what exactly caused the accident. When I first met him in the hospital he had only a broken sternum from the impact and a lot of guilt from the accident. A week later his bowel had burst and he was transferred to an intensive care unit at the Aberdeen hospital.

I walked back to the church thinking about Stephanie and Graham and what they must think about in their present condition. Laying in their hospital rooms it would be hard for them not to think “What bad thing could I have possibly done in my life to cause this to happen to me.” They probably didn’t do anything to deserve what they got and God most likely didn’t cause it. But sitting there all those hours in their condition gives a person time to think.

Psalm 38 is the 2:00 in the morning cry of a once powerful man believed to be the mightiest and greatest king Israel ever had. It’s the cry of a man who had more success in what he attempted than I could ever dream of having in my lifetime. It’s the cry of a man who in his wildest imagination never thought he would find himself in such a mess. It’s the cry of a man face to face with his past.

“Lord do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath” David prayed. “My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly” (v.5). We don’t know what it is he did but given his treatment of women in other parts of Scripture we can only imagine. Now his body is a mess. In addition to being ill and sickly (vs 3a), his muscles and bones are weak and unable to support his frame (vs 3b), his wounds are infected (vs 5), his back is filled with searing pain (vs 7), his heart pounds (vs 10), his eyes have lost their brightness (vs 10), he has become hard of hearing and his tongue is not able to form words (vs 13,14).

It’s 2:00 in the morning and we can’t sleep. All the noise and distractions of the day are gone. We’re alone with our thoughts, face to face with how our life as gone and with what we have done. You say I won’t get to where David was because I won’t let myself get there. Hopefully you won’t ever get where David was but you might find yourself flat on your back with only your thoughts.

        "My guilt has overwhelmed me," says David, "like a burden too heavy to bear" (v.4). Think of a drowning person who is being pulled down by the undertow and beat upon by angry waves. Or, think of a person tottering along under a burden too heavy to bear – he is slowly being forced to his knees. The guilt of David's sin has this kind of affect on his life. His sins are literally pulling his body down.
        To make matters worse, even his friends and family have given up on him: "My friends and companions avoid me ... my neighbors stay far away" (v.11). And his enemies, they "set their traps" and "plot deception" (v.12). It sounds so similar to the story of Job.
        That’s the bad side of David’s situation. Now let’s turn it around and see the good side of David’s situation. Think about it, what does David have going for him? He’s still alive. He still has his memory of how God worked in his life in the past. He still can pray to God. He still has time to repent.

When you find yourself in David’s situation you’ve got to count your blessings. Then you have to re inventory those blessings again and then again. David could still pray. As long as he could still pray there was still a chance for God to turn it around for him.

Too many of us stop at v.14 when we’re going through a hard time like David was going through. Up through v.14 all we hear about are David’s problems. His problems were bad. The list was long. When I’m tired and can’t sleep that’s all I want to think about. I want to run through my problems as if to make sure I don’t leave any of them out. Maybe you don’t have this problem but sometimes in prayer I spend so much time listing out my problems that when I finish praying I feel worse instead of better.

But David didn’t stop at v.14. The next thing he says in v.15 is “LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” That’s easy to pray when things are going well. When I’ve had a good night of sleep and I’m not desperate I can pray that. When we got off the ferry from the island of Iona in Scotland we had to catch a bus to take us on an hour long ride to catch the next ferry back to our car. We had a little change of plans and ended up taking a ferry much later in the day than we had planned. We discovered that there were no buses waiting for our ferry when we got off as we had been told there would be. I walked up the street and asked about a bus and everyone I talked to told me that the last bus had left for the day. Do you know what it’s like to be standing in a foreign country in a light drizzle with no transportation and no hotels available? We prayed v.15 “Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” We could still pray that prayer because it was still early enough and we were still fresh enough. I don’t know how we would have prayed it if we were still praying it at 11:00 pm. Fortunately for us a beautiful Mercedes bus showed up and away we went to the next ferry.

“Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” How did David know that God would answer? The same way that you know your best friend will answer her phone when you call: she’s done it before. You wouldn’t keep calling your friend if she never answered or returned your messages. You’d give up.

I’ve been walking with the Lord for a long time and I challenge anyone here to call upon the Lord and see if God won’t answer. I believe God will answer anyone, anywhere they call. The problem is when we feel desperate like Martha and I sitting on that Scottish shore waiting for a bus with the sun setting. When we feel desperate we want an immediate answer. When we don’t get an immediate answer we think God doesn’t love us any more or that God has finally decided that our sins are too great.

The good thing about going through a hard time is while it’s true our sins are always before us but when we’re down and out memories of those sins come to the surface much better than when we’re healthy and refreshed. When we’re going through a hard time we don’t have as many defenses to ignore them and we’re more likely to deal with them.

That’s when David prayed next in v. 18 “I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.” I don’t wish a hard time on anyone but if you’re going to go through a hard time you might as well turn it around and use it for your advantage. There’s no use wasting any opportunity. Don’t be surprised that you have sins to confess. The problem is the longer you walk with our Lord the more we think we shouldn’t have sins. But the opposite is true. The closer you get to the Lord, the more sin you realize you have and need to confess. We just stay too busy to pay attention.

But when we’re healthy and strong with a good night of sleep we feel good and we feel strong. We’re not as likely to see our need to change our ways as when we’re down. So David takes a bad situation caused by his own sinful ways and uses it as an opportunity to right the ship. “I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.”

The final verses of this Psalm, verses 21 and 22 show the desperation of David. “Lord, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior.” The Scriptures don’t sugar coat life’s difficult situations. They don’t say do this and this and everything will be fine. The Bible is not the Disney Channel.

When we sin we pay the price. When bad things happen to us we pay the price. No matter what we dream, say, think or do the pain is still there. The difference is how you recover and sometimes how fast you recover. While visiting the hospital in Scotland I met a man with cancer laying on what he believed was his deathbed. I visited with him for awhile and found that he had no remaining family in the area. I also learned that he didn’t expect to live much longer and that the remainder of his life for him was going to be one miserable wait to the finish.

We talked together for awhile and looked at a picture book I found on one of the shelves. Then I asked him if I could pray for him. He declined. I thanked him for the visit and he did the same. I went to the next room but my mind didn’t leave him. Somewhere, somehow something had gone wrong in his life and he had never forgiven God for it. Maybe he had privately prayed for healing from his cancer and it hadn’t happened. Whatever it was he had given up.

David didn’t give up. The prayer in this Psalm shows that. In I Chronicles 29:28 we read the end of his story where it says “He(David) died at a good old age, having enjoyed long life, wealth and honor. His son Solomon succeeded him as king.”

God never gave up on David and he’ll never give up on you. I believe that God hadn’t given up on that man I met in the Portsoy hospital and that’s why I was there that day. Whenever you’re down and feel a little desperate about your situation turn it around to your advantage and confess what sins you know you’re committing even if what you have wasn’t caused by sin. Rededicate what’s left of your years to Christ’s service. Then know that God won’t hold those sins against you but wants to give you a fresh start. God sacrificed Jesus Christ to die for those very sins. This is your chance in life to turn it around. May you pray “Lord, I wait for you.”

Postscript: I talked to Allen, the husband of Stephanie, the woman on the dialysis machine after worship in my last day in Scotland. He said she was planning to receive a kidney transplant from their daughter, her eye doctor believes she will receive partial restoration of her eyesight and as soon as the kidney is adjusted they’re catching a plane and flying to California! Expect the best and wait for the Lord.

Children’s Message

Let me tell you a little story this morning about a raccoon who wanted to be a sheep. So he went to Sheep University and enrolled in Sheep classes. In the class they taught him how to speak Sheep. One of the classes was how to fix your hair just like a sheep. He had trouble with that class.

The raccoon worked real hard learning how to be a sheep. He went to class. He did his homework. He did everything he knew to do to be a sheep. Well it came time to graduate and be a sheep but he had to pass one final test.

The day of the big test came and he was nervous. He didn’t know what questions they would ask him. He made sure he could eat grass and had no problem. He tried putting his head through a wire fence and getting it stuck. No problem, he had that down. He practiced walking up and down steep mountains munching on grass as he went. Again, no problem. What could they possibly ask him that would keep him from graduating as a sheep?

They asked him to do all the things that he had expected them to ask. He sailed through everything. He was so certain that he would pass that he couldn’t even imagine being a raccoon anymore.

Then the shepherd came out in the field and called his sheep name but the raccoon didn’t pay any attention. Next the shepherd sent his dog to bring him in and instead of running to his shepherd for protection he climbed over the fence and ran into the woods never to become a sheep.

A raccoon can try to a sheep but he can never be one. He will never listen to the voice of his shepherd.

Did you know that some people try to be a Christian by copying what other people do? That’s like a raccoon trying to be a sheep by copying what sheep do. It’ll never work.

The only way to be a Christian is to pray and accept Jesus Christ the Great Shepherd as your Savior. When you’re having a good day, tell him thank you for such a good day. When you’re having a bad day thank him that you’re at least alive. When you’re about to eat, tell him thank you for the food. When you’re worried or scared tell him. He’ll take care of you. Every day read the Bible and know that your shepherd is talking to you.

Our Bible verse for today is John 10:14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me…”