Text: Psalm 30
Psalm 30 ends, “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 (NIV).”
Eternally grateful, I believe, would be our way of describing it. Eternally grateful and so full of joy that
others see it. I don’t know about you,
but to me that seems like a good place to be. Yet, how does one arrive at it. Like the rich young man who asked Jesus,
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” which means enter the Kingdom of God, we want to know what we can do to be
grateful and joyful.
What can we do?
Jesus answered the man, “Get religion…keep the commandments.” The man said, “I’ve done that since I was a
child. It’s not working.” Jesus says, “This time I’ll be more
specific. Go sell everything you have
and give it to the poor and then come and follow me.” The rich young man walked away sad for he was
very rich. Jesus then tells his
disciples, “The more you have, the harder it is to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Who can be saved?” they said among themselves. Jesus replies, “It’s impossible for humanity
to save itself. But, with God all things
are possible.” I think Jesus is trying
to say there to that young man and to his disciples that being eternally
grateful and full of joy, which I’m led to say are a key component of our
outlook on life after salvation, are not attainable by our efforts. They are a gift from God.
The Psalmist appears to have known that rich young
man’s predicament. He too was wealthy,
well established and he would add, by God’s hand not his own. He writes, “As for me, I said in my
prosperity, ‘I shall not be moved.’
Yahweh, by your favour, you established me; you made my mountain stand
strong.” He was secure in the assurance
of faith that arises in knowing that it is God’s faithfulness alone that had
established him. It was by God’s favour
that he had it so comfortably content.
God in his steadfast love and faithfulness had established him for God’s
purposes and it was blessedly good for the Psalmist.
Yet, in the next breath that comfortable contentment
is gone. Death came knocking on his door
and it seems God decided to look the other way.
“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!’” (ESV) He goes
from comfortable contentment to dismay.
In case we don’t know what dismay is, its definition goes: sudden loss of courage
or resolution from alarm or fear. Given the
Hebrew word that’s used there which is almost exclusively used for this sudden
terror that falls upon the enemies of God, terrorized by God would not be too
far a stretch to say what he’s going through.
He’s been faithful only to find himself suffering what otherwise is
reserved for punishing the wicked. It’s
not that God is getting him for something specific that he’s done. It’s just that God, who once showed him
favour and established him well, has now decided to hide his face, to disregard
him.
Once again, the Psalmist gives no reason or cause for
this what appears to be sudden and capricious change on the part of God. He had fallen out of grace with God, but for
no specific reason. What was he to
do? What would you do? Job’s famous saying, “The good Lord giveth
and the good Lord taketh away” is the sort of thing heroes of good literature
say, but for us we are more apt to shake our fists at the sky and say “What
the….”. I hear a bit of that when the
Psalmist points out to God, “It isn’t going to look good for you if I die. Who’s going to praise you and tell of your
faithfulness?”
What happens next in Psalm 30 is a very pregnant
pause. Something happens that changes
that Psalmist. God does something. Salvation happens. Resurrection, we might say, happens. God acts.
The Psalmist says, “You turned for me my wailing into dancing,…” Missing iin some translations (NIV and NRSV)
is the “for me”. He doesn’t just say
“You turned my wailing into dancing.” He
said, “Lord, you did it for me.” The
Psalmist is not making generalities about God being the type of God who gives
us joy…blah, blah, blah. This was a matter
of life and death between a faithful man and the God who loves him. God did this healing for him, for his own
benefit and advantage and it took him from comfortable content—excellent cup of
coffee first thing in the morning sitting on my dock at my cottage on my
lake—to eternally grateful and full of joy—the after-effect of
salvation—summoning God’s people to give thanks and praise.
So, returning to the original question: How do we get
to be eternally grateful and full of joy?
Well, its God’s doing…and be ready to suffer. John Calvin writes: “You
must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.” God lets the faithful suffer for the purpose
of working for our good and salvation.
Calvin says that a key component of faith is “to recognize that God has
destined all things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his
power and grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon
us, and so bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him.” I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth
but I know there are terminal illness survivors out there who have felt God’s
power and grace at work in their very selves.
Add to that, the terminally ill who have suddenly found themselves at
peace. I know alcoholics and addicts who
have felt the power and grace of God move in their very selves to remove the
addiction. I know people who have been
riddled with shame and guilt only to feel it taken away from them as the power
and grace of God moved within them. I
could go on. The point is that in this
fallen, broken, totally frilled world we live in we, God’s faithful will
suffer, but our suffering is not without purpose. God uses it to bring his very self more
obviously to us and into us that we might know him in his saving power and
grace. We must let this go beyond
speaking generalities about God for when he works savingly in us whatever it is
we know its personal, that he did it for me to make me in the specifics of my
own brokenness eternally grateful and full of joy. Amen.
