Psalm 28 - Text, Context, Implication, Application

Text: Psalm 28:1-3 & 7-9

¹ Of David. To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.
² Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.
³ Do not drag me off with the wicked, with the workers of evil, who speak peace with their neighbors while evil is in their hearts.
⁷ The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
⁸ The LORD is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed.
⁹ Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! Be their shepherd and carry them forever.

Context:

Psalm 28 is, most likely, the third in a triplet of Psalms (Ps. 26-28) designed to be read together and to focus its reader on, first, the need for preservation in times of trouble and persecution and, second, the inevitable (through labored for) joy in the Person and Presence of God. Attributed to David, we may assume these Psalms were either written during or as a reflection on the troubled king’s first hand experience of such persecution as well as God’s ultimate deliverance: “he [the Lord] is the saving refuge of his anointed [i.e., ‘his king’ or ‘his messiah’]” (28:8).

Implication (Gospel):

Though we, as sinners, justly deserve to be “dragged off with the wicked” (v. 3) and to have God “be deaf to us” so that we “become like those who go down to the pit” (v. 1) [i.e., like those abandoned to the grave and to hell], yet in and through His Son, God himself has taken the punishment we deserve. Jesus was, as Luke 22:37 (quoting Isaiah 53:12) says, “Numbered with the transgressors.” In other words, Jesus himself was both literally and spiritually “dragged off with the wicked,” in our place and for our good.

Because of this, God the Father, who was once our judge and enemy, has instead become our “our strength and our shield” (v. 7). God has blessed his people precisely by saving his anointed, that is, not simply by saving David as the Psalm indicates but by saving the ultimate David, God’s true King, Jesus Christ. Jesus has become (not only a “shepherd) but our “Good Shepherd” and he will carry us (that is, love, provide, and transform us) forever.

Application (Gospel):

Because Jesus has taken the wrath that I deserve and “carried me” like a shepherd, I can bear with the sins of those around me, not only putting up with them and forgiving them, but serving them and even “carrying” them when their own mistakes cause them to stumble. Today I will look for ways to care for the people around me, especially when they mess up and don’t deserve it.

Sin, Forgiveness and Confession

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

Praying with David, who knew a good deal about sin, we soon learn that the remedy for sin is not the extermination of sin, not long training in not-sinning, not a rigorous program conditioning us in a pavlovian revulsion to sin. The only effective remedy for sin is the forgiveness of sin—and only God can forgive sin. If we refuse to deal with God, we are left dealing with sin by means of punishment or moral education or concocting some strategy of denial. None seem to make much of dent in the sin business. No. The way, the only way, is to get in on God’s forgiveness. And we do that by confession (91).

Confession is a way out of the puny, self-deceiving, mulish contrivances we attempt in order to manage sin on our own. Confession is entrance into the vast world of forgiveness, encompassed with God’s deliverance and steadfast love (92).

Justified and Forgiven

Acts 13:32-33, 38-39

“And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus . . . .

“Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”

Acts 13:38-39 (Literal Translation)

. . . and from everything that you were not able by the law of Moses to be justified by (in) him all who believe are justified.

Aaron Orendorff

The Law of Moses cannot justify, not because the law itself is somehow flawed or defective, but rather—as the literal translation of v. 38 reads— because we ourselves “were not able.” Romans 8:3-4 reads in many ways like an expanded commentary on vv. 38-39: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

The point in both places is the same: the law (as a system of salvation) demands perfect obedience; we—in the weakness of our flesh, that is, under the power and willful influence of sin—cannot fulfill its “righteous requirements.” God, therefore, through the person of his Son, “condemned” sin by condemning Christ. In other words, God destroyed sin, emptying it of its legal power by, as Colossians 2:14 says, “nailing it to the cross.”

The result? Acts 13:38: “. . . through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed . . .”

Forgiveness, not because of who we are or what we’ve done; not because of our desert or even on account of our pleading. Forgiveness because “what God promised to the father, this he has fulfilled to us.”

Forgivness in Marriage

Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say “I Do”

[Forgiveness] releases the person who sinned from the liability of suffering punishment for that sin. To open this valve, the one sinned against must lay down the temptation to say along with the unforgiving servant, “Pay what you owe!”

[Forgiveness] requires the willingness of the one sinned against to absorb the cost of the sin. You received emotional pain over what she did. Will the pain end with you or will you return it? You endured a blow to your trust because of what he’s done over a period of time. Will your heart attempt to force him to pay what he owes? Or will you follow the footsteps of the master and demonstrate a willingness to absorb the cost?

[The trouble is] we fear God’s methods don’t work. The biblical response—the idea of completely, forthrightly, and permanently forgiving a spouse and releasing him or her from all liability—can seem not only impossibly difficult but less than fully just (107).

True forgiveness sees another’s sin for the evil that it is, addresses it, then absorbs the cost of that sin by the power of God’s abundant grace (108).

Forgiveness and Fear

Psalm 130:1-4

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

[T]he connection between forgiveness and fear is striking: “But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared” (130:4). . . . [T]he “fear of the Lord” is portrayed as not only the outcome of forgiveness, but one of its goals. It confirms that “fear of the Lord” has lees to do with slavish, servile terror (which surely would be decreased by forgiveness, not increased) that with holy reverence. Even so, this reverence has a component of honest fear. When sinners begin to see the magnitude of their sin, and experience the joy of forgiveness, at their best they glimpse what might have been the case had they not been forgiven. Forgiveness engenders relief; ironically, it also engenders sober reflection that settles into reverence and godly fear, for sin can never be taken lightly again, and forgiveness never lightly received (July 2).

Aaron Orendorff,

Fear is a very trick thing. Nothing can both debilitate and drive us quite like fear. “Fear,” one author writes, “is an evil, corroding thread; the fabric of our lives is shot through with it.” More important, however, than the bare reality of fear is the question of its source: What do you fear? Often our nightmares reveal more about us than our dreams. We fear for essentially two reasons: either we’re afraid we might lose something we need or we’re afraid we might not get something we want.

Here, however, the Psalmist’s “fear” is motivated not because he’s lost something or because something is being withheld. Rather, his fear arises out of what he’s gained. Even more surprising is the fact that what he’s gained (we assume) ought to alleviate his fear and not to inspire it: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”

The lesson seems to be this: the gospel, while reliving our consciences and confirming us in love, never moves us beyond the reach of fear. But gospel-fear is an altogether different sort of fear than we have ever experienced before. The fear in this case is good, healthy fear. Fear of what is great, massive, amazing, gracious, merciful. Fear, as Carson says, of what might have been but for the grace of God. Fear that drives us with wonderful and abandon away from other fears—petty, banal fears, fears centered on people, places and things—and towards the expansive and freeing “fear of the Lord.”

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you . . .

Matthew 18:21-22, 27 & 33-35 (cf. 21-35)

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. . . . And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. . . . Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The key thing is that one should never, ever give up making forgiveness and reconciliation one’s goal. If confrontation has to happen, as it often does, it must always be with forgiveness in mind, never revenge.

Why does Jesus solemnly say, in the last verse, that those who refuse to forgive will themselves be refused forgiveness? Isn’t that, to put it bluntly, so harsh as to be out of keeping with the rest of the gospel? Can’t God override our failing at exactly that point?

Apparently not. At least, I don’t know about “can’t,” but it seems he won’t. The New Testament speaks with one voice on this subject (39).

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Matthew 18:15

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Many of us prefer to pretend there isn’t a problem. We can refuse to face the facts, swallow our anger or resentment, paper over the cracks, and carry on as it everything is normal while seething with rage inside. Or we can simply avoid and ignore the other person or group, and pretend they don’t exist (34).

Many Christians have taken the paper-over-the-cracks option, believing that this is what “forgiveness” means—pretending that everything is all right, that the other person hasn’t really done anything wrong. That simply won’t do. If someone else—another Christians in particular!—has been offensive, aggressive, bullying, dishonest, or immoral, nothing whatever is gained by trying to create “reconciliation” without confronting the real evil that’s been done. Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “it didn’t really happen” or “it didn’t really matter.” . . . Forgiveness is when it did happen, and it did matter, and you’re going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway (35).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

My brother's burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot . . . but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross in which I now share. Thus the call to Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which is the Christian's duty to bear (90).

A. Orendorff

All sin (i.e., wrongdoing) creates a debt. This can be seen easily in sins of a financial or physical nature, but it is just as true in relational sins as well. Forgiveness, therefore, means absorbing the debt created by another person’s wrongs, whatever the nature of those wrongs might have been. Justice means taking payments on that debt; forgiveness mean making the payments ourselves.