Psalm 38 - About to fall

Read: Psalm 38 vs 1-22

Psalm 38 is entitled ‘A Petition’. That word has an urgency to it, a sense of intensity, but also a sense of hope. You only ‘petition’ someone who believe has the power, and the will, to help you.

David’s petition begins in verse 1. He asks that the LORD will not be angry with Him, and that His discipline will not be heavy upon him. David is at a moment in his life where he is overwhelmed by a sense of guilt, a burden that he says in vs 4 is ‘too heavy to bear.’ Bowed down and ‘very low’ David describes himself as having a back that is searing with pain (vs 7), and companions who have abandoned him (vs 11).

The whole of the Old Testament points to Jesus. Sometimes the signposts are subtle and sometimes more obvious. The depiction of someone who is broken, scarred on their back and alone in their suffering has clear echoes of Jesus’ journey to the cross. As David writes these words he does so hopeful that God will somehow bring him relief from what he is suffering and from the guilt that is weighing heavily upon Him. When in vs 15 David says ‘I wait for you’ he speaks for every Old Testament believer, waiting for the One who would God would send to bring forgiveness and salvation. 

Jesus is the ‘answer’ that David cries out for in vs 15. Feeling that we are about to fall, and being troubled by our sin, becomes not a hopeless end, but a hope-filled road that brings us to the cross. The message of Jesus’ death is that God has not forsaken us (vs 21) and that God has come to be with us in our brokenness and fallenness. Today we thank God that David’s prayer has been heard. Our Lord and Saviour has come to help us (vs 22).

Prayer: Lord the more I read your word the more my sin can overwhelm me. May I not fear an awareness of guilt that leads me to you and the new beginning that only you can give.