GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 40:13-17
13 Be pleased, O LORD, to save me!
Hurry, O LORD, to help me!
14 Let those who seek to end my life
be put to shame and completely humiliated.
Let those who seek to ruin me be turned back and be disgraced!
15 Let those who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”
be appalled because they have been shamed.
16 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation always say,
“The LORD is great!”
17 Yet I am poor and needy.
May the Lord think of me.
You are my help and my deliverer.
Do not delay, O my God!
These final lines of David’s Psalm about the Messiah divide mankind into two groups: unbelievers and believers. No one can be neutral when it comes to Christ. Either they put their faith in him as their Savior, or they reject him completely as the Savior.
The Savior cries out from the cross, “Lord, save me! Help me!” But the Father chose to save everyone else; he saved you rather than his own Son. This is a point that is too terrible to contemplate for very long. If we dwell on the wrath of God and meditate on the fact of the choice the Father made, we end up with terrible, frightening illustrations that give people nightmares. We don’t need to give our people nightmares when we’re in the pulpit. We’re there to preach, to proclaim as heralds, the grace of God. To do this we must paint hell black and paint heaven gold, but we don’t need to follow every drop of the Lord’s blood as it drips, drips, drips to the stony soil of Golgotha beneath the cross.
So here is the blackness of hell in David’s verses: Those who turn from Christ and away from faith are disgraced. The word “disgraced” in verse 14 is calam, “to be ashamed, disgraced,” to have fallen from favor, especially the favor of a master or a superior. As Isaiah says: “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced” (Isaiah 41:11). And about other, more specific unbelievers, Micah says: “The seers will be ashamed and the diviners disgraced” (Micah 3:7). All who turn from God are turning away from the grace of God.
The taunt, “Aha! Aha!” is the taunt of an enemy, not the playground “I got you!” These are the words of the chief priests and Pharisees at the foot of the cross: “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” (Mark 15:31). They missed the point, of course, that he did not come into the world to save himself, but to save others. Including them, if only they would not reject him. He came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Verse 16 teaches the path to faith in quick, clear words. Man seeks God, seeks rescue from sin. Paul teaches us that God placed us on earth for this reason: “So that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him” (Acts 17:27). Seeking him is not finding him, though. He can be found only in his word, and not anyplace in the human imagination or opinion. But when the gospel is revealed, preached, it creates love in our hearts for Christ, and we join those “who love your salvation.”
David’s closing words can be taken in many situations of human life. But I can’t help but think of them as the prayer of the Spirit of Christ as it briefly left his flesh as he died and was buried in the tomb not far from the cross. He was truly poor and needy then, having to be buried in a borrowed grave (Matthew 27:59-60). The delay was not very long. Friday evening fell quickly over the body of Christ, Saturday passed, and early Sunday morning, before dawn, before the earthquake shook the ground (Matthew 28:2), he had already risen from the dead and left the grave. When the angel rolled the stone away and the women looked inside, the tomb was empty (John 20:1-2), because “God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:30). And since we all have the hope, the sure knowledge, of being raised along with him, we pray David’s words with joy and calm humility: May the Lord think of me.
Amen.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Psalm 40:13-17 May the Lord think of me