GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 71:5-8
In this part of the Psalm, the writer remembers God’s past help, and confesses his present need.
5 For you have been my hope, LORD God
my trust since my youth.
6 I have leaned on you since I was in the womb,
You cut the cord from my mother’s body.
My associate got a call from a research group about our membership the other day. They asked about how different (larger or smaller) our church has become since the 1990s, how many families with children we have, and a few other details. The call ended with the question, “And how many of your members have made a personal decision to come to Christ?” The question showed a typical misunderstanding of how we come to faith. We don’t decide to come to faith in Jesus any more than Lazarus made a decision to come to life and walk out of his tomb. We are called, and either we reject the call and remain unbelievers, or we are converted to faith in Christ. There is no middle ground; no third option. Being “a little saved” is as impossible as being “a little pregnant.”
Our Psalm illustrates this with the fact of pregnancy itself. How long have I belonged to God? “Since my youth.” But then the writer goes further back: “since I was in the womb.” The call to belong to God comes from eternity, when God chose us to belong to him. “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Timothy 1:9). If this is the case, why do we need to bother with going to church or reading the Bible? Why do we need to send our children through confirmation instruction classes? “Because,” the Formula of Concord explains, “God has kept this secret for his own wisdom and has not revealed anything regarding it to us in his Word” (FC SD XI:55). His judgments are unsearchable and beyond tracing out (Romans 11:33). And so we use the time we have to embrace the word of God and to learn everything we can about our Savior and our salvation. And so we put our trust in our saving God. Our Psalm goes on to say, “You cut the cord from my mother’s belly,” or more literally, “From the belly of my mother you cut me off.” The image is of the cutting of the umbilical cord, not of a Caesarean birth. The symbolism is that although I might be cut off from my mother physically, I am always her child, and I am always the child of my God through faith.
I will always praise you.
This line of the Psalm falls outside the poetic structure of the parallel verses, and becomes a kind of exclamation. What a great exclamation to add to anyone’s repertoire!
The “always” here is not the Hebrew noun ‘olam “forever,” but an adverb, tamid, which means “continually,” like the “pray continually” of 1 Thessalonians 5:17.
7 I have been like an evil omen to many;
but you are my strong refuge.
8 My mouth is filled with your praise,
and with your glory all day long.
What kind of “omen” (NIV “portent”) is meant? The author uses the word mophet, which can be a miraculous sign given by God (1 Kings 13:3,5). An example of this is the miracle Moses did before Pharaoh by throwing down his staff so that it would become a snake (Exodus 7:3; 7:9). Joel uses mophet to talk about the signs of the end of the world (Joel 2:30 ). Here, however, it seems to have a negative meaning, a sign taken by foreigners or unbelievers that God does not care for his people. “But,” we sing, “you are my strong refuge.”
God does not forget us. When he made the world, he set in motion his amazing and wonderful providence. He has given us winter and summer, cold and heat, seedtime and harvest, and these things will never cease. He has given us the stars and planets to be our calendar, and he has given us the sun and moon to be our clock. He gave the earth its magnetic field to orient the compass, and he has given us the tide to teach us to use the sea to our advantage and to his glory. Sin has caused the creation to suffer, and sin has made out own human flesh our lifelong enemy. We do not improve over time; so many improvements man attempts cause new suffering, new diseases, and more trouble for God’s creation. And yet our God keeps on looking after us. This is another reason why we praise him: He forgives even our recklessness. And if our lives become an omen or a portent to the world and a warning of the coming judgment, we know that we have a Savior who loves us. He has forgiven us, and he guides us through his holy word.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota