“I will extol You, O LORD, for You have lifted me up,
And have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried out to You,
And You healed me.
O LORD, You brought my soul up from the grave;
You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
Sing praise to the LORD, you saints of His,
And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.
For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for life;
Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy comes in the morning.
Now in my prosperity I said,
‘I shall never be moved.’
LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong;
You hid Your face, and I was troubled.
I cried out to You, O LORD;
And to the LORD I made supplication:
‘What profit is there in my blood,
When I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise You?
Will it declare Your truth?
Hear, O LORD, and have mercy on me;
LORD, be my helper!’
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,
To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.” – Psalm 30:1-12
Psalm 30 was sung at the dedication of King David’s house in Jerusalem. Whether it was written specially for the occasion or whether it was composed at an earlier date, this psalm beautifully commemorates a tremendous milestone in David’s life. His days of running from King Saul were over. He was king over both Judah and all the tribes of Israel. Jerusalem had been won from its Jebusite inhabitants and established as Israel’s capital city. The dedication of his house was an opportunity for David to look back upon his life thus far and perceive the workings of that complex, majestic hand of God that had so graciously brought him to this point. “I will extol You, O LORD, for You have lifted me up,” he writes (vs. 1-3), “and have not let my foes rejoice over me. O LORD my God, I cried out to You, and You healed me. O LORD, You brought my soul up from the grave; You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.”
It had been a long, hard road for David. He had endured many trials since that day Samuel the prophet had anointed him, a lowly shepherd boy, as the next king of Israel. But as he could now see, the Lord had used those very trials to prepare him for the fulfillment of His promise.
“Sing praise to the LORD, you saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Before King Saul began to be jealous of David, David’s life was prosperous. He was exalted from that lowly shepherd boy to the beloved armorbearer of the King of Israel. He killed the Philistines famous champion, Goliath; was victorious in his battles; loved by his people; and he gladly served King Saul, first as musician, then as armorbearer, and finally as captain. His wife was Saul’s daughter Michal, and Jonathan, Michal’s brother, was David’s closest friend. But the Lord does not settle for less when it comes to His children. There was still work to be done in David’s heart, and more that the Lord had planned for his life. A loving father will teach and chasten his child when he needs it; likewise the Lord trains up and chastens His children in order to give them the best. After Saul became envious and sought to kill the young man he had once taken such joy in, David’s stretch of “prosperity” – which he had thought was a thing to be confident of (vs. 6) – came to an abrupt end. The Lord loved David too much to allow him to become complacent. The trials that lay ahead were going to be painful. They were going to cause suffering, weeping, and pain. But they were also going to yield eternal fruit so precious that the pains taken would become utterly insignificant and forgotten!
“LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was troubled.” (Vs. 7) What can you rely upon in this world? What won’t change, fail, or end? The short answer is nothing: nothing and no one, and David knew that. The entire universe is subjected to death and futility. Our world had a beginning; it will have an end. Earth can shake, suns can die, life can decay, mountains can crumble, and people can betray. Apart from God, there is nothing you can invest yourself in that will not let you down. God knows that. Mankind as a whole does not – or at least, it acts as if it does not. We want a mountain that stands strong, but we look for it in all the wrong places. We build our homes in dry riverbeds, which are disasters waiting to happen, and imagine we are secure.
So what does the Lord do?
In David’s case, David already “knew” that God was the only sure foundation. He knew that God alone is worthy of our complete trust. He served well and wisely as a captain of Israel, but God, in His love, didn’t just want a captain. He wanted a king. And David wasn’t ready to be a king just yet.
The Lord “hid His face” from David. To bring him to that morning of joy, He gave him troubles and trials and tribulations. He yanked the rug out from beneath David’s feet and turned his world upside down. David went from a captain to an outlaw; from a hero to a fugitive. He spent years hunted and on the run, dealing with peril, betrayal, conflict, and hardship, as the Lord put him through fire in order to forge His king from His captain. It was not easy. It was not prosperous. It was not pleasurable. But all that “trouble” was a blessing – no, heaps of blessings – beyond all that David could have asked or thought.
How?
The how is spelled out and exampled over and over again in God’s word. Human nature is innately proud, shallow, self-centered, deceitful, malignant, and in a word, sinful. That is who we are; that is how we are born. It takes being “born again” of the Spirit of God to remove that sinful nature, and it took the very heart’s blood of that same God to make rebirth possible. Jesus had not yet come when David was alive, but the Spirit of God was with David all the same. The Lord was working in David’s heart, and one of His greatest tools – for all of us – is suffering.
Simply put, to suffer means to encounter troubles, tests, and problems. We are clearly not adequate to overcome or endure any of those things. However, due to our stubborn pride, we refuse to recognize this inadequacy and therefore fall flat on our faces – over and over again, as many times as it takes, until pain finally produces humility, or until the heart is hardened beyond remedy. Because of who we are God has to knock us down before He can lift us up.
But however painful the “knocking down,” might be, the results are worth every nanosecond. Infinity is literally opened to that humbled soul. It is only the one who knows he’s sick who will seek healing; it is only the soul who knows he is a sinner who will seek salvation. And when that point is reached, suffering takes on a new, very precious role: sanctification. David, through suffering, was being sanctified during his years on the run. He’d already been humbled enough to seek the Lord. Now the Lord was going to use that humility to forge maturity. He guided the shepherd boy into an armorbearer; the armorbearer into a captain; and now He was going to guide the captain into a king. Those years David spent on the run were fraught with more troubles and problems he wasn’t adequate for. His sufferings exposed his weaknesses, and drove him to seek their remedy. They revealed how heavy his sins were, and how much he needed to shed that weight so he could function. They laid bare the limitations of his resources and showed him that the goal he sought could only be reached with resources much greater than his. The only one David could turn, the only One who had the answers he needed, was God. God, the I AM WHO I AM, the Becoming One, the one who becomes that which satisfies our every need. The more David realized he needed the Lord, the closer he drew to him. And the closer David drew to him, the more like Him he became. The more like Him he became, the more he could reflect God’s glory; the more he was able to serve Him, and the more reward he would receive in heaven. God sent David suffering because He loved David. He sends His children suffering because He loves them. Suffering is the necessary product of His favor that is for life, and the night of weeping that brings a morning of eternal joy. “For our light affliction,” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
But that “light affliction” – not even worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us, Scripture declares elsewhere (Romans 8:18) – cannot work its intended benefits unless we allow it to.
“I cried out to You, O LORD; and to the LORD I made supplication: ‘What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth? Hear, O LORD, and have mercy on me; LORD, be my helper!’” (Vs. 8-10)
David’s trials made him cry out to the Lord more and more, recognizing his own weakness and his need for the Lord’s mercy and help. His choice opened the door for the amazing grace of our God to be poured out. David became a mountain that stood strong because he was founded on the true Rock, the Living God, rather than the dry riverbed of human pride. His mourning was turned into dancing.
But David could have made a different choice. He could have chosen to resist God’s hand and refuse to surrender. Rather than turn and be healed, he could have hardened his heart and continued to hurt himself on the same brick wall. That kind of pain is the suffering of the world, which is pointless, tragic, and ends in a twofold death. A believer dies once – physical “death” – and lives for eternity. An unbeliever will die that physical death and then endure the second death, that is, eternal condemnation. God is longsuffering. He does not desire that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9) But if you don’t want Him or His salvation, He will not force Himself on you. He’ll give you opportunity after opportunity to change your mind – trying to awaken your soul with His graciously provided pain – but in the end, your choice is your own, and He will abide by it. The day you draw your last breath in this world is the day your fate will be sealed. And there will be no second chances.
How different is the choice of David! “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, to the end that my glory [soul] may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.” (Vs. 11-12)
David allowed his suffering to work the good God intended. He still had many trials ahead of him, but he knew their purpose. He was being conformed into the image of the glorious, righteous Creator, being transformed from glory to glory, and enabled to revel in the awesome, infinite majesty of the Living God. He was going to see the face of God in righteousness, and he would be satisfied when he awoke in His likeness. David had life – and life abundantly. His suffering had become a song to the praise of God who loved him and performed all things for him.
May every believer alive today sing that song to the God who does and has done for us exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think!
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