What to make of Psalm 39? The one that ends with the prayer:
‘Look away from me, that I may rejoice again
The setting is familar enough. David is going through a time of suffering and he is trying very hard not to complain, not to protest to God. ‘I will put a muzzle on my mouth.’ (verse 1) He is being particularly careful in the presence of ‘the wicked’. To complain or protest in the presence of unbelievers or the people who are causing his suffering would be a bad witness. But eventually he can contain himself no longer. He has to express his pain to God, his displeasure at where he finds himself in this moment. In His presence he reflects on the brevity of life and its lack of purpose:
‘Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
He heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.’ (verse 6)
There is also an intense awareness of the sin which he believes is at the root of his suffering. He experiences God’s judgement as a ‘scourge’ and a ‘blow’. (verse 10). He is aware that there may be a purpose behind the fall of God’s judgement but enough is enough, he wants it to end. Spiritually he feels an ‘alien’ and a ‘stranger’, cut off from God with no expectation of blessing.
Then comes the prayer that God will ‘look away’ from him and give him some reason to rejoice before his life reaches its end. It is so different from expressions of hunger and thirst for the reality of God that we find so often in Scripture. But there is no doubt that there are times when the ancient people of God experienced him as a dark presence with unfathomable purpose. This usually goes along with an awareness of personal sin and the disruption this brings in our relationship with God. There will be no peace until this is eased in the blessing of forgiveness.
Actually this is not that far away in Psalm 39. The fact is that David is praying, his heart is still turned to God, and his desire is for a change in his relationship with God. No more a man of sin, no more a focus for judgement but someone who once again knows blessing in his life. The cry for God to ‘Look away’ is for a changed experience of God. No longer a source of darkness but a source of blessing.
I wonder if this Psalm was in the mind of Jesus when he was being crucified. We know that when He experienced the full force of God’s judgement on the sins of the world he cried out in the words of Psalm 22:1:
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
It is as if the Father has departed, as if, to paraphrase the hymn, the Father has turned His face away. But this is what sin does to us. It obscures the Father’s face, disrupts our relationship with Him, places us at a distance from Him. It is our blessing that it was when Jesus passed through this experience he paid the price for our sin and opened up the possibility of forgiveness and renewal. It was a man who knew about awareness of sin and the blessing of forgiveness who wrote:
‘Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.’ (1 Peter 3: 18a.)
That’s a good verse to reflect upon in Advent. When the Christian Year was established Advent was not just a countdown to Christmas. It was a time to reflect upon personal sin, the judgement of God and the accounting we will all undergo at the future coming of our Lord. Not exactly ‘Jingle Bells’ is it? But it has a place not just once or twice in the year but regularly in our walk with God. It is no bad thing to feel the weight of judgement. How else can we know the blessing of knowing that the righteous has died for the unrighteous to bring us to God.
