Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my sixth episode. Tonight I want to take a look at Psalm 70. So if you have your Bibles you may turn with me to Psalm 70 and I will be using the New Living Translation. Otherwise just sit back, relax, and enjoy.
1 Please, God, rescue me!
Come quickly, Lord, and help me.
2 May those who try to kill me
be humiliated and put to shame.
May those who take delight in my trouble
be turned back in disgrace.
3 Let them be horrified by their shame,
for they said, “Aha! We’ve got him now!”
4 But may all who search for you
be filled with joy and gladness in you.
May those who love your salvation
repeatedly shout, “God is great!”
5 But as for me, I am poor and needy;
please hurry to my aid, O God.
You are my helper and my savior;
O Lord, do not delay.
So what first struck me as interesting about this Psalm was that it is copied almost word for word from the final section of Psalm 40:13-17. I believe that’s because David is repeating a prayer he has prayed before. Something I find most interesting is that you can send up a prayer one day, and months later send up the same prayer verbatim (word for word) but with new meaning. Because who you are the second time you do it is a different person than who you were the first time. You’ve grown and matured. It could be that God’s issue is not so much with what you’re asking for, but with the heart from which you’re asking it.
David is feeling awful in this psalm. When others disappoint and threaten us, we feel empty, as though a vital part of ourselves has been stolen. When others break the trust we have placed in them, they also break our spirits. It is at those empty, broken moments, we must be like David and beg God to rush to our aid. Only God can fill our lives with His joy.
Psalm 70 is short but it is so rich in information. We see David’s plea for God to come quickly with his help. Yet even in his moment of panic, he did not forget to praise God. When we pray, we should always remember to praise God because it helps us remember who God is. Sometimes we can get so caught up in what we need God’s help with and what we request of God that it becomes easy to forget to thank Him for what He’s done and who He is. It’s powerful to see that even when David’s afraid for his life, he’s still praising God.
I know for myself, sometimes I will be praying and asking God to show me what I need. Then, all of the blessings He’s given me start surfacing in my mind. And sometimes, just focusing on how He’s blessed me throughout my life is enough for me to realize that His answer to what I need is for me to focus on what I have.
When you’re praying – maybe you’re laying in bed at night – do you ever start off petitioning God and seeking His advice? Then your mind shifts from the problem you need God’s help with to a seemingly random thought. And it becomes that thought that gives you the perspective you need to solve your problem.
For me this happens frequently when I’m wrapped up in all the head knowledge and trying to figure out God. You know what He always brings me back to? Love. It’s like he tells me, you don’t know enough Michael. You will never know enough, but that’s okay because of love. It’s like He tells me: when you feel like the universe is too big for you and that the hidden treasures of my Word are too complex for you – just remember to love. Love will keep you close to Me.
Speaking of the complexities of His Word – Psalm 70 is loaded – so let’s try to break it down.
First verse:
Please, God, rescue me! Come quickly, Lord, and help me.
What we see here that is David praying to God to hurry up and bring him deliverance. This was probably because David felt a sense of danger and he knew that deliverance wouldn’t do him any good if it took to long. We’ve all been there. Facing down the adversary. Wanting to think that we are calm and firm in our faith that God will come through, but in the back of our minds we’re wondering if He knows just how little time He has left to do it. Maybe we wonder just how much of us will be left by the time He gets there.
Have any of you ever felt this way? Have you ever wondered if it was going to be too late for you?
For myself, these thoughts entered my mind quite a bit in the years leading up to my relationship with Christ. Several times my back was against the wall and I couldn’t see a way out. It’s like, you make moves to try to remedy your situation and then those temporary solutions transform into problems and these solutions-turned-problems pile themselves up on the issues you were trying to solve in the first place. When you don’t know what else to do – that’s how you know you’re in the boat with King David in Psalm 70.
But the good news is God gives us Psalm 70 to tell us that He does know and He will be there.
We could probably make an argument that David is misunderstanding the nature of God when he prays for God to hurry. We know that God does everything according to His own timing, and His timing is perfect. But I don’t think it’s wrong for us to pray to God this way. I think God wants to hear our emotion, our genuine hurt, and our sense of urgency. He wants us to be real with Him and show Him our deepest needs and dependency on Him, then He will take those needs and meet them according to His perfect understanding.
In classic King David fashion, once he gets his prayer in for himself he quickly turns to pray against his enemies.
May those who try to kill me be humiliated and put to shame. May those who take delight in my trouble be turned back in disgrace.
So usually when I see David praying these things about his enemies my first reaction is that it is a little bit harsh of him. But then I started thinking, if someone is sinning or committing a sin against you, praying for them to fail is greatest kindness you could ever do for them. When people are living in sin or making bad decisions we should want them to fail and we should never enable them to succeed. If someone succeeds at a sinful life they are in danger of becoming the type of person who willfully rejects God when their eternity is on the line.
Think of the criminal crucified on the cross next to Jesus. Just a little bit of background for those unfamiliar: the criminal who was crucified next to Jesus had lived a horrible life of crime and bad deeds. But before he died, he said “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Jesus said to the criminal “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Being hung there next to Christ on that day was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. If the Roman authority had never caught him, he may have never turned to Christ and saved his place in heaven.
Can any of you think of a time when you almost did a horrible thing and failed?
I think an experience that I have which many of us probably share involves a relationship. It’s weird how you don’t see it in the moment – being all heartbroken and everything – but then after some time passes you look back and think “Right on, God, thank you for getting me away from that person.” Sometimes the world hurts us so that God can help us.
It’s better to be crucified next to Jesus than to sleep safe at night believing that you don’t need God.
This next verse reminded me of something I picked up in my recent studies, and you may find some utility in it, verse 3:
Let them be horrified by their shame, for they said, “Aha! We’ve got him now!”
David’s enemies believe they’ve beaten him, but David trusts God. There was a famous psychologist named Dr. Carl Jung. You may have heard of the Jung-Myers-Briggs Personality Tests? Jung believed that it was impossible to achieve your potential as a good person until you realized that you have the potential to be a monster. He called this process integration of the shadow. This is how I think it works:
If you go outside of the church and into the secular world and tell someone that they were born into sin, they will be offended by that. I know that’s how I felt. I’d come in to church and hear the Pastor saying we’re all sinners and I would think speak for yourself man, I think I’m alright. If you don’t know Christ then you don’t have an example of moral and ethical perfection. Without that example it’s practically impossible to see your own flaws. And if you can’t see your own flaws, you are blocked from any possibility of maturing.
Now, let’s contrast that with what it’s like when you are primed for growth: when you establish your relationship with Christ it’s easy to remove the big boulders of flaws out of your character. But then as you grow in Christ, He begins to show you smaller rocks, and then He points out little pebble sized flaws that you had no idea even existed.
So David wants his enemies to fall and to fail, and to get a picture of their own shame. So they can be horrified by the people they have become. Then David’s enemies would suffer what Jung called psychic death, from which they could be reborn as good men.
So I would ask you, have any of you ever hit rock bottom? Have you ever had a moment where you looked at yourself in the mirror and thought, who have I become? Or maybe a better question, who am I becoming?
You know it was very hard for me when I left my stable upbringing to go out into the world, only to discover that it wasn’t at all what I thought. I was 100% naive to the fact that brokenness had made so many people incapable of love. That fear had driven so many people to the point where they genuinely did not feel safe unless they were able to make everyone else feel more afraid then they were. In a world without God, the lion in the room attacks before it becomes the victim. Those are the rules.
But learning those things about the world wasn’t the hardest part – no no – the hardest part was that little by little, I was losing the ability to tell the difference between the world and myself. The worst feeling is when you force the people around into the position where the only way for them to protect their hearts is to detach from you.
Maybe David’s praying for them to fail so that they might have another chance at redemption. And today, when we are reborn in Christ and when we trust in Him, we can be sure He will never let us fall quite that far again.
So what does it look like when someone is on the right track? verse 4:
But may all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you. May those who love your salvation repeatedly shout, “God is great!”
I love this verse because this is exactly how it feels when you are in hot pursuit of God. This is what I mean when I tell people to make God’s purpose their purpose. He wants us to search Him out and get to know Him. That process can take many forms. Jesus said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and when I read that – I believe those words cover every single spiritual gift.
So maybe you love to read and learn – so you research and you get to know God through His Word. Maybe you aren’t much of a reader but you’re an athlete – so you volunteer at a church league sporting event. Maybe you can’t get around so well anymore but you are known for having a compassionate heart filled with love for others – so you go visit people in need. I believe each one of you has a talent that is given to you by God and I believe that your talent is needed to advance the Kingdom of God.
Have you ever spent time and effort putting together a surprise party or present for someone you love? And in the hours leading up to the time you reveal it to them you get this crazy sense of excitement. When you give it to them they light up and you are filled with a sense of joy. That is what it feels like to use your gifts to help Christ in His Kingdom.
Or maybe you have talent but you’re just struggling right now and so it’s hard to know what your talent is, that puts you in company with King David, verse 5:
But as for me, I am poor and needy; please hurry to my aid, O God. You are my helper and my savior; O Lord, do not delay.
David calls himself poor and needy in this verse, and that’s exactly how it can feel when you are spiritually drained. You can’t pour from an empty glass. This is why we all need each other here. When we’re together we have the ability to feed ourselves and feed each other according to our gifts. The body of Christ is called to work together, and I don’t think that’s possible without relationships. But we should do as King David did in this psalm and look to God as our first helper or else it won’t matter how much help we give to each other.
How many of you are pouring from an empty glass? How many of you are going through a desert in your life – and yet you still feel the calling to help others and advance the Kingdom of God?
I can tell you some things that might be of use to you. If your glass is empty, if you are frail from your exhaustion – get on your knees and stabilize yourself in prayer. And then think about what it is you’re good at – I mean really good at. Your gift. Your talent. It doesn’t have to be glorious. Then ask yourself: how can I use this gift to make the people and places around me better? Everywhere you go there are little issues and problems within your reach that you and your talent can put in order. Kingdom work will never end until the King returns. Once you know your gift and you see all of the places you can apply it – then you’ve discovered your purpose. Once you have your purpose you can help yourself by organizing your room and your house so that it is efficient in helping you achieve your purpose. Think of your room and your house as your launch pad. Next, practice listening to the words that you say throughout the day. Be precise in your speech – don’t say anything that you know is not true.
Finally, and this last part is super important if your glass is empty – always remember that you are walking with the Lord, not sprinting. Small, incremental progress each day leaves you with a mountain of achieved goals by the end of the year. If you do those things and you pray to God for His help – you won’t feel poor and needy like King David does in this last verse of Psalm 70.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at http://www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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