Latest / Reformed Thinking / A Cry for Mercy Under God’s Chastening (Psalm 6) | Matthew Poole

Transcript

A Cry for Mercy Under God’s Chastening (Psalm 6) | Matthew Poole · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is the deep dive where we
• 0:03
  take your source material, the commentaries, the articles, all
• 0:07
  of it, and we pull out the most important knowledge for you.
• 0:10
  The whole idea is to get you well informed without you having
• 0:13
  to do all the sifting. Today we're opening up a real
• 0:16
  classic of Protestant scriptural interpretation.
• 0:19
  We've got excerpts from Matthew Poole's commentary on the Holy
• 0:22
  Bible, and we're going to be focusing specifically on Psalm
• 0:25
  6. Now, Pool's work, it comes to us
• 0:28
  from the mid 17th century, and it's just known for this
• 0:30
  incredibly careful verse by verse approach.
• 0:33
  So when we read this, we're not just getting a simple reading of
• 0:36
  David's words. It really gives us a look at how
• 0:39
  historic Reformed thought understood things like
• 0:41
  affliction, conscience, and, you know, the very mechanics of
• 0:44
  prayer. Our goal here is pretty
• 0:46
  straightforward. We want to pull out the key
• 0:48
  insights Pool offers on suffering and repentance.
• 0:51
  We want to make sure you get a really clear handle on the
• 0:53
  connection that Poole sees between David's physical pain
• 0:57
  and his spiritual anxiety. And that dual affliction is
• 1:00
  really the engine of the entire Psalm, isn't it?
• 1:02
  Poole kicks things off by stressing that if you don't get
• 1:05
  the occasion of the Psalm, you'll miss the meaning he says
• 1:07
  David is clearly suffering from. I think he calls it some
• 1:10
  grievous distress or disease of the body.
• 1:13
  So this is real. It's not just a metaphor for a
• 1:16
  spiritual struggle. Not at all.
• 1:17
  It's physical. Yeah.
• 1:18
  But, and this is the key, the physical illness isn't just
• 1:21
  random. Pool's clear that it's
• 1:23
  accompanied by great trouble of conscience for his sins.
• 1:26
  David sees his disease as a direct result of his sin.
• 1:29
  He believes he brought this on himself.
• 1:31
  And so he connects that external pain immediately to his internal
• 1:35
  guilt and this feeling of God's displeasure and that
• 1:38
  entanglement of, you know, the physical decay in this deep
• 1:40
  spiritual anguish that dictates everything that follows.
• 1:44
  So we're going to follow Poole's breakdown pretty closely.
• 1:46
  First, David lays out his misery in verses 1 to 3.
• 1:49
  Then he moves into a prayer for mercy.
• 1:51
  That's verses 4 to 7. And then you see this huge
• 1:54
  sudden shift, a complete pivot to this triumphant confidence
• 1:59
  over his enemies in the last few verses.
• 2:01
  OK, let's dive right in then starting at the beginning, verse
• 2:04
  one where David is trying to sort of calibrate God's
• 2:08
  correction. O Lord, rebuke me not in thine
• 2:12
  anger, neither chasten me in my hot displeasure.
• 2:15
  Pool gets right into the vocabulary here, which is so
• 2:18
  important. When David says rebuke me not
• 2:20
  Pool makes it clear that this means do not chasten or correct
• 2:23
  me, right? It's not just a scolding.
• 2:25
  No, exactly. And he says this use of rebuke
• 2:28
  to mean correction is all over Scripture.
• 2:30
  He prints to Job, other Psalms, even Revelation.
• 2:33
  So David knows he's under God's correcting hand.
• 2:35
  He's not asking to just be left alone.
• 2:38
  And that's the core theological point, isn't it?
• 2:41
  He's not asking God to stop the correction.
• 2:43
  For a repentant believer who knows he's done wrong, that's
• 2:46
  unthinkable. The prayer is for God to temper
• 2:49
  it, to change the nature of the correction.
• 2:51
  He asked God not to act in thine anger, which Poole reads his
• 2:54
  meaning with rigor or severity. OK, so this is where you can
• 2:57
  really see Poole's reformed theology coming through.
• 3:00
  Oh, absolutely. Because David recognizes without
• 3:03
  any argument that based on his sins he deserves the worst
• 3:07
  possible chastisement. He deserves the full force of
• 3:10
  God's strict justice, his hot displeasure.
• 3:13
  But the prayer is a plea for God to act out of mercy, out of his
• 3:17
  covenant faithfulness. He wants the discipline of a
• 3:19
  father, not the final sentence of a judge.
• 3:22
  That's such a sophisticated prayer, he's saying.
• 3:24
  I know I deserve the judicial anger, but please treat me
• 3:27
  covenantally. And Poole connects this to the
• 3:30
  prophets, right? He does, yeah.
• 3:32
  He links it to Jeremiah, where the prophets plead for that same
• 3:34
  kind of measured, faithful correction instead of just being
• 3:38
  wiped out completely. So he's asking for mercy to
• 3:40
  mediate justice. But that then raises the
• 3:42
  question, how bad is the affliction he's currently under?
• 3:46
  Because after laying that theological groundwork, David
• 3:49
  immediately gets into the intensity of it in verse 2.
• 3:52
  He does. Verse 2 starts with Have Mercy
• 3:54
  Upon Me, and Poole really zooms in on that phrase.
• 3:57
  It's an immediate bypass of any appeal to his own merit.
• 4:00
  He's. Not making a case for himself.
• 4:02
  Not at all. He's basically saying I plead
• 4:04
  not my merit, but thy free mercy.
• 4:06
  The whole thing is anchored in the grace of God right from the
• 4:09
  start. And then you get this awful
• 4:11
  description of his condition. I am weak or as pool put to I
• 4:14
  languish. And this isn't just feeling a
• 4:17
  bit unwell. It's a dual decay.
• 4:19
  The body is physically wasting away and at the same time his
• 4:22
  spirit is failing because of these excessive pains or
• 4:25
  troubles. It's a total collapse from the
• 4:28
  inside out. And it gets even worse when he
• 4:30
  says my bones are vexed. I mean, we've all felt pain.
• 4:32
  But why does Poole think the focus on the bones is so
• 4:35
  significant? Well, for Poole, that detail is
• 4:38
  all about communicating the extreme, agonizing nature of the
• 4:42
  suffering. The pain is so deep and so
• 4:44
  pervasive that it has reached his bones.
• 4:47
  And you have to think about the poetic weight of that.
• 4:49
  The bones are inward, they're strong, they're normally
• 4:51
  insensible. They should be the last thing to
• 4:53
  feel pain, right? The fact that even his bones are
• 4:56
  in agony is this hyperbolic way of saying the pain is total.
• 5:00
  It's an internal implosion. So it's not just a medical
• 5:03
  symptom, it's a theological statement about the totality of
• 5:07
  the suffering. Exactly.
• 5:08
  Pool connects this to similar language in Job and other
• 5:11
  psalms, where this kind of language is used to describe the
• 5:14
  absolute limit of human suffering.
• 5:16
  And all this description leads right into the prayer, O Lord,
• 5:20
  heal me. And Poole is very insistent that
• 5:23
  we understand this request as being for both the soul and the
• 5:26
  body. It's a holistic healing he's
• 5:28
  after. It has to be.
• 5:29
  The word heal in Scripture often covers both.
• 5:32
  So yes, he wants the disease in his body to stop, but more than
• 5:35
  that, he's asking for the burden of his sin to be lifted.
• 5:38
  He wants the sense of God's displeasure to be removed.
• 5:42
  The physical problem is solved by medicine, if you will, but
• 5:44
  the spiritual problem is only solved by the return of God's
• 5:47
  favor. Which brings us perfectly to
• 5:49
  verse 3, where the focus shifts squarely to that spiritual root
• 5:52
  of the pain. My soul is also sort of X.
• 5:55
  So he's completed the picture. Now the body is vexed, the bones
• 5:58
  are vexed, and now the soul. What are the specific things
• 6:01
  that Pool says are vexing his soul here?
• 6:03
  I mean beyond just the natural emotional reaction to being
• 6:06
  sick. Pool brings it down into two
• 6:08
  things, and the second one is the really heavy one.
• 6:11
  First there's the natural sympathy, you know, the
• 6:13
  emotional drain of being. So I'll.
• 6:15
  But the second source is what's really crushing him.
• 6:17
  It's and I'm quoting Poole here, The burden of my sins and the
• 6:21
  sense of thine anger and my own danger and misery.
• 6:24
  So there it is again. The sickness is a consequence of
• 6:27
  his sin. Right.
• 6:28
  So his greatest distress isn't the physical pain itself, it's
• 6:31
  the immediate, terrifying realization of his guilt before
• 6:34
  a holy God. He's vexed because he knows his
• 6:37
  sin has caused God to withdraw his favor and allow this
• 6:40
  terrible disease as a form of correction.
• 6:42
  The terror is theological. And that terror leads to the end
• 6:46
  of the verse, that broken sentence that Poole calls the
• 6:49
  cry of impatience. But thou, O Lord, how long?
• 6:52
  It's a classic rhetorical device, isn't it?
• 6:54
  Posio pieces cutting yourself off mid sentence.
• 6:56
  It is, and it's such a natural expression of someone in that
• 6:59
  much pain he can't even form a complete thought.
• 7:02
  The only thing he can get out is this raw, desperate question.
• 7:06
  How long? How long will God let him
• 7:09
  languish like this? His suffering is so bad the only
• 7:12
  words he has are an appeal for God to do something about time
• 7:16
  itself. That desperation flows right
• 7:18
  into verse 4, the petition for God to come back.
• 7:21
  Return. Oh Lord, deliver my soul.
• 7:23
  Oh, save me for thy mercy's sake.
• 7:25
  And when he asks God to return unto me, he's speaking in
• 7:28
  covenantal terms. Paul says.
• 7:30
  He's implying that God is deliberately withdrawn.
• 7:32
  What he calls his smiling countenance and my helping hand.
• 7:35
  It's the absence of that comfort that's the real.
• 7:38
  Punishment. That's the spiritual core of it,
• 7:39
  yes. And the plea Deliver my soul.
• 7:42
  Poole interprets that as saving David's very life.
• 7:45
  He points out how soul is often used as a synonym for life and
• 7:48
  Scripture, which then brings up this really fascinating and
• 7:52
  critical question that Poole has to tackle from a reformed
• 7:54
  perspective, which is why were David and other faithful men in
• 7:57
  the Old Testament so often terrified of death, especially
• 8:00
  if they had an assurance of their salvation?
• 8:02
  That is a great question because for us death is gain if you're a
• 8:06
  believer. So why the terror for an Old
• 8:09
  Testament St. Poole gives 2 main reasons.
• 8:12
  The 1st is historical. He says the manifestations of
• 8:15
  God's grace back then were more dark and doubtful.
• 8:19
  They didn't have the full picture.
• 8:21
  Exactly. They didn't have the crystal
• 8:22
  clear light of the New Covenant, Christ's finished work, the
• 8:26
  clear promises of the resurrection.
• 8:28
  They were living in the shadows, which made the immediate state
• 8:31
  of the soul after death a much more terrifying prospect.
• 8:34
  OK, that makes sense. What's the second reason?
• 8:36
  The second one really gets to the heart of their worldview.
• 8:40
  They feared death because they would be deprived of all
• 8:42
  opportunities of advancing God's glory and Kingdom in the world.
• 8:46
  So it's about service. It's all about service, the Old
• 8:50
  Testament believers. Faith was so corporate, so
• 8:52
  public. Their purpose was to see God's
• 8:55
  name propagated among the nations on earth.
• 8:57
  To be taken out of the land of the living meant they could no
• 9:00
  longer actively serve that purpose.
• 9:02
  And that focus on public visible worship is the perfect setup for
• 9:07
  verse 5, which can be really confusing for a modern reader.
• 9:11
  For in death there is no remembrance of thee.
• 9:14
  In the grave, who shall give thee thanks?
• 9:18
  If you take that literally, it sounds like he's denying the
• 9:20
  afterlife completely. How does Poole handle that?
• 9:24
  Poole is very careful here. He adds A vital clarification to
• 9:27
  prevent anyone from falling into theological error.
• 9:31
  He states very clearly that David very well knew and firmly
• 9:34
  believed that souls departed were not extinct, but did go to
• 9:38
  God. The departed absolutely do
• 9:41
  remember and adore God, but they do it in a way that's separate
• 9:44
  from the public earthly praise David is talking about.
• 9:47
  So the remembrance he's afraid of losing isn't his personal
• 9:50
  relationship with. God, no, not at all.
• 9:52
  It's a remembrance in the sense of public phrase and
• 9:54
  thankfulness, the kind that's celebrated in the land of the
• 9:57
  living. David is concerned with the
• 9:59
  visibility of God's faithfulness, the witness given
• 10:01
  to the community and to the world.
• 10:03
  That's such a key distinction. The praise he values is the
• 10:07
  praise that leads to the enlargement and edification of
• 10:11
  God's church and the propagation of true religion among men.
• 10:15
  You can't do that from the grave.
• 10:16
  And for David, that was the highest purpose of his life.
• 10:18
  Exactly. To be cut off was to lose this
• 10:21
  effectiveness in the world, not his salvation.
• 10:24
  And we should probably circle back to that agony of conscience
• 10:26
  for a second. From verse 3.
• 10:28
  Right, because Poole adds another layer.
• 10:31
  He notes that David's grief was made worse not just by the
• 10:33
  disease, but by these terrors of God's wrath and his eternal
• 10:37
  damnation. Now Poole writing in the 17th
• 10:41
  century, he knew first hand from the Puritans that even New
• 10:44
  Testament Saints often have these overwhelming spiritual
• 10:47
  terrors, this immediate fear of condemnation despite being in
• 10:51
  the covenant. So he's saying it's not
• 10:52
  surprising David felt it, too. Not at all.
• 10:55
  If Saints under the clear light of the New Testament felt it,
• 10:58
  it's not strange that David, living under a dimmer
• 11:01
  revelation, would also suffer it.
• 11:03
  He's wrestling with the fear that this might not just be
• 11:06
  fatherly correction, but the start of eternal judgement.
• 11:09
  And that's what pushes his prayer to the absolute breaking
• 11:11
  point. This dual suffering brings us to
• 11:14
  verses 6 and seven, which really detail the extremity of the
• 11:18
  affliction and set the stage for that massive pivot point in
• 11:21
  verse 8. Verse 6 is all about how his
• 11:23
  misery is amplified and he focuses on the night.
• 11:26
  I am weary with my groaning all the night.
• 11:29
  Make I my bed to swim. I water my couch with my tears.
• 11:33
  Why is the night so significant here?
• 11:35
  Well, Pool suggests the night is mentioned as an aggravator.
• 11:38
  That's the time they got appointed for rest and relief.
• 11:40
  But for David it was very sad and doleful.
• 11:43
  Part of it might be physical diseases can often feel worse at
• 11:46
  night. But the real terror is
• 11:48
  spiritual. It comes from the solitude.
• 11:51
  The silence of the night gives him nothing but time to think
• 11:53
  about his sins, about his enemies, about God's
• 11:55
  displeasure. The world goes quiet and his
• 11:58
  conscience just gets louder. That's it exactly.
• 12:01
  All the introspection in the dark just amplifies the guilt
• 12:04
  and that feeling of divine withdrawal.
• 12:06
  And the language about his tears here is so powerful.
• 12:09
  This hyperbolic imagery make eye my bed to swim.
• 12:12
  It's intense, poetic language. Yeah, Cool confirms that it's
• 12:15
  meant to signify a sorrow so huge it defies natural limits.
• 12:19
  He actually compares it to similar language in Jeremiah and
• 12:22
  Lamentations. It's turning his physical pain
• 12:24
  into a meditation on the terror of a guilty conscience.
• 12:27
  He's not just weeping, he's drowning in his grief.
• 12:29
  And this all takes a visible physical toll on him, which he
• 12:32
  describes in verse 7. Mine eye is consumed because of
• 12:35
  grief. It waxeth old because of all
• 12:38
  mine enemies. His eyes are literally growing
• 12:40
  dim. Pool offers 2 reasons.
• 12:43
  It could be the physical effect of so many salt tears.
• 12:46
  But he thinks it's more likely the decay of his spirits, this
• 12:49
  deep grief and affliction. And it's important that David
• 12:52
  ties this grease not just to his sin, but to his enemies, their
• 12:55
  number, their rage, their lies. So the affliction, while it's
• 12:59
  rooted in God's correction for his sin, is being carried out
• 13:02
  and experienced through the non-stop persecution from his
• 13:05
  adversaries. They are harassing him to death.
• 13:08
  Which brings us to the sudden, almost whiplash inducing turn in
• 13:11
  verse 8. David goes from total despair to
• 13:14
  commanding his enemies. Depart from me, all ye workers
• 13:17
  of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.
• 13:20
  The tone just completely flips. That instantaneous change from
• 13:23
  anguish to assurance is just one of those remarkable things in
• 13:26
  the Psalms. How does Pool explain it?
• 13:28
  Pool says it's entirely down to prophetic assurance.
• 13:30
  The key is the verb tense half heard right.
• 13:34
  Pool says the past tense is put for the future, which is a
• 13:37
  common thing in prophetic writing.
• 13:40
  David isn't just hoping, you're wishing he has received, and
• 13:43
  this is Pool's phrase by the Spirit of God, particular
• 13:46
  assurance that God would hear and deliver him.
• 13:50
  So this isn't him talking himself into it.
• 13:52
  It's a revelation. It's a revealed certainty, a
• 13:55
  sudden infusion of conviction. It's that moment where the
• 13:59
  smiling countenance of God that had been withdrawn is abruptly
• 14:03
  restored. In the Reformed view, assurance
• 14:06
  like this can be granted directly by the Holy Spirit,
• 14:09
  right in the middle of the darkest moment.
• 14:11
  And what was it that God hath heard?
• 14:13
  The voice of my weeping? It wasn't his words.
• 14:15
  No, it was the culmination of his prayer mixed with his tears.
• 14:18
  It was his misery itself becoming an argument that
• 14:21
  reached God, and now, based on that certainty, he can command
• 14:24
  his enemies to back off. He's telling them their efforts
• 14:27
  are now totally wasted. Their malice is futile because
• 14:29
  God has already acted. Yes, it's an advance notice of
• 14:32
  judgement. It's over for them.
• 14:34
  And that certainty carries right into verse 9, reinforcing the
• 14:38
  assurance. The Lord have heard my
• 14:40
  supplication. The Lord will receive my prayer.
• 14:45
  He's really building a case here, isn't he?
• 14:46
  He is. It's a logical argument.
• 14:49
  This verse formalizes the prophetic assurance he received
• 14:51
  in verse 8. He uses that new found certainty
• 14:54
  as a reason for his future confidence.
• 14:57
  The logic is so simple. God hath heard, and therefore
• 15:00
  will hear. So it moves from a specific
• 15:03
  answered prayer to a general confidence.
• 15:05
  Exactly. The crisis of doubt is over, the
• 15:08
  anxiety about God's hot displeasure is gone, and it's
• 15:11
  been replaced by this conviction that he's under a merciful
• 15:14
  correction. So having secured his own
• 15:16
  position, he turns his attention back to his enemies in the final
• 15:19
  verse, verse 10, and lays out the judgement waiting for them.
• 15:22
  Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed.
• 15:25
  Let them return and be ashamed suddenly.
• 15:27
  Let's break that down. He prays for them to be ashamed.
• 15:29
  What is Pool's take on what that shame is about?
• 15:32
  Pool says they'll be ashamed of their vain hopes and confidence
• 15:34
  of conquering and destroying me. They had bet everything on
• 15:38
  David's sickness being a sign that God had abandoned him for
• 15:40
  good. And now they're proven wrong.
• 15:43
  Utterly wrong. So they'll be ashamed because of
• 15:46
  that great and unexpected disappointment.
• 15:48
  Shame. Here is the public embarrassing
• 15:52
  failure of all their wicked plans, and they're also to be
• 15:55
  sore vexed, which means they will be terribly troubled by
• 15:58
  David's recovery and God's intervention.
• 16:00
  OK, now what about that phrase? Let them return?
• 16:04
  Poole lays out a few different ways to read that, and it's
• 16:06
  worth going through them. It is, yeah.
• 16:08
  The first possibility is political, that they should
• 16:11
  return from their hostility against David.
• 16:13
  Basically that they submit to him and stop the rebellion.
• 16:16
  An invitation to stand. Down right the second is a
• 16:19
  military reading. Let them turn back, be put to
• 16:22
  flight. This would refer to a defeat in
• 16:24
  battle, a sudden retreat. And the third option is the
• 16:27
  hopeful 1. The penitential one, yes, that
• 16:30
  they might be converted, repent of their sins, and return to
• 16:33
  their proper obedience to David as king.
• 16:35
  But. Given the context of shame and
• 16:36
  vexation, which one does Poole think is the most likely
• 16:39
  meaning? He concludes that it's more
• 16:41
  probable that this returning is rather penal than penitential.
• 16:45
  So it's about punishment, not repentance.
• 16:47
  Yes, based on the context, David seems to be calling for their
• 16:51
  defeat and public humiliation, not necessarily their salvation.
• 16:56
  In this moment, God's grace is for David and his judgement is
• 17:00
  for David's enemies. And Poole adds one last
• 17:02
  linguistic detail about return. He says in the Hebrew it can be
• 17:06
  taken adverbially, meaning they shall be again ashamed or
• 17:10
  clothes with a kind of double shame.
• 17:12
  So the shame is compounded. Right.
• 17:14
  The shame of their initial failure, and then more shame
• 17:17
  when they try to resist David's restoration and fail again.
• 17:21
  It shows the totality of their ruin.
• 17:22
  And the very last word of the Psalm drives it home.
• 17:25
  Suddenly this isn't a slow burn judgement.
• 17:27
  It's going to happen faster than anyone expects.
• 17:29
  So we've gone from total collapse to this incredible,
• 17:32
  assured declaration of triumph. What are the big takeaways from
• 17:35
  Pool's analysis? I think pool gives us a really
• 17:38
  clear pattern for the believer who's facing affliction first.
• 17:42
  You see suffering as a form of divine correction, not as random
• 17:45
  chance or purely judicial wrath. Second, you recognize that the
• 17:50
  deepest pain is almost always spiritual, rooted in sin and the
• 17:54
  sense of God's displeasure, not just the physical discomfort.
• 17:57
  And 3rd. The ultimate comfort is the
• 17:59
  confidence that this correction won't be in hot displeasure, but
• 18:03
  will be moderated by mercy. The Psalm models that shift from
• 18:07
  despairingly asking how long to confidently declaring the Lord
• 18:11
  hath heard. And it also gives us this
• 18:13
  incredible window into the Old Testament worldview, that
• 18:15
  intense fear of death being about the loss of opportunity
• 18:18
  for public worship, for advancing God's Kingdom here on
• 18:21
  earth. That link between physical life
• 18:23
  and the mission of the visible Church is so strong.
• 18:26
  So for our final thought, let's go back to that very idea.
• 18:30
  David's primary fear and death was losing the ability to praise
• 18:33
  God publicly and build up the church.
• 18:35
  If David, who was living under what Pool called the more dark
• 18:38
  and doubtful grace of the Old Covenant, held the earthly
• 18:41
  propagation of religion in such high regard, what responsibility
• 18:45
  does that place on you, On you who live under the much clearer
• 18:49
  light of the New Testament and the finished work of Christ, to
• 18:51
  use your time and your life for God's visible glory in the land
• 18:54
  of the living? That's a question worth thinking
• 18:56
  about.