Bible Study - Psalm 38

Last week we looked at Psalm 44, a psalm that describes the struggle God’s people sometimes have when they think they are faithfully trying to follow the Lord, and yet it seems as if God is not listening or helping or caring about them and the serious problems they are going through. Through this psalm and other Scriptures, especially Romans 8, we were reminded of God’s promise always to be working for our good, even though we may not be able to see or understand what He has been doing. We are called to keep trusting Him and His timing and to keep listening to His Word and promises that nothing, even great troubles, can separate us from His love. Our future is secure in Christ our Savior, no matter what is going on right now.

Psalm 38 reminds us, though, that sometimes we may have been fooling ourselves and bringing troubles upon ourselves and “our steps have actually departed from God and His ways” - different from what was said and thought in Psalm 44:8. We don’t know the exact situation, but there were times when David had done wrong to himself and others and God and couldn’t seem to recognize it or admit it. It took God’s prophets bringing God’s Word to him to help him recognize and admit his sins and failings. This is one of his “penitential” psalms, along with Psalms 32 and 51 and 143, where he had to cry out, “Give ear to my pleas for mercy… enter not into judgment with Your servant, for no one living is righteous before You” (Psalm 143:1,2).

The introduction to Psalm 38 says that it was “a psalm of David, for the Memorial Offering.” There were various Old Testament offerings that God’s people were to make to the Lord in the Tabernacle and later in the temple in Jerusalem. Look at Leviticus 2:1-2, where a “grain offering” was to be made in just a certain way, and then the priest was to take a handful of the grain and burn it as a “memorial portion,” which would bring “a pleasing aroma to the Lord.” The Hebrew word for the “memorial” is related to the word
“to remember.” Scholars think this offering was a way of asking the Lord to remember us in a way that was pleasing to Him and according to His will, in the Old Testament. Psalm 38, then, was a plea from David to the Lord to remember him, in mercy, even though he had been very sinful.

Some think it is like the prayer of the thief on the cross in Luke 23:42. The thief had just admitted that he was rightly condemned for his wrongdoing, receiving “the due reward for his (evil) deeds.” Jesus, in contrast, had done nothing wrong, not deserving His punishment (v. 40-41). This thief humbly asked, “Jesus, remember me, when You come into Your kingdom” (v. 42). This was a pleasing response of faith to Jesus, and Jesus promised, though the thief did not deserve it, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise” (v. 43).

See also the story of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, who “feared God” and prayed to Him and helped the needy (Acts 10:1-2). An angel was sent to Cornelius to tell him, “Your prayers and your acts of mercy have ascended as a ‘memorial’ before God” (v. 3-4). God had not forgotten this man, but now remembered him in the sense of acting on his behalf, and sent Peter to tell him about Jesus; and he and his family and friends received faith and baptism. “To the Gentiles also God had granted repentance that leads to life,” through Jesus (Acts 10:5-11:18).

See also the prophecy of Zechariah in Luke 1:68-79, where Zechariah said that God Himself would “visit and redeem” His people (in the Person of His Son, Jesus) “to show the mercy promised to our fathers, and to ‘remember’ His holy covenant” (v. 72). God had not forgotten, but now was the time for Him to act, through John the Baptist (v. 76) and especially through Jesus, “to give knowledge of salvation to His people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God” (v. 77-79). Or think of the gift of the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion). Jesus told us to receive Communion - to do this -  “in remembrance of Him.” We are to come in faith, remembering what Jesus has done for us and trusting that He will have mercy and forgive our sins.

In Psalm 38, then, David confesses his own sins, remembering his desperate need for God’s mercy. In v. 1, he asks the Lord not to rebuke and discipline him in His anger, though he knows he deserves that “wrath” of God. David uses very poetic language, for the psalms are poetry and hymns addressed to God. In v.2-8, David describes the agony of the guilt he feels for his sins and the “heavy burden”  they are for him to carry. They are like “arrows that have sunk into Him” and “the hand of the Lord” pressing down upon him. He is drowning in his sins and guilt. Everything within him aches because of his sin and God’s “indignation” (disgust) at his “foolishness.” (Have you ever felt that way, maybe laying in bed at night, thinking about things that have gone wrong, sometimes your own fault, and parts of your body seem to ache and burn, and you feel very worn and crushed?) That is what David was feeling, when he was honest with himself and knew he had to admit to his sin. (Words and phrases like these appear in other psalms and other Scriptures, as everyone struggles with sin and its effects. See Psalm 6:1ff., Job 6:4, Psalm 32:3-4, Psalm 69:2-3,14-15, etc.)

David also realizes that he cannot hide his sin and problems from God or others. God already knows, and yet part of praying is being honest with God and confessing our sins and failings, as David knows he must do. Friends also may know, and may want to “stand aloof” (“far off” from him), as if he has a “plague” or leprosy. Some might even want to punish him themselves when “his foot slips” and he fails (v. 9-12).

David then becomes like a “deaf” and “mute” man. He tries not to hear what others say, and he cannot “rebuke” others, because he has no real defense for all that he has done in a wrong way (v. 13-14). David has enemies, too, who “rejoice” in his failings and are “vigorous” in their unfair attacks against him, and criticize him even for the “good” things he tries to do (v. 16,19-20).

For David has not lost faith in His Lord, even in his weaknesses and when he feels  like he “is ready to fall” and “his pain is ever before him” (v. 17). He knows that ultimately, only His Lord can help him. He cries out, “But for You, O Lord, do I wait; it is You, O Lord my God, Who will answer" (v. 15). As he had already done in v. 3-4, David again “confesses his iniquity” (another word for wrongdoing) and expresses his “sorrow for his sin” (v.17). All he can do is throw himself upon the mercy of God; and so he says, “Do not forsake me, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me! Make haste (hurry) to help me, O Lord, my salvation” (v. 21-22).

Other Scriptures tell us that David was forgiven and restored and joy returned to him, because of God’s great mercy, even though there were sometimes consequences, as a result of his sin. David could say, in Psalm 13:5-6: “I have trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.”

Of course, the greatest example of God’s mercy was in the gift of Jesus Himself, as our Savior. Walter Roehrs and others think that portions of Psalm 38 were prophetic of Jesus and what He went through for us, to be our Savior. Look again at verses 13-15 in light of what is said of Jesus in passages like 1 Peter 2:22-25.  David was “deaf” and “mute” because of his own sins and his inability to defend himself. He was guilty. Jesus, in contrast, “committed no sin” of His own, but “he Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” of the cross. He was suffering the penalty of David’s sins and our sins, and “by His wounds, we have been healed” and forgiven. Jesus was “deaf” as He ignored the “reviling” and the accusations made against Him, and He was “mute” and did not “revile“ or “threaten” others. “No deceit was found in His mouth.”

Look also at Isaiah 53,  another prophecy of Jesus. “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows… He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities” (v. 4-5). “The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth… he was “silent  and “opened not His mouth” (v. 6-7). Jesus knew that “it was the will of the Lord to crush Him… as “an offering for guilt” (v. 10) - to suffer the guilt and consequences of the sin of David and us and the whole world.

The agony that Jesus suffered was so, so much greater than what David described in Psalm 38. But, He did this willingly for the sake of all of us, that we might be forgiven through Him and be “accounted righteous” (v. 11). As Peter said in 1 Peter 2:23, in life and death and resurrection, Jesus “continued entrusting Himself to Him (His Heavenly Father), Who would do all things justly and rightly, through His amazing grace and mercy and love and forgiveness for the world. That is the mercy that David also found from the Lord, because of what Jesus would eventually do for him and for us. May we, too, be honest about our sins and bring them also to our Lord Jesus for the full and free forgiveness and new hope that He has already earned for us. That is what He wants for us all.