Who hasn’t felt like David in this Psalm? It’s conflicted. It's ruthlessly honest. It's hopelessly hopeful, and yet it isn’t willing to give up that Yahweh is able to save.
We’ve been there when life is nearly too much and we ask, “Is God going to save me?”
I’ve been there.
In those moments, I know God can save me, but I don’t know if he — in his sovereign will — is going to.
It's impossible — as a Christian — to read this Psalm without hearing the cries of Jesus.
I see the depth of my sin in this psalm when David writes that he is a worm and not a man. I deserve nothing good because of my sin, yet Christ had died in my place.
I see this and I can’t help but know the truth of Hebrews 4:15.
This psalm seems a little emotional, yet it’s grounded in rationality. David seems to emotionally believe that God’s given up on him, then later he yearns for nearness with God because he knows that’s the only thing that will make him feel whole. I believe this is a testament to the genuine suffering he felt. It’s such a human experience, to go through tragedy, or suffer from overly-emotional rationality.
We can see the beauty of this passage because we know even when we go through the deepest moments in life we will never know the darkness of being rejected by God. Rejection is directly related to the strength of the relationship. A message for us could be this: cry out for God when you’re rejected by your parents, friends, spouse, children, etc because it hurts. But know you will never be rejected by the Father like Jesus was. J.A Motyer calls this “Perplexity in suffering” because we will never know suffering like Christ, yet we are all too familiar with suffering that comes with the human experience.
