Joy in the morning

Good morning. Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you for all that we can learn from the Psalms. Please teach us now. In Jesus name. Amen.

‘Joy In The Morning’ is my title. We’re looking at Psalm 30 and this is a great Psalm for a time when we’re beginning to ease out of a pandemic.

How mature are you as a disciple of Christ? I suppose there are three main phases of maturity as a Christian believer; first there’s not knowing, then secondly there’s knowing in theory, and thirdly there’s knowing in practice, not only in our heads but also in our experience – and that, you might say, brings at least the beginnings of maturity. Well this Psalm 30 is a mature Psalm. King David, who wrote it, had been around the block a few times. He’s speaking from heartfelt personal experience. And the great thing is that by taking on board what he has to say, we can accelerate our maturing process. We can benefit from the mature wisdom that he passes on here in this moving and personal Psalm. At the top of the Psalm there’s a heading. It says:

A Psalm of David. A song at the dedication of the temple.

It isn’t clear exactly what the precise occasion was when this was written. That heading in fact refers to the dedication of the house – possibly even David’s house, his royal palace; or maybe the entry of the ark of God into Jerusalem – the first step of the creation of the Jerusalem Temple; or the great celebrations surrounding the provision of the resources needed for the building of the Temple. What’s clear is that this comes out of a time of great joy and celebration in David’s life, the praise is gushing out of him, but it’s also a time of reflection on what he’s been through. The pattern of the Psalm is this. There is a shorter version of David’s testimony in Psalm 30.1-4. Then the key lesson is there in Psalm 30.5. And then in Psalm 30.6-12 David expands his testimony with a filled-out version. The key lesson at the heart of the Psalm, then, is there in Psalm 30.5:

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

That verse takes me right back to one of our annual JPC Music Group Weekends Away, years ago now. It came during a pretty terrible time in the life of my own family. The musician and songwriter Geraldine Latty was with us on the weekend and she taught us a short little song. I wrote the words down, and I’ve kept them to hand ever since. I won’t spoil it by attempting to sing it, but they went like this:

Weeping may endure for the night,But joy comes in the morning.Hold on, hold on.God will see you through.

It’s a direct reference to the heart of this Psalm, and it came to me as a word from God for our situation back then. So I don’t need persuading of the spiritual power of King David’s testimony here. And this testimony of David’s records six stages of experience that he can see he’s been through as he looks back from this time of joy. It all began with a God-given prosperity. Then there was a dangerous complacency. That was followed by a fall into sin and sickness. That called out of David a cry for mercy. God responded with a gracious rescue. And it ends with a grateful outpouring of praise. So the pattern is what we might describe as from hilltop to the depths of the valley, to the mountain top – hill to valley to mountain. Let’s take a look at each of those in turn and see how King David expresses them. So:

First, WHEN GOD PROSPERS US WE CAN BECOME DANGEROUSLY COMPLACENT

Take a look at Psalm 30.6-7. This the beginning of the fuller version of David’s testimony, after the summary version in Psalm 30.1-4. Psalm 30.6-7:

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” By your favour, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

Do see how in Psalm 30.6 it’s all I and me:

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”

At an earlier, younger, greener, more immature stage of his life, David had lost sight of the fact that his prosperity was a gift, and that he should not and could not take it for granted. Nor could he take the credit for it. From his vantage point of later maturity, he can see that. He knows that it was all from God, even though he failed to acknowledge that at the time. And the result of his complacent pride was that he lost his prosperity. He came crashing down. And he lost touch with God.

I got a new bike a while ago, with drop handlebars. I hadn’t had a bike with drop handlebars for about forty years but I was confident, and to Vivienne’s great delight, on a couple of occasions when we went out riding together, she watched me trying to get off the bike, losing my balance, and toppling over on to the ground. So much for my complacent confidence. No serious injuries thankfully. Just a bruised ego. Maybe there was more than a hint of dangerous complacency about our rich, self-satisfied and seemingly self-sufficient culture (not to mention church) before the pandemic hit. It’s almost as if we’ve lost our national balance and toppled over. David learnt his lesson from bitter experience, and from amazing grace. There in Psalm 30.7 you can see a wholesale switch from the emphasis being on me to being on God:

By your favour, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

God is in control. Not us. All good things come from him. Not us. God is the one rightfully on the receiving end of glory. Not us. Sometimes God gives us good times, when things go our way. When that happens, such is our self-centredness, we so easily fall prey to self-satisfaction. That is very dangerous. Pride comes before a fall. When God prospers us we can become dangerously complacent. Beware that danger of complacency. That’s the first point.

Secondly, IF WE FALL INTO SIN OR SICKNESS WE SHOULD CRY OUT TO GOD TO RESCUE US

Those first two stages of David’s testimony (a God-given prosperity and a dangerous complacency) are followed by the next two. These are a fall into sin and sickness, and a cry for mercy. Now let it be said immediately that sickness is by no means always related to sin. Jesus made that very clear and explicit. But sometimes sin and sickness are related, and we don’t know the detail of what happened to King David that’s in his mind here; but in this case, it seems, sin and sickness went together. And apparently he nearly died. So Psalm 30.3:

O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

Sheol is the land of the dead. As David looks back from safety, he knows that he was on the brink of death. And you can see the same thing later on in the Psalm where he remembers how in his desperation he called out to God. Psalm 30.8-10:

To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper!”

He feared he was going to die. He had no clear hope of resurrection, but he could see that death was the last and greatest of our enemies. And he could also see that God is a God of life. It is life that brings glory to God not death. It is living believers who give him praise and glory, not the dead. He didn’t want to die. At the same time, he recognises that wrapped up in this sickness is his sin. That’s why his cry is a plea for mercy. He knows that he needs forgiveness. He needs grace. He needs God to deal with his sin. That’s confirmed by what he says in that key lesson there at the start of Psalm 30.5:

For his anger is but for a moment…

He can see that he does deserve God’s anger and judgement. His only way out is mercy. So it is for us, and we find that mercy in the person of the Messiah, prophesied by David – the Lord Jesus who gave his life that we might live. So we too, when we find ourselves in a pit, whether or not it is of our own making, need to cry out to God for rescue. If we hide from God, he, as it were, hides from us. David describes that life-sapping experience at the end of Psalm 30.7 there:

…you hid your face; I was dismayed.

Do you know that in your own experience? My mind goes all the way back to a time in my teenage years. My faith had only recently come alive, and with it, my sense of sin had also come painfully alive, but I found that too challenging, so metaphorically speaking I ran away from God. I knew that was what I was doing, but I wouldn’t turn and face him. It went on for days. I tried to shut my mind to Jesus, and keep him out, but in the end I couldn’t. I gave up running, and when I turned back to Jesus, he turned back to me; and met me with grace and mercy; and washed me clean. We mess up. We fall. We suffer. We get sick. And when we do, how we need to cry out to the only one who can save us – the living God. So, when God prospers us we can become dangerously complacent. Then if we fall into sin or sickness, we should cry out to God to rescue us. And, as David found, God hears our cry. So:

Thirdly, WHEN GOD GRACIOUSLY RESCUES US WE MUST SING OUT OUR THANKFUL PRAISES TO HIM

King David’s experience was that when, in his distress, he cried out to God, God responded with a gracious rescue. And that gracious rescue resulted in a grateful outpouring of praise. Psalm 30.2-3:

O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

As David looks back to God’s amazing grace in his life, he overflows with praise and thanksgiving. He’s learned his lesson. He doesn’t want to keep the glory for himself. He wants to give it all back to God. So the beginning, the middle and the end of this Psalm is praise. Psalm 30.1:

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.

That phrase drawn me up is graphic. The picture is of a bucket being drawn up from the depths of a well. So David knows that he’s been lifted out of the pit. He could no more rescue himself than a bucket can lift itself out of a well. Nor can we. We owe everything to Christ our saviour. We should be pouring out praise and glory to God even more than David, because we can see our Saviour Jesus more clearly than he ever could. Psalm 30.4:

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.

And again at the end, Psalm 30.11-12:

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever!

There’s another graphic picture of what God does for us in his mercy. He removes our penitential sackcloth and give us new clothes fit for a celebration. He clothes us in gladness. So where does that leave us? We need, like King David, to grow up into mature disciples, who know by experience that God hears our cry and rescues us from trouble. Like David, we need to sing his praise and not be silent. And that praise needs to flow from hearts that know what David learned:

Weeping may endure for the night,But joy comes in the morning.Hold on, hold on.God will see you through.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the way that you taught king David, lifting him out the pit of dismay, and filling him with songs of praise. Help us to learn, in our turn, to trust you when we’re down, to turn to you for mercy and rescue, and to tell of your glory in songs of praise. In Jesus name. Amen.
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