Saturday, September 3, 2016
Psalm 39:12-13 Hear my prayer, O Lord, And give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a stranger with You, A sojourner, as all my fathers were. Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, Before I go away and am no more.
LORD, HEAR ME
God's grace is the basis for the psalmist's plea. His tears are tears of repentance. He is sorry for questioning the LORD; he is sorry for his sins; he calls upon the LORD to remove his plague, that is, to remove his troubles -- especially his spiritual troubles that result from his sin. He further asks God to, "Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, Before I go away and am no more." That prayer finds its answer in Christ Jesus. The blood of the Savior covers the condemning stare of the Law and replaces it with the loving gaze of our heavenly Father. who sees only His beloved children, who are on their way Home to Him in heaven.
As the psalmist declares, "For I am a stranger with You, a sojourner, as all my fathers were." The word for stranger here means: "a newcomer, a temporary inhabitant," -- someone who has no rights to an inheritance. The fathers, that is, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were, strangers in a strange land. They did not hold citizenship in the lands in which they lived. The LORD promised that someday Canaan would belong to them, but they never saw it in their lifetime.
We have no claim on anything in this world, much less a claim on any kind of an eternal inheritance in heaven. But God has promised to see us through the tribulations of this world, to bring us into His kingdom (Acts 14:22) because of what Christ Jesus has done for us. He does forgive all of our transgressions. Our claim of an eternal inheritance in heaven is founded on Christ's work.
"God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him" (Romans 5:9).
