Psalm 38 Sin Brings Suffering

Daily Bible Study for Friday August 19, 2016

By: Hanny Lynn Stearns

Fish N Loaves Ministries, Inc.

“Multiplying God’s Word Around The Globe”

Chapter Reading for Today: Please read in your Bible before proceeding. Note that most translations are considered paraphrases. The Young’s Literal Translation provides a more accurate translation since he is the one who authored a concordance. Others are helpful for seeing a different perspective, but we cannot always depend on their wording. I hope this is helpful to you. If you are studying in another version, that is fine. I am studying from the KJV, but for the purpose of this study, I will keep it with the New King James Version.

One final note: I will put the scripture in italics to differentiate from my own writing. I am adding red to the letters when it is Jesus talking – just like the Bible. Thank you.

Bible Gateway Verse of the Day

1 John 5:12

He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Psalm 100:4

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,

and into His courts with praise.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.

Song: Wedding Day    By: Third Day

Psalm 38

Sin Brings Suffering

In our chapter today, we are getting a view of the backslidden Christian. Our Psalmist starts off asking God not to rebuke him or chasten him in His hot anger. He knew that God was angry about what he had been doing. He is pressed by his own spirit as he feels the sharp arrows of truth penetrating his heart. This person is not someone who has never known the Lord as his Savior. This is a Christian if we were applying it to today’s world. Back in those days they were known as “the people of God.” There were those who were believers in and followers of God – devoted Jews. And there were those who wanted nothing to do with Israel’s God. But the person writing this today is a person who had known God – yet he has backslidden. Let’s pray…

Heavenly Father;

We come before You as Your dearly loved children to see what You will show us individually through this teaching. Father, we also want to thank You for being a merciful God – a Father who loves us at all times, even when we have messed up really bad and turned back to the ways of sin. Lord, I ask You to bring those who need this message today. Open the way for them to read this and receive all that You have for each and every precious soul. Lord, as always, I ask You to give me the utterance to bring forth what You want said to Your children. Use my mind, heart and hands to pen Your message, from Your heart. May this go out unhindered and unchecked by any outside force or my flesh in Jesus name. Thank You for always watching over Your word to perform it in our lives when we trust and obey You. We will make it our goal and primary purpose in life to be doers of Your word and not hearers only. We thank You in advance for the answers to this prayer in Jesus name. Amen.

One need only to read through this for the first time to see the life of Job in it. Job had sinned and it had opened the door for the devil to attack him with sore boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. We just spent 42 week days studying the reason that he suffered so terribly. He had been known to be a man after God’s heart – the Lord Himself said there was no one around like him. Job had been righteous. He had done great things for the poor and needy. He was a respected man in his home and in the marketplace. Everywhere he went, people had looked up to him as a strong man of God.

Yet, in one fell swoop, he was knocked down in an instant with loss and devastation beyond anything he could ever have imagined. And why? Because of his sin. He didn’t even realize it, but he had become prideful and self-righteous. It took him quite a few months to battle this out as he maintained his innocence before God. He was too cocky to listen to God and did far too much talking. So did his pals. I can relate too well to this man.

When they finally came to the end of themselves and were in a position where they would be quiet long enough to hear the Lord out – He showed up and started speaking. Then they got real quiet. Job slammed his hand across his mouth so fast that one would have missed it if they weren’t paying attention. When God began to pose the unanswerable questions to this man of God, Job was rendered speechless.

It is a perfect example of what can happen to anybody, even those who are devoted to the Lord. During our study of Job, the Lord led me to share a great deal of my testimony. You can look it up on my blog. I can understand this thing with Job more than I would like to admit. Some years before my crisis occurred, I had been very excited about Jesus. I wanted to serve Him and I loved Him – or so I thought. I had zeal in my heart for the Lord but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. In a time of terrible pain and turmoil, I turned to my own devices to get the help I needed, and what I got was loss, devastation and ruin – much like Job. I pretty much lost it all, including nearly losing my life from an attempted suicide that very nearly succeeded.

I believe that I am supposed to put myself out here on display first before we talk about anyone else. And why? Because I have experienced the suffering that sin can bring, I can relate well to this chapter. It is always easier for people to look at someone else talking about their wrongdoings than to look at themselves. But I believe that God can use my testimony as a way of reaching you or someone you may know who needs to hear this. I found out firsthand what kind of suffering sin would bring. I had physical conditions that appeared to be extremely serious – yet no one could give me an accurate diagnosis. The problem was my sin, not my body. Sin will bring sickness, because when we are in sin, the devil has the legal right to come in and bring the sickness. He lives to steal, kill and destroy God’s people, and all other people as well.

At one point in those days, I was even stricken with a severe case of what looked like Psoriasis. I had a red rash all over my face, arms, legs, stomach and back. I was embarrassed to even be seen! Yet I had to go to work like that. The attack came when I was getting ready to walk right back into a mess I had just escaped from. I know now the Lord was not one bit pleased with my behavior at the time. I had a Bible laid out on the bed next to me in the hotel room I was staying in, and I would look at it, but I couldn’t seem to pick it up and really read it. I felt condemned in my heart – that was the problem. Picking up my Bible would mean I would have to face what I was doing, and I just wasn’t ready yet. I still had farther to go in my descent into the pit. The devil was having a field day with me – all because I was allowing it.

Our writer today in Psalm 38 is telling us how weighed down he was. He admits that his sins are “over his head.” I was the same way. They were stacked up so high I couldn’t see the end of them. The writer says he was burdened and mourning all day. Again, I can relate. He was so unsettled in his heart he would cry out. That too describes me. I used to cry and cry. It’s more like an agonizing groan; a wailing that comes from deep down on the inside. I didn’t know what to do in order to turn the situation I was in. I did not understand enough about how merciful God is and I chose to continue to try to figure out the solutions on my own. It only caused me additional grief and made things worse. There was no light in my eyes either in those days. I was experiencing true depression for the first time in my life. It is a spirit and it is very oppressive. 

All the people who knew me avoided me like I had a deadly contagious disease. From acquaintances to coworkers, to family and closer friends, I was left alone to my own devices. The Lord had withdrawn His face from me and I was really living in the dark. During the 18 hours that I was in a coma after my attempted suicide, I saw no light. I didn’t get a glimpse of heaven or see Jesus while I was out. I am so grateful that the Lord did not allow me to descend to hell.

There are several people who have had that experience before coming back to life and being given another chance. They actually saw the fires of hell and heard the screams, felt the heat, and the horror of what it is really like. But all I saw was blackness. I would still have a long slow climb back to the Lord once I regained consciousness. The enemy was breathing down hard on me trying his very best to get me killed. And he almost succeeded! Oh the grace and mercy of our God – how great and amazing it truly is.

Yet, in all the things I was going through, I knew better than to blame anyone but myself for what was happening. It was, at the bottom of it all – my own sin. And I was a born again Christian at the time I made these poor choices that brought so much destruction to the life of my family. No person forced me. In fact, the Lord tried to stop me by putting people and circumstances in my path to try to redirect me back to Him, but I pushed past it all and continued down the dark, slippery slope of sin that landed me in the pit of all pits!

There finally came a time when I knew in my heart that I needed to get back to God. One day as I was walking to the place where I was staying in the bitter cold temperatures of winter in northern Michigan, I even said it out loud, “We have to get back to God.” It was at that point that I started looking for churches and going to services. I needed to grab on to something solid. I had gotten too far out there and I was very frightened. I could not see the land; I was too far out in the sea of my sins. I needed a life raft, and I needed it quick.

The Lord has been dealing with this issue of His people turning away from Him and falling back into old ways as long as man has been fallen after Adam and Eve got the whole thing started. And we can’t go blaming Adam and Eve for anything friends. They were humans like you and me. God had given them a free will, just like He gives you and me every waking moment of our lives. They got to choose and we get to choose. When the enemy comes a callin and the flesh starts its jumpin and screamin out to be satisfied, there goes the will of God – right out the window, if we cave in to it. They did it, and so have we. Everyone except Jesus has been guilty of sinning by either giving in to the devil’s temptations or the lusts of our flesh.

Let’s look at a view of what happened with the Lord’s people in the book of Hosea. The book starts off with the Lord telling Hosea to take a wife who is a whore. Now this is really an amazing story of mercy and grace. If you take the time to read the entire book of Hosea, only 14 chapters, you will see that Hosea’s wife is compared to the harlotry of God’s people. They were to be married to the Lord, but they had committed adultery and turned to other lovers, aka, idols. With all that said, we can understand this to be a book about backsliders. We will see it as we look at the final chapter… 

Hosea 14

O Israel, return to the Lord your God,
For you have stumbled because of your iniquity;
² Take words with you, and return to the Lord.
Say to Him,
“Take away all iniquity;
Receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips.
³ Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses, nor will we say anymore to the work of our hands, ‘You are our gods.’ For in You the fatherless finds mercy.”

⁴ “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him.
⁵ I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon.
⁶ His branches shall spread; his beauty shall be like an olive tree, and his fragrance like Lebanon.

⁷ Those who dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall be revived like grain, and grow like a vine.
Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

⁸ “Ephraim shall say, ‘What have I to do anymore with idols?’
I have heard and observed him. I am like a green cypress tree; your fruit is found in Me.”

⁹ Who is wise? Let him understand these things.
Who is prudent? Let him know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them,
But transgressors stumble in them.

At the end of some long hard struggles with sin in this book of great love, we see the Lord calling to His people to return to Him. Can you feel His heart here? He is a jealous God. He desires to have His creation love Him and trust Him above all else. It grieves Him to see His people running around looking to the enemy camp for help, when in reality, there is no help there at all. Oh, how I found that out the hard way! I went into the enemy camp trying to find what my broken heart needed. What did I get in return? My heart was crushed! By the enemy and the weight of my sin. My body was broken and my strength to do anything was gone as long as I stayed in the enemy’s camp.

The Lord is calling them (us) to confess their/our sins and repent. He is telling us to ask Him to receive us back in His grace. He wants us to recognize and admit that the enemy camp cannot save God’s people. He also wants us to turn away from anything that is of their own efforts to try to help them. That’s what I was doing. I relied on my own efforts. But the works of my hands only brought me misery and despair. Nothing I was depending on at the time could help me or deliver me from the emotional pain I was in. I had a stack of idols in my life too high to measure. My daughters were my “gods”. Friends were another form of gods to me. My career had become a god. Status was quickly becoming that too.

Food and alcohol was a god, but it only failed every time I turned to it for comfort. I tried drugs, sex, and many other things to try to ease my pain and find comfort, yet none of it ever produced anything good. In this last book of Hosea, the Lord calls out to the harlot (backslidden Christians) to come back while there is still time.

I was fatherless. In the Lord the fatherless can find mercy. He knows the wounds that come to those who are fatherless. My dad and mom divorced when I was 9 or so, and I no longer had him around to teach me the things a father is supposed to teach a child. And because my mother had fallen into alcoholism, she was rendered helpless by her own sinful life at that time to do anything that would produce healthy and well balanced children. There were five kids in our family, and every one of us had battles with addictions and irregular behaviors of one sort or another. We were left to our own devices for growing up and we all failed at it, quite miserably I might add. But the Lord is there. The damage of a fatherless family ,and motherless too, is indescribable. But the Lord is a father and a mother, all wrapped up into one awesome God and Savior – praise His name forever!

In verse 4 of our Hosea chapter, the Lord assures His people that He will heal their backsliding. What does this mean? Let me share another testimony that I can relate well to this verse. For the past several years, as I battled with food and sugar addiction, the Lord had used this very verse many times over to lure me back up onto the pavement when I slid off into the ditch and gave in to my food idols. Every time I would see it, the words would pierce my heart just like the Psalmist said in the opening verses of Psalm 38 today. When God does this, He is not condemning us. If we are feeling condemned, it is our own heart that is doing it – not the Lord…

1 John 3:20-21

For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. ²¹ Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.

When we take the time to fix our eyes and minds on the word of God every day, even after we know we have sinned and blown it, we will find the verse that will pierce our hearts and bring the conviction, or in other words, compel us to admit our error to the Lord and fall on our knees to ask Him to forgive us. And guess what. As fast as we do that, He forgives us. There is no crying after we have been forgiven. A person does not need to cry and whimper and carry on for hours about what they did.

If we find ourselves doing that, we have allowed the enemy to try to make us feel guilty and bad as if to say God has not really forgiven you. When the Lord forgives, that’s it. The sin is removed from His mind. Then it needs to be removed from ours. We must forgive ourselves. We need to get back up in the joy of the Lord and thank Him and praise Him for all He has done for us and go on with a glorious day in Him. There’s nothing quite like the feeling down deep in our hearts that assures us that our loving heavenly Father has forgiven us and restored us to right standing with Him. After all, that is His heart’s desire. He wants to draw us back to the place of repentance so we can confess and be forgiven…

1 John 1:5-10

⁵ This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

Over time, as we walk closely with the Lord, our “slips” will be fewer and fewer as we die to the flesh more and more. We will always have the devil to contend with, and our flesh didn’t get born again when we got saved, so we will always have to put that under as well. But the sufferings that we endure in this life are for such a short time and then we are outta here and there will be no more devil. As long as we exist in eternity we will always have a free will. The Lord will never take that away. But He will remove the tempter from our midst and then everything is going to change – hallelujah! God is so good!

I always like the part where He says He will love us freely. It is like getting a spanking from a good daddy and a great big hug afterward to remind us that He loves us and is only disciplining us for our own good. I can’t tell you how many times He has shown me this verse, but I can say it has been often. I am quite familiar with it – glory to His name! It has helped me. If I had not been looking at His word, it would have been real easy to continue on in my sin. That’s why we need His word and His Spirit to keep us.

The next several verses in Hosea tell us of the wonderful restoration that the Lord plans to provide for His people when they have returned to Him. As you read the verses, meditate on how sweet it all sounds. He is so good. Not only will He take His harlot bride back into His arms, but He will shower her with love, affection and gifts. Oh God is so good! Hosea took a harlot wife to show us what the Lord was dealing with in us as His church, His bride. Though we have chosen to run to other “lovers” He still wants us back.

He can forget about the other lovers just as quick as a confession is made. He will shower His bride with so much love that the remembrance of anything from the past will be gone. Now that is good news, isn’t it saints? The Lord is a faithful Husband to His bride. He will always take her back into His arms. But she has to want to come back. He will not ever try to force her. He is a perfect gentleman.

At the end of Hosea chapter 14, we see the important questions that we all need to answer. Who is wise? Who is prudent? That person must know and understand these things. God’s way is always right. Those who are truly righteous will choose to walk with Him. But those who are of an evil heart will stay in the path of sin. Which one describes you? What will you do? 

Questions:

Describe the one thing that stands out to you the most in this chapter?

Is there any sin in your life that is unconfessed?

Will you take the time right now to return to the Lord, confess and repent?

Do you realize that the Lord is there to love you and not to condemn you?

What will you do differently after reading this study?

Who can you share this study with?

There are three main points to consider from today’s study…

Sin will always bring suffering

God’s people are called to repent and return to Him

The Lord is a faithful Husband who will always take His bride back into His arms

                        Let’s pray…

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for being a faithful Husband to Your bride – the church. Father, I ask You to show me if there is any unconfessed sin in my life. Help me to know what I need to “come clean” with. Lord, I know that I never need to fear coming to You to admit when I have sinned. Thank You for being so loving, gracious and merciful. Help me to be wise in the days to come and always walk in the understanding of Your will. I give You all the praise, all the glory and all the honor in Jesus name. Amen.

How do you feel in your spirit now that you have confessed your sin?

And God Said… You fill in the blanks.

Luke 3:4-6

as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying:

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make His paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough ways smooth;
⁶ And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”