A Word in Season: Unless I had Believed (Psalm 27:13)

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The 13th verse of the 27th psalm is one of those curious

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Hebrew sentences that seems actually to go nowhere. In most translations it has some words supplied to it to offer an obvious sense, so in the translation that I typically use,

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I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

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But the sentence itself is, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the

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Lord in the land of the living, effectively dot, dot, dot. It's inviting you in to the sentiment that is being expressed.

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Although the sentence seems to go nowhere, in going nowhere apparently it actually leads you somewhere that otherwise you would not have gone.

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It's inviting you if you like to fill in the gaps. Unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the

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Lord in the land of the living, what? Where would I have ended up? What would have become of me?

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You see, in the context of the whole psalm, that's the expression of a man who has been deeply afflicted.

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There is confident faith here, there's an absoluteness about David's assurance that God will be his protector and defender.

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But that confidence is born almost of a holy desperation in the face of some of the most awful assaults and insults.

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The wicked have come up against him to eat up his flesh, his enemies and his foes, but they stumbled and fell.

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There's an expectation that God will hide him, will cover him, will take care of him.

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His enemies are all around him, but God will still defend him. God will hear him when he cries with his voice.

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He will not leave him or forsake him. He will prove the God of his salvation. Yes, if his nearest and dearest relations, even his father and his mother, turn their backs upon him, then the

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Lord God will still take care of him. And so there's this plea that God would lead him in the way because of his enemies, not delivering him to the will of his adversaries, not leaving him in the hands of the violent and the wicked.

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And then, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, to say what would have become of me?

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Without this confident expectation in my God, without this confident assurance that God would never leave me or forsake me, without God to sustain me, not just in my life, but in my soul in anticipation of that life.

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And that's why he concludes, wait on the Lord, be of good courage and he shall strengthen your heart.

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Wait, I say, on the Lord. I think these sentiments, although they come from the experience of David, would have just as properly belonged in the heart of our

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Lord Jesus Christ under specific circumstances. Unless he had believed that he would see the goodness of the

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Lord in the land of the living, what would have become of him? It was this confidence that sustained him in a more pure way than it ever sustained even

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David. And it's that confidence that needs still to sustain God's people when we come up against true enemies, those who hate us for our confidence in God, who are against us because we are for him, who have no regard for us, whose cruelties and wickednesses abound.

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We need to understand what would happen to us if we could not have confidence in God, if it were not for his goodness, his strength, his faithfulness, his love and his mercy.

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Unless we could believe that we would see the goodness of God in the land of the living, then what?

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Emptiness, misery, destruction. But because of God, we hope, we wait on the

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Lord. We are of good courage, confident that God will strengthen our hearts.

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We need to preach to ourselves, as David does here, that God will never leave us or forsake us.

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In the darkest of times, in the deepest of holes, in the most difficult of circumstances, in the most dangerous of seasons, when the enemies of God are gathered around us as individuals or as churches, when we are assaulted and undermined, when the insults and the attacks fly in against us, yes, unless we had believed that we would see the goodness of the

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Lord in the land of the living, we would have been consumed, we would have lost heart, we would have come to nothing, we would have been swept away.

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But God being God, we trust in him, and so we wait upon the

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Lord. We are of good courage, confident that in due time, God will strengthen our hearts.