Psalm 70

To the choirmaster. Of David, for the memorial offering. 

1 Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me!

2 Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt!

3 Let them turn back because of their shame who say, “Aha, Aha!”

The theme of this prayer is pretty simple, “Hurry up and help me!” The thread of “haste” runs through this psalm. He asks God to help him quickly and for his actions to be the immediate reversal of the direction of his enemies -- may they be turned back. These are probably political enemies that a king was likely to have. Someone was always vying for his position, desiring power and honor in a culture that battled continually for those things. David’s prayer is something of a curse, asking that those who seek to take his life would be subject to shame, confusion, and dishonor. As a shame/honor culture, this was in some ways more important than anything else. David desires to be vindicated, honored above his unscrupulous enemies. There are people who love to say, “Aha!” “Gotcha!” They are looking for evidence of wrongdoing or hypocrisy. Failure to keep a standard is not necessarily hypocrisy -- it is being human, committing sin. It doesn’t mean the standard is bad. Some people want to reject religious standards because people do not keep them. The problem is not with the standards, it’s with the people. Look hard enough and you’ll find short-comings in everyone, and if someone envies you or desires your position, they won’t have much trouble finding something to criticize. David just wants it to end, so he asks for God to pick up the pace. This psalm might as well have been written for today when we are so accustomed to getting everything quickly and easily. I can order just about anything I want and have it at my door in two days. I can pull through a drive through and have food in my stomach in a matter of minutes. I can access information and media of my choosing in seconds and I’ll complain if there is even the slightest buffering of my video as if it’s a big imposition on my time. “Hurry up and save me!” is the prayer of this age. I can appreciate the sentiment, but maybe God is doing something more important for me by waiting to save me. Jesus waited to save Lazarus and he died as a result. But Jesus did something greater by raising him from the dead. It’s a lesson about patience and trust in God’s timing. So “Save me God, whenever it’s best.”

4 May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”

5 But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!

After cursing those who are seeking his life, David turns his focus on the faithful and asks that they receive just the opposite -- joy and gladness in God. God himself is to be their reward. Those who have experienced and value God’s rescue will forever say, “God is great!” I remember the summer I spent in Germany and how everyone greeted each other with “Gross Gott” - God is great. What if we had a culture that truly believed and had experienced that truth? A culture that honored him not just with such words but with action? What would that look like? Heaven. After praying blessing on others, David returns to his own situation and asks again, “Hurry up and help me...don’t delay!” David’s urgency may seem impertinent -- like a nagging, crying child who doesn’t understand that mom and dad can do multiple things at once. God is no way like our parents because he can do multiple things at once, quite well in fact. So we are getting back to the question the psalms raise, “Why doesn’t God act when, where, and how we want him to?” The answer is wisdom and trust. We are not God, and we can’t possibly know all the ramifications of every action. We can express our urgency and impatience, but there’s no guarantee that it will speed Him up. In fact, it’s probably bad theology to suggest that God’s sluggishness is motivated by our urgency, that he’s just waiting for our prayers to reach some threshold of annoyance that he finally takes action. This is not to say that perseverance is not important in prayer. Jesus said that it’s like a widow going before an unjust judge relentlessly until she finally got the action she deserved. If that is how an unjust judge is motivated, don’t you think that our benevolent father will do even better than that? So persevere in prayer, but don’t get mad at God if he doesn’t bow before you on your schedule. He is God after all, and his wisdom is to be trusted.