Delivered from afflictions

I am not sure what proper etiquette is on a blog, even if there is such a thing as proper etiquette.  I have not written a post for a week.  Should I apologize?  That seems rather presumptuous and perhaps even arrogant as I would then be presuming that someone might be offended or disappointed in my not writing.  I was not able to write for the past week as the only energy I had was given to study and then writing of my sermon together with keeping up with emails and caring for my disabled son on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.  I am not sure if it was a worse week than before.  I think perhaps I'm just weary of feeling sick.  Anyway today I'm at work and feeling better but still woozy and not 100%.

Yesterday, during the reading of the Scriptures at church a verse really caught my ear and my eye.  We read half of one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 34.  The verse that caught my ear was v. 19: "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all."  The entire psalm reflects the reality of this statement.  The psalmist, who is righteous, talks about his fears and his troubles throughout the psalm.  So this is a verse that fits the reality of the psalmist: the righteous have many afflictions. 

"The righteous" refers to those individuals who are in right standing with God.  This is one of the most common ways in the OT of describing the people of God, those with whom God is well-pleased, who are going to spend eternity with him.  God is righteous and thus to be a righteous person is to have met God's standard, to be acceptable to him.  However, there is a problem in the OT use of this language because the same OT, indeed, in the same book, Psalm 143:2 we are told, "no one living is righteous before you."  In Psalm 14:1 God says, "there is none who does good."  Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."  There scores of verses that repeat this same theme: there are no good or obedient or righteous humans.  So, how can the psalmist talk about himself or anyone being righteous?

That is where the next verse comes in which immediately caught my ear and eye after v. 19 did.  Psalm 34:20 reads, "He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken."  What this verse says is that God prevents all the bones of "the righteous one" to whom v.19 refers from being broken.  Now the apostle John writes this in his gospel (19:31-36), "Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.  So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him.  But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.  But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.  He who saw it has borne witness--his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth--that you also may believe.  For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: "Not one of his bones will be broken."

John tells us that the reason Jesus' legs were not broken by the soldiers as they broke the legs of the other two men is because God had written, through his prophet David, in Psalm 34:20 that not one of the bones of the righteous one would be broken.  Thus the person who is praying this psalm and to whom this entire psalm is referring is Jesus, David's greater son, the Messiah.  Jesus is the only actual righteous human to have ever lived upon the face of this planet because he is the only human who ever perfectly obeyed God's law.

So how are we supposed to read this psalm?  Jesus is the one who has fulfilled everything this psalm and every other psalm says.  Thus, whenever we read these prayers, that is what the Psalms are, we must always read them first as the prayers of Jesus, the righteous one.  Then, if we are united to him by the work of the Holy Spirit through faith in him, we read them as our prayers because we are righteous before God because Jesus obeyed the law in our place and suffered the death we deserve for all of our disobedience.  Thus, I and every believer in Jesus can read this psalm and every psalm as the "righteous one" because we are righteous in God's eyes through our faith in Jesus.  To use NT langauge, we have been justified, declared not guilty but perfectly righteous in God's sight, through our faith in Jesus (Romans 3:21-31, 5:1-11, etc.).

Thus, it is true for me and for every believer that we have many afflictions.  This is in perfect agreement with what the apostle Paul said in Acts 14:22, "...through many afflictions we must enter the kingdom of God."  We should never be surprised by the suffering and pain and trouble we experience in this life because God has told us that we should expect it.  However, the key question is this: God has said that he delivers the righteous from all their afflictions; when and how does God do this?  What does that mean?  Does that mean I can count on not dying of cancer?  Does that mean that my disabled son is going to be miraculously healed and made whole again? 

That is where knowing that this psalm is first about Jesus is so important.  How and when did God deliver Jesus from all his afflictions?  He delivered him from his afflictions after he suffered and died and went to hell for us; when he raised him from the dead and glorified him.  Thus, because I am righteous in Christ, I can know with absolute certainty that I will be delivered from my cancer at the resurrection from the dead.  It may be that I will not die from this cancer and that is what I pray.  However, I need not fear the cancer because whether or not I die from it, I will most certainly be delivered from it at the resurrection from the dead, just like my Savior was delivered from  his afflictions at his resurrection.