Wake Up

This present climate of sickness, death, vaccines, and mandates should cause us to wake up, but to what? There are wars staged to progress on the Ukrainian border while I write this article. There are people in churches angry at one another because of the latest recommendation for how we should handle the next variant of the next epidemic. God help us! We should wake up, but to what? Some would lead you to believe we need to wake up from the sorcery of church, bible, and the like. Some would have you to worship at the altar of their own hubris. There are even some who would encourage you to ignore and live your best life now…do what you want to the fullest and ignore the rest. We need to wake up, but to what?

In Psalm 39 David wrote a Psalm to be put to music score by the Chief Musician Jeduthun. Jeduthun was a Levite and the Chief singer and instructor in Israel in the time of David writing this particular psalm. David sends him words to set to score in Psalm 39, 62, and 77. We see his titles, positions, and notoriety in 1 Chronicles 9.16, 16.38-42, 25.1-6, 2 Chronicles 5.12, 35.15, and Nehemiah 11.17. David believed what was wrote was important enough to make it into a worship piece that others would learn and participate in. What exactly? 

Well… there is a lot in this psalm. I want to draw your attention to verse 4. It seems to be the center of the Psalm, in relation to what David is thinking. It capsulated the entirety of his message. “LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.” That is something to meditate upon. We live every day thinking we have plenty of time to kill. Nope. We do not. I watched a father of a college age daughter speak this morning about his daughters murder. The suspect was released without bail, based upon newly relaxed laws governing that State. They refuse to prosecute for that. Insane? Yes. It isn’t my opinion…it is insane! We need to wake up, but to what?

In David’s Psalm we have a man reflecting on his own mortality and frailty. He is consumed with a sense of not dread, but realization, that life isn’t long and isn’t promised. We have a limited time here, as David said— “a hand’s breath”. We run our mouths, make proclamations, go where we want, and boast of tomorrow. David did the opposite here. He said— “Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it” (8-9). There was do not to quick thinking by this warrior king, on the contrary, he came to most powerful position he could… meekness and humility. In verse 7 David said— “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee.” And there we have it. Wait. Let God do the thinking, heavy lifting, talking, and fighting for you. Wait on Him to deliver you. Wait on Him to secure you. Wait on Him to supply that want or need. Wait. 

We are living in trying times indeed. It is a confusing mess every day every where. If we would trust what the scripture says… “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Corinthians 14.33), we would be at peace. We would realize the confuser is not God, but Satan. People are running around with their hair on fire because of a lack of knowledge of the Word and a lack of waiting on the Supplier. The system of this world is forcing people to live faster and crazier every day. It is the influence of Satan in this world that is turning people into their baser nature and hating on each other. Every single news source is targeting racism with racism. It is sick and twisted. Yes, we need to wake up, but to what?

We need to wake up out of our humanistic thinking. We need to wake up out of the propelling forces shoving us into wasting even more of our time with trinkets and vain pursuits. We need to wake up out of self and into Jesus. We need to wake up out of our pride and realize as David… just how “frail” we really are. We need to wake up and wait on the Lord.