Hurry Up God!

Hurry Up, Lord!

Psalm 70

Psalm 70 is almost identical to Psalm 40:13-16. The repetition highlights the importance of what is recorded here. This short Psalm reflects a reality of many believers. The reality is that we often grow impatient with the Lord. To be sure, we ask the Lord to be patient with us. However, we certainly don’t want the Lord to take His time when we have a need. Four times the Psalmist tells the Lord to hurry up. The Psalm begins and ends with this request. We see the request two times in the first verse and two times in the last verse. The good news is the Psalmists impatience has led him to prayer. This is the lesson we should learn. When anxiety fills our heart, we should cast all our care upon the Lord because He cares for us. I will outline the Psalm in the following way:

1. His urgency (1).

2. His enemy (2-3).

3. His company (4).

4. His poverty (5).

1. His urgency (1).

There is some circumstance in the Psalmists life that he needs deliverance from. The context suggest that his life is being threatened. This is probably the reason for the urgency. This is a rebuke for many of us because we normally lose our patience over very small matters. We can hardly blame a person for impatience if their life is on the line. I think there are legitimate reasons for praying in the manner the Psalmist prays here. Death & disease justify prayers like this. The spiritual state of those we love justify prayers like this as well.

The attitude of the Psalmist is illustrated well in the story of Lazarus taken from John 11. Lazarus was dying and his sisters sent word to Jesus. They wanted Jesus to come and heal their brother. I’m sure they wanted Jesus to come as soon as He heard about the illness. However, Jesus waited two days before He ever began His journey to see Lazarus. By the time He arrived Lazarus had been dead for four days. Martha, Lazarus sister, was clearly upset with Jesus for not coming sooner. She said to the Lord “If you had been here this wouldn’t have happened!” Martha had wanted the Lord to hurry up. The Lord did not immediately answer Martha’s prayer because He wanted to do a greater work than healing Lazarus. He wanted to resurrect Lazarus from the dead. He did just that and Christ received more glory.

Stories like that one from Scripture should comfort us when we have an urgent need. Impatience can lead to sin. We can become grumblers. We can lay blame at the feet of God. We can allow the flesh to dominate. We can become so preoccupied with our need that we are not thinking rightly about the Lord, ourselves or others. We live in these jars of clay and that makes life difficult at times. When life gets difficult, we should remember that He is the potter and we are the clay. In due season the Lord will deliver us.

In fact, the story of Lazarus is the perfect example for the believer struggling in a decaying body. It reveals to us the truth. The truth is the Lord may allow us to die. He may not deliver us from physical death. There is only one generation that will not taste death. That is the generation that is on this earth when Christ returns. If the Lord does allow us to die, as He did with Lazarus, he will also resurrect us from the dead.

I’m afraid we are so used to watching sitcoms we expect our life to be like one. Things are not going to be solved in thirty minutes. Many answers come slowly. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pray with urgency. We should pray urgent prays but we should do so in faith and with patience.

2. His enemy (2-3).

In verses 2-3 the Psalmist calls down curses upon his enemies. He says:

Let them be ashamed

Let them be turned back and put to confusion

Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame

The Psalmist is asking the Lord to foil the plans of his enemies. They have schemed against him and the Psalmist knows he can not handle them. He needs the Lord to destroy whatever plans his enemies have concocted against him.

I want you to notice what these people are seeking to do to the Psalmist.

They are seeking after his soul (they want to kill him).

David wrote this Psalm. There was probably some benefit David’s enemies had in his death. Most likely it was a political benefit. These were not people who simply didn’t care for David. These were people that wanted David dead. They hated him.

They are desiring his hurt (they find joy in his pain). If David were dead that would please them, if David suffered before he died that would please them even more. This shows the depravity of the men. You probably don’t know anyone who wants you to suffer and die. But you probably do know someone who would take delight if awful things happened to you. There are people who love to say, “Serves him right!” or “She got what she deserved!” One of the reason social media is so popular is people love to hear about the misery of others.

They ridicule him. They said “Aha! Aha!” This phrase shows contempt one has for another. We think of what happened to Christ on the cross. As He hung on the cross people showed their contempt by saying things like “If you’re the Son of God come down!” “If you’re the Son of God save yourself!”

It is a sign of depravity to mock the hurting. David’s enemies hated him, and they wanted others to hate him too. They laughed at him and they wanted others to laugh at him as well. When we are treated with such hatred it does give urgency to our prayers. We easily grow weary of the taunts and threats of our enemy.

It is difficult to righteously respond to our enemies. Especially when it seems the Lord is allowing our enemies to prosper. David’s enemies are loud in this Psalm, but God is quiet. That’s probably one of the reasons we see such urgency in David’s prayer. We all have people in our life that we have to put up with. It may be a family member or a co-worker. It may be a neighbor or a politician. We all have people who rub us the wrong way. If we had our way, we’d have the Lord remove them immediately. But the Lord often allows such people to stay in our life because He has a purpose for them. Paul is not the only person to whom the Lord gave a thorn in the flesh. We all have our thorns in the flesh. It’s important that we not deal with them ourselves. It’s important that we pray to the Lord and have Him deal with them. If He doesn’t immediately remove them its our responsibility to continue to live for Christ despite their presence in our life.

3. His company (4).

In verse four David begins to speak of his friends. It is good for us to remember that we are not alone. God has His people on this earth. I want us to consider how the text describes believers in verse four.

“Those that seek Thee” In verse two the wicked are described as seeking the soul of David. In verse four the righteous are described as seeking God. The contrast is intentional. What we seek on this earth reveals our spiritual state. Those who belong to God seek God.

They seek the Person of God. They want to know who He is. They want to be near Him. They want to know His ways. If we want to know if we belong to the company of God, we should ask ourselves these questions:

Do I seek to know God?

Do I seek to understand God’s Word?

Do I seek to be close to God?

To the believer, the most important relationship he/she has is with the Lord. When we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, we will return for another drink. To know God is to love God. That which we love we will seek after.

As a matter of personal inspection, we should ask ourselves on a regular basis “What am I seeking after?” Are we seeking after:

Money

Popularity

Power

Fame

Relationships

Entertainment

What we pursue reveals what we love. The Lord should be Who we pursue with the most passion. Does the phrase “those who seek after God” describe me?

“Such as love Thy salvation” Do you love the salvation of God? There are those who come to the Lord for fire insurance. They don’t want to go to hell, so they say a prayer or perform some ritual. Afterwards, they seldom think of their salvation. That isn’t the type of person the Psalmist describes here.

When you love something, you think of it often. Our salvation is something we should rejoice in daily. The old hymn says:

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how He could love me, a sinner condemned unclean!

Those who love the salvation of God are humbled by it. Friends, what a blessing it is to be saved! Our sins have been dealt with. Our eternity is secure. We have a hope that cannot be taken away. We are going to heaven. We are going to be with the Lord. The Psalmist says that knowledge will inspire us to continually say “Let God be magnified!”

Notice all the joy in verse four. Those who are saved are to rejoice and be glad. Those who seek after God and love His salvation are rewarded with joy. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It is proof that the Holy Spirit of God lives within us. Do you belong to the company David speaks of here? Do you seek after God? Do you love the salvation of God?

5. His poverty (5).

Notice the contrast between the end of verse four and the beginning of verse five. God is magnified. God is great. But David is poor and needy. David is small.

Is this how we describe ourselves? Do we humbly admit “I am poor and needy”? I don’t know if we could find a better description of humanity. We are all poor and needy. You may think “Pastor, I have all I need, how can I be needy?” David wrote this Psalm when he sat upon a throne. David had any earthly thing a person could want. What did David mean then? He was speaking of his spiritual state before God.

Scripture teaches we are all bankrupt before God. Riches profit not in the day of wrath.

We are poor in that we have no righteousness.

We are in debt because we cannot afford to pay the price we owe for our sins.

We are needy in that we need to be made righteous before God.

Certainly, there are ways in which we are poor and needy from an earthly point of view as well. We are a weak people. The collapse of the economy or the contraction of a disease reveals how poor and needy we really are from an earthly standard. But our weakness in those areas should point to the ultimate need we have as poor sinners. Again, we are reminded of a hymn:

Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,

weak and wounded, sick and sore;

Jesus ready stands to save you,

full of pity, love, and power.

We ought to remind ourselves and the Lord of how poor and needy we are. Prayer is no time to gloat. Those who brag to God do not impress Him. But certainly, His heart of mercy is moved when we come humbly to Him admitting our need.

David ends the Psalm in the same way he began it. He asks the Lord to come to his rescue quickly. Notice David says the Lord is his help and deliverer. In other words, David has nowhere else to go. Often when we lose patience, we seek relief from many sources. Impatience can cause us to lose focus. Not David. He would stay at the throne of mercy until he received what he needed. There was no other option for him. He is a great example for us in that regard. Too often if the Lord does not answer in our time, we try to find another avenue to get what we need. David was anxious, he was saying “Hurry up Lord!” but He wasn’t about to go anywhere else for what he needed. May it be so for us as well.