What have you done for me, lately?

We recognize that there is something powerful in the utterance of words. Thoughts may influence us greatly, but speaking them into existence makes them somehow more – well, real.

The drill sergeant, with the goal of getting a green recruit to recognize his dependence on the group, doesn’t merely want to know the recruit’s beliefs, but demands “Let me hear you say it, private!”

Parents who want reconciliation between siblings aren’t satisfied with a penitent heart, but insist that the offending one “tell your brother how you feel.”

And the frustrated girl dealing with her reticent romantic interest doesn’t want to know he loves her, but longs for the day he actually says it.

In Psalm 35, David reflects this same idea when in the midst of an otherwise imprecatory litany he makes a request of God that he “Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation!’” (35:3b). Two things occupy David’s mind about God: 1) a fact, 2) a proclamation.

David faced myriad problems: men sought his life, devised evil against him, laid traps for him, bore false witness, rejoiced over his calamity. All of this resulted from the animosity of God’s anointed, King Saul, and the mere fact that David had been called of God to replace Saul. David had a calling and ministry that others resented and didn’t understand.

But against these David seeks the Lord’s aid, and though he suggested that God fight with shield and buckler, with spear and javelin (vv. 1-2), his true request was otherwise: that they be put to shame, disappointed, caught with their own snares, and that David’s cause be vindicated…in other words, that they fail in their attempts against him.

In this midst of all this David seeks assurance. He knows he cannot trust the might of his own armies, or the cleverness of his schemes, or the brilliance of his defenses, but can only draw confidence from the fact that God is his salvation. This Fact further demonstrates that it is not what God does to alleviate David’s temporal circumstances that make him his salvation, but simply – and profoundly – who he is.

But David isn’t satisfied with the Fact: he wants Proclamation. Perhaps sensing the reality of his nature and that he, like us, needs the Gospel preached to him daily, insists that God declare again to him the Fact: I am your salvation! Like the one who longs to hear his master say “Well done, good and faithful servant,” David knows that unless he heard Proclamation of the Fact from God, he would tend to look elsewhere for sources of salvation, or relief, or solution.

Some of us have never heard God say “I am your salvation!” because we remain in our sin. Some of us don’t want to hear it, because we prefer to look elsewhere for salvation. David reminds us that we need both fact and proclamation.

POLLUTED SACRIFICES (Malachi 1:6-14)

Among other things, the Old Testament sacrificial system was an object lesson to God's people and to the nations that God is holy and that the sin of the people had offended that holiness. The animals sacrificed -- as the type of what was to come -- had to be without blemish. The perpetual shedding of the blood of substitutes served as constant reminder that God was continually holy, the people continually sinful. The promise, then, was for a once-for-all substitutionary sacrifice.

God's indictment of his people in Malachi for offering polluted sacrifices -- those that were lame, defective, sick -- was not (primarily) because God needed meat and was getting less than he deserved. The people were due chastisement because their substandard sacrifice profaned the type, and muted the lesson it was intended to convey. If the people could offer blemished sacrifices, perhaps, then, the Messiah could also be blemished.

The severity of our sin and the holiness of our God require that the substitute be without stain. Our sacrifices and offerings ('present your body a living and holy sacrifice') must, therefore, also be the best we can muster, not because we satisfy God with our best -- after all, our best is not good enough, and God has already been satisfied in Christ -- but because even after we have beheld the Lamb who took away the sins of the world we need constant reminder of his holiness, and the perfection of his redemption.

THE LIFEBOAT THEORY

Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What) proposes that we all act as if we are in a cultural lifeboat, in which permission to remain in the boat depends upon the approval of the majority in the boat. This requires us to jockey for relative position, presenting ourselves as being more valuable to the group than others.

This would include attempting to be more valuable to the group because we make more money, or because we know more people, or because we are better looking, more influential, more entertaining. This is consistent with the error that the disciples made in asking Jesus "who is the greatest in the kingdom," and Jesus chastisement of them that we can't believe because we receive glory from each other and not from him. What those who live according to the lifeboat theory don't realize is that satisfying the other occupants of a boat in a shipwreck situation might be useful, when those occupants decide whether you will remain as a potential survivor or as lunch.

But life, as it were, is not that situation. Sure, we need rescuing. But it is not the others in the boat that determine whether we stay long enough to meet the rescuers. That determination belongs only to God, who determines which ones are in the boat to begin with. So satisfying our fellows is not important, but satisfying God is. And the only way to satisfy God is to rest in the satisfaction made by Another, Jesus Christ.

SELF-MADE RELIGION

"...a moralistic religion of self-salvation is our default setting as fallen creatures. If we are not explicitly and regularly taught out of it, we will always turn the message of God's rescue operation in a message of self-help."

--Michael Horton, "Are Churches Secularizing America?" Modern Reformation, V17, N2, 2008.