Isolation
As a Christian, have you ever felt the isolation and the darkness spoken of in this Psalm, an isolation resulting from sin?
Sin separates us from God and from our fellow man. It leaves us feeling alone. There may be plenty of people around; no shortage of friends, yet no one sees the inner war that rages inside. “My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my nearest kin stand far off” vs 11. Feeling trapped and alone, maybe you despair that you’ll never be rid of your sinful nature. Bible verses describing you as righteous in Christ just seem harder and harder to believe as year after year the same old sins still haunt you. Maybe you throw up your hands and say with the Psalmist here, “My iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.” And Satan will quickly come in to remind you that yes, this is too big for you, so you should give up.
What are we to say to ourselves at such times? We must remember the Lord we love. Our faith wobbles and stumbles, but His faithfulness is unshakable. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13).
There are two ways out of every trial, the Devil’s way and God’s way. Satan says “give up”, God says “get up”; Satan says “keep worrying”, God says “keep walking”; Satan says “take rest by forgetting your sin, it isn’t that bad anyway”, God says “come to me all you who are heavy laden and I shall give you rest” (Matt 11:28). Why believe the Devil instead of believing God? God says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17).
This is true despite all our past sins. God says, “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statues and keep my rules and obey them” (Ez 11:19-20).
We must take these truths and remind ourselves of them. We must get back up and walk in God’s statutes. The battle to be holy won’t end in this life for the Christian. It’s a bit like a fast food restaurant where the cleaning of the kitchen seems endless. If you’re going to make tasty food for the customers, you absolutely must have a clean kitchen. None of the customers see that hard work of cleaning, but they do taste the food. In the Christian life, no one sees you labouring in prayer to God each day, seeking to keep your heart pure and clean. No one sees that struggle, but they will see the fruit the Holy Spirit is growing in your life. We may never stop running and fighting and scrubbing our dirty hearts with a scratch pad. And we have the promise that God will keep us in that race, unless it be found that we never loved Christ from the start and his love is not in us. But most encouraging of all, this Psalm was written by the king, and that gives me hope, just as it would have to those Israelites who sung it. If their great king had been through these depths over his sin and could still call out in faith to God for help, then there was hope for them too. And maybe those Israelites with farther reaching eyes of faith could see these as the words of the greater King; their Messiah who would take their own sins upon himself and suffer that isolation and darkness in their place. And since the only solution to our sins lies in King Jesus, I appeal to all who read this to put all your trust in him and to keep going. The journey may seem long, hard, and lonely, but God the Father awaits us in glory with open arms of love, God the Son, by his death on the cross, has saved us from the pit and set our feet on solid ground, and God the Spirit dwells within us and give us strength for the journey. Without him we can do nothing. We have help!