Conviction by Affliction

Do convicts like verdicts?  Have you ever heard of a a guilty person asking to be sentenced?  "Please, PLEASE give me my sentence!"

Oddly enough, that's exactly what David requests.  He asks God to "quicken" or revive him with a verdict, a sentence.

 

"Great are thy tender mercies, O LORD: quicken me according to thy judgments." Psalm 119:156

The word 'judgment' means verdict or sentence.  So David is speaking to God the Father as his judge - a judge who passes down both tender mercies and verdicts/sentences.  David acknowledges God's tender mercies, but he asks to be quickened, not according to those tender mercies, but according to God's judgments.  Strange.

How do God's verdicts "quicken" us?  How do God's sentences "quicken" us?  In what way does a verdict or a sentence bring life?

Maybe David's experience with God's mercy and judgment will shed some light on his strange request.  Remember when Nathan the prophet told King David the story about the rich man who stole and killed the poor man's only ewe lamb?  King David indignantly pronounced judgment on the rich man - that he would repay fourfold for the lamb.  When Nathan replied, "You are the man", David knew he was convicted and judged by the words of his own mouth.  David openly and publicly confessed and repented of his sin in Psalm 51.

God showed the repentant David great mercy in many ways; by forgiving him, allowing him to continue as King, allowing him to keep Bathsheba.  But the fourfold judgment that David pronounced upon himself did come to pass.  David lost four of his children throughout the years to come. The first repayment occurred immediately as God struck the infant son of Bathsheba and David with an illness and he died.  The other three repayments occurred throughout David's life as he lost three sons by the sword: Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah.

David lived to see three of the fourfold repayments. Each time, David experienced a personal revival.

The First Payment: David's infant son dies by the hand of God

Upon hearing of his infant son's death, David immediately left off mourning for his son to worship God.  David accepted the blame and the judgments.  He harbored no animosity toward God for his verdict, no animosity toward Bathsheba as his partner in sin, no animosity toward Nathan as the messenger of his sentence.  Rather, he worshipped God, comforted Bathsheba, sent for Nathan, and named his next child "beloved of the Lord".  All these things are evidence of a personal revival. 

The Second Payment: Amnon dies by the sword

After Amnon's death, Absalom fled, and David mourned for three years.  Then "the soul of David longed to go forth unto Absalom: for he was comforted concerning Amnon, seeing he was dead" (II Sam 13:39 ).  Although David allowed Absalom to return to Jerusalem, he still would not see Absalom.  David had not fully forgiven Absalom for murdering Amnon.  Five years after Absalom murdered Amnon, David finally showed true forgiveness by seeing Absalom and kissing him.  David's forgiveness is evidence of personal revival.

The Third Payment: Absalom dies by the sword

After Absalom's death in the uprising he orchestrated against his own father, a grieving, but gracious King David pardons treason and excuses failure in his subjects.  He sets aside his personal grief for Absalom in order to comfort and thank his subjects for their loyalty.  David doesn't demand the throne as the prize of victory, but rather seeks his subjects' consent to his rule.  David returns to Jerusalem, not in the frame of mind of a conquering king, but in the frame of mind of a humble servant.  These things are evidence of a personal revival.

David surely recognized these events as part of the sentence he had pronounced upon himself.  Each time a payment was made, it brought back the remembrance of his great sin.  Each time his family suffered turmoil, he traced its root to his sin.  The rest of David's life was lived in the shadow of the next payment, the realization that the fourfold payment had not yet been fulfilled.  The fourth payment was finally made after David's death, when Adonijah died by the sword.

The judgments and the way they played out over the course of his life seemed to make David a better subject of God as well as a better king.  In a way, the judgments did "quicken" him.  Perhaps his exalted position as king was "quickened" by the sense of humility that the judgments wrought.  Perhaps his willingness to forbear and forgive the failures and betrayal of others was "quickened" by the "my sin is ever before me" awareness that the judgments wrought.  Perhaps his zeal for the cleansing Word of God was "quickened" by the realization of his own depravity that the judgments wrought.  Perhaps the conviction of affliction created in David a desperate desire for God that "quickened" his kingdom to desire God.