Psalm 39 Continued…
Psalm 39:12 Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.
Another theme that David shares in this Psalm is that of being a foreigner in a strange land…an alien. This is also a major idea we see for God’s people throughout the Scriptures. It begins with God’s call on Abraham in Genesis 12. Abraham was called from his homeland to go to a land that God would show him where his descendants would dwell.
But that promised inheritance of that land, although realized physically in the land of Jordan, is not fully felt until God’s people come to be and dwell in a New Heaven and New Earth where God is with us unfettered. Until that day, believers know that this earth is not our true home. We are strangers in a strange land.
The people and customs of this world are very different than our own. They speak with words we do not use, they act in ways that we do not act, the participate in things we do not participate in. We are not one of them. We are foreigners to them. And we are not accepted by them.
But we know we will come to our true residence one day (and, as David has already shown us in this Psalm) not too long from now. Listen to the words of just a few passages that emphasize this point for us…
John 17:16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.
Acts 7:6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.’
Ephesians 2:19-20 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
1 Peter 2:11-12 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
PRAY
Father take me home!