Since I didn’t make the time to chew on Psalm 6 last week, I’m doing it today.

I’m only going to offer a few thoughts on verses 1 and 2, “O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.”

First, David does not say, “O Lord, rebuke me not.” He asks that the Lord not rebuke him in His anger. Perhaps David knows that God needs to rebuke His children from time to time. Perhaps David understands that we desperately need to feel God’s chastening rod from time to time. In fact, we ought to question a great many things if we can sin and not experience God’s discipline, either through conviction by His Spirit and Word or through painful circumstances. To experience God’s rebuke is to be assured of sonship. When God disciplines one of His own, He does so for at least three reasons. God rebukes his children because He loves them. He rebukes his children because he wants to restore fellowship. He rebukes his children to teach them righteousness.

Psalm 23:4 Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Jeremiah 31:18-20 I have heard Ephraim grieving,
‘You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined, like an untrained calf;
bring me back that I may be restored, for you are the Lord my God.
For after I had turned away, I relented, and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh;
I was ashamed, and I was confounded, because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’
Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child?
For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still.
Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord.

1 Corinthians 11:32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Hebrews 12:4-11 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Revelation 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

We can trust that when God chastens, though it will not feel good, it will be for our good. He will not do so in his anger, or as the KJV words it, in “thy hot displeasure.” That sounds worse than “anger,” doesn’t it? That sounds more like wrath to me. No, his anger would reduce us to nothing. Jeremiah says, “Correct me, O Lord, but in justice; not in your anger, lest you bring me to nothing.” On this side of Calvary, this verse becomes pregnant with meaning. For God demonstrates his holiness and justice at the cross. Jesus experienced God’s anger for me over my sin, thereby allowing me to know God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. Will I ever know his anger? No, not ever. But because He loves me and promises to be faithful to me, I will know his loving rebuke. Spurgeon writes that “we may pray that the chastisements of our gracious God, if they may not be entirely removed, may at least be sweetened by the consciousness that they are ‘not in anger, but in his dear covenant love.’”

Second, David writes that he is languishing. He is weak. Weak from what? Since this is one of David’s penitential psalms, it is right to understand that his weakness is a result of sin. His very soul is weak and languishing from sin, causing physical manifestations of weakness. David goes on to say, “My bones are troubled.” In Psalm 38, David describes his sin as being so heavy that his bones are no longer healthy. Indeed, our sins affect the way we feel. In his book When the Darkness Will Not Lift, John Piper notes that many times melancholy can come upon us as a result of unconfessed sin. It clogs our joy.

Those who do not know God do not feel this way when they sin. They are happy to continue in it and they feel no shame. Their bones do not shake.

Conviction that is felt deep in one’s bones is a gift of grace, as is the grace to truly repent. God knows this. We would do well to approach Him as David did: with the understanding that she cannot produce one good thing without His help; from the standpoint of one who has faced the ultimate realization that her only hope lies in the mercy of God. Spurgeon comments that “this is the right way to plead with God if we would prevail. Urge not your goodness or your greatness, but plead your sin and your littleness. Cry, ‘I am weak,’ therefore O Lord, give me strength and crush me not.”

He knows that we are dust (Psalm 103). We need to remember that we are dust, approach God accordingly, and wait for His revival and deliverance. That is what David did, and the Lord heard and received his prayer.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 66:1-2 Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.