Mining Grace

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.  He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.

-Psalm 34:19-20

Many are the afflictions of the righteous.  Do you know anything about affliction?  As you read the post, are there nagging problems pulling at your attention?  There is not enough money in the bank account.  Relationship carnage surrounds you.  Your body malfunctions and you have the medical tests to prove it.  Sin has has come to visit and taken up residence in the guest bedroom of your heart.

All Christians are weighed down in afflictions.  But not every Christian truly believes that “the Lord delivers him out of them all.”  How can we be sure that our present suffering is actually the veiled but powerful deliverance of God?

We can know by looking at the cross.

David wrote this psalm when he was on the run from Saul (1 Samuel 21).  It was a humbling moment for David.  He was the annointed king of Israel.  God promised him the throne.  Yet here he was in Gath–forced to flee to the Philistines.  To immediate execution, David acts like a mad man, feigning insanity, spit running down his beard.  Imagine that, the most important man in the world, the anointed king of Israel, acting like a crazy man to save his own hide.  Affliction.  And God saved him out of it.  God brought him safely to the throne…eventually.

But the story does not stop there.  When penning verse 20 of this psalm, David spoke not only of himself, he spoke of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.  On the cross, this Messiah bore the full anger and punishment of God for the sins of all who would be saved.  The Father poured out the cup of complete vengeance on his beloved Son.  The covenant of grace was fulfilled by that simultaneously glorious and gruesome act.

But none of Jesus’s bones were broken.  The apostle John is very specific on this point.  He quotes Psalm 34:20 as fulfilled at the cross (John 19:36).  Has there ever been an affliction greater than the cross-work of Jesus Christ?  Yet God’s promises stood.  Though the full weight of divine wrath was poured upon Christ in aggressive affliction, God’s promise stood.  The weight of our sins could not break one bone of Jesus’s body.  That ossific promise of God stood firm.  He delivered Christ out of every affliction.

So I ask you, dear Christian, if the weight of your sin could not break the bone-promise of God then why do you doubt his deliverance in whatever you suffer today?  God confirms his faithfulness to you in the cross.  Do you need a down payment on God’s love?  You have it in Christ.  Do you need confirmation of his faithfulness?  You have it in Christ.  Do you need strength to bear up under the affliction that will press you down tonight?  You have it in Christ.

Christ is the fulfillment and proof of all the promises of God.  Because, not one of his bones was broken.