Psalm 38:1-2, “O YHWH, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath! For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me…”
Psalm 38:22, “Make hast to help me, O Lord, my salvation!”
Notice two things from these verses in Psalm 38.
First, in verses 1-2, see that David recognizes the wrath of God against his sin as a real and damning threat. The Holy God opposes sin (which is opposition to Him, and therefore opposition to the good of all creation) with all that He is. Indeed, the final outpouring of His immaculate fury against opposition to His name will dismantle the world as we know it (Zeph.3:8, 2 Pt.3:10, Rev.21:1) such that all opposition to Him will be scoured from the surface—and the soul—of His creation. So, the first thing to see is that YHWH Himself is the source of the wrath that will destroy both sin and sinner.
But the second thing to see, in verse 22, is that the sinner’s only hope in the face of YHWH’s holy wrath against sin is humble and desperate faith in YHWH Himself to save us from wrath. Indeed, the very same Lord who’s wrath is the threat in verses 1-2 is Himself the only salvation from that wrath in v.22.
The only hope for those who have fallen into the hand of the living God (Hebrews 10:31), is the hand of the living God (John 10:28)….a salvation that is possible only because the hand that comes down in wrath on the sinner (Ps.38:2), has opened in love to receive the wrath due the sinner into itself (John 20:20-21).
Yes, the reality flowing under the dynamics in Psalm 38 is the crucified and risen Lord who is God with us, bearing and becoming our condemnation, so that He under whose wrath we are slain might—in bearing that wrath and rising again—Himself become the salvation of any and all who cast themselves wholly upon His Name.
