The Treachery of Comfort: When God Hides His Face Text: Psalm 30:6-10
Introduction: The Difference Between Favor and Feelings
We live in a soft age, an age that prizes comfort above all else. We have insulated ourselves from hardship in a thousand different ways, from the climate control in our homes to the insurance policies that guard our possessions. And in this pursuit of a padded life, we have made ourselves vulnerable to a peculiar spiritual disease. It is the disease of presumption. It is the subtle, creeping belief that the absence of trouble is the same thing as the presence of God's favor. We begin to mistake our creature comforts for the Creator's smile.
David, a man well acquainted with both hardship and blessing, here gives us a transparent look into his own heart, and by extension, into ours. He shows us the spiritual mechanics of how a man can go from a mountaintop of blessing to a valley of despair, and how that valley is often the very means God uses to secure our footing on the mountain. This passage is a divine lesson on the difference between the reality of God's favor and the feeling of God's favor. They are not the same thing. God's favor is a covenantal reality, steadfast and unchanging. Our feelings, however, are fickle, and they are often tied directly to our circumstances.
The great danger for the Christian is not adversity, but prosperity. In adversity, our need for God is screamingly obvious. But in prosperity, we are tempted to believe our own press clippings. We start to think we have things handled. Our prayers become less fervent, our gratitude becomes a formality, and our theology becomes a kind of practical atheism. We still believe in God, of course, but we live as though our stability rests on our own wisdom, our own planning, and our own strength. And it is precisely at that moment that a loving Father will often pull the rug out, not to destroy us, but to save us from ourselves.
The Text
Now as for me, I said in my prosperity, "I will never be shaken."
O Yahweh, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong; You hid Your face, I was dismayed.
To You, O Yahweh, I called, And to the Lord I made supplication:
"What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth?"
"Hear, O Yahweh, and be gracious to me; O Yahweh, be my helper."
(Psalm 30:6-10 LSB)
The Folly of Fair-Weather Faith (v. 6)
David begins with a frank confession of his own foolishness.
"Now as for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I will never be shaken.'" (Psalm 30:6)
Notice the source of this declaration: "in my prosperity." When the sun was shining, the kingdom was secure, and the treasury was full, David looked at his circumstances and drew a theological conclusion. He mistook the stability of his situation for the stability of his own soul. This is the native language of the flesh. "I will never be shaken." This is not a statement of faith in God; it is a statement of faith in the status quo. It is the voice of self-reliance masquerading as confidence.
This is a sin that every one of us is prone to. When the paycheck is regular, the children are healthy, and the car starts every morning, we begin to operate on a low-grade hum of self-sufficiency. We are not actively defying God, but we are passively forgetting Him. We have begun to trust in the gifts rather than the Giver. David is confessing that he started to believe his mountain was his own accomplishment. He looked at the mountain of his success and thought, "That's a solid mountain. It's not going anywhere." He had forgotten who put the mountain there in the first place.
This is why God, in His mercy, often introduces a tremor. He allows a little shaking to remind us that He is the only thing that cannot be shaken. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that God shakes the things that are made so that the things that cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:27). Prosperity is a made thing. Your health is a made thing. Your job is a made thing. They can all be shaken. And when we start to trust in them, a loving God will often rattle them to get our attention.
The Divine Correction (v. 7)
In the very next breath, David corrects his previous folly with a dose of sound theology, learned the hard way.
"O Yahweh, by Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong; You hid Your face, I was dismayed." (Psalm 30:7)
Here is the truth of the matter. "By Your favor You have made my mountain to stand strong." He now understands. It was not his strength, his wisdom, or his prosperity that made him secure. It was the unmerited, covenantal favor of God. The mountain was a gift. The stability was a gift. It was all grace, from top to bottom.
And how did God teach him this lesson? "You hid Your face, I was dismayed." This is one of the most potent phrases in all of Scripture. God hiding His face does not mean He has ceased to love His child. It means He has withdrawn the felt sense of His presence and blessing. It is a fatherly act of discipline. When a child is presumptuous and disobedient, a good father will withdraw his smile. He doesn't disown the child, but he introduces a relational distance to show the child the foolishness of his actions. The warmth of fellowship is removed, and the child is left in the cold to consider what he has done.
This is what God did to David. He did not send the Philistines. He did not send a plague. He simply hid His face. He withdrew the subjective experience of His favor, and David was immediately "dismayed." The word means terrified, shattered, thrown into confusion. The moment the feeling of God's blessing was gone, David's self-made confidence evaporated like mist. His mountain, which looked so solid a moment before, now felt like a volcano about to erupt. This is because his confidence was in the feeling of blessing, not in the God of the blessing. God, in His kindness, showed him the difference.
The Logic of a Covenant Child (v. 8-9)
David's terror does not drive him to despair. It drives him to prayer. And notice the kind of prayer it is.
"To You, O Yahweh, I called, And to the Lord I made supplication: 'What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth?'" (Psalm 30:8-9)
This is not the whimpering of a slave before a tyrant. This is the bold, covenantal argument of a son before his father. David does not simply beg for mercy; he reasons with God from God's own character and for God's own glory. His argument is essentially this: "Father, it is not in Your best interest for me to die. Your glory is at stake here."
He asks, "What profit is there in my blood?" This is holy logic. He is saying, "God, you have invested in me. You have made promises to me. You have a purpose for my life. If you let me go down to the pit, to Sheol, to the grave, what return will you get on your investment? Dead men don't sing psalms. Dust doesn't declare your faithfulness."
This is not David questioning the afterlife. This is David understanding his purpose in this life. His primary calling, and ours, is to be a living, breathing billboard for the glory and faithfulness of God. He is arguing that his death would silence a voice of praise that brings God glory in the land of the living. This is a profoundly God-centered prayer. He is appealing to God's zeal for His own name. He is, in effect, challenging God to be God. This is the kind of audacious faith that delights the heart of our Father. He invites us to come and reason with Him, to hold Him to His promises, to argue our case on the basis of His covenant love.
The Simple Cry for Grace (v. 10)
After his bold, theological argument, David's prayer resolves into a simple, humble plea.
"'Hear, O Yahweh, and be gracious to me; O Yahweh, be my helper.'" (Psalm 30:10)
Having made his case, he throws himself entirely upon the mercy of God. He does not demand anything based on his own merit. His argument was about God's glory, but his reception of that deliverance must be entirely a matter of grace. "Be gracious to me." This is the cry of a man who knows he deserves the hidden face. He knows his prosperity led him into the sin of pride. He has no leg to stand on, except the unmerited favor he is appealing for.
And his final petition is a model for us all: "O Yahweh, be my helper." This is the confession of a creature who has been reminded of his utter dependence. The man who a moment ago said, "I will never be shaken," now says, "I cannot take another step without Your help." He has been brought from the pinnacle of self-reliance to the bedrock of God-reliance. And that is exactly where God wanted him. The entire painful episode, the hidden face, the terror, the dismay, was a severe mercy designed to bring him to this very point.
God disciplined David not because He stopped loving him, but precisely because He did love him. He loved him too much to let him continue in the comfortable, soul-rotting sin of self-sufficiency. He introduced a trial to expose a deeper sin, which then led to a desperate prayer, which in turn led to a deeper reliance on grace. This is the pattern of our sanctification. God will wound us in order to heal us more deeply. He will shake our mountains so that we learn to stand upon the Rock who cannot be shaken.