Bird's-eye view
This psalm is a prayer offered up in the midst of great distress, likely when David was being hunted by Saul and was cut off from the central sanctuary. It is a cry for deliverance, but it is much more than that. It is a prayer deeply concerned with the integrity of the worshiper's own heart and lips while under immense pressure. David is surrounded by the snares of wicked men, and his great fear is not just that he will be captured, but that he will be goaded into sinning with his mouth or that his heart would incline toward the wicked ways of his enemies. The psalm opens with a plea for God to receive his desperate prayers as acceptable worship, likening them to the formal, established rites of the tabernacle from which he is exiled. The central theme is a desire for personal holiness in the face of persecution, recognizing that the greatest danger is not what his enemies can do to him, but what they might provoke him to become.
In the new covenant, we see the ultimate fulfillment of this prayer in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the one who, in His distress, offered up perfect prayers. His entire life was a fragrant offering to the Father, and His death on the cross was the ultimate evening sacrifice. Because we are in Him, our fumbling, distressed prayers are received by the Father as incense, not because of our eloquence, but because they are presented by our great High Priest. This psalm therefore teaches us to pray with urgency, to desire that our worship be acceptable to God through Christ, and to be more concerned with our own sanctification than with our immediate circumstances.
Outline
- 1. An Urgent Appeal for a Divine Hearing (Ps 141:1-2)
- a. The Cry for Haste (Ps 141:1)
- b. The Desire for Acceptable Worship (Ps 141:2)
- 2. A Prayer for Personal Holiness Under Pressure (Ps 141:3-5)
- 3. A Prophetic Confidence in God's Justice (Ps 141:6-7)
- 4. A Final Declaration of Trust and a Plea for Protection (Ps 141:8-10)
Context In The Psalter
Psalm 141 is part of the final collection of Davidic psalms that conclude the Psalter. It is surrounded by other psalms of lament and trust. Psalm 140 is a cry for deliverance from violent and deceitful men, and Psalm 142, a maschil of David when he was in the cave, is a prayer of one who feels utterly isolated and overwhelmed. Together, these psalms paint a vivid picture of a man in deep trouble, hunted and alone, whose only refuge is God. Psalm 141 fits squarely within this context, but with a particular emphasis on the spiritual dangers that accompany the physical ones. It is the prayer of a man who knows that the battle for his life is simultaneously a battle for his soul's integrity. This cluster of psalms shows us a believer clinging to God not just as a deliverer from external enemies, but as the keeper of his own heart.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Urgent Prayer
- Prayer as a Spiritual Sacrifice
- The Symbolism of Incense
- The Lifting of Hands in Worship
- The Relationship Between Private Prayer and Public Worship
- Christ as the Fulfillment of the Sacrificial System
Worship in Exile
When we read this psalm, we must feel the predicament of the psalmist. He is in real trouble. The language is that of a man on the run, surrounded by traps and conspiracies. And one of the key elements of his distress is that he is cut off from the tabernacle. He cannot be there for the evening sacrifice. He cannot see the smoke of the incense ascending from the golden altar. For a devout Israelite, this was a profound spiritual hardship. The prescribed worship of God was central to his life and faith.
So what does he do? He does not abandon worship. Rather, he asks God to receive his current, informal, desperate worship as though it were the formal, prescribed worship. "Let my prayer be like the incense. Let the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice." This is a profound theological move. David understands that the external rites pointed to a spiritual reality. The offerings were not magic; they were acceptable because of the heart of the worshiper and the grace of God. And so, when deprived of the symbol, he appeals directly to the reality. This is a foundational principle for new covenant worship. We no longer have a physical temple, a smoking altar, or a Levitical priesthood. But we have the reality to which all those things pointed: Christ Himself. Our prayers, offered in His name, are the true incense. Our lives, offered as living sacrifices, are the true offering.
Verse by Verse Commentary
1 O Yahweh, I call upon You; hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to You!
The psalm opens with a raw cry of urgency. David is not approaching God with a placid, meditative spirit. He is in trouble, and he needs help now. The plea, "hasten to me," is a holy impatience. It is the cry of a child who knows his father is able to help and wonders why the help is taking so long. This is not insolence; it is an expression of faith. He believes God can and will act, and so he urges Him to do so quickly. He calls, and he wants God to "give ear." This is the foundational posture of all true prayer. We are in need, God is our only help, and so we cry out to Him, asking for His immediate and attentive audience. This is not the prayer of a man who has it all together, but of a man who knows he is falling apart and knows the only one who can hold him together.
2 May my prayer be established as incense before You; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.
This is the heart of David's petition and the theological anchor of the psalm. Being exiled from the sanctuary, he asks that God would accept his spiritual worship in place of the ceremonial. First, he asks that his prayer be "established as incense." In the tabernacle and temple, incense was burned on the golden altar before the veil. Its fragrant smoke ascended, symbolizing the prayers of God's people rising up and being a pleasing aroma to Him. As John Owen noted, the incense first had to be crushed or ground. Our prayers must come from a contrite, broken heart. Then, the incense had to be set on fire, fire from the altar of sacrifice. Our prayers are useless unless they are kindled by the Holy Spirit and offered on the basis of Christ's atoning work. And finally, the incense was designed to ascend. Our prayers must be directed heavenward, setting our minds on things above. David is asking that his words, spoken in desperation out in the wilderness, would be received with the same delight as the carefully prepared incense offered by the priests in their official duties.
Second, he asks that "the lifting up of my hands" be as the "evening offering." The lifting of hands is a common biblical posture for prayer. It signifies an appeal to heaven, an openness to receive from God, and a surrender to His will. Here, David wants this simple, universal gesture of prayer to be counted as the great evening sacrifice, the lamb offered daily for the sins of the people. He cannot offer a lamb, so he offers himself. His uplifted hands represent the surrender of his whole being to God. In the new covenant, we are called to present our bodies as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1), and our prayers and praises are the "calves of our lips" (Hos 14:2). David, under pressure, grasps this spiritual reality. His worship is not defined by location, but by the posture of his heart before God, a posture made acceptable because it anticipates the one true sacrifice of Christ.
Application
There are two primary lines of application for us here. The first has to do with our desperation. We often try to clean up our prayers before we offer them to God. We want to come to Him when we are feeling spiritual, when our thoughts are organized, when our hearts are calm. David shows us a different way. He comes to God in the middle of his mess, with a cry of raw urgency. "Hasten to me!" This is a great encouragement. God invites our frantic, desperate, and honest prayers. He is not a distant potentate who can only be approached through layers of protocol. He is a Father who runs to meet his ragged children.
The second line of application is to remember what makes our worship acceptable. Like David, we are often in a state of functional exile. We are not in heaven yet. We are surrounded by snares and temptations. Our prayers feel weak, our worship distracted. The temptation is to think that the acceptability of our worship depends on the quality of our performance. But David points us in the right direction. He asks God to make his prayer like incense. He asks God to receive his gesture as a sacrifice. He is relying entirely on God's gracious acceptance. For us, that gracious acceptance is grounded entirely in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Our prayers are a sweet-smelling aroma to the Father because they are mingled with the incense of Christ's own perfect intercession. He is the great High Priest who takes our feeble, flea-bitten prayers, perfects them, and presents them to the Father. Therefore, we can pray with confidence, not because we are great prayers, but because we have a great Savior in whose name we pray.