Psalm 107:17-22 - Deliverance from Affliction

As we have observed already regarding Psalm 107, it is a psalm in which the author considers four sets of circumstances that the Lord used in his providence to bring sinful people to himself – lost, imprisoned, affliction and a storm at sea. In these verses, we have the third feature that he uses, that of affliction. It is the case that this feature is the one of the four that most people are familiar with. As has often been said, many don’t get lost in a desert, many don’t get put in a cell and many may not be in a storm at sea. But most have experienced sickness in one way or another. Therefore, we should be able to relate to this section of the psalm.

There are some qualifiers that we need to make. First, the writer does not mean that every illness occurs for the reason of converting someone. The biblical teaching is that illness exists as an outcome of the fall of man and there can be no obvious connection between an illness and a person’s salvation. People can be ill and yet not fall into the category of persons described here.

Second, the providence described here can be seen as passive rather than active in that God allows the self-chosen way of life to work out in its disastrous effects, and we know that happens to many people whose life ends in tragic circumstances caused by their own actions.

Third, God can use illness in the lives of his own people and can do so for a variety of reasons. He sent an illness to Paul to keep him humble (the thorn in the flesh), he sent illness to the Corinthians because they abused the Lord’s Supper, and he sent illnesses on Israel on several occasions.

The fool

The people in this third example of divine providence are described as fools. In the Bible, a fool is not a person who lacks intelligence. He is a person who lacks wisdom. Wisdom in the Bible is more than common sense. Instead, it is the outlook on life that recognises the existence of God and the importance of obeying his commandments. Here are a few examples taken from the Old Testament books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but also from other books including a couple from the teachings of Jesus.

One of the psalms mentions that the fool in his heart has said that there is no God (Ps. 14:1). Paul deals with this notion in Romans 1 as he explains how evidence for the existence of God is clearly seen in the created order. Many nations have rejected this clear revelation and replaced God with idols as far as their worship is concerned. But they do so in spite of the evidence and not because of it.

But there are other foolish ways of ignoring the existence of God. The author of Ecclesiastes writes: ‘When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow’ (Ecc. 5:4). A fool assumed that God would not mind him not paying his vow, but he does. Consider the story of Ananias and Sapphira in this regard. We can leave the Lord out of our thinking and that is almost the same as saying that there is no God.

Isaiah points out that ‘the fool speaks folly, and his heart is busy with iniquity, to practise ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink’ (Isa. 32:6). In other words, the fool ignores his responsibility towards God and towards his neighbour because he is focused on living in a sinful way that is busy with iniquity.

There are also several verses that indicate that a fool is self-centred: ‘The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice’ (Prov. 12:15); ‘A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion’ (Prov. 18:2); ‘A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool’ (Prov. 17:10). Those three verses tell us that a fool does not listen to wise advice, even from those known to be wise, but he is keen to state his own opinions about anything and everything.

The Bible warns us about fools: ‘Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm’ (Prov. 13:20). It tells us what to do: ‘Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge’ (Prov. 14:7). Even if they are having a happy time, ‘It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools’ (Ecc. 7:5). Fools may seem happy because they engage in singing, but often when one listens to what they are singing and analyses the words we can easily see that what they are engaged in is not wise.

There are two well-known parables of Jesus that mention fools. One is the parable of the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom to come and to collect his bride. Five were wise and made the appropriate preparations; five were foolish and did not bother putting oil in their lamps. It is possible to read too much into the details in the parable – does the oil in the lamp picture the Holy Spirit? Jesus means by the parable that we should prepare for his return as judge, because if we don’t, we will be extremely disappointed.

The other parable is that of the rich fool who built barns for storing his successful harvests and assumed that they would give him security for the future. But God brought his life to an end, and he did not get to use them. They did not give him any security at all. He was a fool in two ways at least: first, because he did not entrust his future to God; second, he assumed that he would live for a long time.

When a person wants to be a fool, God may let him suffer the consequences of his folly. There are examples of foolish behaviour that have dramatic and stark consequences on numerous individuals, including ones that damage a person’s health, both physically and mentally.

The deliverance

In verse 18, the troubles that the person has brought on himself bring him close to death. It certainly looks ominous, and it is ominous apart from one possibility, which is connected to what is going on in their hearts. What is going on in their hearts? They now have a desire to call upon God.

Where did this desire come from? It came from the God of grace who was at work in their hearts in a merciful manner. He had drawn near to them. His drawing near could have been done in a variety of ways. Perhaps he used a Christian who had witnessed to the sick persons about their need of God. Maybe the sick persons read Christian literature that encouraged them to pray. They may have overheard other people speaking about the importance of calling upon God in times of trouble. God can use anything to bring about this desire, and he can bring it about without using anything. The person finds himself calling on the Lord.

What else would God be doing in their hearts at such a time? He would by the Holy Spirit enable them to realise that their situation was the result of their own folly. There is a sense in which such have been brought face to face with where their life choices have brought them. They have to consider why it has happened and what their own role was in it all. In their considerations, they realise that their choices indicated that there was something wrong with them that made them susceptible to following the paths that they chose. The detail that was wrong in them was the fact that each of them were sinners before they ever sinned or made a wrong decision.

As they thought about these things, they felt that they could call on the Lord for his help. Spurgeon commented that ‘When we have no appetite for meat we may have an appetite for prayer.’ They may have seemed beyond the help of man, but they were not beyond the help of God. From the depths that they were in, depths that indicated they might not have long to live, they called on the Lord for his deliverance. And he heard their cry and answered them in a gracious way.

One biblical instance comes to mind from the Old Testament, and it is the incident of the bronze serpent lifted on a pole. God had judged the Israelites for grumbling against God and against Moses. The Lord’s response was to send serpents into the camp, and they bit the people lethally. However, he also provided a means for curing them, which was for them to look at the raised image of a serpent on a pole. Those who did were cured. Obviously, this was a one-off incident. Yet it illustrates the points made by the author of Psalm 107. The people sinned against God, their sins brought dire consequences, the consequences led them to pray for divine help, and in his mercy the Lord provided it.

Going back to the psalm, how did God deliver them? Verse 20 says that ‘He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.’ How did the Lord deliver them? We can see that he first sent his word, which could be an indication that he was giving priority to his promises. He may have done this through a priest or a prophet declaring a message in the hearing of the person, or he may have sent a verse to the person’s mind. Whatever the way it was done, he did not do it without the Word. Perhaps he brought to their knowledge some of the many statements in the psalms which speak of the Lord healing those who called on him (after all, we should pray in every illness for divine recovery). This is the way that the Lord works, through his Word, in order for prayer to be answered.

This can happen literally, and it can also happen spiritually in the sense that as a man’s heart is changed by the gospel and he lives according to God’s Word, then he recovers physically as well if his problems were caused by his way of life. The gospel has changed drunkards into men and women who looked after themselves and as they did so they recovered physically.

Response (vv. 21-22)

The response urged here by the psalmist is similar to how he encourages the other examples in the psalm to respond. It can be outlined with three points. First, there is personal gratitude to the God who does remarkable things for sinners. That is obviously a particularly important aspect of a genuine response to the rich grace of God expressed in his actions of mercy towards sinners.

Second, there are public expressions of gratitude, illustrated by them going to the temple to offer sacrifices there connected to thanksgiving. It was their responsibility to engage in such actions; they were not to hide from others what God had done for them.

Third, there is a responsibility to celebrate what God had done in their lives, not so much with them describing exactly what had happened to them, but instead they were to participate in the songs of joy that occurred at the temple. What songs could they have sung? They could have sung Psalm 116:8-9: ‘For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.’ Or Psalm 118:17-18: ‘I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.’