You have made your people see hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us stagger
Psalm 60:3
In David’s time it was very common for the corporate body of Israel to view the outcome of national or political events as either God’s favor or indictment upon them. In this psalm, which sits within the context of a military campaign, we find David (an individual) lamenting for his people (a corporate body). As Christians we can learn from this practice, although we should never apply it on such a strict basis as the Israelites did: for we are not under a theocratic nation-state as they were, but under the heavenly kingdom of the Spirit. Even still, this psalm clearly expresses a difficult time for the Israelites, and it applies to ours as well.
First note the agent of the “hard things.” David does not hesitate to say it is God: “Lord, it is you who have made your people see hard things. God, you have given us this bitter wine!” As Christians, we must remember the sovereignty of our Lord. There is not one situation in which He does not exercise complete control, wisdom and direction over the outcome. He reminds us of this elsewhere through His prophet: “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isa 45:7). So we see that, as difficult as it may be in the “hard things,” God is in control of both our blessings and our brokenness, our triumphs and our tragedies, our laughter and our lament. When we are tempted to doubt God’s wisdom and goodness for what He allows in our lives, we must ask our souls like Job, “shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).
Second, we must be careful to note that this does not make God the author of evil. Evil as the absence of good is foreign to God’s nature. We are not talking about evil in the moral sense, but evil in the sense of disaster, calamity, strife, or suffering—the effects of living in a fallen world. What we see through David’s words is that God is able to use these various sufferings for our good. It is easy to believe that suffering is pointless; it certainly feels that way. But there was an immediate purpose for the staggering wine of affliction which God made His people drink. It was to make them trust in Him. Our “hard things” have a way of emptying our self-dependence and making us realize how frail and destitute we really are apart from God. Unless God shows up, we don’t know if we will be able to carry on. This makes us cling to God, and this is good. God’s purposes for our sufferings are often outside of our immediate view, but through grueling dependence we learn to say “whom have I in heaven but you?” (Ps 73:25). When everything is stripped away, only God remains. So we see that God has a purpose for our hard things.
Finally, we recollect the plural nature of this psalm: lament is done together. There were national events occurring which caused the Israelites to grieve. So too will there be events in our lifetime that should grieve the corporate body of Christ. On a smaller level, in our local bodies there will inevitably be hardships among our individual members. In these times we must remember that the sufferings of one impact the whole. Paul tells us to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rm 12:15). In your sufferings, then, you need the body of Christ; and in others’ sufferings, they need you.
To end, the good news is that in our “hard things,” we have One who has walked the wasted roads of a fallen world with us, and for us. The Good Shepherd Himself wept at the grave, grieved loss, felt betrayal, was falsely accused, and took a piercing bed of thorns upon His head. This Jesus is Emmanuel—God with us. So no “hard thing” will remain that way. In reality, it is “light and momentary” (2 Cor 4:17, NIV), for we know that He is there with us, He has beaten death, and one day He will return to make all things new.