Psalm 39: 1 – 13
Muzzle it
To the Chief Musician. To Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.
1 I said, “I will guard my ways, lest I sin with my tongue; I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle, while the wicked are before me.” 2 I was mute with silence, I held my peace even from good; And my sorrow was stirred up. 3 My heart was hot within me; While I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue: 4 “LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. 5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah 6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely, they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches and does not know who will gather them. 7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You. 8 Deliver me from all my transgressions; Do not make me the reproach of the foolish. 9 I was mute, I did not open my mouth, because it was You who did it. 10 Remove Your plague from me; I am consumed by the blow of Your hand. 11 When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; Surely every man is vapor. Selah 12 “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a stranger with You, a sojourner, as all my fathers were. 13 Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, before I go away and am no more.”
One person can single handedly ruin a class or group meeting. All the prayer, study and preparation that went into the lesson can be ruined by one person who talks too much. It is frustrating to the teacher or person speaking and to the other people who are in attendance. Here is what you can do about it.
1. The Indirect Appeal
If the problem is mild but persistent begin the session with a statement of your goals. You might say something like this: ‘My goal is to involve everyone in the discussion. Would everyone here agree that this is a good goal? OK, then I want to ask for your help. I want to ask some of you to get real brave and dive in a little more often, while I want to ask some others of you who have already responded to refrain further input until everyone has had a chance to talk. I am not trying to squelch the conversation; quite the contrary. I am trying to get everyone talking. If we get into the discussion and you have shared several times and you notice some of the rest have not shared so much, I want to ask you to allow some of the reserved individuals to comment. Sound fair enough?
Get everyone to nod and agree. If the problem persists, you can probably restate your goal for the meeting.
2. The Private Appeal
The private appeal has the same goal and works in much the same way. Because it is private it tends to be more direct and therefor effective. The key is to not approach this as scolding; that will never work. Instead, appeal to a common goal: good group discussion. The private appeal might go something like this:
Bob, have you noticed that I just can't seem to get everyone here involved in the group study. I was wondering if you could help me? Here is what I have in mind. I know you know the answer to a lot of the questions I ask. It is very impressive to listen to your insight on the matters. I would still like to see if I could get some of the quiet people talking. What would you think about helping me out by refraining from your input for a bit? Let's see if we can get more of the others involved.
3. The Direct Appeal
There comes a time to be more direct. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. It is better to hurt one person's feelings, if that what it takes, than to let one person ruin the whole group for the rest. There is a lot riding on this. Courage is necessary. If it comes down to it, you might need to say something like this: Bob, can I shoot straight with you? You are talking about twice as much as anyone else in the group. While you have some good things to say, others won't talk when you are doing as much talking as you are. I need to ask you to muzzle the quick responses. Here is a rule for you to follow: don't respond until everyone else has talked once. I really need you to do this for the group. Your interest, knowledge is great but I am asking if you can you do this for me?
What is wrong with these people, Anyway?
To effectively deal with overly talkative people, it is helpful to understand what drives them. I can think of at least two things:
Some people are just oblivious to everyone else around them. These are those fun loving, enjoy-talking, self-consumed people. If handled right they are the easiest to deal with. We can make light out of the issues with these people. "Come on, bob, ‘Muzzle it’ let someone else have a shot."
Some talkers are deeply insecure. They deal with their insecurity by talking, talking, talking. Talking feels like self-esteem to them. It feels like positive reinforcement to them when they talk and others listen. These people must be handled more carefully. The only way to really solve the problem is to help them with this core need. We must muzzle them and make them feel good in the process. This can be a real challenge, but no one said it would be easy. Compliment them. Praise them. Take them to lunch. Don't reject them. Don't crush them. Love them. Then they will be more open to your desire to tell them to ‘Muzzle it’ because they know that you really care about them.
So, what If nothing works?
The needs of the many out way the needs of the few. An overly talkative person can single handedly ruin a meeting. Do the brave thing. Do the courageous thing. Do the loving thing. Do whatever it takes to create a group discussion. Love them but love the group as well. Do what it takes to keep the whole group talking.
Do what needs to be done but do it with grace. Remember, this is a brother for whom Christ's died. If you do not love him as Christ loves him, you will never help him to change. People only change in an atmosphere of love. Be grace and truth to him. Grace is about telling him he is accepted. Truth is about telling him he is driving everyone craze and he needs to as the Lord’s half-brother James said, ‘keep the mouth muzzled.’
I have addressed the need to muzzle other people but as the old saying goes, ‘when you point out the faults of someone else, three fingers are pointing back to you.’ Right? Let us see what our Precious Holy Spirit says about this.
To the Chief Musician. To Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.
This Psalm is offered to the person responsible for the sacred music, or the choirmaster, and is of the Davidic collection. ‘To (or ‘for’) David’ may indicate that it was dedicated to David, written for the Davidic house, or even written by David himself.
Jeduthun’s name appears also in the headings of Psalms 62 and 77. He is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 16, along with Heman and Asaph, as one of the directors of the music in the Temple, and his descendants continued to officiate after the Exile. His other name Ethan was probably his name before he was appointed.
The Psalm appears to have been written while the Psalmist is going through a ‘near death’ illness, and divides into four sections:
1). The Psalmist is determined not to say anything in the presence of the unrighteous that might give him occasion to criticize God. Once he is alone, however, he cannot keep silent (39.1-3).
2). His concern is with his awareness of his own frailty and of the fact that life appears overall to be vain and that a man does not know what will happen to the possessions that he has built up once he is dead. Thus as he lies on his sickbed it raises the question of the very meaning of life (39.4-6).
3). His solution lies in hoping in YHWH and walking rightly before Him, being delivered from all his transgressions. Meanwhile therefore he prays that YHWH will restore him to health, while recognizing that he himself through his illness experience is being corrected for his own sins (39.7-11).
4). Recognizing the brevity of a man’s life on this earth in comparison with God’s he prays that he may be restored and given a little more time before his life is finally over so that he can make good use of it.
1 I said, “I will guard my ways, lest I sin with my tongue; I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle, while the wicked are before me.”
The Psalmist declares that he will ‘keep his ways’. That is, he will watch over them and control them. And his aim and purpose is in order that he might not sin with his tongue by bringing his doubts about life before the unrighteous while they are in his presence, or alternatively by bringing his doubts about the unrighteous who are in his thoughts, before men. The latter problem was a constant one in the Psalms. Why did the unrighteous flourish?
So he determines to keep a bridle on his tongue, lest he say anything that brings dishonor on God. Wise is the man or woman who keeps a watch over what comes from their mouths.
2 I was mute with silence, I held my peace even from good; And my sorrow was stirred up. 3 My heart was hot within me; While I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue:
Thus he was ‘dumb with silence’, saying nothing, even about what was good, lest he slip up with his tongue. But such was the force of the thoughts that were flowing into his mind, that his sorrow was stirred, and his heart was hot within him. His meditations were so powerful that they were too much for him to hold in. And thus while he was musing a fire burned in his heart, and in the end he could no longer keep silence.
4 “LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. 5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah
He calls on YHWH to bring home to him how short his life is, what the measure of his days is, and how frail he is. He recognizes that each of his days are but a handbreadth, a tiny length of time in the great ocean of time, and that his whole life from start to finish is as nothing before God.
6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely, they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches and does not know who will gather them.
And meanwhile what value does that life have? Even at a man’s very best it is simply vanity. Man’s life is like a dream, a passing image, only for a fleeting breath can men make a noise and enjoy themselves. And during this passing dream he builds up wealth and possessions only for them to fall into other hands in a way which is out of his control. And who knows what they will do with them? Such is life without God.
7 “And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in You. 8 Deliver me from all my transgressions; Do not make me the reproach of the foolish.
His solution lies in hoping in YHWH. He recognizes that that is what he is waiting for. If there is any solution it is to be found in God, and in living for Him. So, he prays that he might be delivered from all his transgressions and might live a life that cannot be reproached by the foolish (those who themselves ignore God), a life pleasing to God.
9 I was mute, I did not open my mouth, because it was You who did it.
Here the suggestion appears to be that he was struck dumb with wonder as he recognized that God had done what he asked. He had delivered him for his transgressions and from all reproach and had responded to his hope. He had brought him peace and rest in the recognition that his life was in God’s hands.
10 Remove Your plague from me; I am consumed by the blow of Your hand. 11 When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; Surely every man is vapor. Selah
So he now prays that he might recover from his illness. For his illness had dragged him down and almost devoured him, as by a blow from God’s hand. The result of this rebuke from God, which had been to correct him from his sinful ways, was that he had become but a shadow of his former self. He had become, as it were, moth-eaten. And it had revealed to him how vain life was.
12 “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am a stranger with You, a sojourner, as all my fathers were. 13 Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, before I go away and am no more.”
The idea behind these words is that the earth is God’s, and we enter into it but briefly, as though we were mere immigrants with only a short time to dwell on the earth, before finally going on our way from here and being no longer on it, God being the only One Who has permanence here.
This idea of being a sojourner is applied by Abraham to himself (Genesis 23.4, “I am a foreigner and a visitor among you. Give me property for a burial place among you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”), by Moses to all Israel, considered as the feudal subjects and dependents of YHWH (Leviticus 25.23, “‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.) and by David to himself and his contemporaries (1 Chronicles 29.15 , “For we are aliens and pilgrims before You, as were all our fathers; Our days on earth are as a shadow, And without hope.). All saw themselves as just ‘passing through’.
He prays for the restoration of his strength so that he might fulfil his days on earth, before he must finally depart from it. He wants to be able to make the best use of the time he has left. He simply rests his hope in God. Peter applies this idea of the ‘stranger and sojourner’ to the Christian as he goes through life towards his heavenly home (1 Peter 2.11, “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul”).
