Soon the winter snow will melt. The spring floods will come.

Sandbagging is a fact of life in many river towns. “Build the levees higher!” But just when you think your home is safe, a sand boil appears. The pressure of the floodwaters causes the groundwater and sand to bubble up like a fountain on the “dry side” of the levee. Water flows beneath the earth and the sandbags. The levee disintegrates. The sandbagging was wasted effort.

We can’t protect ourselves

That scene is constantly replayed in my spiritual life. God’s anger is a relentless flood that threatens my life. God’s law convicts me. Pride, a sin against the very first commandment! Guilty! Selfishness, a sin against the second table of the law! Guilty! “The soul who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18:4). I try to build the levees higher. What more can I do? How can I become a better person?

I find someone that seems to be living a better life than I so I imitate him or her. I make new rules for myself to follow. I give up something for Lent. The levee gets higher. I’m a “better” person. I fill sandbags with all the good things I have done. Surely that will hold back the flood of God’s anger.

But it never does. I overcome one temptation only to see God’s anger, like a sand boil, appear in another area of my life. New temptations. New failures. More guilt. Nothing can hold back the flood of God’s anger.

With King David we confess: “You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you.”

Jesus keeps us safe

But who is speaking these words? Read Psalm 69 in its entirety. King David wrote the psalm, but it is messianic. The promised Savior was speaking. King David was just his mouthpiece. You hear Jesus’ voice clearly in several verses: “Zeal for your house consumes me, . . . They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” (69:9,21).

But if the Savior was speaking through King David, how could he say, “You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you”?