Wait for Jehovah; be strong and let thy heart take courage yea, wait for Jehovah.
The psalm ends with an instruction, not an ask. It comes from a man who has just described enemies, false witnesses, and the fear that God had left him. Having told God his trouble, he turns and tells someone else what to do with theirs.
The lesson drawn from trouble
The final words are the conclusion of an experience, not advice offered from a safe distance. One writer draws two lessons out of what the psalmist went through, and the last verse is where they land:
Two lessons, drawn from what he had been through, close the Psalm... Believing he would see this goodness had held him up. Then he tells us, from his own experience, that the only resource for a soul under trial is to wait for the LORD. Then he urges them: be strong, and He will strengthen your heart. Last of all he repeats the sum of everything he has to say: wait for the LORD. And the LORD Himself has said, "Those who wait for me shall not be put to shame." (Isaiah 49:23.)
No second resource
What makes this verse striking is what the psalm never mentions. There is no ally, no plan, no human help anywhere in it.
The goodness of the LORD — no human means — is the resource of the heart... The result is, wait on the LORD. He strengthens the heart. "Wait, I say, on the LORD." This, indeed, is the secret of strength in the time of evil. There is, then, nothing to fear... It is remarkable how completely the thought of any other resource or help than the LORD is missing. And this is what keeps a person honest, because the LORD only helps in a way that keeps the heart true.
Waiting as strength, not weakness
The call to wait sits right beside the call to courage, which rules out the idea that waiting is quiet defeat.
And now a lesson from experience brings this part of the psalm to a fitting close. It is a very brief and a very simple one; yet it is a lesson of perfection... "Wait for the LORD!" Wait — but not in weakness or fear. The call to patience is no reason to be afraid: "be strong, and let your heart take courage!"... Test it, prove it, anyone who will! Who is there who cannot prove it for himself? No one!
Why the command has to be repeated
If waiting were easy, the psalm would not need to say it twice. The pressure comes from inside us — from being sure we must do something right now.
"Strengthened unto all patience." You will find there is nothing that tests the strength of your soul like waiting for God. We think we must do the things we believe are right. Instead, we must learn to wait. Take Saul, for example, in 1 Samuel 13. He ought to have waited, and said, I can do nothing.
Saul was a king of Israel. He was told to wait, ran out of patience, and acted on his own instead.
The promise attached: a strengthened heart
The verse does not promise that the situation will change. It promises that the person will be held up in it. Christians pray for that same strength.
The Apostle Paul bowed his knees before the Father for the believers in Ephesus. He asked that they might be strengthened (Eph. 3:14-16). In chapter 1:3 he had told them that God blessed them with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. But they needed strength to take hold of that, and to live for God's glory here. We are blessed up there; but we need strength down here. We know where to find it. Strength belongs to God!
Words you can hand to someone else
Up to this point the psalm has been one man speaking about himself. At the close he turns to others.
This confidence in God will not make a man impractical... The man who can rejoice in knowing God from experience will strengthen frightened believers around him by his own quiet, joyful faith. He will be able to say to them with real weight, "Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!"
Summary
- Waiting is the lesson. The command closes a psalm of enemies and fear — it is what one man learned by going through trouble, not a theory.
- Waiting is the only resource. No human help appears anywhere in the psalm; that absence is the point, and it keeps the heart honest.
- Waiting is strength, not passivity. "Be strong, let your heart take courage" stands in the same breath — patience is never a reason to be afraid.
- Waiting is the hardest test. Nothing tests a soul like it; the impulse to act, as with Saul, is what the doubled "wait, I say" is guarding against.
- Waiting is passed on. The person God strengthens turns outward and says the same words to someone still afraid.