Well, please turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 13, Psalm 13 as we continue in our study of the Psalms. Psalm 13, I'll begin reading in verse 1, to the chief musician, a psalm of David. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.
Lest my enemies say I have prevailed against him. Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. but I have trusted in your mercy.
Rejoicing in God's Salvation
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Amen. Well, let us pray.
Opening Prayer
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this psalm. We pray now for the ministry and the aid of the spirit who gave us this word to guide our thoughts, to guide our minds and hearts. and to get the comfort and the encouragement, the strength and the stability out of such Psalms like these. May you bless all the brothers and the sisters in our local church.
There are many hurting, many sorrowful, many grieving, many in agony, and I pray God in heaven that you would just come to their aid this day. And again, for those dead in their trespasses and sins, may they see that sorrows and difficulties and trials are not unique to the Christian life, but they befall unbelievers as well. And may they, by grace, see that Christ is that refuge for needy and weary sinners. And again, Lord, forgive us for all of our sins, cleanse us in the precious blood of the Lamb, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Introduction
Well, have you ever felt like God doesn't hear you when you've prayed? You pray and you suspect that perhaps He's taken a bit of a holiday and He isn't giving due course to your particular needs. Have you ever prayed for a long time and it seems like no answer has come from God? If the answer is yes, and I'm going to guess confidently it is a yes, then this psalm is for you.
This psalm and psalms like it. I think it will hopefully help us to not live by feeling. What we perceive or what appears to be the case doesn't upbraid who God is and it doesn't alter the divine plan relative to Paul's expression in Romans 8 that he causes all things to work for our good. Even what appear to be delays in the plan. what appear to be long pauses in the plan.
What appear to be sort of wearying seasons for the saint of Christ when they want to throw up their hands and hopefully with the psalmist cry, how long? Up to this point we have seen how the psalmist deals with the wickedness that surrounded him. He withstood the temptation according to Psalm 11 verse 1 to flee as a bird to the mountain. He does so by contemplating the perfections of God according to Psalm 11 4 to 7.
He prayerfully cries out to the Lord in the midst of the corruption all around him in Psalm 12, verses 1 to 5, and he finds comfort, stability and preservation in the promises of God revealed in the pure words of God in Psalm 12, 6. Here, he prays, but he prays what we call a lament, or a lamentation, as he continues to reflect on his relationship to the Father, the struggles in his own heart, and the opposition of his enemy.
The Lament of the Psalmist
So I want to look first at the lament of the psalmist, verses 1 to 4, and then secondly, the refuge of the psalmist in verses 5 and 6. But in terms of the lament, I wanna see it broken down into two further parts. First his agony, verses one and two, and then his petition in verses three and four.
Defining Biblical Lament
Now what do I mean by lament or by lamentation? You're probably familiar with Jeremiah's lamentations over the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple that occurred under the hand of God ultimately, but instrumentally by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. So, what does it mean to lament? What does it mean to give expression in the way that the psalmist does here in Psalm 13?
Well, a broad definition is a type of prayer or song that expresses deep sorrow, confusion, or distress, but crucially it is directed toward God in faith, not away from Him. There might be a tendency or a temptation that it crawls up in your head to say, well, how is this not whining? There seems to be sort of a thin line between whining and lament. No, there's a great chasm that occurs between whining and lament.
Whining simply whines. Lament cries out the soul to God Most High and seeks His intervention in the various distresses and trials that the crying soul is undergoing. And as our definition says, but crucially it is directed toward God in faith, not away from Him. In a very helpful little book on this concept or this idea of lamentation, it's called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, the author's last name is Vrogop.
For you Dutch brethren here, you can give that G the hard guttural sound. I thought I'd attempt to do it, but I didn't want to make a fool out of myself. Vrogop. He says, a lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.
You might think lament is the opposite of praise. It isn't. Instead, lament is a path to praise as we are led through our brokenness and disappointment. The space between brokenness and God's mercy is where this song is sung.
Think of lament as the transition between pain and promise. And that's how we're going to proceed. That is precisely what I get is the gist of the psalmist here. David, the Lord Jesus, and by virtue of our union with Christ, the church as well, expressing this lament in that transitory phase between the present distress and the future glory that God has promised to all those who love Him.
The Agony of the Psalmist
Now in terms of the expression of his lament, it's very simply stated in verses 1 and 2. So notice again, to the chief musician, a psalm of David. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me? This is duplicated, at least in concept or thought, in previous Psalms. It is specifically referred to in the same sort of a language of God's forgetting in Psalm 89, verse 46, which is a covenant psalm, by the way, and then in the experience of Job, that godly man, Job chapter 13, specifically at verse 24.
But notice the question, how long, O Lord, verse 1, how long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul? And at the end, how long will my enemy be exalted over me? It seems to me that the how long of the psalmist assumes future relief.
The how long of the psalmist assumes future relief. But it's that cry of how long that flows out of the present condition of distress. He doesn't believe for a moment that God has cast him off forever. He doesn't believe for a moment that God is done with him.
He doesn't believe for a moment that God is not going to vindicate him and God's not going to bless him and God's not going to help him. In fact, it's built into his petitions in verses 3 and 4, and then it's definitely demonstrated in the refuge of verses 5 and 6. It is that expression of pain, that expression of sorrow, that expression of hardship, which seems to turn on the issue of timing. How long?
Notice, whining would say, not ever will God come to my rescue. Not ever will God come to my aid. Whining is symptomatic of our carnal hearts, even as redeemed brothers and sisters, that sort of wants to throw up its hands and say, well, I'm done. God hasn't answered my prayer.
God hasn't manifested His presence. God hasn't cured this particular malady. God hasn't saved this particular unconverted family member that I face or that I have. So I'm just, I'm done with it.
That's not the posture of lament in the Scripture. It's a how long? It's a cry from distress for that eventual deliverance by the Most High. I think that 1 Peter 5, 6 sort of sketches this for us.
He says, therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time. Now, if we ask the question, what is due time? Well, for us, the answer is right now. If we ask the question, what is due time?
The answer is yesterday. If we ask the question of God, well, His time is not our time. In fact, He's not bound by time at all, being from everlasting to everlasting. But God does what God does for His glory and for our well-being.
That's the bottom line, brethren, and in due time He will lift you up. We want answers immediately. We want answers yesterday. We want solutions.
We want resolution. We want everything to be tidy. We want everything to be comfortable. Maybe you don't, but I'm preaching at least to one in the audience today.
We want everything just so. And the confusion and the heartache and the distress and the affliction and the distress causes a great consternation of soul. Whiners say, God's never going to come to my aid. Lamenters in the biblical sense say, how long until you come to my aid?
Now with reference to the application of the lament, I think Bonar's on the right path. He says, when David wandered in Judea and mused on the long-deferred promise of the throne of Israel, he might use these words first of all. When he saw no sign of Saul's dominion ending and no appearance of the seed of the woman, he was in such circumstances as fitted him to be the instrument of the Holy Ghost in writing for aftertimes words which might utter feelings of melancholy weariness. The son of David came in the fullness of the time.
Many a night of darkness he passed through. Sometimes the very shades of death bent over him. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death." Could he not fitly take up verse 4 of Psalm 13 as he carried his cross along the Via Dolorosa, or the way of suffering? The approximately 600 meter path that Jesus walked to get to Golgotha to be crucified on the cross.
As we have treated Psalms 1 to 12, so we're going to treat Psalm 13. Yeah, David's in it. But so is David's greater son. In fact, Samuel Pierce says and applies Psalm 13 to the very passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, that final week when he endured that suffering, when he endured that agony.
And if this surprises you, it ought not. The one who said, Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me in the garden of Gethsemane. Or the one who on the cross says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why does it seem a strange thing that we'd apply Psalm 13 and the cry of the soul of Christ or the cry of the Lord Jesus according to our nature is somehow illegitimate?
He was a man of sorrows and he was acquainted with grief. And I don't think that acquainted with grief was the way I might be acquainted with a Chilliwackian that I don't know. Hey, there's a Chilliwackian over there. Oh, I'm acquainted with him.
No, he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He understood it. He knew it. In fact, in Hebrews 5, the Lord God most high was pleased to bring Jesus to that particular point through suffering.
The son learned obedience through the things that he suffered. And in 5.7 the apostle tells us who Jesus in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. Lament, as scripture sets it forth, is a beautiful vehicle for the saints of Christ to carry their distress to God. If we have a problem with lament, then we have a problem with David, who's described as a man after God's own heart.
We have a problem with our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the holy, harmless, and undefiled one. We've got a problem as well with the very Holy Spirit. who gave us these words to help shape our prayer lives and to help us think God's thoughts after Him. The true humanity of Jesus is seen in Psalm 13. Again, he didn't believe for a moment that God had cut him off and forsaken him and he would never visit him again in kindness or in mercy.
According to his human nature, the agonies and the sorrows and the sufferings and the distresses and the afflictions and the hardships of that one who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief evoked from him this kind of praying at the throne of grace. It's not whining, brethren, it is lamentation. And then in terms of the essence of the lament, notice it's pretty simple. The perceived forgetfulness of God.
Verse one. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? Again, the how long assumes there is future relief coming, but presently right now in the Garden of Gethsemane, presently right now on the cross, or if you like, David, when he's fleeing persecution from Saul, when he's gotta deal with Absalom and the usurpation of David's kingdom, I gotta think that would be bad in itself. If I was a king ruling a kingdom and somebody usurped my authority, I doubt that would make me happy.
How much more compounded when it's your own son who usurps your kingdom. Could we not hear David lament, how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Can we not hear David's greater son say this in light of the prologue?
He came to his own and his own did not receive him. Can we not hear the cry of distress in the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ when the Sanhedrin buffets Him on the face, when they spit upon Him, when they mock Him and blaspheme Him? Brethren, as I've said many times in Psalms 1 to 12, if Jesus' humanity isn't just like ours, yet without sin, it's not true humanity. And what true human doesn't find distress distressing?
What true human doesn't find grief grieving? What true human doesn't find sorrow sorrowful? Of course we'd expect this prayer from the mouth of our blessed Savior. So the perceived forgetfulness of God, again impossible as the psalmist relates it to us, verses 5 and 6.
This isn't whining. This isn't a throwing up the hands. I've prayed, and I've prayed, and I've prayed, and I've prayed, and I've prayed, and there's been no help, there's been no remedy, there's been no answer, there's been no relief, so I'm done. You meet that sometimes with non-Christian professors, or people that professed at one time, but weren't the real deal.
Well, you know, I tried God, and it just didn't work out. I tried Christianity and it just didn't work out. What do you think, you're buying a timeshare here? You think you're negotiating a temporal deal?
Once I come to Jesus, I'm going to only ever have it good? Once I come to Jesus, I'm only going to have lakefront property? Once I come to Jesus, I'm only ever going to have a big bank account? I tried it, but it didn't work.
You know, we can mock them, or not mock them, but we can theologically explain them, 1 John 2, 19, they went out from us, but they were not of us, because if they were, they would have continued with us. But is there some of that in our hearts? Maybe just a wee bit? You know, God doesn't answer my prayer.
In fact, we'll use this as an argument as to not, why we don't pray. Why aren't you praying? Because, you know, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I still got this same mess. Again, it's not formulaic.
It's not a vending machine, God. It's not Baal. It's not Molech. Offer up enough kids, Molech may rain blessings down on you.
But not Yahweh. He's not manipulatable. He's not a wax nose that we can mold into whatever it is that we want. He's the God of absolute glory, power, majesty, excellence, infinite wisdom, and has purposed and planned the salvation of all those whom the Lord Jesus rescues and redeems through his blood shedding, his life, and his resurrection, but has never promised them that in this present evil age, all their troubles will be away.
There's a bit of health, wealth and prosperity probably in the best of even reformed Christians. I read my Bible 364 days last year. I didn't miss one church service. Why is my life such a mess?
Instead of God, help me to navigate in the midst of the mess, trusting that you're going to work it out for your glory and for my well-being. Lament is a biblical category that is most excellent. So he sees the perceived, or rather he laments the perceived forgetfulness of God. And then as well, the perceived withdrawal of God.
Again, it's impossible. He already mentions that in verses five and six. But how long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
We're not to walk by sight. We're not to walk by what appears to be the case. We're to walk by faith, 2 Corinthians 5. We're to trust that God has his purposes and his plans.
That God can take crooked things and make them straight. That if God was able to orchestrate the most vile act ever perpetrated by man for his glory and our salvation, namely the crucifixion of the Savior, then he can certainly help us.
Relationship with God
You see, the lament of the psalm, the lament of the psalmist, is in the first place, a lament over his relationship with God. But then notice, secondly, his struggles in his own heart. Look at verse 2a. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?
Again, when the scripture tells us that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, I don't think we're supposed to locate that only in Gethsemane and subsequent to Golgotha. But we see it there on vivid display in Gethsemane and Golgotha. But a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He went about doing good.
He went about healing. He went about raising. He went about helping. He ameliorated the downtrodden and the poor.
What's the response of the multitudes to him? Rejection? No. He had his disciples to be sure.
Despising? Machinations behind the scenes? The treachery of Judas? The conniving of the Sanhedrin?
You don't think that true humanity is affected by such things? And remember, true humanity is affected. Affected. The divinity of Christ, not affected.
He's impassable. The beauty and the glory of the incarnation of our Lord, what we call in theology the hypostatic union, the two natures in the one person. Not a commingling, not a confusion, not a humanizing of the divinity or the divinizing of the humanity. And if the divinity of the humanity or the divinity wasn't communicated to the humanity, when humanity feels abandoned, humanity's sorrowful, right?
So notice what he says. As we see the very essence of this lament, we see his relationship with God in verse one, but then as well, the struggles of his own heart in verse 2a. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? I think that first bit probably should be understood this way.
How long shall I take counsel in my soul? Probably like, how long should I try to figure everything out on my own? That's a fool's errand, isn't it? You ever been vaxed, tried, afflicted, travailed, having or undergoing hardship, and you've tried to knuckle under, you've tried to fix it, you've tried to sort it, How does that usually go?
Not usually well. I think that's probably what he's getting at. How long shall I take counsel in my soul? In what appears to be the absence of God, verses one and two, will you forget me forever?
Will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul? The attempt to sort things out on his own. Again, difficult to predicate of our Lord Jesus Christ, but he was in all points like us tempted and yet without sin.
True humanity functions the way true humanity functions. How long shall I take counsel in my soul? I think the idea here is that we shouldn't condemn this idea altogether. In other words, you've probably heard me say it before, and if you haven't, I will say it.
There comes a point in time in everybody's life when they look in the mirror, when they look at their accounts, when they look at their station, they look at their situation, they realize, you know what, I need to get it together. I need to get it together. My car right now needs to be cleaned. Don't look at the Jeddah, the 2013 in the front aisle.
You'll say, you know, Butler didn't prepare for the Lord's Day by cleaning his car yesterday. Guilty. I should have gotten it together last night. There is a sense, brethren, I'm not suggesting you lean on self to sort out everything, but what was it that encouraged the psalmist in Psalm 12? the pure Word of God.
Sorting yourself out autonomously or independent of God is bad, but getting up on Sunday and going to church, good. Dragging your weary self to Bible study on a Wednesday night, good. Pulling out the hymn book and singing praises during the week, good. and certainly being dependent upon the revealed will of God in His Word all the time. So how long shall I take counsel in my soul?
Again, it's not altogether bad. We should try to do those positive things that God commends. So it's not altogether bad as we should always strive to get it together, but bad in this context if we are trying to solve our griefs, our sorrows, and our pain without God. And after all, isn't that why verse 2 is here?
It's because of verse 1. Notice, how long, verse 1, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? What is it that produces?
What is it that provokes? What is it that incites the trouble of soul for the people of God? It's a perceived absence of God. In fact, Matthew Henry says, nothing is more killing to a soul than the want of God's favor.
Nothing more reviving than the return of it. So this idea of he's trying to sort himself out on his own, but then in verse two he says, having sorrow in my heart daily. Hopefully you've already thought in your head about a proverb in light of this particular Psalm. Proverbs 13, 12 says, hope deferred makes the heart sick.
But when the desires come, or desire comes, it is a tree of life. I would submit that Psalm 13, one to four is the first part of Proverbs 13, 12. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. His heart's sick in the perceived absence of God, in the perceived forgetfulness of God, in the understanding of this distance from God.
That's hope deferred that makes the heart sick. But verses five and six underscore the latter part of the psalm and is the tree of life. Again, Matthew, Henry. Long afflictions try our patience and often tire it.
Again, you know, Matthew Henry was just writing to like four people in his church that happened to be of a melancholic spirit. That's it. That's the only, you know, extension of application beyond those four pathetic souls that Matthew Henry knew personally. Isn't he not writing for all of us?
It's really hard preaching this kind of stuff because I feel like I'm revealing more about me than I should. And I look at faces at times and, you know, what's he talking about? I just can't connect. I mean, my communion with God's always at a fever pitch.
How long? It's always for me. You're the only one in the church right now that can go to sleep. But for the rest of us, long afflictions try our patience and often tire it.
It is a common temptation when trouble lasts long to think it will last always. Despondency then turns to despair. And those that have long been without joy begin at last to be without hope. I wish it was just four people that Matthew Henry knew, but from my read, it's a lot of us.
So in terms of the expression of his lament, his relationship with God in verse one, the struggles of the heart in verse 2a,
Opposition from the Enemy
but then notice in verse 2b, the opposition from the enemy. I mean, if it's not bad enough that we sent some sort of a chasm or distance with God, that causes perpetual ongoing struggles in our hearts, that vexes us and wearies us on a daily basis, throw us all into the mix and let them persecute you. Throw an Absalom into the mix and let him usurp your kingdom. Throw the Sanhedrin into the midst, or into the mix, and let them connive and manipulate and buy off and blackmail and incite multitudes against you.
Notice what he says, verse two at the end. How long will my enemy be exalted over me? You ever thought that? You ever looked around at a culture like ours and had the wherewithal to say, God, how long will these maniacal psychopaths continue to sanction the murder of babies in their mother's womb?
Or these maniacal psychopaths continue to sanction the murder of old people, sick people, How long will these maniacal psychopaths continue to sanction, cutting off the organs of healthy young children to transition them into that which God never intended for them? Does it ever well up in the heart to say with the psalmist here at verse two, the end, how long will my enemy be exalted over me? How long will it be the case that it looks like they're winning? How long, Lord?
Again, I think this applies to our David, persecuting Saul in the usurping Absalom, the traitorous Judah in the conniving Sanhedrin with David's greater son, and then the church and her manifold enemies. The world, the devil, our own flesh, and you know, lots of times we can't even get along together. The Philistines don't kill us at times, we'll kill ourselves. It's a great challenge.
So you see, it's his relationship with God, it's the struggles in his own heart, and it's these pesky Philistines. This devil that roams about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. This Sanhedrin that gives the kill order for the only man that ever lived that was holy, harmless, and undefiled. You see why the psalmist laments.
You see why there is a category of lamentation. And we're going to meet it in the Psalter beyond Psalm 13. There's a whole book given to this theme in the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah is lamenting the fall of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah is lamenting the judgment of God. Jeremiah is crying. Jeremiah is a man of tears. Jeremiah is a man of sorrows.
In fact, it's an adjective. Jeremiah, that means somebody who's given to weeping. Where'd that come from? From the weeping prophet.
Now, under this head, verses one to four, the lament of the psalmist, we've seen the agony of the psalmist in verses one and two, but still under this main head in verses one to four,
The Petition of the Psalmist
we've got the petition of the psalmist in verses three and four. Would it surprise you that the petitions correspond to the lamentations themselves? Notice what he prays for first. his relationship with the Father, the correction of his own soul, and his relationship to his enemies. Look at verse 3a.
Consider and hear me, O Lord my God. See, whining doesn't do that. It says never. not and how long only with a negative connotation that is never. But back to back, lament as a vehicle of prayer is that transition period.
We cry out our sorrows, we cry out our pain, we cry out our griefs, all the while fetching mercy from God, blessing from God, answers from God. This is a textbook example of how to pray lamentationally. I don't know if that's a word, but we're gonna use it. The prayer of lament drives us to God for relief.
You see that, right? The whining of the whiner doesn't send him to God for relief. The whining of the whiner just continues to perpetuate. and only produce despondency and despair and a throwing up of the hands and a forgetting God because he forgot me. Not with the psalmist.
Consider and hear me, O Lord, my God. Simply considering your sorrow, your grief, and your pain is not what lament is. Next time you whine to your spouse and they say, stop whining. Well, I heard from Butler on Sunday that I can do that.
No, no. No, no, no, no, no. Just in case anybody is apt to misinterpret. Lament drives us to God.
In fact, lament is a vehicle carrying us to God. And that's exactly what we see. The prayer of lament as well seeks enlightenment from God. If one of the things that troubles his soul, according to 2A, is how long shall I take counsel in my soul?
Verse three is the corrective. Consider and hear me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes. I'm not doing this good on my own.
The problems aren't assuaged, they're not removed, they're not gone, they're still there. I obviously need divine assistance and aid, so God, consider and hear me. and enlighten my eyes to see that pure word of Psalm 12 verse 6, to see it as the Spirit intended for it, to see it as my hope, my foundation, my comfort, my stability, my life raft in what appears to be at times an ocean of sorrows. God help me, enlighten me, fill me with understanding. It is to make sense of the things that are happening, to understand the implications of Romans 8.28.
We know that God causes all things to work together for good. To those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. I can testify by experience, that verse is a lot easier when everything's going well. It's a lot easier when everything's going well.
I dare say Romans 8.28, it's easier to believe today than it was two months ago when it was nothing but rain and clouds. Probably easier today here than it is in certain other parts of the world where they're, you know, weighed down by snow. In other words, during the times of blessing in our Christian life, we're the strongest proponents of Romans 8.28. But what happens when the pain, the misery, the sorrow, the affliction, the hardship, the distress comes?
We almost become practical atheists with reference to Romans 8.28. I don't see how. I can't see how. Again, that's why you're asking God to enlighten your eyes so that you can see how.
To understand his glory is the apex. your well-being he has covenanted to take on, and though it may not appear to be that way, guess what, soldier, you walk by faith and not by sight. Asaph, Psalm 73, I saw the wicked prosper, I saw the righteous falter, and it made me almost slip, Asaph admits, until I went into the sanctuary of the Lord. What's he saying? I got enlightenment through the public means of preaching and praying and singing and chanting songs.
When I got a Godward perspective on the issues concerning this world, well then I understood. See, we try to figure things out apart from God. We try to orchestrate things apart from God. We try to take matters into our own hands apart from God.
Brethren, that's a fool's errand. Take it from a chief fool in our church service this morning. We need to understand once again that God's time frame is not ours and that we may tarry long in such a condition, but to know that if called to suffer, God has his purposes in that suffering. There's tough pills that are having to be administered when preaching goes on or counseling goes on or brethren and fellowship go.
Sometimes it's hard. And I think at some level we know. I mean, if you were five and you had a bit of a cough and your mom said, hey, we're gonna try this new natural remedy. And the pill was about the size of a jumbo marble.
Would you willingly run up and say, yeah, mommy, give me the pill? We know intuitively, mom's right. She's combed the fields of natural science and has figured out what combination of herbs and various things combined together in a marble-sized pill is gonna deal with all my maladies. But man, I don't wanna take that big pill.
At some level in our hearts, we know what the Bible says, if we've walked with Christ for any amount of time. But man, those pills are big and hard to swallow. The Psalms help you. The experience of David, the experience of true David, our Lord Jesus, the experience of the church that we are connected to mystically by our participation in the church today.
So after consider and hear me, O Lord my God, enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep, excuse me, he moves from his relationship to God to now his inner struggles. I think that's verse three at the end. Lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest I'm overwhelmed.
Unless I'm overcome. Again, go to Gethsemane, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, the Savior says. I wouldn't have written that, even believing in the hypostatic union. I'd be shocked.
But the true humanity of our Lord, captured by the gospel writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, puts it in there for us men and for our encouragement. My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, the Savior said. So the spiritual reference, God, if you don't come, ruin is my lot. God, if you don't come, ruin is my physical lot because these Philistines or Saul or Absalom or the Sanhedrin, they're gonna beat me.
And that's where he moves finally in terms of his petition. The opposition from the enemy. Look at verse four. Lest my enemies say, I have prevailed against him.
Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. So Saul, Absalom, Philistines, Sanhedrin, your enemies, my enemies, what is it that they want? They want our defeat. You don't go into a battle to lose.
The devil roams about like a roaring lion just because, seeking whom he may devour. It's all out, brethren. It's to the death. And for the psalmist, he does not want the enemy to stand victorious.
He does not want the wicked foot on his neck boasting triumphantly that God was not able. Verse 4, lest my enemies say, I have prevailed against him. Lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. Moses prayed similarly in his prayer of intercession in Numbers 14.
Remember when the children of Israel start to grumble and whine and complain? I know, pretty surprising. But they did it recurringly in the wilderness. And in Numbers 14, God's ready to wipe them out.
Spoken in the manner of men, spoken, you know, in a way that we can gain accommodation, but God's basically, I'm done. That's it. Nice try, champs. No, no, that's probably not exactly right, but that kind of ethic or ethos.
What does Moses pray? Now if you kill these people as one man, then the nations which have heard of your fame will speak saying, because the Lord was not able to bring this people to the land which he swore to give them, therefore he killed them in the wilderness. Wouldn't that be triumph on the part of the godless? Wouldn't that be triumph on the part of the wicked?
Wouldn't it be an event, or a time rather, where they could lower the foot on the neck of their enemies and cry victory? Moses uses that as an argument to God as to why God should spare old covenant Israel. You know the story, Moses prevailed with God. Spurgeon said, it is well for us that our salvation and God's honor are so intimately connected that they stand or fall together.
So the lament is there clearly specified in verses one to four.
The Refuge of the Psalmist
Let's turn quickly now to the refuge of the psalmist in verses five and six. So lament does not produce forgetfulness and perpetuate despair, but it promotes trust in God and a rehearsal of truth concerning God. Specifically, what has he done in the past? which always for the psalmist means he's able to do in the present and he's promised to do in the future. So
Trust in Covenant Mercy
notice in 5a, the psalmist's trust in the mercy of God. But I have trusted in your mercy. You see the trajectory of lament? He's crying out, God, how long?
You're gonna forget me forever. He's crying out about what is perceived to be the absence of God. He's crying out about the daily sorrows in his heart. He's crying out about the daily reality of trying to sort it out on his own.
He's crying out about the encroaching enemy and the potential that the enemy may rejoice over his demise. See, whining would stop. Actually, whining wouldn't even petition verses three and four. Whining certainly doesn't do five and six.
You see? So verse five, consider, I'm sorry, verse five, but I have trusted in your mercy. He seeks his refuge in God. We've seen that in Psalms three, Psalms four, Psalms six, Psalm seven, Psalm nine, Psalm 11.
And as well, notice specifically what he says. I have trusted in your mercy. That's his refuge, that's his safe haven, that's his happy place. But further, with reference to mercy, mercy is a perfection of God.
What is God? God is spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. It is being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. We call those the perfections of God.
Can we call mercy a perfection of God? Yes. He's abundant in mercy. So certainly the psalmist has recourse to that mercy.
Listen to Plummer. To the believing sinner or sufferer, how sweet is mercy. He lives by it. He hopes in it.
He prefers it to all other sources of joy. He is never more blessed than when he thinks of no other resource. Amen. If you're using the ESV or the NIV, I think that those translations pick up something a bit more in the word employed by the psalmist.
I don't like doing that, because it sounds like there's a hidden esoteric meaning that the ESV guys got right, but the NKJ guys didn't. But just to parse it out a bit, the perfection of God, he is abundant in mercy. but the covenant of God. When he says, I have trusted in your hesed, your hesed, the ESV renders it steadfast love. The NIV renders it unfailing love.
In terms of the context, it seems to speak, yes, of the perfection. I need mercy to deliver me from this distress. but it seems to go in the direction of covenant stability as well. I need your protection. I need you as my rock.
I need you as my refuge. I need you as my fortification. as I try to make heads or tails out of what I perceive to be some distance, out of what's going on in my soul day by day, and what's happening around me in terms of the opposition of the enemy. I trust in your covenant, God. I trust in that stability.
Ash renders it this way, and he says, I feel your hiddenness, but I trust your covenant. David did that. Jesus repeatedly and steadily trusted that covenant love from his father. In him, we may do the same.
And then he cites Habakkuk 3, 17 to 19. I didn't want to go there because I don't want to keep you to one. Don't fear. That's actually not going to happen.
But turn to the prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk prophesies pretty much on the eve of the fall of the southern kingdom. He prophesies, you know, a few years before Nebuchadnezzar and his armies come and destroy Jerusalem and take captives to Babylon. And it's intriguing because in the prophet Habakkuk you see questions.
Notice in 1.2, O Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear? Even cry out to you violence and you will not save. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me.
There is strife and contention arises. You see what's happening here. He's seeing the difficulties, he's seeing the trials, he's seeing the hardships, he's seeing the afflictions, and it evokes from him this cry to God, which is lament. He then basically explains just how bad things are gonna get.
I'd like to soften that blow, but that's pretty much it. Yeah, it's gonna be rough, brethren. You know when the measure of God's wrath is filled up and you've defied His covenant that many times in Deuteronomy 28, still in the Bible, yeah Judah, it's over. Notice how the psalm ends, I'm sorry, the book ends. 317, though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit beyond the vines, though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls.
Just so we can get what he's saying there. In modern parlance, it would be, even though there's no more gasoline for our cars, even though Costco's been shot down, Even though famine has betaken the land, even though we're pining away because of this chastening or judging hand of God, even though all that stuff happens, even all that stuff is occurring, verse 18. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, He will make my feet like deer's feet, and He will make me walk on my high hills.
And notice how Habakkuk ends, the way that David often starts, to the chief musician, with my stringed instruments. In other words, Israel, sing your laments, pray to your God, fetch it down by His grace, and never lose sight of the joy of the Lord, which is your strength, even though everything around you is a mess. That's what the prophet says. He's trusting in that covenant love of God.
So then notice what he does. Verse 5, I have trusted in your mercy, My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. There's a contrast with the enemy. Remember the enemy according to 4b?
It says, let those who trouble me or lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved. I don't want them to rejoice over my demise. I want to rejoice in your blessing. I think too often we do that.
We let the afflictors rejoice and displace our joy in the Lord that we should be operating according to. So I have trusted in your mercy. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. Again, Plummer says, David begins his song in sadness, but he ends it in joy.
And then notice this inward rejoicing in the salvation of God. Verse 6 tells us there's an outward expression of that rejoicing in God in corporate worship. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Remember, this psalm is composed for public singing.
This psalm is composed for public lamenting, leading us to that place of praise in the mercy of God. my heart shall rejoice in your salvation i will sing to the lord because he has dealt bountifully with me even in the midst of these afflictions i think i can't prove this and i don't even think it but it wouldn't surprise me to know that at some point in paul's mind in romans 8 as he's rehearsing previous revelation doesn't seem completely untoward that he might have the possibility of thinking of Psalm 13. Because see, at the end of Romans 8, what does Paul do? He wants to defang whatever it is that is troubling you. How does he do that?
He says, that He, God, who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? Our relationship with God. As far as the inner turmoils of our hearts, that's Romans 8, 37 to 39, which ends in the crescendo. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In other words, believer, Whatever things are hitting you, take comfort in that reality. Well, what about our enemies? Romans 8, 31. If God is for us, you know the rest.
Who can be against us? Believe it or not, brethren, we're not the first generation of God's people to struggle with these issues. It feels as if God is removed from me. It feels as if I've got nothing but turmoil.
It feels as if I've got nothing but enemies outside of me. Yeah, we're not the first generation. David knew it. Moses knew it, certainly.
The old covenant Israelites that were faithful believers knew it. New covenant Israelites that are faithful believers in Christ know it. Ash says, here is joy in the midst of tears. Well, just quickly, the psalm and the experience of David already alluded to it.
I mean, again, if I'm running from Absalom, my son, I'm running from Saul, I'm running from Philistines, where are you, God? How long, God? It's causing vexation in my soul on a daily basis. And these guys are gonna win.
I don't want them to win. I don't want them to put their foot on my neck and say victory. Certainly the psalm and the experience of Jesus, the demonstration of his true humanity, the perceived removal of the nearness of God. Again, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
The opposition of his enemies. Consider that even after the fact of the resurrection, what do his enemies do? They pay off Roman soldiers to fake the narrative that his disciples came at night to steal him away. Wow, they put pressure on the Roman authority to guard the tomb.
When he's raised from the dead, now they go into plan B mode. Well, we'll just bribe these guards and tell the guards that his disciples came at night and stole his body. Why go to those lengths? Because they wanted the win.
See, we probably should learn a bit more from the God-haters. They play to win. Times we just play to exist, just to barely move. And I get it, sometimes that's all you got in you.
Not all the time. So there's help for us in the Savior, and that position of authority and intercession at the right hand of the Father.
Christ Our Sympathizing High Priest
Turn to Hebrews 14, or 4, we're gonna end here. Hebrews chapter 4. The Lord Christ is in a position to aid those in need. So Hebrews 4.14, seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Lest we think, well, that's good, we got something in common with the Savior. There's an implication, an application, a conclusion wrought by the apostle in 416. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The reality is, is that as God's people, there will be sorrow, There will be grief, there will be pain, there will be distress, there will be affliction, there will be hardship. There will be perceived times, or times where you perceive that God is not with you. There will be times when your soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, lest you sleep the sleep of death. And there are times when it's going to seem like your enemies are lowering their foot on your neck to cry victory.
That's gonna happen, probably has happened, and I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but it's most likely gonna happen again. What do we do? We listen to the apostle. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Dixon says, trouble outward and inward of body and spirit, fightings without and terrors within, vexations from heaven and earth, from God deserting and men pursuing may fall upon a child of God at one time and continue for a long time enough as here. Bonar says, but not our head only, every member of his body also has found cause oftentimes to utter such complaints and fears. A believer in darkness, a believer under temptation, a believer under pressure of some continued trial, a believer spending wearisome nights and lying awake on his couch, may find appropriate language here wherein to express his feelings to God and all the more appropriate because it is associated with the Savior's darkness and so assures us of his sympathy. We take up the harp which he used in Galilean Gethsemane and in touching its strings do we not recall to our head the remembrance of the days of his flesh?
Absolutely! That's what lament teaches. That's what the people of God need to receive, and the people of God need to go to their God with that sorrow, cry it out to Him, laying a hand upon the surety of a better covenant, realizing that in Him, There's mercy. Yes, His perfection.
Yes, His blessing, but His covenant. And He, He will keep us. He will preserve us. And He will bring us unto that blessed day and that place where there's no more sorrows, there's no more pain, no more hunger, no more thirst, and there's no more death.
Application
And if you're not a believer here this morning, it's not just Christians. You know, this could send the wrong message. An unbeliever here saying, boy, why would I want to be a Christian? They sound miserable.
This just sounds horrible. They're going to leave here saying, but I'm going to pray for you. Is suffering, sorrows, trials, and afflictions unique only to the believer? Not the last time I checked.
Non-Christians have their share of sorrows and trials and hardships. They get diseases. They go bankrupt. They get robbed.
They get mugged. I'm not saying come to the Lord Jesus so you won't get mugged. Come to the Lord Jesus so you won't get robbed. but come to the Lord Jesus and hope in the mercy of God, believing on that Lord Jesus to receive that mercy from God so that you're forgiven of your sins, that you have the righteousness of Jesus such that one day you'll enter into the presence of a thrice holy God. and then deal with the trials, deal with the sorrows, deal with the afflictions in really the only way that a creature can with any degree of success and satisfaction, by being found in Christ. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in his way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in him. I don't think it's accidental that Psalm 212 sets the stage for the rest of the Psalter, shows us the godly man of Psalm 1. It shows us His triumphant reign in Psalm 2 and bids sinners to come to Him and to kiss Him, to believe on Him and be saved. Well, let us pray.
Closing Prayer
Our Father, we thank You for Psalm 13. We thank You for this vehicle of lament. I pray that You would help us to use it, help us to pour out our hearts before the throne of grace, seeking to fetch help in our time of need, which, as we confess and admit, is really always. So help us to be a prayerful people, help us to be a faithful people, help us to be rooted in Scripture, that pure word, as we read of in Psalm 126.
We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, you can stand and we'll sing 570, 5-7-0, for our doxology in praise to our God.