“'How Long, O Lord': Hope in Lament” (Psalm 13)” | 8/9/2020
Psalm 13| 8/9/20 | Will Duval
This morning, I’m excited to launch our new sermon series with you: “Psalms of Hope”. If you’ve clicked on the news at ANY point in the past 5 months now, you might think the world is coming to an end, and all the pretribulationists out there are clearly wrong, because we’re all living through the WORST of it as we speak!
Now more than ever, we need hope. And for that, we need to turn to God’s word. But this morning, we begin in a rather unexpected place. Of all the obvious “Psalms of Hope” that we will get to in this series - Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”; Ps 46: “"God is our refuge and strength, a very present[b] help in trouble.”; Ps 91: “he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.” and many others - at first glance, Psalm 13 doesn’t seem to fit. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? ” - few people would characterize THAT as a “psalm of HOPE”. In fact, Psalm 13 has traditionally been categorized as a psalm of LAMENT.
Over ⅓ of the psalms are laments. What IS a lament? Mark Vroegop, whose recent book “Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament” is a huge help for understanding this idea of lament, defines it this way:
“Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust… Lament provides a pathway for being honest and processing the emotional struggles of [life]. It affirms talking to God about struggles, disappointments, and hurts. Lament gives us a biblical language that is raw and candid… a language for the land between a hard life and trusting in God’s sovereignty… a prayer language for God’s people as they live in a world marred by sin. It is how we talk to God about our sorrows as we renew our hope in his sovereign care. To cry is human, but to lament is Christian.”
And I want to show you this morning that not only is lament distinctly Christian, but it is also definitively HOPEFUL. There is great HOPE in lament. As Martin Luther said, sometimes “hope despairs and yet despair hopes” (VanGemeren, Psalms, 306).
But I just want to acknowledge from the outset this morning, that we have A LOT of folks here, many of you at HOME, who will be hearing this message today from a place of DEEP despair. And if you’re not today, praise God; just store this message away in your heart, cuz if you’re blessed to live long enough, you WILL find yourself there eventually. But for MANY, David’s words here - “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? ” - will feel ESPECIALLY personal and raw even this morning.
-Some of you are trying to figure out single parenting while working and now homeschooling your kids.
-Some of you haven’t felt human touch for 5 months now.
-Some of you suffer from PTSD, from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, such severe depression, you struggle to even get out of bed most days.
-Some of you have had battled infertility for years, had multiple miscarriages, stillbirths.
-You’ve lost children to rare genetic diseases, and suicide.
-You were diagnosed with cancer and told you only had a few years to live.
-You’ve been stuck in loveless marriages for decades, and feel totally unknown and uncared for.
-You caught your spouse cheating on you.
-You’ve waited for them to recover from addiction for years now, to no avail.
-You’ve had loved ones in and out of prison and rehab dozens of times.
-You were sexually abused as a child.
-You were spiritually abused as an adult.
-You’ve been racially profiled, and discriminated against.
-You’ve been homeless.
-You’ve been SHOT.
-You’ve been abandoned by a parent.
-And you’ve watched your dying parents reject Jesus all the way to their graves, knowing they would spend an ETERNITY separated from God, in Hell.
And that’s just the “edited for time and content” version. I had to cut other examples because they were too graphic or traumatic. And I’m sure even as your pastor, that I don’t even know the HALF of it. To be human, is to suffer.
There’s a story of a young prince, whose father wanted to insulate him from suffering. So he confined him to the palace, and a life of luxury and pleasure. But the boy longed to see the world, so one day, in disguise, he escaped. And for the very first time, he encountered sickness, and death. This sent the prince into an existential crisis, and he renounced his comfortable life for a life of asceticism. And after 6 years of searching, he finally discovered the secret to life, the CURE for suffering: detachment. If you don’t really CARE about material things - your house, your body - then you won’t really care if they… burn down, or get old and break down. If you don’t get ATTACHED in relationships, you won’t have to suffer when those around you hurt you, or pass away. The answer to suffering is: DETACH.
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That prince’s name was Siddhartha Gautama. You probably know him simply as “the Buddha”. His teachings on suffering form the backbone of Buddhism, the 5th largest religion in the world today. Buddhism’s approach to dealing with suffering is essentially to DENY it. Through meditation, it is possible to achieve a higher state of consciousness that is untouched by suffering. We’re all born into this broken, painful material world stained by suffering, and the goal is to TRANSCEND it; nirvana. It’s the ultimate form of DENIAL.
There’s another approach one can take to suffering: DESPAIR. The fastest growing religion in THIS country is atheism, the belief that there is no god, we are the products of blind chance, and when we die, our bodies become food for worms and our selves simply cease to exist, and the vast majority of us will be soon forgotten forever. Atheist Bertrand Russell summarized his own worldview in this way: “Man is but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms... [Nothing] can preserve a life beyond the grave… All the brightness of human genius is destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins… the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” (“A Free Man’s Worship”, quoted from Driscoll, Doctrine, p105).
When asked if his version of reality made him depressed, atheist Richard Dawkins famously answered: “The universe is bleak, cold and empty.” Get used to it.
But friends, in the face of suffering, and these dually sinister so-called “solutions” TO it - denial and despair - I want to encourage you this morning, from the Truth of God’s word, that there is a third option. A response to suffering that rejects BOTH the flippant minimizing of DENIAL - “Everything is fine; suffering is just an illusion” - AND the callous pessimism of DESPAIR - “Everything is awful; suffering is the ONLY reality in this life”, and that is to DARE to HOPE - “Everything is NOT fine at the moment; but I dare to TRUST that one day, it will be. That one day, all of this hurt will be healed, all of this brokenness will be fixed, all of this suffering will be REDEEMED. And I choose to live today, while I am STILL suffering, in light of that future hope that I KNOW I can count on, because MY hope, rests in a GOD who I know I can count on.
That is my prayer for every one of us here today who is hurting. That God would use Psalm 13 this morning, to move you past denial, past despair, to a place where you can dare to hope, in the steadfast love, the bountiful goodness, and the ultimate salvation, of our God.
Would you stand with me, as you’re able, for the reading of God’s word. I’d like to try something different this morning, since Psalm 13 is so short, and to make this even more personal for us. I’d like to invite you to read it out loud together with me. You can follow along in your Bibles, and the words from the ESV translation will be on the screen. Can we read Psalm 13 together aloud? Hear, and SPEAK, the word of the Lord:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.”
This is the word of the Lord... (LET’S PRAY...)
Some scholars think David wrote Psalm 13 while he was fleeing the jealous rage of King Saul, who wanted to kill him to prevent his ascendancy to the throne. Others think David wrote this later in life, while fleeing his own jealous son, Absalom, who also wanted to kill him and steal his throne. Either way, you’ve got David - the boy who defeated giants, the king who united a nation, the man after God’s own heart - who is presently on the precipice of the pit of utter despair.
But out of his hurt and his fear, what David offers us here, in these 6 short verses, is nothing short of a BLUEPRINT for lament, a distinctively Christian response to suffering. There are 3 movements in a prayer of lament. Many of us are familiar with the “A.C.T.S. model” of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. That’s a wonderful, biblical outline for prayer. But so too is the “C.A.T. prayer”. That’s your acronym for a prayer of lament. I’m not trying to diss FELINES, like cat-owners necessarily need to lament; although I am more of a dog-person myself. But C-A-T just happened to be the best acronym I could fit together. Hopefully it’ll be memorable now; next time you are despairing, you’ll think of CATS, and you’ll remember how to lament. :)
Step #1: CRY OUT to God. Cry out to God. Now, with EACH of these steps, I also want to show you why we find HOPE in the process of lamenting. And I’ll do that by pointing us to 2 key attributes of God, that ought to inspire great HOPE in us. The first one, for Step #1, is that we can find HOPE in crying out to God, because God is REAL. God’s REAL. He’s THERE. He EXISTS. Here’s what I’m getting at:
Where does the ATHEIST turn when he despairs? Who does the BUDDHIST beseech when she is hurting? As difficult as your circumstances may get, Christian - and this isn’t intended to take anything AWAY from your pain; life can be incredibly hard sometimes - nevertheless, we find hope in the knowledge that no matter HOW bad it gets, at LEAST there’s always a God we can complain to.
I look back on one of the darkest periods in my OWN life, when my father left us, and I remember at times I was so despondent, so ANGRY at God, that I would literally look up at the sky, stick my middle-fingers up as close to God’s FACE as I could get them, and SCREAM obscenities at God. “You blankety-blank; how COULD you?! I HATE you!”
Years later, when I came BACK to the faith, I was able to appreciate a peculiar beauty in the fact that even in the midst of my HATRED of God, I never could quite bring myself to DISBELIEVE in him. I could never quite convince myself that God wasn’t REAL. And I firmly believe, today, that most people who THINK they’re atheists aren’t really atheists at all; they just don’t LIKE the god they believe in. They innately know, as ALL of us do, on some level, Romans 1 - God’s existence is undeniable - atheists just don’t LIKE him.
Now, I don’t think that David, or the Holy Spirit, who inspired these words of lament in Psalm 13, would necessarily advocate for cussing God out and flipping him the bird, but I DO think that what we find here is biblical precedent for real, honest, uncensored, vulnerable CRYING OUT to God. David’s words here are RAW: Here is the DuVal paraphrased translation, of vv1-2:
“God - Have you FORGOTTEN all about me?
Are you IGNORING me?
Have you ABANDONED me, all on my own?
Am I doomed to be depressed, all day every day the rest of my life?
Do you even CARE about my affliction?
“God - are you EVER going to make good on your promises?
“How long, O Lord?” God’s answer to that question, elsewhere in his word, is abundantly clear: NOT LONG. Without minimizing our suffering, God assures us that relatively speaking, in the grand scheme of eternity, our suffering in this life will be but a BLIP on the radar:
Romans 8:18 “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
If you have it really rough, in this first world country of ours, you may endure suffering for 10… 20… 30 years of your 80 or 90 year life; but let’s just say for the sake of argument you suffer all 90+ years. Now stack that up and compare it against ETERNITY! An eternity of GLORY that is to be revealed to you, if you persevere to the end, and hold firm to your faith. What is awaiting you?
Revelation 21.4-5 “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away... “Behold, I am making all things [what?] new.”” PARADISE!
You say, “Well that sounds pretty great to me; God- what are you WAITING for? How long, O Lord, must I wait for all things to be made new?
For my broken marriage to be made new…
For my aging body to be made new…
For my failing finances to be made new…
Come Lord Jesus - return and make all this mess NEW!
God - What are you WAITING on?!”
His answer? 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you,[a] not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. ”
He is PATIENT to fulfill his PROMISES, so that you don’t PERISH. And he doesn’t just wish that you should reach repentance, for those of you who have not yet received Christ as your Lord and Savior, who are playing Rush & Roulette every single day with your eternal future, but even for those of us who are SAVED, God wishes that we should reach sanctification. If you are still suffering in this life - take heart, brother, sister - that means God is not yet done PURIFYING you.
W.S. Plumer reminds us (Psalms, 188): “There must be a great deal of dross in even good men to make daily and long-continued sorrow so necessary to their sanctification”. Such a great quote. Here’s another one: “That is good for us which leads us to pray. It is better to be praying in the whale’s belly than asleep in the ship.” (188)
Nelsen Walker uses this analogy: A bar of steel is worth ~$5. If you make it into horseshoes, it’s ~$10. If you fashion it into needles for sewing, that’s ~$350. But if you fashion it into the delicate springs that go into fine watches, it’s worth $2,500. The difference in worth is how many times is got cut, run through the oven to be heat-treated, smashed, twisted and formed, heated up again, smashed again, polished… there’s no such thing as instant godliness. Jesus said, ‘The one I love, I will prune.’” (sermon, Calvary Church, Mar 3, 2016).
Some of you are thinking, “Wow, Jesus, you must REALLY love me then!” But here’s the SECOND reason we find hope in our cries, friends: Because God is UNDERSTANDING. When you cry out to God in your suffering, take heart - you’re in really good company: “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Matt 27.46) And the Bible says that our suffering identifies us with Christ, it UNITES us to him. The One who for no good in us, but for the goodness that was in HIM, voluntarily stepped off heaven’s throne to identify with US, to unite himself to US, in HIS suffering. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15), and actually, Jesus was tempted in ways you and I will NEVER be - Satan has never offered to give ME all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; God’s never LET him tempt me in that way, cuz He knows how’d I’d probably respond! I’ve never been tempted, as I suffered unimaginable physical agony, being flogged and crucified, and even WORSE emotional and spiritual agony, being cut off from my perfect union with God the Father while I bore His WRATH instead, the penalty that was rightfully owed a bunch of rebel sinners, to be tempted by the knowledge that at any moment, with but a word, I could call down legions of angels to turn the tables, and nail my executioners to THEIR crosses instead. I’ve never faced that temptation.
Ours is NOT the god of Buddhism’s denial, who says, “Suffering is an illusion; rise above it.”
Ours is NOT the silent, non-existent god of atheism’s despair.
Ours is NOT the god of ISLAM, who can’t even be bothered with such trivial, messy, worldly, human troubles.
Our God UNDERSTANDS, because our God was willing to suffer the very WORST of it, for US, so that WE could inherit all the riches of HEAVEN, in HIM.
Our God is REAL, and he knows our SUFFERING is real, because he understands it.
Step #2 of lament: We APPEAL to God. (vv3-4) We CRY OUT to God, then we APPEAL to him. We CALL UPON him, we petition him, we implore him, we PLEAD with him, if need be.
That’s what David does here, in vv3-4: he employs 3 imperative verbs, to BEG God: “Consider me. Answer me. Light up my eyes.”
What do you do when you feel like God has forgotten you? Like, v1, God is “hiding his face” from you? You APPEAL to God, and say, “CONSIDER me.” LOOK at me. NOTICE me, and my suffering.
What do you do when you feel like God is ignoring you; and you’ve resigned yourself, v2, to “taking counsel in your own soul”, because you feel like you can’t even get an audience with Him? You APPEAL to God, and say, “ANSWER me.” AKNOWLEDGE me. RESPOND to me, God, even if it’s to say, “No”, that would be better than SILENCE. Say something!
And what do you do when in David’s case, you literally fear for your life? When you know that if God doesn’t intervene, v3, there is an imminent threat that you may be “sleeping the sleep of death” soon? Or even, in most of our cases, when it’s a metaphorical death, a loss, an overwhelming grief. You APPEAL to God, and say, “light up my eyes.” Give me LIFE. I need you to BE the God of Psalm 23, and “restore my soul”.
Lest, v4, “my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.”
We don’t really have enemies anymore. There are people we don’t like, and folks who don’t like us, but we’re not COOL enough to have enemies. You gotta be like a movie superhero to have an enemy these days. An archnemesis.
But the Bible makes it very clear that we DO have an enemy. Satan: the adversary, the deceiver, the wicked one, the ruler of darkness and prince of this world. And he prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet 5:8); seeking to devour YOU. He is the ultimate enemy. And he is ALSO real. And like God, he ALSO understands suffering, but unlike God, he wants to USE it to lead you astray. To shatter your faith, to stamp out your hope in God. But we ALSO know, biblically, that Satan operates within God’s purview; that God holds Satan’s leash, and every little bit of havoc that Satan wreaks, God chooses to ALLOW, not because he is SCORNING us, but because He is refining us - Isaiah 48:10; because God disciplines those he loves - Hebrews 12:6. And yet, it’s not FUN, is it? So Jesus teaches us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matt 6:13) The Greek there is actually “deliver us from the evil ONE.” From Satan, our enemy.
And as we pray that, as we APPEAL to God - “consider, answer, light up my eyes” - we can HOPE, because we know #1) God is LISTENING, and #2) God is CARING.
Let me just give you one Scripture to pair with each of those truths - it’s SO hard, because there are SO many beautiful ones, that remind us of both those foundational promises, that God LISTENS, and that he CARES, but here’s just one apiece, to jot down, and take with you, to meditate on, and to REVEL in later:
#1 - God LISTENS to your cries, your appeals for help:
1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” Ohhh!! Did you HEAR that? That is a PROMISE from God - anything we ask… according to his will… he HEARS us, and he ACTS.
And secondly, God CARES, about your suffering:
1 Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” God CARES for YOU. For YOU. For YOU.
Finally, friends, Step #3 of lament: We TRUST God. (vv5-6) We have hope because we CAN trust God. And we CAN trust God, because:
God is SOVEREIGN.
God is GOOD.
Vroegop explains, “Christians lament because we know that God is both sovereign and good. Christians know his promises in the Scriptures. We believe in God’s power to deliver.” We know, Romans 8:28, that God has promised to “work all things together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” If God wasn’t SOVEREIGN, we couldn’t trust that he had the POWER to bring light out of darkness, good out of evil. If God wasn’t GOOD, we couldn’t trust that he’d even have the DESIRE to do it! But our HOPE is in the unchanging character of who God is: he is 100% able, and 100% willing to BLESS his beloved children at ALL times, and that means if you are going through a REALLY difficult struggle right now, God has actually ordained it for your good and for your growth and for HIS OWN ultimate glory.
Friends, I KNOW that is a HARD truth to accept sometimes. We do not always see HOW God is using it, WHY God ordained it. I don’t claim to have those answers, why God allows infants to die, and God knows that FAITH-wise, I am chief among sinners - I do NOT stand before you today as a pillar of faith. A beacon of unwavering hope and confidence in God’s promises. Ha! My wife is laughing in the [front row]!
But here’s what I DO know: I know that when times get tough, I need that HOPE, that I can put my trust in God’s steadfast love.
I know that when life kicks me in the teeth, I need that HOPE that “my heart will rejoice to see God’s salvation”
That in the darkest of nights, I can still “SING to the Lord,” because I can look back, and reflect, and realize that “he has dealt bountifully with me”; that he hasn’t failed me yet, so why am I afraid he’s gonna start NOW?
Did you catch David’s intentional alternation back and forth between the PAST and FUTURE tenses of the verbs, in vv5-6? He says:
-I HAVE trusted in your love (past tense)
-So I SHALL rejoice in your salvation (future tense)
-I WILL sing to the Lord (future tense)
-Because He HAS dealt bountifully with me (past tense)
Here’s the takeaway principle for us this morning: Our future hope is ROOTED in God’s past faithfulness. Mark that down: Our future hope is ROOTED in God’s past faithfulness.
So I ask you this morning, friends: what past faithfulness of God’s in YOUR OWN life, can YOU look back, and hang your hat on, rest your HOPE in, that if He has PROVEN himself sovereign, and good, and FAITHFUL before, he WILL do it again?
If you are a believer in Christ this morning, if you have TRUSTED in Jesus for your salvation, then you have ALREADY got your answer:
The most DIRE suffering you were facing, and totally powerless over - Death and Hell: defeated.
The most desperate need in your life: forgiveness of your sin and the redemption of your SOUL - satisfied.
And for those of you who HAVEN’T yet trusted in him,
who HAVEN’T yet put all your hope in Christ and Christ alone for this life and the life to come -
if you HAVEN’T yet trusted in Jesus’ steadfast love, the kind of love that would DIE for you;
The kind of RESCUING love that causes hearts to REJOICE in its salvation; did you know the Hebrew word in v5 for “salvation” is “yeshua”; that’s Jesus’ NAME, in Aramaic. David literally exclaims in Psalm 13:5 - “my heart shall rejoice in JESUS.”
Does YOUR heart, friend? You can today. Trust in Jesus, and even in the midst of suffering, watch him turn your denial, and your despair, into a confident dare to HOPE.
I want to try something a little different this morning. In lieu of a closing corporate prayer together, I want to give you a few minutes to actually practice WRITING OUT own your own lament, following these 3 steps: Cry out, Appeal, Trust.
This is an exercise that Vroegop commends in his book, and I think it might really prove to be powerful for some of us today. He says, “I write out everything that is troubling me. This hand-written list of complaints becomes a platform for prayer instead of a pit of discouragement… I use honest lament to drive me back to what I know to be true. After telling God about my pain, I remind my heart about God’s promises. In so doing, the pain that could have driven me away from God becomes a means of reaffirming my confidence in him… [Life] will be challenging. But lament offers an outlet. We can turn to God in our pain and watch it lead us to trust.
So I want to invite you to do that this morning. Scott and the team will come up and play quietly for a few minutes, and give you time to write out your OWN cries to God - you can be HONEST, raw... God can handle it; he knows your thoughts already anyway! And then APPEAL to him: Jesus said, “You don’t HAVE because you don’t ASK”; may that not be true of US, in our suffering. And finally, remind your heart that you can TRUST in God’s good promises. Let’s prayerfully write and reflect.