“Tracks 6 & 13: How Long? (Psalm 6 & 13)" | 6/2/24
“GOD - Where ARE you? Are you even still LISTENING? Cuz it sure doesn’t FEEL like it. Was it something I DID? Are you PUNISHING me? Cuz if SO, I’m not sure what it is, or how much more of this I can TAKE.
I can’t remember the last time I felt happy, even an OUNCE of joy in my life. I can’t remember the last time I felt like ANYONE cared. It feels like I could DIE, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Actually, I’m pretty sure a LOT of people’s lives would be BETTER OFF.
At least that’s what the voice in my HEAD keeps telling me. And I don’t know how to shut him UP. YOU might be silent, God, but the ENEMY sure isn’t! Why won’t YOU silence him?! Why won’t you say SOMETHING… DO something? Why won’t you DELIVER me from this DARKNESS?
O LORD… how LONG?
How long will you… FORGET me?
How long will you hide your FACE from me?
How long must I LANGUISH, waste away, cry my EYES out, FLOOD my bed with TEARS…
Lord… how LONG?
Anyone else ever feel that way? That’s a pretty typical, maybe every-other-week JOURNAL entry for me. But sometimes I just plagiarize it; I just copy of King David’s paper.
Like we said from the beginning of this sermon series in the Psalms: that’s the BEAUTIFUL thing about this book, these songs - they help give voice to the full RANGE of human emotion and experience.
Feeling JOYFUL? Blessed? Ready to PRAISE the Lord? There’s a playlist for you here.
Feeling ANGRY? Upset? Unjustly wronged? There’s a playlist for you too.
Whether you’re feeling THANKFUL & tranquil, or betrayed & afraid, Psalms has got some songs for YOU.
Which means that when you’re feeling SAD… or any of sadness’s related SUB-emotions [[“Feelings Wheel”]]: Lonely, Vulnerable, Ashamed, Remorseful, Hurt, Despairing, DEPRESSED - that’s where we’re camping out this morning: David’s gonna say, “I have sorrow in my heart ALL the day long”; what’s that? That’s DEPRESSION, folks. And if you’re NOT feeling me and King David on it, well, praise GOD; I’m happy for YOU (I WISH I was; but Imma be HONEST; YOUR happiness just makes ME even MORE depressed); but HEY: at least I can know I’m NOT alone, that I’m in good company, cuz DAVID sure feels me. And he wrote a song for me. For US. A song for the SAD.
-
And singing it this morning doesn’t make me faithless; it makes me HONEST. Singing it won’t mean YOU’RE being heretical; it actually means you’re being BIBLICAL.
Or at least, it CAN. If we’re gonna sing these sad psalms faithfully, biblically this morning, then we need to learn to sing them - and PRAY them - the way that DAVID did. There are four prayers that David offers up to God here, three petitions and one PRAISE at the end. David feels afflicted on EVERY side: from AROUND him (afflicted by his enemies), from WITHIN him (afflicted by his own HEART), even from ABOVE him (he’s afflicted by God HIMSELF). And so David prays for deliverance THREE times, and then he’s gonna conclude with a prayer of TRUST that God WILL come through for him; God will DELIVER.
Let’s read it together: I invite you to STAND with me if you’re able; maybe you CAN’T. You’re so filled SADNESS you can’t even find the strength and the motivation to STAND this morning. God bless you; these psalms are for YOU this morning: Psalms 6 & 13:
“To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.
6:1 O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
[And now ch13… Also] To the choirmaster. [Also…] A Psalm of David.
13:1 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… Seated…]
A few quick contextual notes about the SUPERSCRIPTIONS here, the headers of these two psalms - 3 admissions of IGNORANCE I need to make; 3 things we’re not SURE of:
First, we’re not sure who the “Choirmaster” is, to whom David addressed these psalm. Some speculate it was Heman or Asaph, one of the chief musicians from David’s reign recorded in the book of 1 Chronicles; others believe this was a nickname David used for God HIMSELF.
The second thing we don’t know for sure is what that word “Sheminith” refers to, in Psalm 6. We know in Hebrew it “means ‘eighth’ [but it could] refer to the number of a familiar melody, [or indicate] a lower octave for men’s voices, or [perhaps refer to] the number of strings on the instrument to be played.” (Warren Wiersbe, 879) We’re just not sure.
And the THIRD unknown here is the historical CONTEXT for David’s writing these psalms. Some scholars will point out David’s allusion to God’s “rebuking” and “discipline” in v1 of Psalm 6 and therefore categorize it as a “penitential psalm”; they speculate that David may have written it after his affair with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah. But I’D like to point out that David never actually expresses any PENITENCE here; we hear no direct mention of David’s SIN, no prayer of CONFESSION, and no request for absolution here.
David’s prayer sounds a lot more to ME like the prayer of the RIGHTEOUS sufferer JOB, who asked God: ““Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O Watcher of mankind? Why have You made me Your target?” (7:20)
But while we may not know precisely WHY it was written, to WHOM it was written, or how this song was to be sung, we DO know 4 even more important truths that it teaches us:
#1 - When the Lord afflicts us, we pray for God’s RELENTING. (6:1-3; 13:1)
Like DAVID, we’ll spend the MAJORITY of our time on this point.
David may be experiencing affliction on EVERY side, but by far the most difficult affliction for him to understand, and the most painful affliction for him to ENDURE, is the LORD’S affliction. That’s why he begins BOTH these psalms by going STRAIGHT to the source, of his most unthinkable, unBEARable pain:
“O LORD, rebuke me not… O LORD, how long…?” (6:1; 13:1)
And before returning to what David DOES with all his grief and anguish, let’s first note four things he DOESN’T do:
For starters, David doesn’t DESIRE God’s affliction; he doesn’t WELCOME it. Now, that might sound ridiculous at first to even suggest, but think about it with me for just a minute: Don’t you know people who LOVE to play the martyr? Who NEED something to complain about to their therapist? People for whom misery has become SUCH a part of their identity that they wouldn’t even know who they ARE anymore WITHOUT it?
The Eeyores of the world. Who could strike GOLD and complain their hands hurt from the vibration of the pickaxe. Who could win the LOTTERY and despair over how to SPEND it all.
David says: “Not me; I didn’t ASK for this.” We should note that there’s nothing inherently GODLY about being GLOOMY. That JOY is a fruit of the Spirit, and the Bible doesn’t ROMANTICIZE sorrow; Proverbs 15:15 acknowledges that: “All the days of the afflicted are evil,
but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast.”
And it’s okay to WANT the FEAST, to ASK God for it, like the apostle PAUL praying, for the church in Rome: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy”! THAT is a godly prayer.
Second, while David doesn’t DESIRE God’s affliction, he also doesn’t DENY it. You probably also know folks who desire and EXPECT God’s BLESSING so much that they refuse to even RECOGNIZE God’s hardship when it comes their way. They’re in DENIAL. So they either WHITEWASH it - they try and SPIN it and paint a big HAPPY face over their suffering instead: “You know, this diagnosis, this divorce, this demotion… it’s REALLY a blessing in DISGUISE. Now I’ll have more time for my crocheting, while I’m sitting for 8-hour chemo treatments without a job or a family to rush home to.” They can’t bring themselves to admit, “Actually, this really… STINKS!” (See, I DON’T struggle with “denial”, so when I’m not in the pulpit, I tend to use more colorful language for MY hardships. But the folks who are stuck here would do WELL to at LEAST admit: “This STINKS. This is AWFUL, God.”
David does; it’s BIBLICAL: “I’m LANGUISHING” over here, God… “My soul is greatly troubled… I am WEARY with my MOANING”.
But the DENIERS either whitewash their pain OR they REATTRIBUTE it. “If I can’t deny the suffering, then I guess I’ll deny its SOURCE,” where my suffering is COMING from. You know people like this too, don’t you; BELIEVERS, who rightfully give God all the credit and praise when things are going WELL in their lives, but the minute things take a turn for the worse, it’s like they don’t even have a CATEGORY in their THEOLOGY for a good God who might allow suffering for reasons UNKNOWN to us. So all of a sudden SATAN has taken a really keen interest in their lives.
Now, look - I know Satan is real, and he’s our “adversary… prowling around like a lion, seeking someone to devour.” But can I just remind you that UNLIKE God, Satan is NOT omnipresent. He devours one at a time. And there are 8 billion people on the planet; just how important do you think you ARE?
And even if Satan (or some other demonic force) WAS behind your suffering, we know that ultimately GOD holds the LEASH. Satan had to ask God’s PERMISSION to test Job (1:11-12), to sift Peter like wheat (Lk 22:31), to deceive King Ahab with lies (1 Kgs 22:19-22). God’s WORD doesn’t mince words about God’s agency in our suffering, so why should we?
Amos 3:6 rhetorically asks “Does disaster come upon a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
Likewise Lamentations 3:38 “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?”
Ecclesiastes 7:14 says, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other”.
God HIMSELF declares in Isaiah 45:7 - “ I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.”
Not Satan. Not FATE. Not “the universe” - we Christians shouldn’t sound like PAGANS. In trying to avoid the problem of EVIL, we’ve re-created the problem of POLYTHEISM. There’s YAHWEH, who presides over the good, and SATAN or Karma or “LIFE” that presides over the BAD.
God says, “I don’t THINK so.” He says, “no purpose of [MINE] can be thwarted”, Job 42:2.
God says, “‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’” Isaiah 46:10.
God says, “[I] work all things according to the counsel of [my] will”. Don’t DENY me my agency.
David doesn’t desire suffering, he doesn’t DENY his suffering (OR its true source)... but THIRDLY, David doesn’t DESPISE God’s affliction. To “despise” is to “regard with contempt… or disdain; to scorn”.
NOW I can PREACH to somebody this morning! Cuz most of us aren’t EEYORES, so perpetually downcast that we WELCOME sorrow. But most of us aren’t TED LASSOs either, SpongeBobs, Leslie Knopes - so hopelessly optimistic and peppy positive that we have to live in DENIAL when troubles DO come our way.
No, MOST of us are just REALISTS - who WANT God’s blessings, but we’re honest enough to point out and CRY out when God sends us his AFFLICTION instead; we let him know that WE DON’T LIKE IT!
And David’s example here shows us: that’s OKAY. We don’t have to LIKE our suffering - although, the Bible does invite us to “Count it all joy… when [we] meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” (Jam 1:2-3); God DOES invite us to “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom 5:3-5). So IDEALLY we wouldn’t settle for just not DESPISING affliction; we’d seek to actually find JOY in it. Not morbidly seeking it OUT like the EEYORES, but rather, learning to accept suffering for what it IS: the INSTRUMENT - maybe it’s the scalpel; it doesn’t FEEL good - but nevertheless it is the instrument of a good God who is pruning us of our pride and our self-reliance by “testing” and strengthening our faith as we are forced to lean on HIM in our weakness, to pull us through.
At least that’s how God WANTS to use the suffering He brings into our lives. What he DOESN’T want, is for us to DESPISE it, to despise HIM. Trials CAN bring us closer to God, IF we lean on him for strength; or they CAN drive us FARTHER from God, if we BLAME and DENOUNCE Him… perhaps even RE-nounce Him. To DE-nounce is “to accuse or condemn” God, which is bad enough; but to RE-nounce is to “give up; to disown”. To completely harden your HEART against God, and FORSAKE him.
Anyone else ever been THERE? My DAD left in 6th grade, and I DE-nounced God: “God- this is YOUR fault, and I HATE you for it.” Then after de-CONSTRUCTING through college and grad school, when the NEXT wave of trials came - unemployment, marital disappointments - THAT time I tried to RE-nounce God altogether - “God, I’m DONE with you.” Actually, I was done even TALKING to him by that point; so I told POLLY: “I’m DONE with God. With the IDEA of God, that is. Cuz I don’t believe… I CAN’T believe in God anymore.”
Fortunately, even when I was ready to quit on God, HE refused to quit on ME. Fortunately, as 2 Timothy 2:13 promises, even “if we are faith-LESS, [GOD] remains faith-FUL”.
Maybe that’s been YOUR story as well. Or perhaps it COULD be your story, this morning. You’ve been despising, blaming, HATING God for too long now. And this morning it’s time to HUMBLE yourself and realize that all of the “God, how COULD you?”s in your life actually run in the OPPOSITE direction.
Here’s what I mean: Somewhere along the way, we humans started believing that God actually OWES us something, LOTS of things.
We LOST our Psalm 8 outlook - “What is man, that a God like you would even be MINDFUL of us?”
We forgot that every SUNRISE is a new day that we don’t deserve - “God, how COULD you?”...
Every MEAL is a blessing that we’re not promised - “God, how COULD you?”...
Every BREATH is a GIFT that God doesn’t OWE us - “God, how COULD you?!”...
And INSTEAD, somewhere between indoor plumbing and the iPhone 15 PRO, humanity got SPOILED, and we got our “God how COULD you”s REVERSED. Such that NOW, we’ve come to EXPECT and feel ENTITLED to the blessings, while becoming perplexed and INDIGNANT at the hardships.
But it’s actually NOT a modern problem, is it? Perhaps the oldest story in the BIBLE, our earliest Hebrew manuscripts tell the story of JOB, who began his suffering well enough - “The Lord gives, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”” (1:21) - but as his pain wore ON, Job found himself asking that AGE-old question: “God- how COULD you?!”
And do you remember God’s response?
“Job- who exactly do you think you ARE?! To question ME?! Hey; I’ve got a question for YOU now: Where were YOU, when I was creating the entire UNIVERSE out of NOTHING!? Huh? Riddle me THAT! Do YOU sovereignly govern all of creation by the power of YOUR word, Job, for YOUR glory? I forget - is that YOU, Job; or is that ME?!” If you think I’m overdramatizing the point, go reread Job 38-41 for yourself; God gets a little SAUCY with him. God does not take KINDLY to being put in DOCK by mere MORTALS like us, who would be so PRESUMPTUOUS as to sit TRIAL over the almighty, infallible, incontrovertible, incomprehensible, SUPREMELY wise, good and authoritative God over ALL!
But that’s not what DAVID is doing here. David is asking God not to rebuke him here in ch6 v1; while Job actually had the audacity to rebuke GOD. It’s one thing to pray that GOD wouldn’t reprimand YOU; but it’s ANOTHER thing to dare to reprimand GOD!
Actually, it’s worth noting that David DOESN’T pray against God’s discipline outright, does he? Look closer: he asks God not to rebuke him specifically… in his ANGER… in his WRATH.
Hebrews 12 exhorts us: “do not DESPISE (KJV) the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.” (v5)
Why? Because “the Lord disciplines the one he loves…
He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” (vv6,10)
I like the way Warren Wiersbe puts it (879-80): “God’s answer to the question (“How Long?”) is this: “I will discipline you until you learn the lesson I want you to learn and are equipped for the work I want you to do… The question we should ask [then] isn’t “When will I get out of this?” but rather “What CAN I get out of this?”.”
So to RECAP: we don’t DESIRE God’s affliction, we don’t DENY God’s affliction, we don’t DESPISE God’s affliction.
But LASTLY, we don’t just have to DIGEST God’s affliction either.
To “digest” means “to bear with patience; to endure”. And of course in ONE sense, we ARE called to patiently endure suffering. But in another very real and biblical sense, God INVITES us here, in Psalms 6 and 13, to QUESTION our suffering - “How LONG, O Lord?” - even to REPUDIATE it - David prays: “Be gracious to me, O Lord… heal me… TURN, O Lord, deliver my life; save me… Consider me… answer me, light up my eyes”.
David’s not CONTENT to simply “make peace” with his suffering and passively ACCEPT it. No; he REJECTS it! He actively prays AGAINST it.
Which brings us back to main point #1 that launched all these sub-points: #1 - When the Lord afflicts, what DO we do? We PRAY for God’s RELENTING. (6:1-3; 13:1)
We don’t SUCCUMB to the sorrow.
We don’t COPE with denial.
We don’t HARDEN our hearts against God in ANGER.
But neither do we RESIGN ourselves to quietly accepting the inescapability of suffering; NO! Because we KNOW the One who “forms light and darkness… who makes well-being and calamity”; we know him PERSONALLY, like DAVID, who USES God’s PERSONAL, covenantal name “YAHWEH” 11x here, to APPEAL to him: “God - YAHWEH - please, I’m BEGGING you here: RELENT! Turn! Deliver! Spare! Save!”
I BELIEVE that you make both the light AND the darkness, so I’m asking you to make MORE of the LIGHT for me, and DESTROY the darkness I’m going through!
I BELIEVE you create both well-being AND calamity, so I’m pleading with you to WORK the well-being and CONQUER the CALAMITY!
God: would you DO it, I pray.
That’s all petition #1.
But God isn’t David’s ONLY assailant.
And with his SECOND petition now, David teaches us that (#2-) When enemies afflict us, we pray for God’s RESCUE. (6:4-5; 13:3-4)
This was an even more prominent theme last week in Psalm 5, the first of the IMPRECATORY psalms, where David actually prayed for God’s VENGEANCE against his enemies. So I’ll be much briefer on this point. But notice with me: Why WAS David crying so much in ch6, v7 that he felt like his eyes were melting? It was “Because of all my FOES”, he cries, all these “workers of EVIL”, v8. David ECHOES this in ch13 as well, v2: “How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”. He prays for God to REVIVE him, v4, “lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.”
This kind of “rescue” and “enemy” language is pretty FOREIGN to most of us today. But we need to understand and appreciate the WHO, WHAT, and WHY of God’s rescue here. Only THREE quicker sub-points this time:
For starters, from WHOM does God rescue us? I know David had human enemies chasing him throughout his life - Saul, Absalom - as do you and I. But who is our most fearsome, FORMIDABLE enemy? Same as David’s: it’s SATAN. And even though God DOES hold his leash, even though Satan DOES have to get God’s PERMISSION to sift and afflict us, even though he’s NOT omnipotent and or omnipresent, the Bible is still pretty clear: as far as ENEMIES go, Satan is no joke. So we are exhorted to “Be sober-minded; watchful… Resist him, stand firm in your faith” (1 Pet 5:8-9), to “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” (Eph 6:11)
Second, from WHAT does God rescue us?
David references at least in PASSING here in BOTH psalms - God’s deliverance from DEATH. And from what comes AFTER it: in DAVID’S case, ch6, v5: it was SHEOL.
Now, I won’t take the time for an in-depth discussion here of the OT conception of the AFTERLIFE; I did at least ONE “Ask the Pastor” episode on that years ago now; I’m sure Brian could dig out of the archives for anyone interested. Or better yet: just look up “Sheol” on GotQuestions.org. But here’s the CLIFF’S notes version: Sheol was the “place of the dead” where EVERYONE - believers and unbelievers ALIKE - went before Christ. There are some passages in the OT that seem to indicate perhaps there were better and worse NEIGHBORHOODS, if you will, that one could be assigned to in Sheol. But it’s never depicted as a particularly pleasant place for ANYONE. That’s why even a BELIEVER, like DAVID here, clearly wanted to AVOID death and Sheol.
Thirdly, FOR WHAT does God rescue us? For HIS OWN glory and PRAISE. That is WHY David asks God to rescue him here: he prays in v4, “save me for the sake of your steadfast love”, God; that my life might be a living TESTIMONY to YOUR unfailing love and mercy. David’s not even worried so much about the gloom & doom of Sheol, as he is about the prospect of not being able to REMEMBER God through his PRAISE, v5.
THAT is why God rescues us, Church; why he SUSTAINS us here on earth and why he PUT us here in the FIRST place: to bring him GLORY and PRAISE. In our JOYS… and even in our SORROWS. The DARKER the valley, the more GLORY God gets when we PRAISE him through it ANYWAY.
And may we NEVER forget: God has already RESCUED us from our greatest enemies of ALL: Sin and Satan; Hell and Death.
Hebrews 2 proclaims the good news of the GOSPEL, that “Through his death [Jesus] destroyed the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and he RESCUED all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (Heb 2:14-15)
Such that NOW, if we are UNITED with Christ by FAITH in HIS death and resurrection, we can confidently declare: ““O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your STING? The sting of death is sin… But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15:55-57)
All to the praise of HIS glorious name - Hallelujah!
#3- When our own HEARTS afflict us, we pray for God’s RELIEF. (6:6-7; 13:2)
David says: “When I’m under attack from enemies AROUND me… and from GOD ABOVE me… sometimes it feels like the only place left for me to turn is INWARD.” When it feels like GOD has “forgotten” me; like He’s “hiding his FACE from me, I turn INWARD instead.
But David says, “Guess what: I’ve found that turning INWARD isn’t any BETTER!” When I “take counsel in my soul”, when I listen to the advice of the surrounding culture, that tells me to “follow my heart” and “trust my feelings”, guess what I FEEL?
“LANGUISHING… greatly TROUBLED… I feel weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.”
David says: “I’m afflicted from WITHOUT, and I’m afflicted from WITHIN.”
You know, FEELINGS are a tricky thing, aren’t they? They’re kinda like POLITICIANS - they’re really IMPORTANT… and they DO tell you SOMETHING… but you can’t always TRUST them, can you? (That was an ELECTION year joke for ya. Buckle up: I got 5 more MONTHS of those coming your way.)
But feelings are kinda LIKE that. Speaking of politics, a wise man once said, “Facts don’t CARE about your feelings.” And sometimes you and I need to CONFRONT our feelings with the FACTS of God’s word.
*When our FEELINGS tell us God has FORGOTTEN us, the fact is God promises: ““Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even SHE may forget,
yet I will not forget you.” (Isa 49:15)
*When our FEELINGS tell us God has ABANDONED us, the fact is God promised “I will NEVER leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5).
*When our FEELINGS tell us we are HOPELESS, WORTHLESS, that NO ONE could ever love someone like us, we remember the FACTS of God’s word: “I formed you… I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine… you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you.” (Isa 43:1, 4)
Church: when our fickle feelings AFFLICT us, we preach the firm facts of God’s word to our hearts. 1 John 3:20 reminds us that “whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart”.
So we preach HIS word to our hearts. But we don’t just talk to ourselves, even if it IS God’s word we’re speaking; we also need to get OUT of that echo chamber, and quit the SELF-talk, and take our hurting hearts directly to HIM! He INVITES us too; that is yet another of God’s glorious promises: that we can “cast all our cares on him, because he cares for US.” (1 Pet 5:7
Sometimes we don’t even have the WORDS for it; that’s okay. Charles Spurgeon called our TEARS “liquid prayers”. Don’t you LOVE that?
And Psalm 56:8 promises that God HEARS those “liquid prayers”, he COLLECTS those tears, every single one of them, in his “bottle”, BECAUSE he cares for us.
So we BRING our cares to the One who can actually BRING us relief. The One who PROMISES to:
Ps 34:18 “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And he saves the crushed in spirit.”
Ps 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.”
And ONE day, Rev 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”.
But UNTIL that day, even when God doesn’t bring the relief IMMEDIATELY - cuz I don’t find THAT promise anywhere in Scripture - even when the relief is less like mainlining morphine and MORE like a REALLY slow-release ADVIL, that CLAIMS to work for up to 8 hrs, but sometimes feels like it TAKES 8 hrs to KICK IN - God never promised to do it in OUR timing, did He?
But even STILL… WHAT? What are we to do while we AWAIT God’s relief… his RESCUE… his RELENTING?
In a word, we TRUST. We trust God’s promises. That he IS still listening, that he DOES still care, and BECAUSE God hears & cares, we trust Him - #4 - to RESPOND. (6:6-7; 13:5-6)
Prayer #4 is a prayer of PRAISE. Look at how David ends BOTH these psalms, these otherwise, to this point, HEART-wrenching, GUT-wrenching psalms. But here’s how he ends them:
Ch6: “the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.”
Similarly, but even MORE praise-filled now, despite an even more DESPAIRING tone to this point, here’s how Psalm 13 ends: “But [David says; Don’t you LOVE the “BUTS” of Scripture?!] 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.”
There it is once AGAIN: the Bible’s reminder that our present hope of God’s future deliverance is rooted in his PAST faithfulness. I’ll repeat that: we have a PRESENT HOPE, a reason to believe and be hopeful TODAY (“I will SING to the Lord”, David says, TODAY)... in anticipation of God’s FUTURE deliverance (“my heart SHALL rejoice in his salvation”; maybe not TODAY, maybe not tomorrow; but God I TRUST you to come through… WHY?) that hope is ROOTED in God’s PAST faithfulness (David says: “because he has dealt - PAST tense - bountifully with me.”).
We look BACK to our yesterdays, to draw hope for our TOMORROWS, which we can ACCESS even TODAY.
“He's never let me down
He's faithful through generations
So why would He fail now?
He won't.”
And how do we KNOW? I mean REALLY know, that God WILL relent, that he WILL rescue, he WILL relieve, will RESPOND?
Romans 8:32 answers this way: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
If God didn’t spare his own SON…
Friends: JESUS is the greater SUFFERER foreshadowed here in Psalms 6 & 13.
The One who cried out “How LONG, O Lord”, will you hide your FACE from me, as I die in AGONY on this cross, abandoned and rejected. And yet God DIDN’T relent; Jesus drank the FULL CUP of God’s righteous WRATH against sin, for us.
Jesus faced the enemies that we COULDN’T - Sin, Hell and Death - so that we wouldn’t HAVE to; in order to RESCUE us.
Jesus was afflicted with inner turmoil, the likes of which you and I will NEVER know - he literally sweat drops of BLOOD in the Garden of Gethsemane - PLEADING with God: “My Father… PLEASE let this cup [the cup OF your wrath, let it] pass from me”. And yet God did NOT bring him relief. WHY??
God turned his back on Jesus on the cross, so he would NEVER have to turn his back on you and me, in our sin, ever again. God closed his ear to JESUS’s prayer so that He would NEVER have to close his ears to OUR prayers. God cut JESUS off from the land of the LIVING so that you and I don’t HAVE to be now; so we CAN be “delivered” from the “sleep of DEATH”.
We get God’s relenting, his relief, his response, his RESCUE because Jesus DIDN’T. Because he suffered in our PLACE.
God doesn’t promise us a life free of suffering here and now, no matter HOW righteous we strive to live. But he does promise us an ETERNITY free of suffering, in the life to COME, not because of how righteous WE are, but because of how righteous JESUS was; and because of HIS steadfast love for us.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer.”
Let’s pray…