Psalms 13:1-6 KJV To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy
face from me? [2] How long shall I take
counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine
enemy be exalted over me? [3]
Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I
sleep the sleep of death; [4]
Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that
trouble me rejoice when I am moved. [5]
But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy
salvation. [6] I will sing unto the
LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.
I.
INTRODUCTION—THE PSALMS OF COMFORT
The fall of 1996 was not a kind time during the life of the
Bridge City UPC. Brother Harrell told me
at least ten years after that time that everywhere he looked in that church
that people were under some of the greatest strains of life that he had ever
seen. He never has told me that problems
that they faced during that time and if the truth be told, I would love to know
what the challenges were. But knowing
life as I have come to know it, I have a feeling that whether it was 1996 or
2013 or even the ‘80’s, life sometimes can punch you when you least expect
it.
Brother Harrell told me that beginning on the Sunday nights in October,
November, and some of December that he went into that pulpit with one thing on
his mind—comfort. He told me he preached
comfort from every single angle he could find in the Bible. To this there are still some of the saints in
Bridge City that can recall how much the Word helped them to keep walking!
But that was not the first time he had preached like that,
sometime in the 80’s the Bridge City UPC was going through a particularly
trying time. Brother John Harrell told
me that there had been times in his 40+ year ministry there that things were so
bad that he wouldn’t even leave town because of all the problems and troubles that
was brewing.
His messages in that series of ten were:
·
Healing In His
Wings
·
Jesus Is So
Approachable
·
The Foothill
Principle
·
You Can Face
Into the Wind
·
Branded by the
Marks of Jesus
·
Chains
·
The Storm of
“Not Yet”
·
Light Sown
·
The Father Is
With Me
·
Mysteries That
Defy Explanation
-If you are
in need of comfort and encouragement, there seems to be one place in the Bible
that fits the bill. Perhaps no other
book of the Bible pours out comfort and encouragement as does the Psalms.
A.
Light and Darkness in the Psalms
-Just to take
one small theme and pull it from the Psalms is to find great blessing. Consider what we find when we consider the
man who has to battle with darkness.
·
The Lord is my light and my salvation—27:1
·
The Lord will enlighten my darkness—18:28
·
God is a sun—84:11
·
I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed—132:17
·
The Word is a lamp to the feet and a light to the path—119:105
·
The commandment of the Lord. . . enlightens the eyes—19:8
·
Send out thy light. . . let it lead me—43:3
·
Light is sown for righteousness—97:11
·
Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness—112:4
·
He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light—37:6
·
He will keep you secretly in his pavilion—32:7
-There are a
vast number of subjects that we can seek out when we read of God’s power in the
Psalms. The great encouragement is that
having an understanding that none of the challenges that faces the saint of God
can stand against God’s plan or resources.
B.
Quotes on Psalm 13
Charles Spurgeon—Whenever you look into
David’s Psalms, you will somewhere or other see yourself. You never get into a corner, but you find
David in that corner. I think that I was
never so low that I could not find that David was lower, and I never climbed so
high that I could not find that David was up above me. (From The
Treasury of David)
Joseph Parker—This psalm begins with
winter and ends with summer; it begins with low muffled tones of sorrow and
ends with a rapture of praise.
Matthew Henry—Days of trouble must be
days of prayer.
Andrew Fuller—It is not under the
sharpest, but the longest trials, that we are most in danger of fainting. . .
When Job was accosted with evil tidings, in quick succession, he bore it with
becoming fortitude; but when he could see no end to his troubles, he sunk under
them.
II.
PSALM 13
-David got to
this place in his life. There is a
connection between Psalm 12 and Psalm 13.
In fact there is a noted intensity in Psalm 12 and by the time you get
to Psalm 13 there is a sense of desperation that pours out of David.
-In Psalm 12,
David feels as if he has been abandoned by godly men but when he gets to Psalm
13, he seems to indicate that he has been abandoned by God. Being abandoned by God is a terrible matter.
·
Jonah thought he wanted to run from God and abandon Him but he
changed his mind when he was in the belly of the fish.
·
Esau fled from God but when he carefully sought him in
repentance it was a terrible thing that he could not find God.
·
Balaam tried to abandon God by going to see Balak. He found the terrible consequences of
abandoning God.
·
Scattered all throughout Scripture come the pleadings of men,
“Don’t hide your face from us, O Lord!”
-Forgive me
for feeling this way but I take great encouragement from the fact that the man
after God’s own heart would cry out as he did in this Psalm. That should let all of us know that there
will be times in our walk with God when we will have the same feelings.
-Something to
help me remember the flow of this psalm is a helpful outline that Steven Lawson
in his commentary on the Psalms. He
divides the six verses under three headings:
·
David’s Sorrow—vv. 1-2. . . His problems put him on his
face!
·
David’s Supplication
(Prayer)—vv. 3-4. . . His prayer puts him on his knees!
·
David’s Singing—vv. 5-6. . . His praise puts him on his
feet!
A.
David’s Sorrow—Psalm 13:1-2
Psalms
13:1-2 KJV To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy
face from me? [2] How long shall I take
counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine
enemy be exalted over me?
-There are some hints that this has been a trial of sorts
that has been dragging on for an extended period of time. . . Four times he
cries out. . .
·
How long, O Lord will you forget me?
·
How long, O Lord will you hide your face from me?
·
How long, O Lord must I reason with my soul that is filled with
sorrow?
·
How long, O Lord will my enemy have power over me?
-The soul came come to a place that there is a great
period of wrestling that can settle in on us.
We all come to this place at some point.
Everyone will make
the trip to Psalm 13. All men no matter
how dedicated or how noble their service has been for the Lord will live in
this place.
-Various
circumstances of life will bring you here.
·
Family Matters will bring you to this place. Marriages will have to endure pressures of
unreasonable expectations. Trying to
work out the personality clashes will leave you will a feeling of abandonment. Children will get to be teenagers and will
become antagonistic and rebellious while they are trying to figure out their
place in life. Strain comes to the
family and we feel like we have nowhere to turn.
·
Secular Work will bring you to this place. We all have to work and there are certain
blessings that come from that work that we invest ourselves in. But then you will enter into a place where it
becomes mundane and boring. It no longer
holds the inspiration that it once did.
The rapid promotions that came early have leveled off and now that
inevitable holding pattern consumes us.
The profit margins seem to become stagnant and maintenance consumes most
of our time.
·
Church Work will get to this place. Some seem to think that because of the
nobility and power of working for the Kingdom of God that there is nothing but
long stretches of revival, inspiration, and spiritual passion marked by
occasional tussles with the devil. But
those who have the Kingdom closest to their heart soon discover that the
harvest has seasons, growth levels off, prayers become dry, and seasons of hard
plowing and sowing are our lot in life.
·
Spiritual life will get to this place. For those who have been faithfully serving
the Lord for years can find that early in their walk, many spiritual victories
took place. Now they are more spaced out
and spiritual progress seems to have greatly slowed. It is almost as if there is a deep spiritual
slump that dogs your steps. The longer
this takes place the more inward, spiritual analysis consumes us. Old mistakes and past sins are dredged up and
we wonder.
-All of these
circumstances give rise to the challenging questions of the Spirit:
·
Has God forgotten?
·
Have the blessings of God been taken away forever?
·
Where are His blessings?
·
Is God punishing me for what I did years ago?
-In
situations like this we have a tendency to think that God has abandoned us. Our emotions can get the best of us during
times like these. Furthermore there is a
deadly enemy that we have to prevail against.
-The devil is
the adversary of our souls.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones—The devil is the adversary
of our souls. He can use our
temperaments and our physical condition.
He so deals with us that we allow our temperament to control and govern
us, instead of keeping temperament where it should be kept. There is no end to the ways the devil
produces spiritual depression. We must
always bear that in mind.
B.
David’s Supplication—Psalm 13:3-4
Psalms
13:3-4 KJV Consider and hear me, O LORD my God:
lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; [4] Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against
him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
-David can
greatly help us to see the solution for this kind of situation. He cries out in prayer. Just as we all come to the place where we
feel as if we have been abandoned by God, we all have to come to a place that
prayer pours out of our soul.
-There is a
fantastic blessing that comes to the man who learns how to “pray through!”
·
Consider me (look at me)!
·
Hear me!
·
Open my eyes!
-His feelings
say that God has turned away from him. . . His faith says something totally
different! There is a huge connection
that every Spirit-filled believer needs have this shoved in his heart and
broken off!
-Prayer makes
a difference!
-If you can
ever come to the place that you began to engage prayer. . . as in getting down
on your knees kind of prayer. We need
the kind of prayer that is prolonged and seeking out the God of power—Jehovah.
-David poured
his soul out to the Lord and told Him that his enemies were mocking him. “I have prevailed against him!”
I heard a story recently that reminded me of a very similar
circumstance in my own life. Years ago
when we would spend a few weeks in the summer at my granny’s house, my papaw
and I would play checkers. We would sit
at a concrete picnic table under a huge oak tree and spend hours playing
checkers and dominoes in the late afternoons.
I can remember the first few times I played him, he would let me
win. As time went by it got to the point
that I could never beat him because of his method of playing and I can remember
a time that this point was driven home to me.
We started playing and I moved and he let me take a couple of his
pieces. He moved again and I took
another one of his pieces. But with that
loss it ended up that this one move set up every one of my pieces so that he
could jump all the way to the end line where he would be crowned as king. After that, he moved backwards and took the
majority of my men causing me to lose the game.
That was not the only time that he did that to me. It was as if he had taken one king and had
taken every one of my players. He had
learned the value of losing a checker or two as long as he was heading for king
territory.
-Can you
gather in to that and understand it from the spiritual side. We can afford to give up a few things in life
if we are going for the crown.
Furthermore, God knows what He is doing with our lives.
-You can
trust the Lord, even when it seems like the enemy may be taking piece after
piece of your life in this seeming “game of checkers.”
C.
David’s Song—Psalm 13:5-6
Psalms 13:5-6 KJV But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart
shall rejoice in thy salvation. [6]
I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.
-David moves
even beyond his prayer into a place of praise.
He can get into the place of praise because his prayer has caused him to
remember something—the salvation of the Lord!
-There are a
lot of aspects of this salvation that has come to David.
·
Salvation from sin.
·
Salvation from self.
·
Salvation from Satan.
·
Salvation from Saul.
-David is now
standing on the side of victory. It does
not matter what situation of life that you find yourself in—as the old
Mississippi Mass Choir song says, “It’s good to know Jesus! Everybody ought to know Jesus!”
-David says
that he will rejoice in his salvation.
There may be times in your life when that is all you have the
opportunity to praise God for. But we
must rejoice in our salvation!
-David ushers
one more principle in the final verse of this passage—He hath dealt bountifully
with me. This means past tense. He was looking to the blessings in the past
and found himself filled with a song.
-We can do
that! David will have to keep running
from Saul for a while longer but despite that, God has not changed. If God can bring him through many dangers,
toils, and snares in the past then there is nothing in the future that God
cannot supply the necessary resources to see us through!
III.
CONCLUSION—I’VE GOT CONFIDENCE
-While we are
making appeals to old songs, there is one more that is worth mentioning. Andrae Crouch used to sing a song sometime in
the ‘70’s called “I’ve Got Confidence, God Is Gonna See Me Through!”
-We get to
that point sometimes in our walk with God.
Nothing right now seems to be working out but there is a God who can
usher us all the way home!
Philip
Harrelson
March 16,
2013
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