A SLEEPLESS
CONSCIENCE
TEXT: Psalm 6:1-10
Psalms 6:1-10 KJV To the chief Musician on Neginoth upon
Sheminith, A Psalm of David. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither
chasten me in thy hot displeasure. [2]
Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for
my bones are vexed. [3] My soul is also sore
vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long? [4]
Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies' sake. [5] For in death there is no
remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? [6] I am weary with my groaning; all the night
make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. [7] Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it
waxeth old because of all mine enemies. [8]
Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; for the LORD hath heard the
voice of my weeping. [9]
The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my
prayer. [10] Let all mine enemies be
ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly.
I.
INTRODUCTION—THE
SLEEP INDUSTRY
-Time Magazine did an article in January 2013 on the
sleep industry. The article was
entitled, “The Sleep Industry: Why We’re
Paying Big Bucks for Something That’s Free.”
Here are some of the snippets of the article:
·
Sleep is one of
life’s great free pleasures.
·
Spending related to
sleep has increased 8.8% annually since 2008, reaching about $32 billion in 2012.
·
Last year (2012), 73% of American Internet users went online to research health information, and 43%
looked specifically for sleep remedies.
·
According to the National Sleep Foundation, only 56% of Americans say they get a “good night’s
sleep” on a typical work or school night.
·
Recent sleep studies
have linked insufficient sleep to a host of problems including hypertension, depression, anxiety, diabetes,
improper immune functioning, forgetfulness, clumsiness, jumpiness and even things
like teen sports injuries.
·
To beat the lack of
sleep, young adults are largely responsible for supercharged sales of energy
drinks such as Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy, Rockstar and Monster. In 2012, sales of energy drinks grew 19%.
(The annual number of ER visits due to energy-drink consumption doubled over the past four years as well.)
·
Product marketers
constantly launch new sleep remedies that include sleep-monitoring devices,
aromatherapy, teas, supplements, botanicals, balms, bath salts and
over-the-counter sedatives in new formulations like tongue strips.
·
While overall sales
of mattresses have been sluggish throughout the recession era, the opposite is
true of more expensive specialty mattresses. Sales of high-end brands like Tempur-Pedic and Select Comfort have skyrocketed over the past few years.
-When you tack on the pharmaceutical industry efforts to
get physicians to prescribe medicines to help people go to sleep, more money is
to be made.
-Most all of us at some point have had difficulty
sleeping for whatever reason. Sometimes
it has been the pressures of life, the challenges of the tasks facing us the
next day, or some emotional trial that robbed sleep from our eyes. I also have to think that there have been
times that we have been in the same condition that David mentions in Psalm 6:6. He says that his tears have robbed him from
sleeping. He has a conscience that will
not go to sleep. There is a reason that
his conscience cannot allow him to sleep—unconfessed sin.
II.
THE
BACKGROUND OF PSALM 6
A.
What
Sin Does to Us
-This psalm is about one of the most important things
that a saint can do—the confession of sin and repent of it.
-As you read through this particular psalm, it begins
with an attitude of allowing the heart to listen and to hear the voice of God
as it speaks to the conscience.
-Sin is a great hindrance to our walk with the Lord. The only remedy for sin is to walk in the
constant power of the Holy Ghost and allow the Spirit to guide you.
·
Sin breaks
fellowship with God.
·
Sin hinders the work
of the Holy Ghost.
·
Sin opens us up to
the disciplining hand of God.
·
Sin declares a
contention against God in the soul of a man.
·
Sin has fruit that
only the Spirit of the Lord can hinder its growth.
·
Sin has a power to
cause men to lean toward the world and its enticements.
·
Sin gives great
strength to carnality and puts a soul in jeopardy.
-Those who realize that the only hope they have is the
dependence on the Lord will go a long way toward spiritual success.
B.
Historical
Background
-The historical background of this psalm is hard to
pin-point in the life of David. What we
do know is that David wrote Psalms 3-41 and that this one came at some point in
his life when he was burdened by the impact that sin had upon him.
-This psalm is the first of what is called a penitential
psalm. This means that it is one that
expresses a need for God to remove the sin that has come in. It is a psalm marked by confession of sin and
then a request for mercy and forgiveness.
-There are a total of seven penitential psalms in the
book of Psalms. Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51,
102, 130, and 143 are their locations.
The most famous of all of these is Psalm 51 where David cries out in
pain for his breach against God with the sin he committed with Bathsheba.
-Just as Psalm 6 has words that you immediately see as
those of contrition the others have similar aspects to them also. Just the phrases give way to an understanding
of the anguish in the soul of a man:
·
32:3—My bones waxed old. .
. Roaring through the night.
·
32:4—My moisture has
turned into the drought of summer.
·
38:2—Arrows stick fast in
me. . .
·
38:3—There is no soundness
in my flesh. . .
·
38:5—My wounds stink and
are corrupt because of my foolishness.
·
38:7—Filled with a
loathsome disease. . .
·
38:8—I am feeble and sore
broken. . .
·
38:11—My friends stand
aloof from my sore. . .
·
102:3—My days are consumed
like smoke. . .
·
102:9—I have eaten ashes
like bread and mingled my drink with weeping. . .
·
143:3—The enemy hath
persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground. . .
·
143:4—My spirit
overwhelmed within me. . . my heart is desolate. . .
-There are some who might say that this is depressing
language to hear but the reality is that every single one of these Psalms all
end on a note of faith in God who has the ability to remove the guilt that sin
has brought to their lives.
-That is one of the devil’s nasty secrets that he wants
to keep from every child of God. He
wants us to think that there is no remedy and that once we have gotten involved
with some hideous sin that we cannot recover.
That is nothing more than one of his devices that he uses so
effectively!
III.
PSALM
6—TWO DIRECTIONS
-I am going to borrow an outline from Steven Lawson’s
fine preaching commentary on the Psalms.
He breaks Psalm 6 in two. The
first seven verses is the problem of unconfessed sin and the last 3 verses is
the power of confessed sin.
A.
Psalm
6:1-7—The Problem of Unconfessed Sin
Psalms 6:1-7 KJV To the chief Musician on Neginoth upon
Sheminith, A Psalm of David. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither
chasten me in thy hot displeasure. [2]
Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones
are vexed. [3] My soul is also sore
vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long? [4]
Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies' sake. [5] For in death there is no remembrance of thee:
in the grave who shall give thee thanks?
[6] I am weary with my groaning; all the night
make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. [7] Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it
waxeth old because of all mine enemies.
-Even just a quick look at this passage allows us to see
that there are some things that we lose when we get involved in the low-life of
sinful activities.
6:1—A loss of divine
pleasure. . . David cries out because of his awareness that God is not
pleased with the direction of his life.
Rebuke, anger, and chasten are strong words and yet that is how David
described the conditions he was living under.
-There are times that life just seems to come at us like
a torpedo. It seems as if there are no
breaks, no favor, no opportunities, almost as if everything has turned against
us.
·
Stability erodes
away.
·
Divorce.
·
Wayward
children.
·
Marriages under
pressure.
·
Dire financial
straits.
·
Unrelenting job
stress.
-Some may even feel like that they have greatly sinned
against God because of some of the matters that are taking place. You are more prone to this belief if you have
a sharp conscience and are alert to the things of the Word. Be careful that you don’t allow the devil to
buttonhole you into believing that you have some deadly sin that God is
disciplining you over.
-Sometimes life is just hard! In fact, Paul makes reference to this in
Romans:
Romans 5:3-5 ESV More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance, [4] and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, [5] and hope does not put us to shame,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
has been given to us.
-BUT it is imperative that when
things seem to be moving in the wrong direction that we fall to our knees and
plead with the Lord and ask Him if there is a work in our lives that He is
trying to sort out for His own glory.
Could it be that there has been some sinful patterns that have slipped
in and now the hand of discipline is moving against us?
-To all who are honest in their walk with God, there is a
sense of knowing deep down when we are not walking in the fellowship with the
Lord that He has intended for us. If we
choose self-deception, we will continue to stay in that place of God’s
displeasure.
-The ultimate goal of every man is to be saved!
6:2—A loss of physical
strength. . . I am weak. . . heal me. . . my bones are vexed.
-He gives an expression that he is weak. The NIV notes it this way. . . I am faint. . . in 6:6 he expresses it. . . I am worn out from
groaning. . . It is in times like these that we can feel like that all of the
energy we have for life has escaped us.
·
Too tired to get out
of bed and get dressed for the day.
·
Too worn out to get
in the car and even drive to work.
·
Too weary to clean
the house.
·
Too exhausted to
cook for the children.
·
Too depressed to go
to church.
·
Too burdened to read
the Bible.
·
To sluggish to even
bend our knees in prayer.
-That is the sort of thing that David is saying about his
life.
-He also cries out that his bones are in agony. This is a poetic way to describe the inner
turmoil that is taking place.
-I have worked in healthcare long enough to know that our
bodies wear out and with age they give way to weakness. But there is a thought that most of us do not
want to entertain and yet is very biblical in its view. There are times that sickness comes on us
because of the judgment of God. The
Bible is loaded with examples of this:
·
Miriam was smitten
with leprosy because she spoke against Moses.
·
The Israelites were
bitten by serpents and were sick and some died because of their rebellion.
·
Jeroboam reached out
his hand in opposition to the altar and God withered his hand.
·
Uzziah smitten with
leprosy because he stepped out of his spiritual boundaries.
·
The man who was in
sin in 1 Corinthians 5 had his health stricken so he would turn from the sin.
·
Some Corinthians
were sick and even died because they abused communion.
-Even the Scripture that we take encouragement from
sometimes in James 5 gives a hint that some
sickness can be linked to sin:
James 5:14-15 KJV Is any sick among you? let him call for the
elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord: [15] And the prayer of faith
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins,
they shall be forgiven him.
-There is no way to say that all sickness is because of
sin but I can be certain of one thing. . . There
are some who have physical sickness because of their sin. It is crucial for us to make sure that
our lives do not fall into the category.
6:3—A loss of peace of
mind. . . My soul is vexed, he says.
-You can say it in this way. . . I am about to lose my
mind! That is where David was and it was
to such a degree that he asked the question, “How long?”
-You will find this phrase 61 times in the KJV and it is
specifically in the Psalms 18 times. It
is the cry of a man who is longing for relief.
-All of the “how longs” help us to learn that all of
God’s delays are maturing times. He is
using it either to mature the time such as in Psalm 37 so that His purpose
prevails or He is using it to mature the man as in Psalm 119:67 (Before I was
afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word).
-Here is where you can began to see the hints of God’s
greatness when He has the ability to use sin for His own benefit in the
salvation of man! That ought to stir
something in our heart to realize that even on our bad days, God is working due
diligence to save us from this untoward generation!
6:4—A loss of spiritual
fellowship. . . Return, O Lord, deliver my soul. . .
-David is at that pleading point of longing for the Lord
to work in him once more!
-You can pick up on that cry when you here David seeking
for the Lord to “return to me” and then “deliver me. . . save me.”
-There is an admission that his prayer has been hindered
because of his unconfessed sin. To a
degree all of us who are honest enough to admit it have found that there have
been times when our own sin has blocked the ears of God.
-I realize that some who are in Pentecostal circles are
very uncomfortable with this idea of having to battle with sin even after they
have received the wonderful gift of the Holy Ghost. But consider with me the fact that jealousy,
envy, pride, arrogance, gossip, lying, corrupt words out of our mouths, railing
accusations, arguments, and so forth are all matters that we have to repent
of. These kinds of activities hinder the
flow of the Spirit in our lives and one of the devices of the devil is minimize
the fact that we may be holding on to these things.
-Turn away from these things so that your prayers may be
absolutely productive! David wanted the
Lord to put him back into a place of sweet fellowship again and to restore
him. He longed to be free from the
physical, emotional, and spiritual pain he was experiencing.
6:5—A loss of physical
health. . . Deliver me from death. . . Deliver me from the grave. . .
-David realized that his sin was really in the process of
destroying his life! If things did not
turn around soon, he was going to die.
He was in the mode of reasoning with the Lord in his prayer.
-Do you ever reason with the Lord in prayer? There are hints of this in Scripture where
the Lord urges men to reason with him.
Isaiah 1:18 KJV Come now, and let us reason together, saith
the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
·
Isaiah 41:21—Bring forth
your strong reasons. . .
·
Isaiah 43:26—Let us plead
together. . . that you may be justified. . .
·
Job 40:7-8—I will demand
of thee. . . and declare thou unto me. . .
-There is something of substance to this when we can talk
out the greatest matters of the soul with the Lord!
-David further concluded that the only time that praise
can be uttered in a person’s life is when they are still alive. No public praise or service is offered to God
after a person has gone the way of the grave.
(NOTE: Those who persist in unconfessed sin may be
subject to premature death; Acts 5:1-11; James 5:20; 1 John 5:17.)
6:6—A loss of physical
sleep. . . Weary with groaning. . . My bed is swimming in tears. . .
-David gives us the picture of man who is fighting with
weariness and fatigue and yet he still cannot sleep. He tosses and turns but all of that is
compounded by his tears. His eyes were
so swollen he could not close them in sleep.
-David’s mind turns to his enemies whom God is using to
discipline him. It is highly unlikely that
they even had a thought of David but his mind was on them as God was using it
as a threshing floor of the soul.
(THIS IS JUST EXTRA
THAT I DUG OUT WHILE WORKING ON THIS:
The marks of a contrite spirit is found when we look at Psalm 6. The Sorrow for Sin (vv. 3, 6 , 7); The
Humiliation of Sin (vv. 2, 4); The Hatred of Sin (v. 8).)
B.
Psalm
6:8-10—The Power of Confessed Sin
Psalms 6:8-10 KJV Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity;
for the LORD hath heard the voice of my weeping. [9] The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD
will receive my prayer. [10]
Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be
ashamed suddenly.
-Earlier we mentioned that this is a psalm going in two
directions and now you see the second part of it. Repentance put a heaviness on the soul but
the change starts in verse 8. It takes
place because of the weeping and turning away from sin in the first seven verses.
-This psalm is for those who scarcely have the heart to
pray and it brings them within sight of victory.
1.
Aron
Ralston—127 Hours
-My brother loaned me a book sometime back and I finally
got around to reading it. It is the
story of Aron Ralston who was trapped in a canyon and had to resort to drastic
means to save his own life.
Trapped Hiker
Had One Way Out -- With His Knife
Aron Ralston amputated his right arm five days after a boulder had pinned it.
May 03, 2003—By Stephanie
Simon and J. Michael Kennedy—Times Staff Writers
ASPEN, Colo. --
His right arm was pinned beneath an 800-pound boulder. His water bottle was
empty. It did not seem likely that a rescue crew could ever spot him in the
narrow slit of Blue John Canyon, in the wilds of southeast Utah.
So, after five days, Aron
Ralston took out his pocketknife and amputated his arm below the elbow. Then he
rigged anchors into the cliff, fixed a rope and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon
floor. Bleeding heavily through a makeshift tourniquet, Ralston began to hike.
He had walked about five
miles when a helicopter search team spotted him Thursday afternoon on a trail
through Canyonlands National Park, drained and dehydrated -- but still pushing
forward.
"That's true grit,"
park ranger Glenn Sherrill said.
On Friday, Ralston was
recovering from surgery at a Colorado hospital. And his friends were predicting
he would return to the mountain wilderness the first chance he gets.
"I expect him to be out
there, doing everything he ever did," nature photographer John Fielder
said.
Ralston, 27, is an audacious
mountaineer who has climbed 59 of the highest peaks in Colorado. A story this
spring in his hometown paper, the Aspen Times, described him climbing alone, in
midwinter, in the dead of night, without cell phone, radio, beacon or rope. A
mechanical engineer by training, an explorer in spirit, Ralston relishes
pushing his body over ice-slick cliffs. He delights in standing alone at a
14,000-foot summit as lightning crashes around him, as gray wolves howl from
distant ledges.
The adventure that ended with
his self-amputation was supposed to have been a modest one: a bike ride up a
canyon, then a hike down through the sculpted sandstone bluffs on a bright
spring Saturday. The round trip would take perhaps eight hours. Ralston thought
so little of it, he didn't bother to give his roommates a detailed itinerary,
as was his practice on mountain climbs.
He completed the ride without
incident and left his bike at the top, planning to drive up in his truck later
to retrieve it. On the way down, he used rock-climbing equipment to navigate
the narrow passages of Blue John Canyon -- which in places is just 3 feet wide.
After an hour or two, he came to a giant boulder wedged in the canyon,
according to Sherrill, the park ranger.
Ralston scrambled over the
boulder and was lowering himself down when it shifted, pinning his arm. He
managed to maneuver his feet so that he was standing upright. But he could not
free himself.
Authorities said he used his
climbing gear to rig a webbed sling so he could try to push the rock away with
his feet. It was too heavy.
He stood there, trapped, for
five days, during which temperatures dropped to 30 degrees.
On Tuesday, he ran out of
water. On Thursday, he "realized that his survival required drastic
action," according to a statement by the sheriff's office in Emery County,
Utah. He used his pocketknife to free himself the only way he could, by cutting
off part of his arm. Though such brutal surgery is hard to imagine, others in
desperate straits have done it, managing to sever the muscles and tendons that
attach limbs to joints with a modest jackknife.
It is unclear whether Ralston
hacked through his bone or whether the bone had been crushed by the boulder. Once he had completed the job, he used his
first-aid kit to tie a tourniquet around his bicep. Then he rappelled down the
cliff -- and started walking. "His
instinct for survival was great," Fielder said.
Hours later, Ralston met two
hikers in Horseshoe Canyon. They gave him water and walked with him until they
could flag down a helicopter from the Utah Department of Public Safety.
Ralston's co-workers had alerted the mountain rescue crews just that morning
that he had not shown up for work all week.
"He was obviously in
major distress, having cut his own arm off, but he was still ambulatory,"
park ranger Jim Blazik said.
Ralston remained conscious
through the brief helicopter ride to Allen Memorial Hospital in Moab, Utah, and
walked into the emergency room on his own. He was later flown to St. Mary's
Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo. Rescuers
returned to the canyon later to try to retrieve the amputated limb; they saw
it, but couldn't budge the boulder. "It's
a phenomenal story, but Aron is a phenomenal person," said Tim Mutrie, the
Aspen reporter who profiled Ralston.
Ralston underwent surgery
Thursday night and is in serious condition in the intensive care unit. His
"spirits are high and he anxiously looks forward to returning to his love
of the outdoors," his mother, Donna Ralston, said in a statement Friday.
Though relieved that Ralston
survived, Blazik chided him for hiking through such rugged, remote terrain
alone and without leaving a detailed itinerary with friends. "As far as
I'm concerned, that was a foolish act, very, very unwisely done," Blazik
said, emphasizing that he was not speaking for the park service.
Ralston is accustomed to such
criticism.
He has conquered all 59 of
the Colorado peaks he counts as "Fourteeners," summits of at least
14,000 feet, with names such as Challenger Point and Mount Massive. (Some
climbers, using a different ranking method, count only 54 Fourteeners.)
Five years ago he set out to
make history by climbing those summits again -- this time alone, in wintertime. Veteran climbers have watched with a blend of
awe and alarm as he has methodically scrambled up one after another, risking
frostbite and worse as he pushes to the top, then signs his name triumphantly
in the summit log. Because the risk of avalanche is greatest when the sun is
out, he often climbs after midnight. Only
three climbers have ever reached the summit of every Fourteener in Colorado.
None has done it solo. Ralston has 14 more to go.
Mutrie, who considers Ralston
a friend, says the climber finds joy in tackling monster peaks without the
oxygen canisters, satellite-guided tracking systems and communication gear that
many mountaineers routinely pack. Stripped down to the bare essentials, Ralston
pits himself against nature. "For him, it clarifies the goal," Mutrie
said.
An avalanche in February
nearly buried Ralston alive as he skied backcountry with two friends; the
experience sobered, but did not stop, him. Described by friends as soft-spoken
and easygoing off the mountains, Ralston focused on his climbing goals with an
intensity few could rival.
"He was trying to be one
of the top mountaineers," said Joe Wheadon, who shares a rented house with
Ralston in Aspen. "That was what he wanted to do."
Ralston graduated from
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a double major in French and
mechanical engineering and a minor in performance piano. According to Mutrie's story, he worked for
several years designing "clean rooms" for microchip production. When
his employer, Intel, wouldn't give him three weeks off to climb Mt. McKinley,
he quit.
"I could live out of my
truck," he told Mutrie. "That's kind of an attractive lifestyle to
me, actually."
Instead, Ralston moved to
Aspen, took a job in a mountaineering store and packed his truck for the
wilderness every chance he got. Alone
with the elements, testing his strength and his savvy, pushing himself past
every limit he thought he had, he thrives.
"To challenge yourself,
to survive in what can often be hostile conditions -- it's a very primal thing
that people like Aron do," his friend Fielder said. "It's all unnecessary," Ralston
told Mutrie, "but at the same time it's entirely necessary for me. I
wouldn't lead a happy life doing anything other than what I'm doing. This is my
ultimate contribution, whether anybody likes it or not. It's my
art."
-Sometimes you have to resort to what others may consider
drastic means just for your own survival.
That is what Aron Ralston found himself being forced to do.
2.
The
Power of Confessed Sin
-But when we look to the last three verses of Psalm 6 we
find that David puts his enemies in one place and he puts the Lord in another
place.
-His enemies:
·
Depart from me. . .
·
You workers of
iniquity. . .
·
Let my enemies be
ashamed at their treatment of me. . .
·
Let my enemies be
vexed with suffering as I have suffered. . .
-His Lord:
·
He heard the voice
of my weeping. . .
·
He heard my
supplication. . . (my pleading, my reasoning, my groaning)
·
He will receive my
prayer. . .
IV.
CONCLUSION—POWER
OVER SIN
-God grants all power over sin and it comes from two
directions:
·
The empowering work
of His Spirit and His Word
·
The work of
repentance and confession on the part of the saint.
-It can restore hope and faith!
Philip Harrelson
July 6, 2014
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