Please remain standing now for the reading of God's Word. We're going to be looking at Psalm 6 this morning. Again, Psalm 6. Please listen to the reading of God's Word. To the Choir Master, with string instruments, according to the Shemineth, a Psalm of David. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. In June of 1520, Spanish control over the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was quickly unraveling. A few weeks earlier, the tension in Tenochtitlan had reached a boiling point and full rebellion against the Spanish had broken out after Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes left the city and traveled back to Veracruz to defeat the troops that the Spanish governor in Havana had deployed to arrest Cortes for insubordination. In Cortés' absence, the man he had left in charge, Pedro de Alvarado, had ordered a massacre of the Aztec nobles and priests who were participating in a pagan ceremony at the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan. The attack was brutal, resulting in many deaths and sparking a fierce uprising. After Cortes defeated the Spanish troops from Havana, he returned to Tenochtitlan to find that the fragile peace with the Aztecs had been shattered, and he immediately understood the great peril of his circumstances. With the Spanish troops besieged from within the city walls, Cortes decided that a hasty retreat was their only hope. So exactly 504 years ago today, on the fateful night of June 30, 1520, Hernán Cortés led his troops under the cover of darkness in a daring escape out of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Two things conspired against him and turned that attempted escape into a catastrophe. First, the greed of his troops significantly slowed down their movement, since not only were they traveling under heavy armor, but they were also weighed down by the gold they had stolen from the Aztec treasury. Second, on the night of June 30, 1520, there was a full moon, so their greed deprived them of agility and the bright moonlight deprived them of stealth as they moved along the causeway that connected the island city to the mainland. Having become aware of their movements, the Aztec warriors launched a fierce attack. Chaos erupted as the Spaniards fought desperately to survive. Many fell under the barrage of Aztec spears and arrows, and many more drowned in the Lake Texloco's dark waters, submerged under the unbearable burden of their stolen gold. The Daostics have removed part of the causeway that connected the Nosyitlan to the mainland. As the bodies of men and horses piled up along the shallow waters of the lake, their lifeless bodies formed a morbid bridge that, ironically, permitted Cortés and others to reach the mainland and preserve their lives. Exhausted and defeated, Cortés and those who escaped regrouped near a large cypress tree with a trunk over 10 feet in diameter and about 150 feet tall. The few remaining hours of the night became a nightmare that Cortés would never forget. The Aztecs had managed to capture scores of Spanish soldiers, and for the rest of the night, the Aztecs devoted themselves to ritualistically sacrifice every single one of them. So under the massive cypress tree and the unrelenting witness of the full moon, the air became thick with the weeping and wailing of the sacrificial victims, and Cortés, overwhelmed by the agony of his men, succumbed in despair and whipped bitterly. That tree came to be known as el árbol de la noche triste, or the tree of the night of sorrows. A tree whose trunk still stands, a silent witness to the deep sorrow that can befall the human soul. I pray none of us ever find ourselves in the shadow of that kind of tree. But King David, the primary human author of the Hebrew Psalter, not only experienced nights like the one Cortes experienced exactly 504 years ago, under the tree of the Night of Sorrows, but thankfully, He also recorded his raw sentiments in the Psalter, providing the Church in God's providence and under his guidance with a compass to guide us out of a state of deep sorrow and into the light of God's love. Psalm 6 is precisely that kind of godly compass. Now, many consider Psalm 6 to be the first of seven penitential psalms in the Psalter. In such psalms, the psalmist expresses sorrow for sin, and he pleads with God for mercy and deliverance. Think for a moment how extraordinary this is. Many people today suggest that the Christian God is either despotic or uncaring, and that Christians are self-righteous and hypocritic. However, penitential psalms, like Psalm 6, demonstrate that far from being called by the Scriptures to be self-righteous, and far from being encouraged by the Scriptures to be hypocritic, the Scriptures call us and encourage us to confess our sin and to express sorrow for it. And far from God being despotic and uncaring, the Scriptures teach us that He has compassion for His people. and that His saving work is an act of mercy and a demonstration of His love for them. This is why Psalm 6 presents a message of hope for you this morning, since it reminds you that because God is who He is, you can come to Him as you are, in the depths of sorrow, in the shame of your sin, in the agony of persecution. And not only will He not turn you away, but because of the love that is yours by virtue of your union with Christ, He will have mercy on you, and He will deliver you from the attacks of the wicked, and from the fear of uncertainty, and even from the seemingly unbearable weight of deep despair. And that's not all. God will also work in you, even painfully if necessary, to purify you, to cause you to repent from your sin, to teach you to hate your sin, and to turn away from it, and to turn in hope to Christ, that you might become more and more like Him. You see, the Psalms are not only a window into our hearts, they are the uncensored voice of the Christian soul, confessing to God our remorse, our fear, our shame, and our sorrow, and doing so with the expectation that our good Heavenly Father hears our prayers and acts for our benefit. If I could distill the message of Psalm 6 into a singular proposition, it would be this. In your distress, do not despair, but turn to God for deliverance. Again, in your distress, do not despair, but turn to God for deliverance. So the message of Psalm 6 is a message that we all need to hear this morning, for it offers us many practical lessons that will enable us to draw near to God in our time of need. Consider first the title or superscript of the psalm. We read, To the Choir Master, with string instruments, according to the Shemanev, a psalm of David. The first thing I want to point out to you is that like Psalms 4 and 5 before it, Psalm 6 is addressed to the choir master. Furthermore, the title intimates that the psalm is to be recited or sung with stringed instruments according to the shemineth. The shemineth means the eighth, so it probably refers to an eighth-stringed instrument or to a musical beat. You might ask, why should we care about these kinds of details? The reason is that we ought to worship God in the way that he commands, neither taking away from his ordinances nor adding rituals according to our own preferences or to the traditions of men, as Moses instructs in Deuteronomy 12 and Jesus confirms in Matthew 15. This is known as the regulative principle of worship, which asserts that the worship of God should be based solely on what is explicitly commanded in Scripture. This is why our worship services are not a concert, nor a political rally, nor a platform for a self-improvement TED Talk, nor your weekly Cappuccino with Jesus check-in. Instead, we strive to worship God in spirit and in truth, as Jesus commands us to do so in John 4.24, and to do so decently and in order, as Paul instructs in 1 Corinthians 14.40, and to do it in a way that God Himself prescribes in the entirety of His Word. And we learn in Psalms, like Psalm 6, that music and singing has always been an important and God-honoring element of worship. Even in our simple worship services, we worship God by singing hymns accompanied with a stringed instrument, in this case the piano, which even though it has a keyboard, its sound production relies on strings being struck by hammers. Our first lesson, therefore, is that we sing in our worship services not primarily because we enjoy it, though we do, nor because singing together brings us closer together, though it does, but because singing to God in worship is prescribed in His Word. Now, the title also teaches us that this psalm is composed by David. However, unlike Psalm 3, for example, which tells us what the psalm is about, Psalm 6 does not give us the historical background for its composition. We do know that Psalm 6 is a prayer that David offers in terribly difficult circumstances, perhaps under his own tree of sorrows. So in the midst of his agony, let us first of all consider David's posture. In verse 2, we read that David is languishing and that his bones are troubled. And in verse 3, we read that his soul is greatly troubled. The word languishing has the sense of withering. of drying out, of dwindling away. It's as if his very life is dissipating, like it is vanishing into thin air. His bones, which are the frame of his body, or the scaffolding, one might think, of his very existence, are troubled, or better yet, distressed, and his soul is greatly troubled. The word languishing, like I said, has this sense of withering, and David feels like his whole existence is withering, like he is falling apart. His body cannot withstand the burden that he is carrying, and his soul is in abject terror. He is utterly dismayed, one might say. That's the sense conveyed by David's poetic language in this psalm. In verses 6 and 7, we learn more about David's ruinous condition. His pain has provoked an intense moaning that has debilitated him. And at night, tears pour out from his eyes without ceasing, so that his couch is drenched by his unconsolable weeping. So profound is his grief that his eyes are wasting away from so much crying, and he feels that the constant torment from his foes might cause him to lose his eyesight altogether as his eye grows weaker and weaker. Darkness is encompassing David, and he is about to black out as the world, his world, is spinning out of control. Worst of all, Verse 1 shows that David is concerned that God has set his anger and his wrath against him. We see that in his words in verse 1. In other words, David's despair is deepened by his concern that God has forsaken him. So in Psalm 6, David's posture is that of a man who is forlorn, physically frail, spiritually faint, emotionally fading. He feels forsaken and forgotten by God. Have you ever felt this way? Perhaps not all at once, but can you identify with that sense of sorrow that is conveyed in the first seven verses of Psalm 6? Problems in your marriage, for example, can lead you down very, very dark paths. especially because conflict with your spouse can make it seem as if you had made an adversary out of the very person whom God has provided to encourage and support you in your adversity. And if you're not careful, that can cause you to lose trust in your spouse, and to lose trust even in God's promises. And that can very quickly and effectively be used by Satan to cause you to feel physically alone, and emotionally abused and spiritually abandoned. Relational conflicts with family or with friends can cause you to experience a deep sense of betrayal. When one of your children or grandchildren or one of your parents is not walking with the Lord, that can provoke a profound sense of sorrow. The loss of employment and the uncertainty that comes with it can lead to unbearably high levels of stress and anxiety, as you consider the potential repercussions on your family, not to mention the unwarranted guilt and shame that often accompany the loss of a job. And speaking of guilt and shame, hidden, indwelling sin over time can not only stunt your spiritual maturity, and your growth in godliness as well. But Satan can use it to cause you to doubt your salvation, leading you to spiritual despair. Of course, chronic illness, deteriorating health, an unfavorable diagnosis, and the prospect of death, either yours or that of a loved one, can lead you to a very dark valley indeed, causing you to drench your pillow with tears night after night, after night. My father was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer in September of 2011, and he passed away two months later at the age of 59. I love my father deeply, and those couple of months were a nightmare to me. It was a nightmare to my sisters, it was, most of all, a nightmare to my mother. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to spend the last ten days of my dad's life with him, although the remembrance of those days can still be disquieting for me. In particular, the night before he died was especially ghastly. I remember it was about three in the morning and I couldn't sleep, so I went to the living room and there was a window in our living room that faced the front of the street. And I opened that window and noticed that there was no breeze. It was eerily quiet and still outside, as if death itself had moved into the neighborhood. The only sound I could hear was that of my father's labored breathing as he gasped for air with greater and greater difficulty. I thought to myself, what a nightmare this is. I was in my last year of seminary, and I remember praying that God would have mercy on my father. Since he was a believer, I prayed that if God was not going to heal him, that he would take my father to enjoy his presence. I also prayed that God would use my profound sense of pain to teach me how to minister to His sheep whenever their hearts were hurting like mine was. In that night of sorrow, instead of questioning the goodness of God, I was thankful that the Lord permitted me to seek comfort in Him through prayer. And you see, that is the pattern that David lays out for us in Psalm 6. While the circumstances of his life have given him a posture of sorrow, David doesn't protest against God. Instead, he prays to Him, pleading with Him before God's throne of grace. And that is what we must do when we find ourselves under the tree of sorrow. We are not to run away from God. We are to take comfort under the shadow of His wings. So having looked at David's posture, let us now consider David's plea. Notice, first of all, that David addresses his plea to God using his covenantal name, Yahweh, translated Lord in the ESV. In the 10 verses of Psalm 6, David uses God's covenantal name eight times. So when sadness sets in, when anguish agitates you, when doubt depresses you, when conflict confounds you, When fear makes you faint, when iniquity isolates you, beloved Christian, do not believe, even for a moment, that your privilege of calling upon your Heavenly Father for help has been revoked. On the contrary, that is when Christ's work for you is most beneficial, and when He most clearly demonstrates His unfailing love for you. Remember that your standing before God has never been grounded on your goodness or steadfastness, nor on your happiness or confidence, nor even on the strength and extent of your faith. No, the reason why you can turn to God in prayer, even and especially in your night of sorrow, is because of Christ's perfect and finished work for you. The circumstances in your life may change. The vibrancy of your walk with the Lord may vary. The fortitude of your faith may fade or may flourish. But what never changes, but is always steadfast, and is always sufficient, is the merit and efficacy of Christ's work for you. Satan's snares, the fallen world's lies, and your own sinfulness will constantly remind you of your inadequacy to stand before God. Ah, but in so doing, your adversaries are doing you a great favor. For you see, a greater apprehension of your personal inadequacy should result in a correspondingly greater appreciation for Christ's work. Remember Jesus' rebuke of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7, when Jesus asked him, if a lender cancels a man's debt of 50 denarii and another man's debt of 500 denarii, which man will love him more? And Simon answered, I suppose the one who had the larger debt. So Jesus replied, you suppose correctly. He who has forgiven much loves much. Far from invalidating your appeal before God's grace, It is precisely through confessing your necessity and poverty, and your personal unworthiness before God, that the chambers of the King shall be opened wide to you, through the abundantly merciful ministrations of Jesus, who is never ashamed of you, but who will gladly anoint your head with oil and prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. When the devil reminds you of your inadequacy and need, discern that you have been forgiven much, so love much. So in your distress do not despair, but turn to God for deliverance. For as sound travels faster through water than it does through air, so also your tears expedite your appeal for mercy before the very heart of the God of consolation. The second thing I want you to notice about David's plea is that in verse 1, David doesn't ask that God not rebuke him nor discipline him, but that God does not do these things in anger or in wrath. There are two things I want you to take away from this. First, you may find that the rebuke and discipline of the Lord is painful, but you can be assured that it is always good. If we rebuke and discipline our own children because we want to help them grow in maturity, steering them away from a direction that will lead them to trouble, and helping them to experience a steady life of blessing and joy and peace, how much more should we benefit from the rebuke and discipline of our loving Heavenly Father? So don't despise the Lord's rebuke and discipline when they come, but learn from them and grow through them. Second, notice that David prays that God restrain his anger and his wrath. Now, can God restrain his anger and wrath from us, even when our sinful actions merit it? Would this not violate God's justice? No, it would not. The Christian can indeed pray that God withhold his anger and wrath from us without putting God's justice in jeopardy. The reason for this, of course, is that God has already fully satisfied his anger and wrath for our sins when Jesus was judged on the cross of Calvary. Thus, David prayed relying on the future fulfillment of God's promise. But you can pray remembering God's past demonstration of his faithfulness. The third thing I want you to notice about David's plea is that he reminds God of his covenantal promises to his people. In verses 2 and 4, David asks for grace, healing, deliverance, and salvation, not because he deserves them, not because it would be just for him to receive these blessings, but for the sake of God's steadfast love. What David is doing here is reminding God of the promises that God made to his people. In Exodus 3, 8, when God appears before Moses in the burning bush, he tells him, I have come down to deliver my people out of the land, out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. In Exodus 15-2, after God delivers Israel from bondage in Egypt, Moses and the people of Israel praise God by singing a song, saying, The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. In Exodus 15-26, as Israel begins its journey through the wilderness, God made this promise, If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in His eyes, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord your Healer. And on Mount Sinai, in Exodus 34, 6, as God hands Moses the tablets of the Ten Commandments, that are going to go inside the Ark of the Covenant, God identifies Himself in this way. The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. So you see, the lesson for us is that it is always good for us to pray God's words back to Him, especially reminding Him of His promises to His people and claiming them because of His steadfast love. This underscores the practical importance of reading the Bible, for it is only by reading the Bible that we will be able to learn and claim God's promises for us and for our loved ones as they are contained in the Bible. The last thing I want to highlight about David's plea this morning is the purpose that he attaches to it. Look at verses 4 and 5 with me. Turn, O Lord, deliver my life. Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol, who will give you praise? David says that the reason why God should be gracious to him and heal him and deliver him and save him is so that David can remember God's faithfulness and give him praise. Beloved Christian, it is good for us to write down our prayers, not only because it will help us remember who to pray for and what to pray for, but also because it will help us remember God's faithfulness, which will increase our gratitude and love for Him, and it will encourage and embolden us to give Him praise, which will help others trust in Him. In verses 8 to 10, David's tone changes. He writes, Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment." It's as if David's sorrow has dissipated, and he is confident that the Lord has heard his weeping. has heard his plea, and most importantly, has accepted his prayer. So, in this prayer of Psalm 6, we have seen that David's posture of sorrow led him to plead God's promises for the purpose of praising God. Now we see David's prayer end with a prophecy. Instead of David being concerned about God's anger and wrath, he warns his enemies that God's anger and wrath will fall upon them, altogether certain that in a moment they will be put to shame. This shift in the psalm is so abrupt that it has left secular biblical scholars confounded, leading some of them even to posit that these verses were a later edition written by a different hand. Christians, of course, have no excuse for indulging such folly. You see, in verse 9, David tells us, the Lord accepts my prayer. And that tells us everything we need to know about the source of David's confidence and the reason for his change in tone. The reason the Lord accepts David's prayer is the same reason why God's anger and wrath are no longer set on David. You see, as David prayed God's promises, David himself remembered them. And he understood that God himself would provide and offer up the Lamb who would appease God's anger and wrath. So David trusted, fully trusted in that promise. You and I get to fully trust in that fact. Look at how the author of Hebrews puts it in Hebrews 10. He writes, and every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting for the time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Christ is both our Passover Lamb, which satisfies God's anger and wrath, and our High Priest, who is at God's right hand, interceding for us, guaranteeing through His perfect merit that God accepts our prayers as they are sanctified and offered up by Jesus Himself. In a moment, your enemies and His enemies will be made a footstool for His feet. This liberates us to pray, as Jesus commanded us, for our enemies, since vengeance belongs to Him and not to us. You know, we live in a time during which revisionist history is everywhere, and this movement has not spared even the tree of the night of sorrow. Early in 2020, just before the 500th anniversary of Cortés' fateful night, the authorities in Mexico City renamed the tree from the Tree of the Night of Sorrow to the Tree of the Victorious Night, commemorating the victory of the Native Aztecs over the European colonizers. And although I'm no fan of revisionist history, in this instance I do find good precedence for that revision. You see, as Cortes wept bitterly under the tree of sorrow, he vowed to return one day to avenge his men's death and conquer Tenochtitlan. Well, that reminds me of a different vow under a different tree. On the night of his arrest, our Savior was greatly troubled, sweating drops of sorrow as he prayed beneath an olive tree. Yet he vowed to do his Father's will, no matter what the cost. The next day, under the shadow of another tree on Calvary, the drops of sorrow transformed into drops of love, as our Lord fulfilled His vow not to avenge His men by killing His enemies, but to redeem His bride by dying for her while she was yet His enemy. Thus, while it is true that our Savior hung on a tree of sorrow, that tree became a tree of victory when He was raised on the third day. That's why, like David, if you are in Christ, you can be sure that God's anger and wrath are no longer on you. That's also why, like David, if you are in Christ, you can be sure that God accepts your prayer. So in your distress, do not despair, but turn to God for deliverance. Let's pray.