Would you remain standing for the reading of God's Word? I'd ask you to turn to Psalm 13 in your Bibles. Psalm 13. Hear now the written Word of God. How long, O Yahweh, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 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? Consider and answer me, O Yahweh my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. You may be seated. We've been a little Old Testament heavy the last two Sundays. We're looking forward to get back to the gospel, Matthew. Sunday? Okay, good. Back to the New Testament, but we're going to be looking at Psalm 13 tonight, last Sunday morning. We looked at Psalm 47, which was a Psalm of victory, of rejoicing as the Lord defeated his enemies. And today we kind of look at the other side of the picture, I guess you could say. When you think about there being 150 Psalms out there, you would know that these 150 Psalms probably have a lot of similarities, and they do, and a lot of differences. For example, we see a lot of what they call Hebrew parallelism, as the poet will build on one theme and say it in several different ways to drive home the point about who God is or what God has done. Although rhyme was not a big deal to the Hebrew poets, there was a bit of I guess you could say rhythm, almost, to what is being said. But in 150 Psalms, you also have a lot of things that are different, too. And because of that, theologians have began to look at the Psalms and put them in different categories. Like I said, last Sunday morning, we looked at a Psalm of victory, of God's victory over His enemies. There are other categories like psalms of praise and thanksgiving. For example, Psalm 150, it says, Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens. Praise Him for His acts of power. Praise Him for His surpassing greatness. Praise Him with the clash of symbols. Praise Him with resounding symbols. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So you see why they call that a psalm of praise. I mean, he drives that point home. We have messianic psalms. THAT YOU LOOK AT THESE PSALMS AND THEY POINT US FORWARD TO CHRIST AND WHO HE IS. AND I GUESS THE ONE THAT CAME TO MY MIND FIRST WAS PSALM 22, BECAUSE IT IS SUCH A CLEAR PICTURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST AND WHAT HE DID FOR US, AND IT BEGINS WITH THOSE WORDS, MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME? There are psalms of wisdom, or we might call them didactic psalms, that's easy for you to say, which basically teach, Psalm 119, for all of those verses and all of those sections, it's an acrostic, each stanza begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet starting with alpha, or starting, And we're just like Bet, Gimel, I said alpha, that's Greek. But yeah, we work your, Aleph, and you work your way down to the very end. And it teaches us all about the word of God and how important God's word is to us. We have the pilgrimage Psalms. songs of ascents there from Psalm 120 to 134, and those 15 psalms were psalms that the children of Israel on the way to the festivals would sing and chant along the road as they traveled going to worship the Lord at the Feast of the Tabernacles, or Unleavened Bread, or something one of those feasts. And then our favorite the imprecatory psalms where God speaks of, we call out to God to protect us from our enemies, mainly by smashing them, right? That is, you know, we just love those psalms for some reason. But tonight we're looking at a different psalm and a psalm that's not necessarily a lot of fun, but it is a psalm of what they call psalms of lament. It is a psalm of lament and the word lament means to mourn. or to grieve. And we see this word a gazillion times in the Old Testament. We see Abraham grieving, lamenting for Sarah. We see Joseph lamenting over his father as he died there in Egypt. We see the Israelites lamenting when Aaron died there in the wilderness. Jeremiah lamenting for Josiah. when he died, David, for Saul. And Jonathan, when they were killed, he lamented their death. He wrote a lament for Abner. for Absalom, his son, who had rebelled against him. It was all of there. And we have an entire book of the Old Testament, right? The book of Lamentations that is full of laments, the mourning and the grieving over the destruction of Jerusalem by God's enemies. I quote Eliphaz, one of Job's friends sometimes. Usually you don't like to quote Job's friends because they're usually so off base on what is true, but I think Eliphaz got this one right when he said, A man is born for troubles as sparks fly upward. AS A MATTER OF FACT, PAUL, WHEN HE WAS BEING ATTACKED BY THOSE WHO SAID, WELL, PAUL'S NOT A REAL APOSTLE LIKE WE ARE, HE NEVER SAW THE LORD, AND THEY WERE MAKING ALL THESE ARGUMENTS AGAINST HIM, AND HIS ARGUMENT FOR HIS APOSTLESHIP, ONE OF THOSE ARGUMENTS WAS, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LOOK AT THE AFFLICTION I'VE GONE THROUGH, THE TROUBLE I'VE GONE THROUGH, AND HE SAYS TO THEM, ARE THESE OTHER PEOPLE SERVANTS OF CHRIST? WELL, I'M A BETTER ONE. I'M TALKING LIKE A MADMAN. And then he goes on, with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews forty lashes, less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea. On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, in danger from my own people, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the wilderness, in danger at sea, in danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from other things, there is a daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. There's a lot of things to grieve about there. That is a tough life. And he said, it's because I'm an apostle that all of this has happened to me. Now, few of us will ever have to face that much trouble, but we'd be kidding ourselves if we think that being a Christian in some way inoculates us from trouble in this world. One pastor I know said to me, hey, Clifton, I never knew trouble until I became a Christian. He said, that's when the trouble began in his life. Jesus told us in John 16, 33, I have said these things to you that in me, you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world. So if we are going to face tribulation in this world, and we're going to face trouble, and all of these things are going to come our way, it would be good for us to know how to deal with these troubles, how to face them biblically. And tonight, we're going to look at David and how he faced these troubles that he went through at this particular time. Now, he did not deal with them perfectly, But I think by the time the night's over, we'll know that he did deal with them honestly. He shared exactly what he felt going through these things. And from looking at him, I think we can maybe learn some things about how we too can deal with these troubles. As we look at this Psalm, we'll see several things. Three, tonight, that old Baptist life working its way back in here. We'll look at David's condition. We'll look at David's prayer. And last of all, we'll look at David's actions. David's condition, David's prayer, and David's actions. Looking in verse 1 and 2, we see David's condition. It says, How long, O Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 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? Now, as we look at this, we always want to ask, what is the context for the writing of these particular words? And as we looked at the psalm last Sunday morning and other psalms here, I think the time before that I preached, I looked at the psalm, and I'm always talking about, you know, what was going on around David when these words were written? And as I was thinking about this one, I felt like Captain Louis Renaud in Casablanca, several times during the movie, he turns to his underling and he says, round up the usual suspects. And as we look at the condition of David's life at this particular time, we round up the usual suspects who were causing problems to him. Some people believe, yes, this was during the time of Absalom's rebellion, against him and how he ran for his life down to the Jordan River and crossed over on the other side to find protection and ended up coming back and having to battle his own son in battle. Others say this is speaking about his battles with the Philistines that went on for several years as he battled up and down against them, winning some victories and mostly winning victories with them. But last of all, people think this was during the time he was hiding from Saul. And when you look at the words and you see the, how long, how long, how long, how long, it makes you think, yes, it makes sense that this would be talking about the time he was running for his life from Saul. King Saul was out to destroy him. All David had done wrong was do what Saul asked him to do. He sent him out to fight the Philistines. He went out and fought the Philistines. He won great victories in Saul's name. But yet, when David came back, the women were out there in the victory parade, and what were they crying? You know, Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands, and this jealousy that Saul had and paranoia just really kicked in, and he tried to destroy David. And David had no choice but to run. He took his family and he sent them to Moab, asked the king of Moab to watch over them, and then he spent the next several years running from cave to cave, place to place, trying to stay alive as Saul chased him down with his soldiers. And we can see how that would fit in very well with this, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever and will you hide your face from me? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? I am convinced that this was written during that time, or at least David had that time in his head as he was writing these words. Matthew Henry said, it's a common temptation when trouble lasts long to think it will last always. And that's how David was wondering, is this just going to go on forever? We get a pretty good idea how David's feeling as we look at these verses. To begin with, he starts out saying, How long, O Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? That's what the word forget here means, to mislay. or like you've lost your keys, or to be oblivious to someone. And David felt like God had forgotten him as he's out here running for his life. God, where are you? Yeah, I feel all alone here. Saul is after me. Where can I run? It's almost as if David had the idea that God was really busy somewhere else off in Mesopotamia and had lost track of him and what was going on. Now, none of us believe, I think, that David really believed that in his head, but that is exactly how he felt. We have to remember that David is the one who wrote, God does not forget the cry of the afflicted. So David knew the truth in his head, but he is having trouble getting that truth in to his emotions and his feelings and what was going on. Sometimes our minds and our emotions don't run on the same track. We know things, but yet we feel other things. I think it's imperative at times like this for us to see what God's Word says about how He cares for us. And in Isaiah 49, we have Zion saying, God's people saying, the Lord has forsaken us, the Lord has forgotten us. And then God says to them, can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Now he starts using a ridiculous illustration. He said, can a woman forget her nursing child? Can a woman forget about that child? She birthed that child. Now she is feeding that child. Did she mislay that child somewhere? Where did I leave that baby? I just don't know. I can't find it. It is something that makes no sense at all to anyone. They know that would never happen, right? But yet he says, maybe though there was some crazy person out there somewhere that does that, but if that is true, understand that I will never forget you. I am your God, you are my people, and I will be there for you. A pastor friend had another pastor call him on a Monday. You usually don't want to take calls from pastors on Mondays because they've either had the day of Pentecost the day before or just, a horrible, horrible day. Well, this guy had had a horrible, horrible day, and he called his friend to try to get some encouragement and comfort, and he was telling him about all the woes. He said, oh, the church, people are after me. They're trying to run me off, and I don't know what I'm gonna do, and there's this one guy in there, and he just, he has made my life miserable, and he said, my wife is upset because, you know, they had to cut my pay, and we don't know how we're gonna make ends meet, My kids are teenagers now, and although I trained them and raised them in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, and I catechized them, and I did all of those things, and now they're rebelling against me. I just don't know what I'm going to do." And he just went on and on and on. And finally, his pastor friend said, you know, it's interesting that you would call me today, because last night I was praying for you. And I fell asleep while I was praying, and I had a dream. And in my dream, I was telling God about all of the problems that you were going through, and what a tough time it was, and all that. And he said, well, did God say anything? And he said, well, yes, He did. He said, well, what did He say? He said, God said to me, where is old Bill? I've lost track of him. I haven't seen him in ages. Now, that's how David felt. He felt like God had lost track of him. But in reality, God is omniscient. He knows all things. He knows what you're going through. He will never forget about you. But we see the next how long, and that tells us a little more about David. He says, how long will you hide your face from me? Now here his emotions have taken a step up, I guess you could say, because now it's not talking about God has forgotten something, that God has just forgot about all that was going on in David's life, but here it's like God purposely has turned away. Why do you turn away from me? It's as if he's saying, God does not listen to me. He has turned his face away. Lord, turn your face back. to me. We see wording like this in Psalm 44. It's one of those Psalms of Korah that we talk about all the time. And they said, why, in the King James, it just sounds so much better. Why dost thou hide thy face and forget our affliction and our oppression? It's almost as if he thinks God is purposely doing this to him. He feels like Habakkuk. You know, when he talked about, well, the fig tree's not blossoming, and the fruit's not on the vine, and the olives have all fallen off the trees, and the famine came, and the crops are gone. We don't have any food whatsoever. The flock has died from lack of water and food, and there's no herd in the stalls. All is lost. What am I going to do? But yet after that Habakkuk said, no, yet, even though all this stuff happened, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He was going to trust in God's strength even when everything else had gone wrong. David was struggling to try to do that as he goes through these how-longs. How can I trust in Him? But then there's another how-long. Verse 3, How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? It's Charles Brown's Christmas song, Please Come Home for Christmas, My Baby's Gone, I Have No Friends. That is how David feels. He's all alone. It's as if God is gone. You say, wait a minute, he has 400 men with him, right? But have you ever looked what those 400 men were like? Here's a description of those 400 men that were with David. And everyone who is in distress, and everyone who is in debt, And everyone who was bitter and soul gathered to him. And he became commander over them, and there were with him about 400 men. All these bitter, angry, debt-ridden criminals out there in the world all rush to David, and those are his friends. Those are the people with him. And what happens? He goes, they leave their families in ziklag, and they go to try to tell the Philistines they're going to join in this battle, and they say, we don't want you in our battle. You go back home, you'll turn against us. And when they get back home, lo and behold, the Amalekites had come and carried their wives and children and their crops and everything away. And what did these 400 good friends of David want to do to him? Stone him to death because of what he brought on them. You can see why he feels so alone. Yes, there are external things going on, but the internal battles are just as real. Again, we have to remember that this is the same David that wrote these words. In Psalm 62, for God alone my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. And then in Psalm 37, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil desires. You see, he knows, he knows in his head, but it's so hard for him to understand that in his heart. Then there's one more, how long here? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Now again, I can't tell you for sure that this is Saul that was David's enemy at this particular time, but I'm pretty sure that David's enemies here are also God's. enemies. And he's saying, God, please, how long? Don't let my enemies gloat over me. Don't let them act as if they have been victorious over me. Do something. Somehow, how long is all of this going to go on? David has forgotten the promises of God. He forgot the promise when Samuel came to his house, and all the family was there in the house, and God told Samuel he was going to anoint the new king to take Saul's place, and he looked first at the oldest brother, and he was good-looking and tall and strong, and God says, not him, and not him, and he went through the whole line, and Samuel basically said, he's not here, Is there another son somewhere that we don't know about?" And he said, well, David, he's out watching the sheep. Somebody has to watch him. He says, we're not sitting down to eat until he gets here. So they rushed out to get David and they bring him in. And the Lord says, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. So the promises of God were there. He had seen God do so much for him. The victory over Goliath, the victory over the other Philistines, the way God watched over him, the way he was able to slip away right from under Saul's nose. God had taken care of him, but yet now sorrow and uncertainty filled his heart. What is he to do? Now, I won't say everything that he just said was a good thing to say, but I will say this, as we began to look at David's prayer, at least he knew who to turn to. In the midst of all this darkness, when his soul was dark, he turned to the Lord. And if you notice, it's all caps, Lord. Yahweh, it's the covenant name of God, not a generic name of God. He is calling out to God with his woes. How long, oh Yahweh, will you forgive me forever? And he goes, will you hide your face? And he says all of these things. And then we get down to verse three and the prayer continues. He says, Consider and answer me, O Yahweh my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him. Lest my foes rejoice, because I am shaken. O Yahweh. And then I think it's, we have to take seriously the fact that he also throws that personal pronoun in there. It's not, oh, Yahweh, God, but it's, oh, Yahweh, my God, my God. He knew who to turn to. In His darkness, in His trouble, in His sufferings, He knew He could turn to God. It reminded me of Jesus when He said some hard sayings, and it says that everyone turned, went away and followed him no longer. If you remember, Jesus turned to his disciples and basically said, are you going to go too? And Peter, being Simon Peter, said, Lord, to where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And even down in the darkness of David's soul, I think he realized that. that he had nowhere else to turn, that the Lord was there for him. So he looked to him and look at his prayer. ESV says, consider and answer me. Some versions just say, behold, look, see what I'm going through, Lord, and please answer me. And this word for answer has a hint of understanding about it. Understand what I feel, Lord. Hear my plea, hear my cry. This guy I went to seminary with from Woodville, he was a big red-headed guy, big red beard, and now it's a big white beard, like so many things that have happened. But whenever you would talk to Len, whether it was serious or just happy talk, when you would say something, he'd look at you and he'd say, I hear you. I hear you." That was just his response to everything. And David just wants to realize and know that God hears him. He says, Lord, hear me, and this is my prayer, enlighten my eyes, or as it says in the ESV, light up my eyes. Now, this is terminology we don't normally use today, but if you look in the Old Testament, if you remember the story of when Saul had just become king, and he was fighting against the Philistines, and times were really, really hard, and the Philistines were over here, and the Hebrews were over here, and basically they had two swords, and Saul had one, and Jonathan had the other, and you had all these Philistines everywhere. And Jonathan turned to his armor bearer and says, well, God can deliver by few or by many, right? He said, let's see if God's going to give these Philistines into our hands. He said, we'll show ourselves. And if they say, hey, come up here and fight, then we'll know that the Lord has given them into our hands. So they climbed up the rocks and they looked around the corner and the Philistines were up on the ridge and they kind of went, you know, hey, and the Philistines looked down at them and said, Oh, look, the Hebrews are coming out of their holes. You know, come up here and we'll show you a thing or two. That's Philistine talk, I guess. Jonathan said, God is going to give us the victory. If you remember, they went up the mountain and they attacked this company, and they were all killed except for the ones that ran. And when they ran into the camp, it caused this panic, and they started fighting each other, and this panic, and they're running, and the Hebrews see what is going on, and Saul says, two arms, and they grabbed staffs and whatever they had to fight with, and went after the Philistines. And if you remember, Saul took an oath, And he said, I want vengeance on my enemies, and if anybody eats anything before all of my enemies have been killed, then, you know, they will be put to death. So they all went charging out, and by the end of the day, of course, they're about to pass out. They're fainting and hungry, and Jonathan is leading a group through the forest, and he sees some honey. in a log there that had fallen that the bees had built a hive in. And he took his staff and he dipped it in the honey and he put it to his mouth and they all went, and he says, what's the matter? And he says, well, and he told them about the oath his father had taken. And basically he said, well, that's silly. Not exactly those words, but close. He said, look how I have taken the honey and how my eyes have lit up. Now he had energy and he had a new strength. His eyes had been enlightened. And that's what he's saying here. He's saying, Lord, enlighten my eyes lest I sleep to death. I don't want to die. Give me energy. And here he's not even so much asking, Lord, give me wisdom to understand why all of this is going on. I think maybe he's figured out that that's not the most important question. He doesn't need so much wisdom. He can trust God for that, but he says, Lord, I need strength. Give me strength. Open my eyes. Help me to continue on. Give me strength to overcome. And out of that prayer he prays, we move to these actions that he took in verse five and six, really only three. The first one is the most important. He says, but I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. As we look at this, we see that David's still being honest. Yes, the darkness is still there, the trouble is still there, Saul's still on the prowl, looking for him probably, but yet he says, first of all, the first action, I have trusted in your steadfast love. It is that old Hebrew word, that hesed, that has been translated several different ways because there are different sides to it. Here we see it spoken of as steadfast love. I will trust in your steadfast love. I believe that in that covenant love that you have, for me." It's also been translated God's faithfulness. I am trusting in your faithfulness to watch over me, to take care of me. It's also been translated mercy. He says, I am trusting in your mercy to watch over me. And as we look at all of these things that he is trusting in God, we see two things. Number one, it was undeserved on David's part. and it is always undeserved on our part. If something is mercy, you don't deserve it. You haven't earned it. God gives it out of his grace. So it is undeserved on David's part, but on God's part, he is faithful and loving in what he does. So he calls out to God. He says, I have trusted in your mercy. Now, Hebrew tenses can get complicated, and I'm sure not up here to do Hebrew grammar because I was horrible in Hebrew in school. But as we look at the English translation here, it's, I have trusted, and that is perfect tense. And that means there is a past action that took place. I have trusted, and the consequences of that action continues to this day. I have trusted in your steadfast love and your mercy and your faithfulness to me. And because I did that, you have been faithful and merciful to me all the way to now. And that will go on in to the future. Yes, he's still hurting. Yes, he's still scared. Yes, he probably still feels alone. But in all this, he realizes, I will trust in you. I will trust in your covenant love. And that is what happened when When Christ came and He did all these things for us, in the book of Galatians it says, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. We trust in Him. He has done this for us and we know that we can go on no matter how dark it gets. We are a part of that covenant of grace that God made with Abraham so many years before. And if you remember, when that covenant was made, he cut the animals in two and separated the pieces, and normally the two covenant makers walk through together. But if you remember in this case, God went through alone, basically saying, I am taking charge of this covenant myself. I am gonna make sure that it follows through and all goes well. I will be your God, you will be my people. But then we see two future tense actions. My heart will rejoice and I will sing. Now again, David's honest here. I don't think he's really rejoicing just yet. And I don't really think he's singing just yet. But he is trusting. And that's what matters most. He says, I believe because I've trusted the day will come when I will rejoice again, and the day will come when I will sing again because of your faithfulness to me. That's what we saw in the affirmation of faith tonight. That in all my sorrows and persecution, I can have an uplifted head. I can hope because of what is waiting for me out there. I know that Christ will care for me, because He lived and died and was raised for me. And because He said this to me that, surprisingly, was in the beginning our call to worship. He said to us, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Whatever you're facing, be it sickness or trouble or finances or just an empty soul you feel like you have, know that Christ is there for you and He has invited you to draw near to Him. For His yoke is easy, and His burdenless life. And we can draw there through Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. Let's pray together, please. Father, I don't know where everyone is tonight. Some maybe are going through just deep, dark times, uncertain times. For others, there may be good times, but we realize that the days will come when they too will be facing tribulations and troubles and afflictions and all of these things. And Lord, just remind us how important it is to build your Word into our heart, that when our emotions cry out something that is not the same with your Word, that we can say, wait, no, that is not how God is. God is a good God. God is faithful to us. He has covenant love for us. Lord, teach us to trust in You. Teach us to trust in Your Word as we live out our lives. And Lord, we do ask You tonight to enlighten our eyes. Give us strength to live for You. Give us strength to walk with You. Get a strength to rest in you and what you have done for us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.