So turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 13. We will read all six verses. Psalm 13. Here is the word of the Lord. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts? and every day have sorrow in my heart. How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. My enemy will say, I have overcome him and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. Dear people of God, we like to be happy, or at least most of us do. We like to be optimistic in our outlook in life and cheerful. We like to have a light blazing in our eyes as we survey life around us. And I think Southern California helps this in many ways. The weather here is so good that it continually lifts our spirits. We rarely get storms that depress our mood. Instead, when we do get rain or storms, they are unique and novel. During the summer, we do not wonder if it's going to be sunny, but when. Well, most of the neighborhoods and towns also in which we live are new and well-kept, and all this helps foster a positive outlook on life. But many times, our lives are not as neat and tidy as our neighbor's flower garden, And our experiences in this sinful world are not like the continuous succession of sunny days that we often get here in California. No, instead, our lives are often hard and difficult. And it is not beneficial in those times to always try and paste a happy face on all of it. Now, I am not decrying our desire to rejoice and to be happy. Joy and happiness are very good emotions for a Christian, but they are not the only emotions that are proper for us to experience. We also need to learn how to lament. We need to know how to express true sorrow in a godly way without trying to cover it over in some cheesy and superficial optimism. The Bible contains within it examples of the wide ranges of emotions that the members of God's covenant community will experience in this life. They are not only described in many places, but we also see them lived out before us in the stories recorded in the history of redemption. Their cries of joy and their cries of sorrow come to us in very vivid language and they come out of a story that we know and that we treasure. For they are not figures that are alien to us, characters in some foreign legend. No, instead, their story is a part of our story. For we are members with them in the same covenant community, the body that God has called and chosen to redeem from all time. And it is through these people that God worked the history of redemption, the story of our own redemption. Their stories are recorded for us as both witnesses and also examples. As witnesses, they focus our attention on the central acts of God's redemptive history, the life, death, and resurrection of their Savior and ours, Jesus Christ. But also as examples, they instruct us on how to respond to God's grace and how we are to live in this world. So as we look together tonight at this Psalm of David, we see his cries as an example of how we are to properly lament the tragedies of this age without forgetting the covenant faithfulness of our God. But his lament first points us forward to Christ. For as we will see, Christ was the one who was truly righteous and yet truly forsaken by God. To understand David's lament, we need to remember that his relationship with God was not just an undefined acquaintance, some passing friendship. His relationship was founded on a covenant between them, an oath-bound agreement. God was David's sovereign Lord. And David was his faithful servant or his servant. David depended on God as his Lord and he turned to him for help in times of need. The covenant had both blessings for faithfulness and also curses for disobedience. And we will see how David uses this covenantal language throughout this psalm as he cries out, as he is portrayed as a righteous sufferer, one who has not been disobedient, but righteous, and yet he is suffering the covenant curses. And in this way, he anticipates the work of Christ. But the Bible tells us that David was sinful, And we see examples of his sin in the stories. And so he did not ultimately trust in his own righteousness, but he trusted in God's covenant of grace, whereby God himself, through Jesus Christ, endured the covenant curses and earned the covenant blessings for those who would be saved. And it is ultimately on these covenant promises that David puts his hope. So to begin, David starts out with the cry, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? What is David asking by this? Is he implying that God has some sort of problem remembering who David is? No. We can see throughout the Bible that the terms remembering and forgetting are covenantal, And they deal not with the mere retention of facts, but with action. To remember someone is not only to recall who they are, but it is to act on their behalf. Likewise, forgetting someone is not just having a memory lapse, but it is failing to act on their behalf, as is appropriate. An example the Bible gives to us is in the story of Noah. And right in the middle of the flood, the Bible says, And God remembered Noah. And so he caused the floodwaters to recede so that Noah would be saved and come to rest on dry land. So David's cry that God has forgotten him is not like meeting an old college buddy at a reunion who can't quite remember who you are and why they know you or why they should know you. Instead, it's like belonging to a military troop and you've gone out on a mission and your buddies, who you depended on, have not done their part. They haven't showed up where they're supposed to. They haven't done their part of the operation. And now you are feeling like a piece of laundry hung out to dry. Those who should have remembered you have forgotten you. This is the cry of David. But it is not that he has just begun to feel this way. He's not crying out prematurely without patience. We can see from his cry that he's felt this way for quite a while. He does not cry, have you forgotten me? But he cries out, how long? Will you forget me forever? The implication, the question implies that he has not felt forgotten just for a little while. But he has felt forgotten for a long time. and now he can no longer bear it. Is God ever going to keep his covenant with him? Will he never act? Will God not remember his servant? David then cries out again in another vivid image. He says, how long will you hide your face from me? This cry makes more explicit the willful nature of what David is talking about. It cannot be that David's need has merely slipped the mind of God. No, instead, David sees this as a willed action. God has actively hid his face from him. With this cry, David is going right to the center of the covenant relationship with God. To have God's face turned towards you was the heart of covenant blessing. But to have God's face hidden was the ultimate covenant curse. We can see the blessing of God's face in the Aaronic benediction that is often used at the closing of our services in number 6. Notice that God's face is so integral that it's mentioned two times in this short blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turned His face toward you and give you peace. But rebellion from God and the breaking of His covenant would bring about the covenant curses. And at the center of this was the hiding of God's face. We can see an example of this in Deuteronomy 31, verses 16 through 18. And the Lord said to Moses, You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves. to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them. I will hide my face from them and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and difficulties will come upon them and on that day they will ask, Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is not with us? And I will certainly hide my face on that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods. We can see from this that God's hiding of his face is more than just God withholding his blessings, but it is also God actively judging. By hiding his face, he is inflicting the covenant curses. It is a display of his anger and wrath against sin. David turns in verse 3 towards his experiences. He describes his own life and his experiences as the opposite of covenant blessing. David has cried out to God, not just because he is somewhat depressed in his spirit, he's having a bad day. No, he is actually experiencing in his own life these covenant curses. He feels that he is under the judgment of God. The land of Canaan was, for Israel, the land of rest. To have somewhere to live peacefully and prosperously without continuous strife was a great blessing. And rest was held out to Adam at the beginning as a promise, the heavenly rest that we still wait for. Well, at the beginning of verse 3, David cries out. Instead of claiming rest, he cries out, How long must I take counsel in my soul, as one version renders it. He has had to constantly plan and plot and scheme in order to stay alive. Someone or something was always putting his world into strife and disorder. Danger and death were always at his heels. This psalm could easily have come from the time when David was on the run from Saul, a fugitive who could not settle down in peace, but instead had to constantly flee from place to place. And this almost drove him to despair. Another of the covenant blessings was joy and gladness. But David was feeling the opposite of this as he states that he continually had sorrow in his heart. He was burdened by grief. He was looking for the day when God would reverse his fortunes, just as God later promised the exiles in Jeremiah 31, 13. I will turn their mourning into gladness. I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. But we must not confuse true sorrow and grief with a negative attitude or a general pessimism. David was not just a grump who liked to complain about everything, someone who was more comfortable being angry and bitter than joyful. No, we often read of his great shows of joy, like when he danced before the Lord when the ark was moving to Jerusalem. The Psalter also contains many of his psalms of praise. Some people do not have joy in their lives because their sinful attitudes poison their heart and their emotions. But there is also true grief. And this is what David was experiencing. And we must see how he responds to it. Many people try to live a lie by being happy all the time. But the Bible does not call us to this superficial and fake joy. Instead, we can and will experience the full range of joy and sorrow in our own lives. So David's sorrow was not produced by some melancholy moodiness of his, but because of real tragedies in his life. He was living in a sinful world, and sin and its consequences are not something to be imagined away, but something to be mourned over and to cause us grief. They are a time to turn to the Lord in lament. David had many things in his life that caused him grief and sorrow. He was chased by his own king who he had been faithful to, King Saul. He had to bear the news that his best friend Jonathan was killed in battle. He eventually had to watch his own sons turn away from the Lord in sin and then turn against him in rebellion and eventually die. The last, to move on, the last of David's cries in verse 3 concerns his enemy. This was again a sign of God's covenant. When God was blessing his people, he would drive out their enemies before them and give them rest. But David, as we said, was constantly plotting and planning because his enemies were being exalted over him as they defeated and triumphed over him. It may be that the singular enemy that's referred to is really a personification of death here. He is in this struggle for his life, and death seems to be gaining the upper hand. But his sorrow and oppression, this did not drive David to despair, but to call out to God, to pour out his concerns and troubles before his covenant Lord. Just the fact that David wrote a lament at this time shows, or this is instructed for us. For it shows that we are not to seek ways to cover over our sorrow, like with the temporary pleasures of this world. But we are to turn to God and demonstrate our faith by doing that. For David knew that only God could save him from these troubles because they were under his control. Only he could restore David to covenantal blessedness instead of cursedness. He showed this just by the fact that he wrote this lament to God. But we also see it in his cries that we just looked at because he identifies the root problem first. It is God's actions towards him. He knows that he is frantic, that he is sorrowful, that he is overrun by his enemies because of God's will and purpose. And so he calls out for God to turn to him and act. Look on me and answer, O Lord, my God. Take notice of me. Remember me, your covenant servant. But remember, in the sense of acting, rescuing, saving me, granting the covenant blessings. David here is boldly approaching God's throne of grace in prayer. And he is claiming the covenantal promises that God has given to him. He knows that God has said in his covenant of grace these things because he is a member, he is in covenant with God. So he calls for direct action from God, and he shows his absolute dependence on him by declaring what will happen if God fails to act on his behalf. He calls on God to give light to my eyes, to brighten my eyes, to cause them to shine. This is a very vivid imagery that we can all relate with. When we are tired and worn down and stressed out or depressed, our eyes show it because they are dull and downcast. But when we get excited, when we're full of life, our eyes dance and they shine. They reveal the life that is in us or the lack of life. They reveal the hope that is in us or the lack of hope. David is calling out for God to grant him life. Life of joy and victory. He declares that if God does not give light to his eyes, he will surely die and be overcome. And David speaks of three results if the Lord does not act on his behalf. And he's not speaking of these as mere possibilities. If you help, I might get by, but I might not. No, these are the outcomes that will necessarily befall him if his covenant Lord does not come to his rescue. Most likely these three results are all different ways of speaking of the same fate of death again, the ever-present enemy. First, at the end of verse 3, he speaks of his personal experience of death as it comes on him as a sleep. Then in verse 4, he visualizes his enemy again in the singular, declaring that he has overcome David. And lastly, he sees his earthly oppressors rejoicing that he has slipped, implying that he has fallen in death. So David calls out for the Lord of life to act so that he will not end up in the clutches of death. He needs God to give light to his eyes. And we should not miss the tie between giving light to the eyes and the Lord's face. For as we saw earlier in the covenantal blessing of having God's face turn towards you, it is also spoken of as having God's face shine upon you. David wants God to turn his face towards him and answer him. And thereby God's face will be shining upon him and David's eyes will reflect that light and begin to shine again. And so we come to the end of David's cries, his explanation of his plight. God has seemed to turn his back on David and inflicted on him the covenant curses. He prays to God to respond and to answer him, for he will surely fall in death. Then in verse 5, we come upon a change, a turn of David's thoughts. He has poured out his heart to God in a lament, but now he turns to a declaration of what he knows, what he believes about this God to whom he is speaking. The truths of this declaration have really been implicit in the cries that have gone before, in the very fact that he cries out to God at all, but now he spells them out. I think the translations capture this term very well with a simple, but I. It is as if all of David's talk beforehand is true, but what follows is what really matters and is at the core of who he is. David makes a three-fold declaration. He addresses the first two to God, and the last is a promise of a response he will undertake. And we can see in the first, something David has done in the past that still continues. And in the second, something that he looks forward to in the future. And in the third, his response in the present that will continue on. David first declares, I have trusted in your steadfast love. Or your covenant faithfulness. David long ago decided who was his covenant Lord. And that he was faithful. That God would keep his covenant to David. And so now he takes everything that has happened to him. And he looks at it in light of this profession. In reality, this is his declaration that he is a Christian. That he is a member of God's covenant community. the church. He knows and trusts that God will not forsake, for he is the God who keeps covenant and upholds his steadfast love. All of his experiences in this life are looked at through this covenantal relationship. And so his next declaration is based on this trust. My heart will rejoice in your salvation. It's looking towards the future. That's what another translation has. David has interpreted his immediate circumstances through his trust in God. And now he knows that his trust is not misplaced. But instead, God will surely deliver him. He will save him. So he looks forward to that in confidence, knowing that there will be a time when his heart will be able to rejoice because God has kept his covenant and delivered his servant. David is ultimately speaking not just of salvation from his temporary earthly problems, but he is looking forward to the great and glorious day when he will be freed from all of the struggles of this life and live forever in the blessedness of the new heavens and the new earth. Now David's last phrase in verse 6 is a little more difficult to interpret. It is hard to know exactly what he means. Many see this as a repetition of the second phrase, that it's a promise that he will sing to the Lord when the Lord has been good to him. Meaning that David will sing to God when God has saved him from this problem of which he's crying out. So they take it as David's vow of praise that he will write a psalm after God has delivered him. But this phrase can also be seen not as some future act of David, a future act that is depending and waiting upon God's action in the future, but it could also be rendered as David's present attitude based on God's goodness to him throughout his life. Not only does he look to the past for his trust and the future for his salvation, But I believe David declares what his attitude will be in the present. God has been good to David already, though there is much more to come. For the greatest of God's bounty is not seen in this world, but is hidden in his eternal plan for those he has chosen. David is declaring that already God has been good to him, because he is a member of God's covenant people, a part of those who are chosen from before time for eternal blessedness and joy, the real fulfillment of the covenant promises. And because of this, David will sing to the Lord at all times. This commitment to praise is instructive to us, for it shows us that even amidst our sorrow and grief, the times of true sorrow, when we need to lament, We are not to forsake praise of God. We are to recall his bounteous goodness to us, even in our times of lamentation. Now, having looked at David's lament, we must ask ourselves a few questions. In what way was David experiencing the covenant curses? And how is this instructive for us? Well, first, we must note that David justly deserved, in his own person, the covenant curses. He is guilty before God because of Adam's disobedience and his own sin. Under the original covenant with Adam, David stood condemned and worthy of eternal punishment. But God had made a new covenant, the covenant of grace with those who he would redeem. But yet in order for God's justice to be preserved, someone must bear the covenant curses in place of those whom God would redeem. And David's suffering in this psalm is pointing forward to that one. The psalm does not mention any sin, any disobedience, or any reason why David is experiencing such sorrow and such suffering in this life. He is seen as the righteous sufferer, the one who was righteous in his life and yet was suffering the covenant curses. And in this way, he teaches us of the truly righteous one who would come and suffer the fullness of the covenant curses for us. For Jesus Christ lived a life that was perfectly righteous, keeping all of God's law, and yet He suffered all of God's covenant curses, God's wrath against our sin. God turned His face away from Jesus so that He cried out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? A quote from another lament by David. Jesus did go to death. He had his oppressors rejoice over his stumbling. But he experienced this so that he could once for all conquer sin and death. He was humbled and rejected that we might be raised up in salvation. And it is only because of the work of Christ that David could have the confidence and the hope that he has in this psalm. He knew that God had made a covenant of grace with him so that no matter what he experienced, he could have a sure hope that God would provide a future final salvation. So we need to first see David's lament as showing us the gospel of Jesus Christ. David's suffering points us forward to the one who really fully experienced God's wrath against sin. The one in whom we need to place our faith so that we may look forward to the fullness of our salvation. The salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ. But David also teaches us how to lament for just as he experiences the covenant curses in his life, so also we experience the covenant curses in our own lives. For we live in this present evil age, a period under the judgment of God. For when Adam and Eve sinned, God decreed upon Adam and Eve and this world a series of judgments, though only partial and temporary. And you and I experience in our lives these covenant curses. But even though we experience them together with the rest of the world, our non-Christian neighbors, they relate to us in vastly different ways. The non-Christian, when he experiences the hardships and the pain in this life, It is but a reminder to him, a small foretaste of the judgment that is coming, the judgment of God that awaits him on the last day. On that day, the unbeliever will bear the full wrath of God against his sins in the ultimate covenant curse of hell itself. But for us, those who have trusted in Jesus Christ, Our experiences of pain and suffering in this life focuses our attention on the sufferings of Christ. We are to rejoice in our sufferings because we have been counted worthy to suffer with Christ. And we know that God is using our sufferings. He is using the pain that we have in this life to purify us, to sanctify us, so that we are further conformed to the image of Christ. And so, dear people of God, when you experience extreme sorrow in your life, when your enemies are exalted over you, when you do not feel that you can continue on in the hardships that have befallen to you, lament to your covenant, Lord, as David did. Do not seek to paste a happy face on it when your soul needs to cry out to God in grief. And do not cover over your grief with the shallow pleasures of this world, the distractions of this life. Instead, demonstrate your faith by the very fact that you cry out to your covenant Lord. And cry to Him directly as the one that you know is responsible, the one who you feel has forgotten you and turns his face away from you. Bring to him your experiences of grief and sorrow and oppression. Lay before him all your cares and woes. Cry for him to see you and to answer, or else you will be consumed. But do not stop there. Do not stop with your cry of pain and sorrow. Instead, follow David's pattern and continue on and profess that you are a Christian. Profess what you believe. Make explicit the faith that you demonstrate merely by crying out to God in lamentation. Take note of how your hardships have pointed you to Christ, to His sufferings, and reaffirm your trust in Him and the confidence that you have in His salvation. And continue to praise God for His goodness to you. But do not expect your lamentation to be a quick fix, to leave you bouncy and joyful after you're done with your prayer. No, I don't think David went from despair to joy in the course of this lament. He was still sorrowful and somber, pressed down by the cares of this world, but he was also confident and trusting in his covenant Lord. And so we must not expect to reach such a plane of joy and blessedness in this life. We will experience many times of joy and happiness. And we need to continually praise God because he has been good to us. But we will also repeatedly experience pain and sorrow and need to turn to God in lamentation. Dear people of God, may your times of suffering cause you to bring to mind the sufferings of Christ for you and strengthen your faith as you turn to God in lamentation. In lamentation, but with confidence in His final salvation. Amen. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, It is a joy that we can come to you. We can come to you in all times, in all circumstances, that you are in control of all and we can pour out all our concerns before you. And not only that, but you have instructed us through your word. You have given us examples of how we are to bring our sorrow to you. And so, in our sorrow, may we show our faith. May we show that we are trusting in you as our covenant Lord by turning to you and fully spreading out our grief before your throne of mercy. And so, give us strength in these times of sorrow, for we know that through them, you are forming us to the image of Christ. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.