How Long?

Our sermon this evening is from the Psalms, Psalm 13, and in the Pew Bible it's on page 574. I hope the title of the sermon didn't scare you how long. It's not going to be that long this evening, so, yeah, oh boy, that was not good. Okay, Psalm 13, how long, O Lord? To the choir master, a psalm of David, hear the words of God. How long, O Lord, 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 Lord 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. There ends the reading of God's word this evening. How often have we said those very words? How long, O Lord? How often do we feel forgotten? How often do we feel alone? Sometimes even by God. In our mind, we think it. Has God forgotten us too? Or being so worried it makes us sick where we can't even get out of bed. Sometimes depression sinks in. And it makes us not want to do anything. anything and you think to yourself why is god taking so long to answer my prayers maybe you're watching somebody suffer through a disease or a sickness and your prayers just seem to go to the ceiling and no further and sometimes that agony gets so overwhelming that you just lash out at god please lord hear our prayers please i'm bended knee You know what? If you've felt that way before, you are not alone. You are not alone. This evening, we're going to look at a chapter in the Psalms. And you're going to see that very thing. And you're probably thinking to yourself, wait a second. The Psalms, that's a praise book. That's not full of laments. Oh, it's a praise book, all right. There's songs of praise. There's hymns. There's wisdom psalms. There's royal psalms. There's psalms of thanksgiving. But did you know that almost 40% of the psalms are laments? Psalms that cry out to God for help. Songs with pleas in them, the pleas hear us. 40%. But the psalms of lament, they don't stay that way. They don't. At the end, there's always a twist to praise at the end. And our psalm, Psalm 13, was no different. Most scholars, when they want to hear a lament psalm or teach about a lament psalm, they go right to Psalm 13, where it has everything you need. It has the pleas. It has the prayer. It turns to the praise. So you're probably guessing what my three points are tonight. Plea, prayer, and praise. The text gave it to me. I didn't make it up. And the theme tonight, the main focus tonight, is because even though we have dark nights of the soul, we need to always be falling back on the unfailing covenant love of our Lord. Always. So let's jump into the text. Verse 1. How long, O Lord, 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 enemies be exalted over me? The first thing that jumps off, right, is that how long? Over and over again, David cries out, how long? In the first two verses, he asks four questions. He has this sense of being overwhelmed with everything going on in his life. If you see, there's a pattern here. He talks to God. How long will you forget me? And then he goes into himself. How long will I take counsel into my soul? And third, he says, how long will my enemies overtake me? He goes outside. All of our relationships, the one with God, the one with ourselves, and the one with others. David hits them all in this lament. First, he feels abandoned by God. Abandoned. Did you catch that? How long will you forget me forever? Will you hide your face from me? When bad things happen and we feel our prayers aren't being heard, as Christians we know God is still with us, right? We know it. It's the fact. It's the truth. But after a while, and things still aren't going the same way, or they're going good, and it feels like a snowball is happening. Things are getting worse. We forget. We forget that God is always with us. And David forgot that God was with him. And after these feelings of abandonment, and after these feelings of agony, it starts to feel like forever, doesn't it? The Psalms of lament have that phrase, how long. It comes up all over the Psalms. Psalm 35 reads, How long, O Lord, will you look on? Rescue me from their destruction. My precious life from the lions. Or Psalm 79 says, How long, O Lord, will you be angry forever? Our psalm has David so upset with himself that he really feels abandoned. Abandoned. The second line of our psalm gives us this glimpse of David's mind. How long will you hide your face from me? David's a broken man here in this psalm. Broken. He truly feels like the covenant blessings of his God are no longer on him. What do I mean by that? Well, in Numbers 6, 24-26, you've all heard this probably a thousand times. The Aaronic blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. The Lord has promised to shine his face on his covenant people. That's a promise. It will always happen. But in David's mind, he feels like he's outside the camp. That face is hidden from him. He doesn't know why. He has no peace, only depression. When you're depressed like David is, it feels like nobody can help. You feel lonely, and you see with David, David's first lament is with God. Why? How long? But then his next lament turns inward, and it only leads to more distress for David. How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? David thought in his mind, well, if God's not going to hear me, I'm going to do this myself. And that never turns out good, ever. But what happens when you start keeping things in? Tears you apart from the inside. And David is feeling that agony as he prays this prayer. As one pastor put it, David's self-examinations only lead to self-condemnation, which further worsens his suffering. And then we move on to the next lament. Not only that, he feels the pressure from the enemy on the outside. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? David had a lot of enemies. We don't know which one this is. Could it be Saul? Maybe a Philistine king? Maybe it's one of his sons that tried to take his kingdom from him. Or maybe it's everything wrapped up into one, right? As believers, we know we have enemies, but it could be as the enemy. The world, the flesh, and the devil are always out to get us. sent by the enemy, Satan. I fully believe David is struggling the same way we do today. At this point in David's lament, he probably feels like the entire world is out to get him. The entire world. These pleas in our text are from his heart. They're showing us to be honest with God. That's what we can get out of this first section. Be honest with God. God wants to hear your hurts. He wants to hear about your pain, your disappointments. The Bible is telling you that you are not alone. Don't ever think that you're the only person to ever feel this way. The Bible is full of people who feel this way. Full of them. Think of Joseph, right? Joseph, he's a young man. He's in prison for a crime he didn't commit. And when he finally thinks he's going to get out, remember the dream of the baker and the cupbearer, and he explains it, and he tells the cupbearer, you're going to be out, but remember me. Please remember me. Two years goes by, and he sits in that prison cell waiting to be remembered. How long do you think he shouted out? How long, oh Lord, do I sit here? I'm an innocent man. But what we'll see is God is faithful and he'll remember his people. But we're not there yet. Our second point is prayer. David says, Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemy says I have prevailed over him. Lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken. We have the same structure as the first one with God, with himself. with his enemies. At first, David was distressed. He was in agony. He had questions. But now those questions have turned to imperatives. They've turned to commands. David, at this point, is crying out in prayer. Consider, he says, or you could say, look on me. That's a command. If you look in your Bible, you could put an exclamation point right in there. He says, look at me. Answer me. That's what he's saying. David feels forgotten. He thinks he's been forgotten. Now he prays for God's attention to come back and answer these pleas that he has. Not only does he pray for God's countenance to shine on him again, and that he's no longer forgotten, but now he says he needs physical strength as well. He says, give light to my eyes or I'll sleep the sleep of death. That's a Hebrew idiom, but we see in other places in the Old Testament. David's asking for physical strength. One place we see this else in the Old Testament is in 1 Samuel 14. With Saul's troops, they've been on this long march to go fight the Philistines, and they're out of energy. And Saul tells them, you guys can't eat until we win this victory. But Saul's son wasn't there. And so Jonathan comes with his staff and he sticks it in the honey and he puts his honey in his mouth and it says his eyes lit up. And that's that idiom right there. It's just that nourishment he gets from the honey. And that's what David seeks in his depression, just physical nourishment. It's not a magical honey from what Jonathan touched. David isn't looking for a cure of magic or just the Lord saying, okay, you're cured, have this energy. No, he just wants to eat. When you're depressed, you don't eat, you lay around. And he's telling him, God, that please give me the energy just to eat food. David felt near death. And he feels like it's it, it's over. God won't hear me, I can't do this myself, I'm just going to die. And for death, it's not a good thing for David. Death is not a good thing. It's sad when we see people die. But we know as believers, our last breath here is our first breath there. We know we'll be directly with our Savior when we die. But for David, what does he say? He says, I can't die, God, don't let me die. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him. Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. David prays against death because he feels that his enemies will rejoice over his death. And for David, that means we're going to rejoice against his God. David, your God wasn't big enough to heal you. David can't handle that. David doesn't want that. David knows his God's big. His God is the creator of the universe. He doesn't want those enemies to blaspheme his God. So he said, you can't let me die, Lord. My enemies will prevail. Prayer is such an important thing in our lives, beloved. Even if we feel that we're on death's door, we should be talking to God. He wants to hear us. Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 116 teaches us that prayer is the most important part of our thankfulness to God. Our thankfulness. Let me tell you about a guy who thought God would never hear his prayer. Never in a thousand years would God hear his prayer. God told this man, I have a task for you. You need to go. What did this man do? He said, no way, God. And he turned the other direction and went as far away as he could. You guys know who I'm talking about? Jonah. Jonah. God told Jonah, go to Nineveh. And he said, you know what, God? See you later. He went the other direction. What happens? gets thrown into the sea, eaten by a fish, straight down to the bottom of the ocean. This is a guy who probably thought, God is never going to hear my prayer. But guess what? God does hear his prayer. I want to read it to you. And I want you to think of David as well. In my distress, I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave, I called for help. And you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the sea. And the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight. He's like, David. But Jonah says, yet I look again towards your holy temple. The engulfing waters threatened me. The deep surrounded me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. The roots of the mountains I sank down to. The earth beneath barred me forever. but you brought my life up from the pit. Oh, Lord, my God. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayers rose to you, to your holy temple. That, my friends, is our God. No matter how low you are, like Jonah, the bottom of the ocean, or how you feel like that in your heart when you're laying in bed and depressed, or you're at work and you feel like you need a new job, The Lord will hear your prayer. Psalm 139 tells us, Where shall I go from your spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, there you are. If I make my bed in the grave, there you are. If I take wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hands shall lead me. Your right hand shall hold me. There is nowhere you can go that God will not hear your prayers. And now we get to the third point. Praise. Praise. David 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. This huge emphasis right away that we really can't see when we read in the English, but we can see it in the Hebrew is that in Hebrew, words have pronouns built in. Or like in Spanish, you know Spanish, the pronouns built in. If I say run, you're like, run. If I say we run, they run, I run. See, the pronoun, we have to add it. In Hebrew, we don't. But David adds a pronoun in here to show how much praise he has. He says, but I, I have trusted in your steadfast love. He adds that extra pronoun to show how much he loves the Lord. And it's not, I will trust. Did you see that? But I have trusted in your steadfast love. It's always been there. It's nothing that all of a sudden God did something for him, and he's like, yep, now I'll trust in you, Lord. No, it was always there. I trusted in your steadfast love. And what's in this steadfast love that he's trusting in? The Hebrew has the word hesed. We've all heard hesed before, right? The NIV translates it, unfailing love. We have it here as steadfast love. Other places have it as loving kindness, faithful love. Really, it's God's covenant love for his people. That's the idea behind that word. That covenant promise that he will be our God and we will be his people. And nothing will ever change that. Absolutely nothing. It's almost like David at this moment gets his moment of clarity. He shakes his head and he's like, wait a second. I've always trusted the Lord. He's never failed me, not even once. And I will rely on that. And my heart shall rejoice in that salvation. And he sings. I will sing to the Lord because he's been bountiful with me. And we've got to take away that David's situation hadn't changed from the beginning of this psalm to the end. It didn't. It's still the same. He still feels depressed. But he knows the truth. He knows it. Think of Job. Job loses everything. Family, health, property. And all Job wants is an answer. But Job gets three friends. that are just talking nonsense to him for a long time. But does Job ever get that answer? No. No. Job never gets his answer. What's Job get? Job gets God saying, where were you when I created the earth? Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? He doesn't get an answer for why he suffered. But what he gets is he knows that God was faithful this whole time. And he gets blessed. He gets a double portion of what he had lost. Going back to Joseph. Think of Joseph, right? Two extra years in the prison cell, then it becomes the second in command of Egypt, the biggest power in the world. God is faithful. Martin Luther writes about this psalm right here, and he says, When the thunder and the lightning are still raging around him, David sings his song of praise. David knew that God was faithful to his promises. Deep down his side, David truly knew God would never leave or forsake his people. On this side of history, we know one who has been forsaken by God, don't we? We know one who would shout at the top of his lungs, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He went through the torment. He felt abandoned. And not for anything he did, but to save a people from his sin. Christ went to the cross, and he had to feel abandoned by God. He could say how long as he was nailed there. The book of Hebrews tells us, In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who is able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverence. Jesus Christ, our Savior, really did have the sins of the world pinned to him as he was nailed to that cross. While he was forsaken by God. Dear Christians, he did that for you. So you could never stop trusting in his love. His love. His Father's love. Ever. Even when you want to shake your fist at the sky. Remember who sits on the throne up there and what he's done for you. He is ever interceding for your prayers. He's always listening. He's always hearing. Christ wants to hear your shouts. Christ wants to hear your pain. He wants to hear your prayers. I want to leave you with this. The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians, do not lose heart. Though your outer self is wasting away, your inner man is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for eternal weight and glory beyond all comprehension as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Beloved, even though we have dark nights of the soul, and they'll come, even though we have those, we always need to fall back on his unfailing love. It will never fail. You may not get your answer when you want it. You may see loved ones get sick and die. But he is there to hold you through it, to always love you. He wants to hear your hurts because he will bless you. He will hold you close. Never forget about His unfailing covenant love. Let's pray. Father God, You're so good to us. Though as we're fallen and we do feel alone sometimes and we shake our fist at You, Lord, we just pray that You hear us. And we know You do. We know You do. We ask You just to help us remember that when these dark times come. Lord, help us to love You. and share you with others that we could see that are going through this same pain, that you want to hear their shouts in Christ, that you want to hear their prayers. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.