If you're visiting this morning, we are working through the Psalms. And this was the songbook of God's people expressing the very real struggles, the sincere things that they went through in life, and how wonderful it is to see this this morning in Psalm 13, something that you all will connect with this morning and we'll consider where the answer came. So this is Psalm 13. How long, O Lord? And we'll consider the entirety of the psalm. This is found on page 574 in the Pew Bible if you're looking. To the choir master, a psalm of David. 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. May the Lord bless this morning the hearing of His Word. One of the things that Israel often charged the Lord with throughout Israel's history, it's a sad charge, but one of the things, especially that Ezekiel exposed, that they often said about the Lord is that He was unfair in His dealings with them. you'll remember this, yet you say, the way of the Lord is not fair. Hear now, O house of Israel, is my way not fair? Is it not your ways that are not fair? We love to blame God often for the miseries that happen to us and that we experience in this life. The misery sometimes that we experience as we already considered in 1 Peter that come as the consequences of the choices that we have made. That's not always the case. That's not always the case. But it is more often than we realize. We have an interesting struggle here presented to us this morning in Psalm 13. It's a favorite of many. And it's a beautiful psalm that challenges us to think about how the Lord really has been to His people. How He has treated His people. And how often we are unfair to Him. Psalm 13 is really a psalm like no other for the downcast and we might say the depressed. This is a psalm for depression. What makes a psalm so interesting as I was working through it this week is that David really doesn't give us any circumstance for what he's going through or backdrop to the psalm to figure out what happened to him. I always find that interesting that some do and some don't. And I believe that's immensely important in and of itself this morning as we look at Psalm 13. Because what this psalm here is showing us is really an answer to all kinds of spiritual depression and whatever kind of form that takes on, Psalm 13 is really giving us a concrete answer to go forward. It is a psalm of great help. But it wants us to see something about us and it wants us to see something about God in this struggle. Why would God put a psalm like this here? It's an interesting thing to think about. The mere presence of this psalm tells us that God desires for us that we know His deliverance. and all the sadnesses that we face in this life. The mere presence of it tells us that. God wants us to know His deliverance. God wants us to know that there is an answer. But what does He want to teach us through that? In verses 1 and 2, you have from David a cry of despair. If you look there at verse 1, this is what we read. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from Me? Now, I think it's easy to read those questions and pass over just how weighty they are and how great the implications are in those questions. There's some serious things being implied there. There's some serious things being questioned there. Whatever David is describing here in the course of his own life, one thing is very clear. He feels totally and completely abandoned by the Lord. And that raises the next kind of question for us is, is that true? Is that true? Does God actually abandon His people? Does God forget His people? Is it really fair of David to say that of the Lord? I mean, that's the first sort of thing I think about when I look at Psalm 13. He's making a pretty serious accusation here. Does the Lord forget His people? That really requires being answered, doesn't it? Most Sundays I'll, at the end of the service, raise my hands and I'll give the Aaronic blessing. I will say the Lord bless you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you. Did you catch what David said at the beginning of the psalm? Why have you turned your face from me? Why have you taken that blessing from my life? Is David telling the truth? Is this what we can expect from God? It's an amazing thing of who this comes from. I mean, this is the guy, boys and girls, who struck down Goliath, isn't it? This is the guy who was the powerful king of Israel. This was the one who the Lord had used in a wondrous way to lead His people. And here from the mouth of this giant comes this kind of question. How much longer will you continue forgetting? David feels forsaken and David feels forgotten. Anyone will tell you in the course of their life that these are the two components to depression. Forsaken and being forgotten. They're the feelings of someone who has fallen into depression. He feels alone. He feels weary. It's the kind of feeling of rejection that often makes you feel alone. And it's that overwhelming sense of emptiness that comes over people, isn't it? Lost and without direction. And you're amazed that you have slid into that and you don't know what's caused it. You don't know what's happened. But here you are and you feel like you have sunken right into a pit. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to lay on your bed and not get up. And the worst kind of pain about it is you struggle with the question has God's face, God's presence, God's blessing been taken from me? Now you can understand this. I believe this psalm is describing a whole different kind of circumstance. This is really a little bit different from what we think are the big sufferers in life, isn't it? Sure, this psalm applies to the big sufferings of this life, but I remember a man years ago who I ministered to and he was in his early 50's and he suffered a stroke and you know, for 25 years that man was confined to his bed in a convalescent home at 50. And I remember going to visit him and he couldn't use his body. Mind was attacked. And the loneliness he would get out in discussing these things to me. He died a few years ago. The suffering that believer had to undergo was something that most of us probably will never know. Some are called to go through it. There are many Psalms that address it. There are the big tragedies of life. There are the real big tragedies. You have a whole book of Job to describe that kind of stuff that goes on in people's lives. And other psalms describe it too. Sudden tragedy. Psalm 77, I believe, is one where the psalmist says, in the day of my trouble, I just thought about you and I was troubled. I couldn't even handle thinking about the Lord in light of what I was going through. Many of you have been through that. You know that. Or you will. Psalm 13 applies to that, but I'm not convinced it's that kind of psalm. Psalm 13, what makes it so unique, what makes Psalm 13 so useful to the Christian is that it gets down to the very common and real struggles of the believer in everyday life. When periods of darkness and periods of depression come and hardship, This is the common experience of all of us. It's real. And there are a whole variety of common circumstances of life that are completely outside of our control that can induce this, that can bring this about. And we easily slip into a sense of hopelessness and we easily slip into a sense of abandonment from the Lord Himself. Where's the power? Where's God? The mundaneness of life can bring it. The monotony of it all, day after day. The same old routine. The same struggles. And then the continuance of evil. Things never seem to get better. Things only seem to get worse. You'll notice David references enemies in this psalm constantly. It seems through all of this, God's absent. I've struggled with that. You've struggled with that. What's amazing is that the world is constantly describing this to us too. And its reference point, though, has nothing to do with God. Listen to their songs. You know, here we have God's people's songs. Listen to their songs. I was reading the words this past week of the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby. I hope no one knows it, by the way. And why I would know it, it was written in 1966. But I considered that song. It was number one on the charts in the UK. And you know, listen to what it expresses. Ah, look at all the lonely people. Look at all the lonely people. All the lonely people. Where do they come from? All the lonely people. Where do they belong? And then notice what that song attacked. It attacked God's answer. Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. That's encouraging. Look at Him working. Why does he care? Eleanor Rigby died in the church where she was buried along with her name. Nobody came. Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave. No one was saved. Ah, look at all the lonely people. Imagine how many people went around singing that and memorizing that. No answer in preaching. No one saved. They're just lonely. Going nowhere. They're going to die in hopelessness. The world expresses this all the time, doesn't it? You look at the world's songs. These are the songs that dominate the charts of number ones by this sad world. They're declaring it to us. They're speaking it to us. What makes David's cry different? Kind of surprising this would come from one of God's people. And maybe that's the real point, isn't it? this cry, Lord, You have forgotten me. You have turned Your shining face for me. It's one thing for the world to describe abandonment, but it's a whole other thing for the Christian to describe it because his whole thought process is governed by a knowledge that the Lord is sovereign over every single aspect and detail and affair of His life. And that knowledge of His sovereignty and perception that God is not acting in a particular circumstance in our sorrows is a rather tough pill to swallow. I don't like it. I struggle with it. Oh, said Job, that I were as in the months of old. Notice, he slipped into depression. As in the days when God watched over me, when His lamp shone upon my head. And by His light, I walked through darkness as I was in my prime when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were all around me, when my steps were washed with butter and the rock poured out for me streams of oil. It's all gone now. Where's God? I had it all. it's all ripped away. When we get past the superficiality of how we're all dressed today and the veneer, and we get past all of that, I suspect this sermon is connecting with a whole bunch of people right now who are living this. And you don't know why. And you struggle with, are you going anywhere? You feel alone. You feel like you're in a spiritual wasteland. You feel entrapped. This is spiritual depression. You can't see beyond the circumstance and you wonder where the Lord is. I sink. What's wrong with me? David's expressing it. And in verse 2, he says something that I find just remarkable. He says, how much longer shall I take counsel in my soul? I think mind is probably a better word to use there. Shall I have sorrow in my heart all the day long? It's an amazing thing he's saying to the Lord. How much longer do I have to wrestle with this? How much longer, Lord, do I have to continue to go in myself and deal with this? Now, I don't know if you caught the connection there, but we really should see the connection, this general circumstance here, this connection between the mind and the feelings that are going on. At least in a general sense, really, David is describing something. But what's wrong with him? He has questioned the Lord's presence. And in the next breath, he has told us that he is weary of going inward. I'm tired of going inward. So, in his mind, he is wrestling with the question of how does this circumstance really show that God cares about me? When my feelings have overwhelmed my heart to lead me to the conclusion that He's completely absent. there's an inward struggle, of course, of what he knows to be true in the mind and the inconsistency with how he is feeling. We could say it this way. The feelings have drawn him into despair, suggesting things to him that God is completely absent. Leaving him, right? Leaving us with the question, is his perception of things right or wrong here? I mean, that's what we need to answer. Feelings are immensely misleading. I'm a guy, and I struggle with it. I learned this, not something I expected as a preacher, about Mondays. Mondays are awful days for preachers. When I first started to preach Sunday, I was up on cloud nine. And I was excited, and I loved the ministry. Oh, I could die in the pulpit today. And then Monday would come. And it was awful. It was the worst kind of depression. And I thought, what in the world is wrong with me? I mean, I am just down in the dumps. And Darcy would kick me out of the house. Sunday was here. Monday was here. And it was a radical shift. Sunday God was with me. Monday He was gone, right? Was it true? See, if you look carefully at verse 1, what is the source of His complaint? Will you forget me forever? Whatever this is, this depression has been ongoing and He's pushing His own instability, His up and down life upon the One who is stable, isn't He? He's pushing that upon the stable One. He is pushing the fact of His change, of His struggle, upon the One who does not change. Why have You withdrawn, O Lord? Where are You? Does God leave us? Does God leave us? the reality is that His very promise in the covenant of grace all the way back is that God said over and over and over again He would never leave His people. Ever, ever, ever, ever. If you were to go through Genesis, you would be struck by something that happened. Every time God's people were in hardship, you would have the statement over and over and over again. Genesis and Exodus. And God remembered. He never forgot. When Israel was at its darkest moment of apostasy, Isaiah would stand up and you know what he would declare? And think of Psalm 13.1 as I read this. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth. Break forth, O mountains, into singing. For the Lord has comforted His people and will have compassion on His afflicted. But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgotten me. Can a woman forget her nursing child that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Now David has just said, Lord, why have you forgotten? The Lord declared, inspired in His Word, I will not forget. I will never leave nor forsake. Why is he going through this? It's a really important point because many old Reformed writers would describe, theologians would talk about God departing for a season. And Christians have described this. You cry out to God and it seems that there's no answer and the distance only seems worse with prayer. And they don't seem to get past the roof and there's nothing but struggle and everything feels so questionable. Notice I'm emphasizing feeling. they were always careful to maintain that it was not God's presence, but His countenance, His joy. The Westminster Confession saying that God can temporarily withdraw the light of His countenance. And you might say, well, why does God do that? I don't know the circumstance here in Psalm 13. David is sunk into a pit. His enemies are attacking. And what is the thing that we do? I know this. What is the thing that we do in these circumstances? When discouragement comes. When we have circumstances that we dislike or we are confronted with, we can run. I've seen people do that in the life of the church. But the real thing that people do is that they turn inward. You know, every false prophet of our day has told us to go inward. Isn't it interesting that every single false prophet of our day. The number one bestseller years ago, his seven steps for blessed life said this. Number one, keep pressing forward. Number two, be positive toward yourself. Number three, develop better relationships. Number four, form better habits. Number five, embrace the place where you are. Number six, how do you embrace the place? We'll talk about that. stay passionate about life. Number seven, develop your inner life. Now David's trying that. David's trying it. You know what happens when we turn there? Your feelings of abandonment often descend into what? Sorrow. Into self-pity. And it compounds to the point to where you get bitter and you never get out of yourself. Morbid introspection. The anger begins to dominate the life. The bitterness begins to grow. Spurgeon used to say that, you know, ruminating on trouble is bitter work. I've seen the ministry. Bitterness totally destroy people. They wear it on the face and they want people to see it. They dislike their circumstances. They're going to let everyone know it. And it's a strange deal because some people don't want to be delivered from it. They love the anger. They feed on it. They wear it. They delight in it. They find some kind of strange satisfaction in it. And inwardly, a rod of madness is taking over as it can destroy the life. You ever see joy of the Lord on people like this? They've created it. They're living it. Now the most pastoral verse in the Bible is something that comes out of 1 John where it says something that I've always thought was amazing that John would say this. When our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and He knows all things. Your feelings don't determine the reality, do they? So what should you do? Verse 3 is so beautiful. Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Now notice what he asks for. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Give light to my eyes, lest my enemies say I've prevailed over him, lest my foes rejoice because I'm shaken. I don't know if you feel the weight of this, but he's saying the road I'm on is a road that leads to death. I don't know how many have felt this, but you just have to take seriously, don't you, the implications of a depressed life. Because many ask the question in the midst of that kind of depression, what is life worth living? And people take their lives. And some have contemplated it here, I guarantee it. And here is the Lord, through His Word, screaming at us. Come to Me. Come. I will hear. I haven't departed. I haven't left. Cry out to Me. I will hear you. And now we're starting to move to an answer. David cried out to the Lord and the first thing you see is that the whole psalm is moving us to prayer. It's moving us to come. Why do we pray? Well, remember last week, the last psalm, He said, lead us, O Lord, in Your righteousness. That was the petition. That was the heart of it. To be led in righteousness. In the heart of depression and abandonment, He says, Lord, give light to my eyes. There it is. Now, does God desire to do that for you? You could say, well, I don't know. And then you could say, well, 1 John says if whoever doesn't believe God has made him a liar, I don't want to make him a liar. I'm sure you don't want to make him a liar. If the Lord has just put this down for us and He desires to give light to our eyes and He's put it in Scripture for us, that means He delights to give light to our eyes. God wants to give light to your eyes. He delights to give that to His people. Did He answer David's prayer? Yes. But not in the way that we think. Look at verse 5. But I have trusted in Your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in what? Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because He's dealt bountifully with me. Now what in the world is this? Where is the answer? Listen, this guy is in the pit. And by the end of the psalm, here we go again. This guy is up and he's joyful and he's singing songs and he's happy. These guys in the psalms are a bunch of schizophrenics is what they are, aren't they? You know what? We're all a bunch of schizophrenics to some degree. Don't call me tomorrow. And I struggle with what is real and what is not real. That's the definition of a schizophrenic. Did David get his answer? I want to know the secret. You want to know the secret. Here is my response. I don't find a specific answer given in this psalm. And you say, meaning that the Lord changed his circumstance. There's no change of circumstance. Do you find that? I have trusted you. In other words, whatever God did for him, He came to a realization. The circumstances are what they are. God has never promised that He will whiz-bang, change our circumstances and fix them the way that we want them fixed. As uncomfortable as they are, as painful as they are, as troubled as I am, as easily as I want to fall into the pit of depression over them, you say, well, how did he get to verse 5 then? I don't get it. From verses 3 to 5, this is a radical shift. And the answer is, light was given to him. And you say, what is that light? I say he stopped looking inward. And the psalm tells us that he began to look outside of him. and his whole attitude has changed so the circumstances did not but all of a sudden God gave light to the eyes and what did he see what does David say here through this I will trust in your steadfast love that word is so beautiful we saw it in Psalm 5 it's hard to even translate mercy, steadfast love, covenant faithfulness all wrapped up in what you could say gospel what kind of light did the Lord give David he looked somewhere one day the light came didn't it and the life was the light of men this is the true light which enlightens everyone coming into the world you want light for your eyes you look outside of yourself to Jesus of Nazareth. Because when He came, He was the light. He was God's answer to our darkness. And He would stand up one day right in the middle of the courtyard of the temple and behind Him were massive lampstands and He would declare, and I don't think it was any light declaration, I think He screamed it in the middle of the temple, I am the light of the world. Come to Me and you'll have light. If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of the world. You see, that led David to remember the promises. And he says, I will rejoice in your salvation. What David saw that day through his struggle with the eyes of faith was the Lord Jesus Christ. That the Lord would come and that He would carry these sorrows. And you know, what if you had to carry this yourself? You ever thought about the weight of Isaiah when it says He will carry your sorrows? David believed that God would not let him sleep the sleep of death. David trusted that the enemies would not prevail, whatever they were, because the Lord would come and he would experience in full extent in body and in soul, what? God forsakenness. And he would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Knowing the ultimate sense of abandonment that any man could ever know, and we have no clue the weight of that abandonment. Fully bearing the sorrow of what David was experiencing that he would prevail over the enemy so that he could forever enjoy the promise that God will what? Never leave him nor forsake him. People always say, where's God in this? Where's God? Where is He in this or that? And they put the blame often on their own misery they chose upon Him. Where is God? There He was in AD 30 in the month of Nisan in about the sixth hour of the day pinning His Son to a cross. There's where God was. Declaring to a world in darkness and in misery the answer to our own abandonment that we chose from the beginning. the Son of God fully experiencing the horror of what it means to be forsaken that you today might have light for your eyes as you go forward. This is what David saw. And you see, this is the answer in all of our loaves. There's no other answer. We want a quick fix to all of our circumstances. We're Americans, by the way. Bolt it up. God's given the answer. And He has given light to your eyes right now. If you are believing, you are seeing so clearly that nothing indeed, no matter what it is, He has promised can separate you from His love. Therefore, we will trust Him, says David. And whatever the circumstance, I'm going to trust Him. Whatever the sad hardships or circumstances I have to endure, the truth is, He has always dealt bountifully with us. And can't you say that today? That's the truth of the matter. Look at your life. He's always dealt bountifully with you. And what a way to be pulled out of sorrow. Sometimes I think, if I remain in my self-pity and I walk around with a mad face and I want to show everyone I'm angry about this circumstance and that circumstance, I've chosen that. You can fight to hold on to that. But shouldn't the light of Christ's Gospel make us different from the Beatles? Shouldn't the light of Christ's Gospel make us different from the Beatles and the misery that this world sits in today? I close with this. One day the Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh. I don't know what it was. I have my idea of what it was, but I'm glad we're not told what it was. A messenger of Satan to torment him. And he says, I pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away. Lord, take it, please. And he said, my grace is sufficient. My grace is sufficient. Paul goes on then to boast. Talk about a schizophrenic. He goes on to boast. In the very same passage, whatever the Lord gives me, hardships and sufferings and persecutions and afflictions, contrary to everything I feel, they're not declarations that God is absent. But the truth of the matter is, He is never more present for in my weakness there the power of Christ rests upon me. And it's there that I'm strong. the answer is not a whiz-bang change of circumstance. The answer is to see He's always been good to you. And if you want light, look to the cross. He's answered any sense of your abandonment. When we do that, when we see as we should, we see that God's given you the answer to all of your sorrows in this life. He's never forgotten you. He'll never forsake you. Lo, said Jesus, I am with you even to the close of the age. Amen. O Lord our God, we are so humbled and grateful that You would even inspire putting down a question that is not true. You don't leave Your people. You don't forsake them. You've done the unimaginable in sending Your Son so that we would have light. and so whatever afflictions and sorrows come down our path would you always give light to our eyes not to sink inward but to look and see that outside of us came the light of the world and that as we trust you in all the circumstances of life whatever they may be we would be able to say with David we have known Your bounteous goodness to us all along the way. And that we would be able to rejoice in Your salvation. We praise You today for Your kindness and Your love. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.