No Matter What
Okay, so take your Bibles this morning and open to Psalm 13. We’re going to read the psalm together, and as we do I want you to notice how neatly this psalm is divided up into three categories of prayer. As we read, you’re going to to see this pretty easily because every two verses there’s a switch.
So here we go: Psalm 13:1:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
[2] 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?
[3] Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
[4] Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
Lest my foes rejoices because I am shaken.
[5] But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
[6] I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
All right, now let’s go back and talk about the three different categories of prayer.
Verses 1 and 2 is Confession; verses 3 and 4 is Supplication; verses 5 and 6 is Adoration. And what I want to do for the rest of this video is just spend a little time unpacking what David is doing in each of these categories, but first let’s pray together.
Father, in this moment, I confess that I need your help, and we all need your help — because this way of doing things is odd. We’d rather be in person, but here we are. So please fill me with your Spirit and send your Spirit to everyone who is able to watch this video and hear your word. We know that you are sovereign and good, and we trust you now, in Jesus’s name, amen.
So there are three categories.
#1. Confession (verses 1–2)
And I’m calling this Confession because David here is being honest with God. He is coming to God aware of where he’s at, and instead of trying to hide that, instead of pretending that his heart is somewhere it’s not, he just owns it. And he basically says, “Okay, Father, here’s where I am.” And then it’s five questions, one after another. Let’s look at the first three.
First, how long, Lord?
Second, will you forget me forever?
Third, will you hide your face from me?
Now these are questions, but they’re not really questions. The question part is more like a prop. David is using these questions to lament his felt absence of God. That’s why the intensity grows a little more with each line. First, it’s how long? That’s a simple way of saying: I don’t like this. I wish things were different. I don’t want to be where I’m at. How much longer?
And that level of confession is one where I think we’re all at right now. We don’t like what’s going on in our city, in our nation, in our world. We don’t like pandemics, so how long, God? How long do we have to do this? That’s an honest question, and we’re asking that, and that’s okay.
Acknowledging Felt-Reality
But then David says, “Will you forget me forever?” And here, in one step, this goes from being perhaps an inconvenient situation for David to now he’s admitting that he feels like God has forgotten him. And I’m saying the word “feels” here on purpose. David is describing his felt-reality. David knows, and we know, theologically that God can’t forget anything — because he’s God! God knows everything and everyone, and nothing can slip his mind, but man, for David it sure doesn’t feel like that. David feels forgotten, and so he says it.
He goes from, “I don’t like this” to “I’m forgotten” to then the third question, “How long will you hide your face from me?”
And this is an even higher level of intensity, because maybe before, in the first two questions, it’s David’s issue. It’s David’s issue that he doesn’t like where he’s at. It’s David’s issue that he is forgettable, as it were. But here, in this third question, David puts it on God. “How long will you hide your face from me?”
Oh, so that’s what this is? God is hiding his face?
That’s how David feels. His felt-reality is that God is actively choosing to hide his face. David feels like he can’t see God’s face on God’s purpose.
Is God Too Busy on His Phone?
Just imagine you’re trying to talk to someone and you’d like to have some eye contact, but they keep staring at their phone and they never look at you. In fact, imagine they hold their phone up to their face, and they’re not just not making eye contact with you, they’re not even letting you look at them [it’s just like this the whole time; you’re trying to talk to them and this is all you’re getting — how would that make you feel?
It would make you feel ignored. Maybe forgotten. Because in that scenario, the person is not present for you. That’s what we say, right? They’re not present, and if they’re not present, it means they’re absent. That’s what David is feeling here about God.
For David, if he’s honest about where he’s at, it feels like he keeps trying to talk to God but God is too busy looking at his phone. So David laments, “How long, God, are you going to hide your face from me?”
This is the experience of divine absence. And it’s real. It’s the dark night of the soul. It’s that moment when you realize it’s not too hard to imagine that God has nothing to do with anything. Look at verse 2.
Points for the Enemy
David here goes from the sense of absence to now reckoning with his isolation: “How long must I take counsel in my soul?” — in other words, David is having to ask himself advice. He’s talking to himself, deliberating with himself, sorting through things with himself, because he’s by himself. And his heart is sorrowful all day. Because it’s cold and cloudy, and his emotional forecast doesn’t look good.
Then here in verse 2 there’s the last question, and it kind of signals the transition. “How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” The enemies of David are exploiting his situation. David’s felt-reality is that God is checked out and uninvolved — and that counts as a point for the bad guys. So how many points are they going to get? That’s his question.
And as a category, number 1, we’re calling this David’s confession. David is being honest with God about where he’s at. He’s lamenting the felt absence of God.
Okay, here’s the second category in verses 3 and 4.
#2. Supplication (verses 3–4)
And the word “supplication” is a good Bible word. It’s means to make a request. It means we’re asking God for something.
That’s in verse 3. In verses 1–2, David is honest about the absence of God he feels, then here in verse 3 he pleads with God to intervene. David wants God to answer him. “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Light up my eyes…”
And that’s an interesting phrase. The ESV gives a super literal translation of the Hebrew. David says “light up” (or we might say “enlighten”) and then simply “my eyes.” Enlighten my eyes.
In other words, David needs God to help him see rightly, which means that David has enough presence of mind to know that he is currently not seeing rightly.
To See in the Dark
And this is a really important step in Psalm 13 because it actually clarifies how we understand verses 1 and 2. David is admitting that what he’s doing here, the way he’s praying, the lament he’s bringing to God, is owing to his own inability to see. In his humility, David understands that his condition is connected to his lack of perspective, and so he is asking God to change that.
Charles Spurgeon has a great comment here. He says that David is praying, “Let the eye of my faith be clear, so that I may see my God in the dark.”
I love that, because it’s still dark. David is still in a place he’d rather not be. The question of “how long” in verse 1 still stands. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t there. God is there, which is how David is talking to him.
There’s an irony going on here if we think about it: David is talking to God who (he feels like) isn’t there. David starts with “God, where are you?” … but he continues talking like he knows where he is. God is with him. David confesses that he feels like God is absent, but David acts in the reality that God is present despite the way he feels.
This is where David is getting beneath his emotion. He is going deeper than his feelings and he is putting his will to work: God, it feels like you’re absent, but I know you’re present. I know it. God, help me. Make me see. Give me perspective. Light up my eyes.
David wants to taste what he is clinching his fists to believe.
God is here. I know he’s here — and that’s really the only chance we have of being rescued.
Remember God’s Supremacy
And in terms of relevance for where we are in this pandemic, I want us to get this: the presence of God in our crisis is the only hope that God can rescue us from our crisis.
And this is what that means for the COVID-19, and this is something to watch out for. Right now, in this current situation, there is a lot of necessary stress put on human agency. There is a vital lists of things that we are supposed to do:
Don’t gather in groups
Maintain social distancing
Wash your hands
This is all good advice, and we’re keeping it. These are actions that we can take. BUT — if we’re not careful, with all the emphasis on the things that we must do, we can forget that God is here. God has a part in this, and it’s the part that is sovereign over every detail. We know this. God is sovereign over every subatomic particle in this universe, and that includes any kind of strand of any type of virus, and that includes COVID-19. This virus cannot do anything that God does not permit. Which means if the virus will be stopped, God has to stop it. And he is pleased to use means. God uses means! Wash your hands! But don’t think for a second that washing your hands is what saves you. Don’t let your human agency eclipse the truth of God’s supremacy.
God is big; we are small; and ultimately all of this is in his hands; not our washed hands.
There’s A Lot at Stake
David knows that in Psalm 13, which is why he talking to God. He is bringing this prayer to God. He is making this supplication and there’s a lot at stake.
That’s what David is saying in verses 3–4 with that word “lest.”
“lest I sleep the sleep of death”
“lest my enemy say, ‘I have prevailed over him,’”
“lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.”
This is just escalating the intensity of the prayer. If God doesn’t intervene there will be terrible ramifications. And again, just think about how relevant this psalm is for us. I’m sure you’ve seen the numbers with the pandemic. We’re staring down the barrel of possibly millions of death. God, please, you’ve got to intervene. Please.
That’s David’s supplication. And ours too.
Now we move to last two verses, verses 5 and 6. This is the category of Adoration.
Confession, Supplication, and now …
#3. Adoration (verses 5–6)
Look at this:
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.
And it’s pretty simple to see what David is doing here. He goes from lamenting God’s felt absence, to petitioning God to intervene, to now declaring his trust in God’s steadfast love. David does this within just five verses, and although it’s easy to at least see this movement, it’s less easy to actually keep up with this movement from our hearts.
Who God Is and What He’s Done
David has just spent four verses saying that his world is basically falling apart, and now, all of a sudden, he’s singing praise and worship. He is saying that he trusts the God who he felt like forgot him.
And this only makes sense with us when we understand the direction that David has been going this whole time. He starts with his felt-reality, but he’s had no intention of ending there. He starts on the surface, and chooses to move toward the depths. His felt-reality gives way to ultimate reality, and that is who God is and what he has done.
God is Yahweh. He is the God of steadfast love. He is the God who Created all things and sustains all things, and who made himself known to Israel through a promise backed by his character. He is the God of salvation, of rescue, of making a way when there is no way.
So David says, I trust you, God. I’m banking on your love. Which means, I’m rejoicing in your salvation.
David’s faith in God is his joy in God, and then that has expression. He sings. In verse 6 he says: I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.
He Has Dealt Bountifully with Me
And that’s where this psalm ends. It’s a lament that lands in praise because David has drilled down to the bottom of his heart. He acknowledges his felt-reality; he petitions God for perspective; and then he declares his trust in God, his joy in God, and he sings. Because when he gets down to the bottom of his heart, when he gets that perspective, when he breathes in the air of Ultimate Reality, he knows “The Lord has dealt bountifully with me.”
And that phrase basically means how it sounds. It is transactional language. God has been dealing with David, and it’s a good deal. The God of steadfast love makes good deals — and if that’s true of David, how much truer is it for us?
David considers God’s dealing with him to be bountiful — abundant, gushing with goodness. And so how much better has God dealt with us for whom Jesus bled and died and was raised, and who live in the light of that resurrection?
Church, how much more bountiful has God dealt with us who can say, with Paul: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
All of Jesus and His Benefits
By God’s grace, we have been united to Jesus through faith, and in Jesus we have received all of Jesus and all his benefits. That’s the way the Reformers talked about our union with Jesus. Jesus has given us himself, and with himself, united to him by his Holy Spirit who dwells inside us, we have forgiveness and righteousness and eternal life, and hope and wisdom and endurance, and freedom and nearness and one another in the church. We have Jesus and all his benefits, and that is the depths of God’s steadfast love. That’s how God has dealt with us. And it’s a good deal. And that’s why we can sing.
This is the message of Psalm 13: it’s that no matter what, from the very bottom of our hearts we can have real joy and we can praise God, because no matter what, when it’s all said and done, God has dealt so bountifully with us in Jesus.
Father, thank you for Jesus, who is the radiance of your glory, and who is our Lord, our Savior, and our Treasure. Thank you that Jesus did not count equality with you a thing to be grasped, but that he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant and being born in the likeness of men; thank you for Jesus’s life and his character, that he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, and that he’s not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. Thank you for his faithfulness and righteousness, and thank you that Jesus died for us, in our place, paying for all our sins, absorbing the wrath we deserved. And thank you for his resurrection, that he is victorious over sin and death, and that we have new life in him. Jesus is our living hope. He is our solid rock. Thank you, Father, for Jesus, in Jesus’s name, amen.
