From Sorrow to Song | Psalm 13

Introduction

Question: are you afraid of the dark? Do you remember that awesome show from the 90s? It was terrifying! I admit that I was definitely afraid of the dark as a little boy—terrified to go into a dark basement or outside at night on my grandpa’s farm. There is just something about the dark that immediately carries a sense of foreboding and fear. You don’t know what’s out there!

I recently viewed a documentary all about free-diving. Free-diving is the extreme sport where divers hold their breaths for upwards of 5 minutes in order to dive as deep as possible, sometimes over 200m deep. One diver was describing the experience of their descent and some of the physics involved. She talked about how at a certain depth, the pressure of the ocean outweighs the buoyancy of your compressed lungs—thus, you reach a point where you don’t have to swim down anymore, but let the ocean push you down into the depths where light can no longer penetrate, and the diver sees nothing but darkness. 

Some divers describe this experience as having almost a tranquil or serene effect—just let your mind go and let yourself fall. But that can also have a terrifying effect on experienced divers, even world-record holding divers. They report seeing things in the dark that they know aren’t there, causing their heart rate to quicken, and forcing them to turn back to the top.

In Psalm 13, David seems to be experiencing a similar, dreadful experience. There are many moments in his life that could occasion such an outcry of despair from him: the endless hunt of Saul for his life, the betrayals he experienced from within his own family, the endless Philistine pressure—if you had just a cursory idea of David, you might know him only as the brave shepherd kid who killed Goliath, or the conquering king of the Philistines, or the dancing, joyous man after God’s own heart. But it is here in his Psalms—particularly his lament psalms—that David exposes his heart, his affections, his fears, his terror, and his hope to God.

Of course, out of an incredible kindness of God, we are given a treasure trove in the Psalms. We can locate ourselves in their highs and in their lows. And it is in Psalm 13 that we witness a deep low of David. But unlike other laments, this Psalm does not stay in the depths of despair. After reaching the bottom, David turns his face back up to where he knows the light is, and begins the long ascent back up to the surface, kicking against all the pressing circumstances that tempt him to despair and to give in. Faith is at the center of this prayer, and we would do well to glean lessons from David in the midst of chaotic circumstances. One author writes that this Psalm “begins with a deep sigh, followed by a gentle prayer, and concludes with great joy.”

So let us hear from David this morning, knowing that it is not only David who we hear from, but God himself. So out of reverence for this word, would you please stand as I read Psalm 13.

Psalm 13 is clearly a psalm of lament. These psalms, these lament psalms, could be defined as someone (usually David) expressing distress or sorrow and asking for divine help. Lament can be a hard word to get our heads around. I think we know what it means, but it can be hard to conceptualize. In the Greek language, there are 18 different words used to convey the idea of lament—these words vary in their precise meaning, but they include sorrow, wailing, discouragement, to cry out, to be distressed, to sigh and groan, wretched, and grief. All those words can contribute to a word picture of what we mean when we say that Psalm 13 is a psalm of lament.

There is a very real and present darkness for David, but as we saw in reading Psalm 13, it doesn’t stay in those depths. So my aim today, my humble appeal to you this morning, is to set forth the example of David through the inspired word of God in order to persuade you that there is hope. No matter the darkness, you can be sustained and grown in the midst of terrifying circumstances and unthinkable suffering. Don’t you want that hope? My friends, I believe not only can you have it, but in Christ, you already do.

In our darkest moments, our Sovereign Lord is faithful to sustain weary souls, resulting in faith-fill praise.

So as we make the ascent from the depths, we are going to see 3 stages: 1) the pressing question, 2) the critical petition, and 3) the faith-filled resolution.

The Pressing Question

It’s not hard to see what is emphatic to David in this Psalm: he is asking, begging, to know how long? How long? That question is repeated no less than 4 times in two verses, and is at the very beginning of each line. The position and repetition of the phrase shows it is forefront in David’s mind. Either this distress and opposition is intense, or it has been a long season of crying out with no response (probably both). This repeated address is a rhetorical question—by asking “how long, O Lord?” David is not really expecting an answer, but is making a point and describing his emotions: namely, he is feeling abandoned, isolated, desolate, alone.

Now, as Christians, we know the answer to that question: of course you’re not alone, David! Don’t you know that God is always with us? That he will never forsake us or leave us and that we need not be afraid? Come on, David! Cheer up!

Of course, that’s all true, but is missing the point. Look at the very first line in Psalm 13:1…

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

—Psalm 13:1

Do you notice it? The sentence is broken up. It is incomplete; it is broken off before finishing the idea of how long until God delivers him. Breaking off a sentence is a way of expressing extreme emotions...God knows precisely what the afflicted mean when they cry out, “How long, O LORD …?” Feeling, not logic, is what shapes this outcry. 

Maybe you can relate? You’ve been a Christian for a long time, maybe you’ve even have degrees in theology and ministry, maybe you do or have worked in ministry—but when suffering really hits, when your friends turn on you, when you get news that shatters hopes and destroys dreams, whatever that emotion (we can call it lament) wells up in us. It’s not logical or precise, but it is powerful and we can see it here that David is pressing God by asking, “How long? Will it be like this forever? Why does this keep happening to me? To us? I can not endure this anymore.” Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’ve asked that question before. Maybe you’ve asked it recently. Maybe you’re asking it right now.

The repeated question is powerful enough, but the 4 phrases that follow each refrain of “How long” can illuminate for us and analyze the distress that David is feeling. It’s not clear exactly which event in David's life has brought him to this point. This is not like Psalm 51, which has as a part of the inspired text the occasion (a confession for his adultery with Bathsheba), but the clauses following the “how longs” give us some lessons:

Lesson #1: Whenever you feel abandoned by God, pray to God.

Notice that David is asking this rhetorical question not out into nothing, as if he is just yelling for anyone to hear. He addresses his plea to the LORD. All caps. Yahweh, the covenantal name of God. The one who declared in Exodus 6:7…

I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.

—Exodus 6:7

He is feeling forgotten, like the Lord has turned his back on him. Like the divine favor of the Lord that was promised to him in this covenantal relationship has turned away, leaving nothing but his back, a picture of dejection. And by including the adverb “forever”, David indicates that he does not see any hope of change.

Again, it’s easy to sit here and correct David’s theology, but that is not the point of a psalm. Look at what Calvin writes when commenting on this opening verse:

[H]ere [David] speaks not so much according to the opinion of others, as according to the feeling of his own mind, when he complains of being neglected by God. Not that the persuasion of the truth of God’s promises was extinguished in his heart, or that he did not repose himself on his grace; but when we are for a long time weighed down by calamities, and when we do not perceive any sign of divine aid, this thought unavoidably forces itself upon us, that God has forgotten us.

—John Calvin

The point of this psalm is not a theological treatise, but a song that describes his feelings. And he feels the walls pressing in and the darkness overwhelming him. Like the free-diver, he can’t breathe, but all around him are shadows and darkness and the surface feels a million miles away. But David will not be distracted. He will not turn his face away, but will look to the heavens, for it is only from there that help will come, if any at all. His frustration, his fears, are Godward. And as we see later in the Psalm, that has an effect.

Lesson #2: Whenever you feel at the end of yourself, pray to God.

This third refrain of “how long” shows his personal frustration. When forced to take counsel within himself, within his very soul, he finds nothing but sorrow. It’s like he has made attempt after attempt to remedy the situation himself to no avail. There is an emotional weight, a grief that produces sorrow daily, relentlessly.

Do you ever find yourself in similar situations? This tangible frustration that nothing seems to go right, no matter how good your intentions. I’ve experienced that recently. It seems every single house project I have tried to tackle, no matter how small or simple the task, is met with just incredible resistance. It’s like the house is fighting me! Or maybe there’s a work situation that just doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction, and you can tell, you just have this pit in your stomach, that this is going to end badly, and nothing you do to remedy the situation seems to be working. Or maybe you’ve longed for something, something good, and it just feels like door after door has slammed in your face.

Follow the example of David. Cry out to God! When we feel helpless, it’s because we are. Our sovereign Lord sits in the heavens and does all that he pleases! So when we come to an end of ourselves, it’s because we are finite creatures. Flesh and blood are of no help at all; we need the Spirit to give us life.

Lesson #3: Whenever you feel like your enemies are prevailing, pray to God.

Not only does it seem that his enemies are present and waging war against him, but the final refrain of “how long” shows that it seems that they are winning. Not only that, they are gloating in their victory. Enemies in the Psalms are typically understood as ones who hate the psalmist, but more specifically hate the psalmist’s faith. The enemies in view are not just any one who opposes David for his foreign policy or his choice of music at the temple gathering or whatever, but they are the enemies of God. This is what David despises—that the enemies of the Lord would prevail and mock and glory in their victory. There arises in David a serious demand for justice. Someone has to right this wrong. Listen to how David views the enemies of God in Psalm 139:19–22…

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.

Again, David is taking inventory of the situation around him—he feels alone, like there is no one trustworthy around him to encourage him or to give him advice, and the people who hate God are winning—and asking God, “how long?” And there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.

But in prayer, we are communing with the king who, as Ryan preached last week, sits on the throne and is now, right now, putting all enemies under his feet. He has not been and will not be defeated. So take heart, dear friends, and hold fast! 

David then pivots from interrogating God to an appeal.

The Critical Petition

No longer are rhetorical questions employed, but genuine and sincere pleas to God that he provide relief and protection. By asking God to “consider” him, what he means is that he is begging God to look at him. Remember, he is feeling alone and abandoned and as if the very face of God has turned away. And so David cries out, “LOOK! Consider me! Turn your face toward me! See me! Answer me!” These cries seem desperate and then seem almost irreverent. Again, we are witnessing the intersection of orthodoxy (right belief or doctrinal accuracy) and personal, intimate, soul-deep experience of sorrow. Of course we know God is sovereign and that he hasn’t left us…but it sure feels like it. But notice (don’t miss this!) what comes next: 

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God.

—Psalm 13:3a

David still understands, despite the disequilibrating experiences, that he belongs to God. And this informs and fuels everything that flows in this psalm. He is calling for an audience from the Most High. What an audacious claim! One that only someone who can claim that the Lord is my God can make…

And look at what he is asking for (v. 3b)

“Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” 

—Psalm 13:3b

This feeling of abandonment has the effect of feeling like death. What does it mean to have the Lord turn away from you? Death. That’s what it feels like. This is darkness, utter darkness. But the psalmist gives a remedy—David begs God to light up his eyes. What does he mean by that? The image of light is used everywhere in Scripture, so it could mean many things: illumination of the mind, restoration of physical strength from an illness, moral energy…but what I think is in view here is David is asking God to banish the darkness of his isolation by giving light by turning back to him. He feels as though the Lord has turned away, so he feels as though he is cursed—so he begs God to turn back to him. What he’s asking for is the blessing given to Aaron in Numbers 6…

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.

—Numbers 6:24–26

What he wants more than anything is God himself.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

—1 John 1:5

Remember, David is in considerable anguish. He fears that if God doesn’t act, he will sleep this sleep of death. He feels forsaken and left out in the dark. And again, we are meant to locate ourselves in this psalm with each of our own stories. But this psalm is not given to us so that we can rationalize or reason our way out of painful circumstances. No, rather the purpose of this psalm, particularly in these opening stanzas to give us—you and me—the words we need to bring that anguish to the one who knows our frame and knows all that is in us. When trials abound, when it feels like the pressures of life (like the ocean) are pushing you down, this gracious gift from the Lord is meant to be a means by which we can cry out to God.

“Look at us? Consider us? Don’t you see? Will it be like this forever? HOW LONG?”

David’s final appeal to God to motivate him to act is to not just rescue him from what feels like the jaws of death, but to vindicate the name of God from the enemies who seek to not only prevail, but rejoice. Humiliation—not just of the singer, but of God himself is what is at risk. The enemies sense that this man is at his end, he is on the ropes, he is “shaken”, and they are eager to make a name for themselves by shaming the Lord’s anointed.

But suddenly, like the first dawn on the third day in the east, hope rises, and the tone completely changes. 

The Faith-Filled Resolution 

While the first 4 verses of this psalm are intense and emotional, there is a discernible shift that takes place in verse 5. Instead of agony, there is confidence. Out of despair and desolation, we see delight. Out of the chaos of David’s circumstances (and out of the chaos of our circumstances), we hear resolution in the voice of the psalmist—you can almost hear his gritted teeth as 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.

—Psalm 13:5–6

In the midst of our suffering it is so easy to be laser-focused on the destabilizing events and circumstances and people around us. But what we see in David is that when we are faced with fear about what the future will hold—”how long will this suffering continue?”; “When will you act?”; “Will it be like this forever?”—the remedy is to look back at all that God has done to inform what we will do in the future.

The first two words of v. 5 change the entire tone of this psalm and are fronted and placed in a position of emphasis: BUT I…the focus shifts not on what God is seemingly not doing, but to how the sufferer is going to respond. Look at the 3 verbs connected to David in these last 2 verses: I have trusted, I shall rejoice, and I will sing. 

To look forward, David looks back. Instead of looking down at his circumstances, he looks up to where his hope has rested all these years. He has trusted in the steadfast love of the Lord, revealed to Israel in that great covenant promise in Exodus 34:6–7

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

—Exodus 34:6–7

That is the foundation to everything. Who God is and how he has revealed himself and then shown himself to be faithful is the foundation of the hope that David resolves himself to. Derek Kidner says it so well:

However great the pressure, the choice is still [David’s] to make, not the enemy’s; and God’s covenant remains. So the psalmist entrusts himself to this pledged love, and turns his attention not to the quality of his faith but to its object and its outcome, which he has every intention of enjoying. 

—Derek Kidner

The assurance of our faith is not found in how strongly we feel in any given moment. Given how often I feel all over the place, that would be very un-assuring. The confidence of our faith is not found in the quality of it but in the object of that faith: in the person and work of Christ Jesus our Lord. He who was actually abandoned by God, who actually looked up to the heavens and could ask “My God, why have you forsaken me?”, it is he who we have communion with, and that can produce faith.

And regardless of your circumstances, if you’ve been a Christian any amount of time, you can look back, if only to your miraculous and gracious conversion, and reflect on how God has been faithful to you in the past. Each of us, regardless of how trying our current moment is, we can all say with David that “he has dealt bountifully with me.” And for those of us here today who can say that, we have an assurance and view that David could only dream of: our security is in the person and work of Christ. Look how Paul puts it in Colossians 2…

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

—Colossians 2:13–15

That is amazing grace. That is miraculous. That is steadfast love. In Christ, God has answered all of David’s “how long”’s with an emphatic answer. How long will he forget you? No more. How long will he hide his face from you? No, the Father turned his face away from the suffering Christ on the cross so that, in union with the risen Christ, he might turn his face toward you. How long will his enemies prevail? He who sits on the throne, the Lion of Judah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords laughs in derision as the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain, and he has put all those enemies to open shame, and at the cross, he triumphed over them and of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end! That is being dealt with bountifully.

And it is from this foundation, like kicking off the bottom of the ocean, that propels David into resolution about his future action. Because of all that he knows God to be, he will rejoice and sing. The silence of isolation is broken by the song of hope that wells up in David as he thinks on the wondrous salvation of God. And the same can be true for you, my friends. You too, in the midst of your sorrow and suffering can praise God for all that he has done and has promised to do in the future for you.

And don’t you want that kind of hope? Don’t you want to be faithful in your suffering and sorrow? My friends, avail yourselves of Christ, and all that he has accomplished for you. Never forget that he was crushed for your iniquities. He really did bear your griefs and carry your sorrows. Christ was pierced for your transgressions so that you might have peace, and by his wounds we have been healed. He, the man of sorrows, took our iniquities so that he could put them in the grave so that we might be brought near to the Father. So cry out to the Lord, and you may find that your crying really can turn to singing.