I'm Tired, Lord! Series

I’m Tired, Lord!

Psalm 6:1-10

- We’re continuing our study through the book of Psalms.

- This week, we’re going to look at a time when David was tired and struggling physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

- This made me think of one of the things I struggle with personally, and that’s physical labor.

- I’m more of an office guy, so when it comes to doing hard work outside or any kind of backbreaking work, I have a tough time.

- Last fall, I took down our storage tent because a tree had fallen on it and it needed to be replaced.

- Instead of buying another tent, I decided to buy 2 metal sheds.

- I’d never put something like them together before, but I thought I could figure it out.

- So out I went, working on it.

- Turns out, it was a lot harder than I thought!

- What should have taken me maybe a week lasted a lot longer, and only recently was I able to finish everything completely.

- Well, this huge project was physically difficult, so every time I worked on it, I got tired.

- But the problem was when I started to get physically tired, I’d struggle some spiritually, because I’d think, “I could be reading a book right now, or writing a sermon.”

- So I wasn’t working at it to the best of my ability as if I were doing it for Christ, which is what Scripture tells us to do.

- Well, the longer it took, the more frustrated I got, so I began to struggle emotionally.

- I was struggling with it so much that when the snow started falling, I was so overwhelmed that I just stopped working on it.

- Finally, just last week, I went back to it because my wonderful wife motivated me to, and I got everything done and stuff moved back into the sheds neatly.

- It felt really good to be done!

- In life, there are times when we’re struggling with something, and we get really tired because it’s so overwhelming.

- We get drained physically, spiritually, and emotionally, and it’s really hard to pick ourselves back up.

- Here in Psalm 6, we see this happen with David.

- But what’s the background of why David would be feeling physically, spiritually, and emotionally worn out?

- Well, to answer that, we first must know that this Psalm is one of a group of 7 that are known as “penitential Psalms.”

- They are found in Chapter 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.

- The word penitent means “feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done wrong; to be repentant.”

- Many commentators believe that David wrote some or all of these after his transgression with Bathsheba.

- After that sin, God disciplined him by taking the life of his newborn child.

- Some of these penitent Psalms were probably also written after he disobeyed God’s command to not number the people…

- Remember, after that sin, God disciplined David by sending a plague on the people for three days, killing over 70,000 of his people.

- So that explains why the man after God’s own heart would be feeling physically, spiritually, and emotionally tired all at the same time…

- Yet David also shows us in these Psalms that it’s not hopeless and it is possible to move forward, we just need to look to our Great God to bring us through.

- So let’s look at these 3 parts of David’s struggle here in the first penitential Psalm, Psalm 6.

I.) David was physically struggling- Vs 1-2

- There have been quite a few times where I’ve physically struggled to make it through something.

- When I was in the Army, there were a lot of physically challenging things I had to do.

- In Basic Training, one of them was the physical test.

- We had to do push-ups, sit-ups, and a 2-mile run.

- The Drill Sergeants made us run on a track that was not paved, it was all sand.

- According to them, this would help us with endurance.

- So, we had to run around this track 5 times.

- At the end of every run, I was exhausted, but they were right…it was helping build my endurance.

- On the last week of basic training, we had to pass our test with a certain run time, or else we’d fail.

- This time for the run, though, they told us that we only had to run 4 laps instead of 5.

- It turns out that they had us running extra laps the entire time so that we’d be even more motivated on our final run, and it would seem a whole lot easier than the previous times.