Psalm 13 - He Has Been Good To Me Series

Good morning. If you have your Bibles, please open up to Psalm 13:1. As you may know if you were here last week, we are looking at the Psalms through the summer. We are not going to cover all 150 Psalms. We are going to cover about 12 of them. The thing that is nice about the Psalms is that they lend themselves to topical study. As we talked about last week, the Psalms can be classified by different categories. Last week we looked at Psalm 1 which was considered a Wisdom Psalm. Today we are going to look at Psalm 13, which is considered a Psalm of Lament, a Psalm of Sorrow. This Psalm, Psalm 13, was written by King David. Some of you know who King David was, some of you don’t. King David was a man who had very humble beginnings. He was a shepherd boy. You might the story back in 1 Samuel where David had to confront the giant Goliath and was able to knock him down and kill him with a sling shot. We know that following that David went on to really the height of authority. He captured Jerusalem. He set up the capital of Jerusalem. He set up the temple. He unified the people and basically developed a kingdom that expanded all through the Middle East. That was King David. We also know that King David found time to do other things. He was a very skilled musician. He was a warrior. He led his people into battle. We know that he was a politician. He was an administrator who administered the temple but also he was a poet. The guy could write. In fact, 73 of the 150 Psalms are attributed to King David, 73 of the 150 Psalms. What we also know that is most important is that David was a man who loved God. I forget where it says it. It says “David was a man after God’s own heart.” He just loved God and we see that especially in the Old Testament. We see that in the early books of the Old Testament. We see that intense love of God, but we really see it in the book of Psalms. We see it especially in what is known as the Praise Psalms, those high and lofty prayers in the book of Psalms where David is just singing praises to his God, his creator. But we also see it in the Lament Psalms. We see it in those Psalms where David is in some sort of a pit. He is feeling pretty bad. It might have to do with his own sin. It might have to do with the sin of others or as we see in today’s reading out of Psalm 13, we might see that it just has to do with some unknown enemy out there. We are going to read all the way through the Psalm starting at verse 1 down to verse 6. Psalm 13:1-6. (Scripture read here.)

This, once again, is a Psalm of Lament. It is a Psalm of Sorrow. What is nice about this particular Psalm is that it is easily broken down into three key parts that seem to represent all the other Lament Psalms. The first part is what I would call the complaint. The second part of the Psalm is what I would call the request. The third part is what I would call the trust. Complaint, request, and trust. We are going to look at this Psalm in the context of that particular framework.

First of all, we want to think about the idea of complaint. That would be the first two verses that say “How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” We look at this and think what is the complaint here. I think the complaint is that King David is feeling alienated. He is feeling ignored by God. He is feeling forgotten by God. We see this in the repetition of those two words: How long? Four times in the first two verses he asks the question how long. It is like if you have children you know when you go on a long vacation the kids sit in the car saying how long before we get there? How long before we get there? How long before we get there? How long before we get there? That is really what is going on here. It is constantly. How long must I deal with this? Really it almost sounds a little bit blasphemous. King David is getting a little bit demanding. He asks the question how long, oh Lord? He doesn’t even wait for an answer. He says will you forget me forever? It is a little bit sarcastic to God. That gives us a clue that this particular Psalm is not like some of those more flowery, sentimental Psalms like Psalm 23 walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Those comforting Psalms. No this is a raw Psalm of emotion. This is a guy who is basically just venting up to God because he is feeling neglected. He is feeling alienated. In fact, when he asks how long will you hide your face from me; in the Old Testament the idea of God hiding his face has the meaning behind it of alienation. You don’t want God turning his face on you. David is feeling alienated. He is feeling frustrated. He is feeling ignored by God. Not only that, he has some inner turmoil. You can just sense the inner turmoil because he goes on to say “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?” The literal meaning behind this is how long must I carry on this conversation with myself within the depths of my soul? How long must I have this wrestling match going on inside of me? How long do I have to put up with that? Every day I have sorrow in my heart? What that means is King David was severely depressed. He was in a spiritual and emotional funk. He probably didn’t feel like getting out of bed. He was downright depressed. Then he goes on to say “How long will my enemy triumph over me?” The other interesting thing here is that that word triumph can be replaced with the word exalt. “How long will my enemy exalt over me?” Which gives a clue of how bad things have gotten. David knew that the word exalt was limited to God. What he is saying is if this thing doesn’t get solved what is going to happen is this enemy out there is going to take your exalted place. That is a bad thing. The first two verses are the complaint.